Wikipedia Edit-a-thon: International Year of Indigenous Languages

The United Nations has declared 2019 the International Year of Indigenous Languages (IYIL2019). Please join the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America for a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon in honor of the occasion! Wikipedia articles are the top search results for most languages, and yet many of these articles have few or no citations, are out of date, make no mention of community projects like language revitalization, or are simply very short. As academics, we can use our access to university libraries and databases, and our training with scholarly sources to share accurate and up to date knowledge on Indigenous languages at the exact moment that people are searching for more information about them.

At this workshop we will provide participants with an introduction to Wikipedia editing while we focus on improving the Wikipedia records about indigenous languages. We will provide a list of indigenous languages from Latin America that need editing in Wikipedia, as well as some physical and virtual resources and information about these languages that can be used to make edits and write articles.  Participants are also welcome to edit any Wikipedia page for any indigenous language that interests them.

This event is open to anyone interested in indigenous languages and editing Wikipedia.  Experienced and novice Wikipedians (Wikipedia editors) welcome.  Wikipedia editing instruction offered at 12:15pm & 3:15pm.  Pizza, snacks and drinks provided.  Participants are welcome to come and go as their schedules allow.  The language of instruction will be English, but participants may edit any language edition of Wikipedia.

This event is part of a larger #lingwiki initiative comprising edit-a-thons at multiple locations in honor of the UN International Year of Indigenous Languages.

How to prepare:

Please do these steps ahead of time to get yourself set up to participate in this event:

1. Create a Wikipedia editor account here if you don’t already have one. This is a crucial step that should be done ahead of time!
2. Enroll in our official Wikipedia Program Event here .
3. Plan to bring your laptop to the event.

Interested in participating but can’t make it to a local event? Sign up for the remote editathon with your Wikipedia account and boldly start editing!

For more information, see:
Event website
Facebook event
Or contact ailla@ailla.utexas.org with questions.

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