UC Berkeley's first 'Wikipedian'

With the upcoming project and topic of Wikipedia on everyone’s mind, I thought I would share an relatable article that was published in my hometown newspaper about a month ago. 

Here is the scanned article as I encourage you all to take a look at it:

The article is titled, “UC Berkeley brings in its first ‘Wikipedian’” and features Kevin Gorman as Berkeley’s first in-residence Wikipedian (SO COOL!). Just as Professor Cartwright and Professor Losh are providing aid to us, Kevin’s main job is to advise professor and coach students on how to edit Wikipedia articles successfully. 

His focus of concern began with female philosophers, whom until a few years ago, did not have a single article written on them. At Berkeley, students are now publishing on Wikipedia as part of an exciting new curricula under Gorman’s guidance.

I found a few points in this article that are closely related to our class’s goals in regards to the Wikiworld.

Last week’s assigned video, “Feminism, Technology and Wikistorming” touched on the important relation between Wikipedia and academia. In this video there is a discussion on the greater goal of sharing knowledge that is only available to university students with credentials. This is in line with Gorman’s goal to get information online for everyone. The access that Berkeley students and professors have to scholastic information can have a huge impact on the Wiki-community.

As we discussed in class, 90% of Wikipedia’s editors are are male and 80% are white. This is a huge concern as this domination skews many topics and perspectives on this user-generated site. I agree with Kevin as he explains, “College students bring needed radical change and gender diversity to a site dominated by young white men…”.