You’d expect that Gainesville’s history would be on Wikipedia, but not much is. In case you didn’t know, Gainesville was fundamental to the national women’s movement, anti-war, and anti-racist movements in the 1970s and has a rich history of other Civil Rights activism.
I think it’s important to share this history and to make it available to everyone on Wikipedia. I propose that we hold an informal, yet structured, Edit-A-Thon to add information to Wikipedia articles about the history of Gainesville. Edit-A-Thons are events designed for people to work together to make changes to a specific genre or region. Attending these events are a great way to learn more about Wikipedia and how to write articles with others on the largest and most popular encyclopedia available.
Have you edited Wikipedia? Great! Never edited before? Don’t worry about it! We’ll work through the kinks together and make some helpful contributions about our history. We can use primary source materials from Florida Memory, the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, the Florida NOW Archive, and UF Digital Collections. If all goes well, this session will result in the creation of great articles that will continue to be edited and watched after the session.
This is a great idea, especially with the Matheson Museum in attendance!