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Join us for the Women in Computing edit-a-thon at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Friday, November 2, 2018!

Join the MIT Libraries, EECS GSA, and EECS GW6 as we celebrate women in computing and engineering. We'll celebrate Millie Dresselhaus's birthday (Nov 11) and Ada Lovelace Day (Oct 10) by editing and improving Wikipedia articles on the work and lives of female engineers and computer scientists, with a particular focus on documenting and explaining their work and technical achievements. As always, beginners welcome! We'll provide training for new editors, an introduction to editing Wikipedia, and assistance throughout the event.

Learn how to edit Wikipedia over lunch and then spend the afternoon exploring, adding to and editing the world’s largest open access project. Everyone is welcome, including new and experienced Wikipedia editors, and editing in any language (not just English) is welcome! Join us to take a break from the lab and share your technical knowledge and enthusiasm for science and engineering with the world.

Please join us for any portion of the event, but do register here or list yourself below so we have an accurate count for lunch.

What: Women in Computing editathon

When: Friday November 2, 2018, 12-4pm

Where: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA, 12-0168 (building 12, room 0168 - the new Nano building).

Suggested Focus: minority engineers, women engineers and computer scientists and their work, improving articles on computer science, mathematical and engineering concepts. Work in any language is ok!

What to bring: bring your laptop. Training and snacks will be provided. Drop in anytime.

Schedule

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  • 12:00p-1:00p - Lunch, Wikipedia introduction and editing class
  • 1:00p-3:30p - edit-a-thon -- work on articles: get one-on-one help from experienced Wikipedia editors, librarians and writing instructors. Use MIT Library resources to add citations and information.
  • 3:30p-4:00p - edit-a-thon discussion and report-out

What we did

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List your edits here!

Participant List

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Topics to work on

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Examples of specific things to do

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Work on articles about women scientists & engineers and their work:

person some things about their work
add bibliography of books and most notable (eg award-winning) papers to Barbara Liskov; are awards and current research section up to date? Expand and edit her bio in other languages (eg Spanish) fill out and add citations to CLU (programming language)
update appointment information for Shafi Goldwasser; add bibliography of most notable papers/books and expand work section Improve the lead sections of cryptography articles to explain the topic to a layperson
expand Leslie P. Kaelbling to include more information about her group's research; are awards up to date? improve articles about Markov topics; AI conferences
add a bibliography to Frances E. Allen of most notable papers/books; improve citations and history section in Optimizing compiler
expand Judy Clapp's article
expand Martha Evens's article
make Asu Ozdaglar an article --> it is Asu Özdağlar
expand Cynthia Barnhart's article
expand Nancy Lynch's article
make Lidija Sekaric an article
expand Harriet Louise Hardy's article
add Margaret E. Dayton Stinton to an article, such as the MIT Chemistry Department article. In 1865 she was the first female employee of MIT See the Women at MIT timeline; resource - Google books
expand the paragraph on Women at MIT studies on the MIT article in the section "Faculty and staff" Resources: book "Becoming MIT"; Barriers to Equality in Academia: Women in Computer Science at M.I.T. (1983); Women at M.I.T.: A Preliminary Research Report on Women's Issues at the Institute (1989, copy will be available at the edit-a-thon).

Work on various topics:

  • Find current statistics for Women_in_engineering
  • Improve articles about CS conferences: List_of_computer_science_conferences (common fixes: ensure that the website is current; history of locations; publisher of conference; describe topics)
  • Anything to add to List of important publications in computer science?
  • As a random idea, perhaps add non-traditionally young/active personal photos? "People in the field, they don't look like me" is a well-known barrier for engineering students from non-traditional populations. What I've not seen discussed, is that for kids, "they look so old" can also be a barrier to identification. And "I was inspired to become an engineer, when I met one, and she <had great shoes, was a cheerleader, etc>" stories reoccur. Attending to appearance and age can be fraught. But in addition to the usual "mature professional gravitas" headshots, perhaps recruitment would be aided by "and here's a picture of them having fun as a graduate student". Or... reading with a cat? As from the "thanks everyone - it was a blast" slides at the end of thesis defenses (unusually extensive in MIT microbiology). An MIT AeroAstro graduating-cohort photo was useful for a middle-school student interested in astro, both for its gender and racial accessibility, but also for showing a tight crew, dressed to party, having fun.

MIT Libraries Resources:

  • EECS Resources libguide
  • EECS new books - contains online resources
  • DSpace@MIT - MIT’s institutional repository. Includes Open Access papers by MIT faculty and over 14,000 MIT theses
  • Women and underrepresented minorities in computing ebook at MIT Libraries
  • Vertical files from the MIT Institute Archives and Special Collections and a selection of books will be on site


Categories:

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