Cape Town has won the rights to host the 14th edition of the Wikimania conference – Wikimania 2018, now just a month away.
Wikipedia is one of the Internet’s most trafficked websites. As the flagship project of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia is the key conversational pivot on which the conference will revolve.
The event moves from country to country each year. At an intimate event in Cape Town, a few of the foundation’s local members asserted it might well be South Africa’s first and last time hosting the event.
In attendance was Wikimedia South Africa’s president Douglas Scott and chair of Wiki in Africa Isla Haddow-Flood who revealed a notable set of numbers behind Wikipedia’s success thus far, and how much information remains unfilled in African society.
The Scope of Wikipedia
Wikipedia receives conservatively 15-billion page views every month and the number of volunteer editors working on the site at any one time during the month is 200 000.
At the moment, 46-million articles are on the free encyclopedia, while the number of languages used for articles is 300, with English being the language with the largest set of articles.
But for Africa, and specifically African women, these numbers are less than impressive. For instance, the stories told of African women are few and far between, let alone the pieces that are edited by women.
Less than 20% of Wikipedia’s editors are women
16% of all biographies written on Wikipedia in English are about women, with just 0.318% of biographical entries on women about African women.
12% of biographies in Sub-Saharan Africa are about women
Africa’s involvement in the Wikipedia movement is also at a standstill.
In three months, more edits are made from Hong Kong than the continent of Africa
There are 100-times more geotagged articles in France than Africa
Just a quarter of all edits of Sub-Saharan Africa originate from Sub-Saharan African editors
Wikimania 2018 conference is set to “catalyse a conversation around bridging knowledge gaps” on Wikipedia, especially on the African continent. The conference will begin on 18 July in Cape Town’s Cape Sun Hotel.
