Berkeley Professor Leads Students to Make 300,000 LGBTQ+ Wikipedia Pages Over Past Decade

"Since 2016, UC Berkeley professor Juana Maria Rodriguez has been assigning her students the task of creating and updating over 300,000 Wikipedia entries, with the goal of preserving queer and trans history and celebrating the intersectionality of the BIPOC LGBTQ+ community. As the Daily Californian reports, Juana Maria Rodriguez, an ethnic studies, gender and women's studies, and performance studies professor at the University of California Berkeley,"

"Per the Daily Cal, Rodriguez's students have made over 300,000 updates and 3,000 citations to Wikipedia to date totaling more than 96 million views, while spotlighting in particular the lives of queer and trans Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. Per the Daily Cal, some of the people Rodriguez's students have highlighted include Indigenous drag queens, transgender activists Adela Vazquez and Karla Avelar and Oakland gay landmark, the White Horse Bar. As the site Them reports, students have also documented LGBTQ history in Chinatown"

"It becomes particularly important to document these subcultures within these communities, Rodriguez told Them. Because it's not just queer Latinas it's queer goth Latinas, it's queer comics of color, it's African American slaying, right? It's very specific topics that might really vary by region, by historical moment, and of course at different places around the world, Rodriguez continued, per Them."

Since 2016 a UC Berkeley professor has assigned students to create and update Wikipedia entries focused on queer and trans BIPOC histories. The project partnered with Wiki Education to address knowledge gaps around gender, racial, and ethnic diversity. Students produced over 300,000 updates and roughly 3,000 citations, generating more than 96 million views. Entries spotlight Indigenous drag queens, transgender activists Adela Vazquez and Karla Avelar, the White Horse Bar, LGBTQ history in Chinatown, and international sex worker movements. The work emphasizes documenting intersectional subcultures and regional specificity and aims to preserve marginalized histories amid political pressures that threaten erasure.

Read at sfist.com