Sally Foy Dixon didn’t exist until May 2, 2016, despite her role in the early 1970s as founding curator of Carnegie Museum of Art’s Film Section, one of the first museum-based film programs in the country. That’s because until then, she had no Wikipedia page; she had not yet entered the canon of artists and curators recognized by the world’s most popular reference site.

Since her wiki-birth less than a year ago, Ms. Dixon’s page has amassed nearly 700 views — a meager amount to some, but still a testament to demand for knowledge on her and her work.

“Her legacy was known to people who start to dig deeply into American avant-garde film, but otherwise it was sort of lost,” said Emily Davis, film and video archivist at CMOA. “We thought this Wikipedia page was one really small way we could not only help her get recognized, but to help people learn about those in the past who had contributed to the field.”

Ms. Dixon’s page is just one of dozens created last year by women and men at Pittsburgh first Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon, which consisted of two editing marathons in the spring. These events sought to identify and correct biased articles on women in the arts, add and update pages that lacked quality information, and research and create pages for those still eclipsed from history. 

Angela Washko, Carnegie Mellon University visiting assistant professor of art and co-organizer of the university’s iteration of the Edit-A-Thon, said last year her group created 16 new articles and improved more than 30 in just eight hours.

When just 15 percent of Wikipedia’s people-based articles focus on women, according to Ms. Washko, every additional page counts. 

“Over time, I continue to be surprised in finding notable women artists, especially those of color or queer ones, who don’t have pages at all,” she said.

This is a consequence of the gender gap in Wikipedia editing. According to Art+Feminism, an advocacy group working to make under-represented artists visible, less than 10 percent of Wikipedia’s open-source editing contributors identify as female.

“In general, people see these issues through their own lenses, and our experience has been a victim of the male lens,” said Catherine Evans, chief curator at CMOA.

In combating pre-existing bias in Wikipedia articles, as well as the utter absence of other pages, CMOA will host this year’s Edit-A-Thon. There, two information sessions will outline the structural and ethical components of editing Wikipedia, as well as provide tutorials on the technical side of creating pages.

Wikipedia offers a visual editor now, as well as a traditional option to use code, so the editing process has become much more accessible, according to Ms. Evans.

“I was completely unskilled [prior to attending an Edit-A-Thon], and it was such an interesting learning curve,” she said. 

This year, participants at CMOA will focus on the intersecting identities of artists, honing in on queer women and women of color.

With more than 280 Edit-A-Thons occurring each year across six continents, according to Art+Feminism, improvements to the gender gap have been piece-wise against the mammoth collection of articles on Wikipedia, but no doubt significant.

For one, there’s inherent irony in the self-reflexive “Gender bias on Wikipedia” article on Wikipedia — it didn’t even exist before April 2014, four years after Wikimedia Foundation first unearthed findings on the site’s gender gap in a comprehensive survey.

But most of that page’s edits occurred during August 2014, a few months after Art+Feminism’s first annual Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon. That month, 162 edits. Last month, 14 edits — a sign that past Edit-A-Thons can massage out the kinks.

“These events empower people to have a base understanding of how easy it is to contribute to this encyclopedia and to diversify that space,” Ms. Washko said.

This year’s Pittsburgh Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon begins at 10:30 a.m. Saturday in CMOA’s Hall of Sculpture, 4400 Forbes Ave., Oakland and runs until 4 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.cmoa.org.

Courtney Linder: clinder@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1707. Twitter: @LinderPG.

First Published: March 2, 2017, 5:00 a.m.