Wikipedia has become an important source of information today, and with more and more people looking up online for their questions, Wikipedia’s importance cannot be stressed any further. However, there is very less queer India information on Wikipedia, so much so that only cities had a wiki page about the pride march held in that city. Every year more and more cities are holding queer pride marches and none of this information is available on Wikipedia.
To fill this gap, Gaylaxy partnered with Feminism in India (FII) to create/edit pages of queer pride marches in India. And June being a pride month, what better way to celebrate than hold a Wikipedia editathon. An initial list of 20 cities that had held pride march till now was made, and a call given out to add any city that was missed out. People added to the list and we got to know that around 23 Indian cities had held pride marches till now.
The editathon was held at India HIV/AIDS Alliance on 17 June and 11 of us gathered on a pleasant Saturday morning. The event began with a brief introduction of Wikipedia’s rules by Japleen Pasricha, FII’s founder and editor, followed by instructions on how to create/edit wiki pages. Some of the bigger prides like Bengaluru Namma Pride, Kolkata Rainbow Pride Walk did not have a wiki page, while others like the Mumbai and Delhi pride had very little information about them on their wiki page.
Our #WikipediaEditathon on #PrideMarches is underway! Notice our cool #Pride flag decor 😀. Stay tuned for updates! #PrideMarch pic.twitter.com/FyYd5MeFSj
— Feminism in India (@FeminismInIndia) June 17, 2017
Each participant chose one or more pride march/city and started looking up the internet for news links and reliable sources that could be used as references for the pages (so that the page doesn’t get deleted by the wiki community later). By the end of the day, 10 new wiki pages had been created and another 4 updated. The 14 pages are:
- Delhi Queer Pride Parade: Japleen
- Kolkata Rainbow Pride Walk: Shagun
- Chennai Rainbow Pride: Asmita
- Awadh Queer Pride: Megha
- Chandigarh LGBT Pride Walk: Archita
- Nagpur Pride March: Aqsa
- Pune Pride: Darshan
- Bhopal Pride March: Aqsa
- Gurgoan Queer Pride: Archita
- Queer Azaadi Mumbai: Himanshi
- Queer Gulabi Pride Jaipur: Japleen
- Patna Pride March: Suraj
- Hyderabad Queer Pride March: Megha
- Bengaluru Namma Pride March: Sukhdeep
Hopefully others will take up the responsibility of maintaining these pages. Here’s a Basic To-Dos and Rules For Participants prepared by FII that might be of help to you.