2025:Program/Wikientrevistas: Uncovering life stories forgotten by the mainstream media
Session title: Wikientrevistas: Uncovering life stories forgotten by the mainstream media
- Session type: Lightning talk
- Track: Lightning Talk Showcase
- Language: en
đ„ Session Recording: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikientrevistas_-Uncovering_life_stories_forgotten_by_the_mainstream_media-Day_2-Nairobi-_Lightning_Talk.webm đ„
Have you ever come across an exceptional person from your country who doesn't have a Wikipedia article, only to find there aren't enough notable sources to create one? After running into this issue multiple times, we at Wikimedistas de Ecuador, with the prime goal of preserving our cultural memory, deviced to launch the inititive Wikientrevistas, a series of interviews conducted by our user group members with remarkable Ecuadorian figures from the cultural and activist spheres, often overlooked by mainstream media. Come and discover more about this initiative!
Description
As members of the Wikimedia movement, one of our primary objectives is preserving knowledge, including our shared cultural memory, as well as uncovering the different aspects of history that are slowly being forgotten. One of the biggest roadblocks in this endeavor is the fact that we depend on the mainstream media to garner enough references to create Wikipedia articles or reference information in other Wikimedia projects. This becomes a problem when considering the biases that the mainstream media often has and its general tendency to erase the contributions of certain groups, particularly women, Indigenous groups , and LGBT people.
At Wikimedistas de Ecuador, we encountered this problem multiple times. Many notable people in fields such as politics, culture, and activism who have remarkable and important life stories, have sadly been mostly ignored by so called reputable sources, which has made it almost impossible to tell their stories in Wikipedia articles. The fact that many of these people are getting older and the reminder that there is a deadline, led us to consider alternative ways of listening to their stories. This is how Wikientrevistas was born. This initiative started in 2024 and consists of interviews, conducted by members of the user group, with outstanding Ecuadorian individuals who haven't received the level of attention we believe they deserve from local mainstream media.
As part of Wikientrevistas, we interview these people, carefully crafting questions that can gather as many facts about them as possible. We then upload the recordings to Wikimedia Commons before sharing them on other video platforms that support the Creative Commons license. In this short session, we will discuss how this initiative began, how we plan our interviews, and why we believe it is essential to replicate similar projects in other countries, particularly in the Global South.
- How does your session relate to the event theme, Wikimania@20 â Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability?
Telling the stories of relevant, mostly forgotten people from our communities is essential to the theme of Inclusivity.
- What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?
Everyone can participate in this session
Resources
Speakers
- Freddy Veloz
- I'm Freddy, a wikipedian from Ecuador. I'm a bureaucrat in the Spanish Wikisource, although most of my current edits are in the Spanish Wikipedia. I'm part of the Wikimedistas de Ecuador and Wikimedia LGBT user groups. Most of my edits are focused on literature (particularly from Latin America), LGBT history (particularly from the global south) and Ecuadorian politics.