Wiki Loves Pride- An Invitation to A Revolutionary Act

Every year between June and August, Queer Wikimedians and their allies embark on a mission of activism called “Wiki Loves Pride”. While many in the movement see this act as just editing and contributing to the bigger global picture, this simple act is transformational and defiant.

Wiki Loves Pride is an event on the Wikimedia LGBT+ calendar in celebration of Pride Month. Activities set out during this period include, but are not limited to, editing Wikipedia, posting pride events and activities on WikiCommons, and improving queer data on WikiData.

Last year, WLP saw over 700 articles—many of them new, some improved—and thousands of images and videos uploaded to Commons. The event took place across Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe.

Why is this important? The world is currently experiencing a rise in far-right ideologies, and all of them are targeting Queer content offline. Books are being banned, civil society spaces for queer people are shrinking, and in some parts of the World—like Senegal, Nigeria, Russia, and of recent, Hungary—documenting queer histories might land you in jail.

So, we need a place where we can proactively archive the existence, culture, lifestyle, and activism of queer people—a place that is safe, secure, and free for anyone to use on a global scale. This is why Wiki Loves Pride is such a powerful act of advocacy.

On January 15, 2001, Jimmy Wales and Jerry Sanger created a platform that would make encyclopedias accessible to every human for free. It was designed to be created by a collective of humans, irrespective of race, gender, class, or sexual orientation.

Twenty-five years later, with thousands of editors and billions of readers, Wikipedia is one of the most powerful sources of information and knowledge in the world and still free at the point of use.

Queer content on Wikipedia is as old as Wikipedia itself. Roughly five months after its launch, an article dedicated to the explanation of the word “Gay” appeared. It has since garnered 40,000 views in the last 30 days and over eight thousand edits. Just five days after the publication of “Gay,” another article, titled “Cross Dressing,” appeared on Wikipedia on May 20, 2001, and has since had over 21,000 visits in the last 30 days.

Within Wikipedia’s first year, queer archivists saw an opportunity to save queer history and took it. Articles were created about figures like Thomas Mann, the German Nobel Prize Winner for Literature; Sappho of the ancient Greek island of Lesbos; James Buchanan Jr., the 15th President of the United States; and Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, the famous Italian painter. All these, and many more, were the hard work of thousands of Wikimedians with one sole aim: preserving history so the generation after them can have a sense of belonging and of self.

This culture of preserving history has not only closed the sexuality gap in human history, but it is challenging queer revisionism—one article, picture, video, and data point at a time.

But this work is not without its challenges. Wikipedia requires a verifiable source before an article can be allowed to stay on the platform. In a world with increasing media silence or censorship of queer lives, work, and success, it is becoming very hard to find sources for much queer content.

This is what Wiki Loves Pride is set up to correct. Activities during the month include media training, museum visits, and sometimes the scanning of documents, including books, letters, wills, and birth certificates, to verify the identity of queer people written out of history.

Every edit and contribution on Wikipedia. Every uploads on WikiCommons and every input on WikiData is an act of revolution etched in the sand of history. One that will liberate every wondering soul. Answer every curious mind and rescue every trapped soul. This is not just an activity during pride month, it is a radical love letter to every Queer person around the world that lasts for eternity.

This year, as we prepare for another Wiki Loves Pride, we are expanding beyond the Wikimedia community. We are inviting queer academicians, archivists, writers, researchers, and organizations to join us in keeping queer memories alive. Groups and individual can apply for a small grants to host events during this period.

It is important to note that the only way we can challenge negative comments like “Homosexuality is Un-African” or that queerness is a perversion is to keep documenting our history, existent, culture and reality.

We have been here, and we will always be here, on and off Wiki.