Art+Feminism Network Organizers at ESEAP Conference 2026

This past May 2026, the two of us, Anthony Diaz and Jessie Mi, headed to Kaohsiung, Taiwan, for the ESEAP Conference 2026. We weren’t just there to represent Art+Feminism; we were there to talk about a major turning point for our movement. For years, our focus has been on editing Wikipedia articles; we introduced a shift that we feel is critical for the future: co-creating a Feminist Data Commons.

As Network Organizers for Art+Feminism, we have spent years working alongside a global community to fill gaps on Wikipedia related to gender, feminism, and the arts. But as the internet evolves and as search engines, algorithms, and AI increasingly rely on structured backend data, our strategy has had to evolve too.

Why We’re Diving Into Wikidata

During our talk, “A+F Strategic Transformation: From Editing Articles to Co-creating a Feminist Data Commons,” we got straight to the point about why Year Two of our campaign is centered on Wikidata.

When people asked us “Why Wikidata?”, our answer was simple: it’s the backbone of the internet. It feeds the search results people see every day and acts as the training data for emerging AI models. If the structured data on the backend is biased or missing, that bias ripples across the entire digital ecosystem. By organizing data activism on Wikidata, we can tackle systemic bias at its root. Plus, for newcomers, Wikidata’s structured format is often less intimidating to edit than a Wikipedia article. To put it plainly: if we want the internet to tell feminist stories, we have to start building feminist data structures.

Real Talk: Labeling and Erasure

One of the most meaningful parts of our session wasn’t on our slides. It came from a question about a very real dilemma we face in the movement: How do we label LGBT people on Wikipedia when there are no traditional “reliable sources” or references available?

This is the heart of the problem. In many places, the “published” record has intentionally erased or ignored queer and trans lives. If we only follow the standard rules of verifiability, we risk becoming part of that erasure. We discussed how a Feminist Data Commons can help us move past this. By working with community-led archives and oral histories, we can find ethical ways to document these lives safely, ensuring they aren’t written out of history just because they were written out of the mainstream media.

Building the Future Together

The internet of tomorrow is being trained on the data we provide today. If we want a “Feminist Internet,” we have to build the structures to support it now.

We’re inviting everyone, editors, GLAM partners, and activists, to join our Conversation Series and Virtual Editing Tables. Let’s keep this momentum going. Huge thanks to the ESEAP Conference 2026 organizers for giving us the space to share this vision.