“Hidden Caribbean Figures”: an editing event to make Caribbean Literature visible on Wikipedia

In  March 2026, I had the opportunity to participate as a co-facilitator in the event “Hidden Figures of the Caribbean: An Editing Event to Visualize Caribbean Literature.” It was a two-day Wikipedia editing workshop at Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), in Kingston, Jamaica focused on creating and improving articles, with the goal of reducing the content gap about the Caribbean in the online encyclopedia.

This event was  a collaboration between the Create Caribbean Research Institute (CCRI) founded and led by Dr. Schuyler Esprit and recognized as the first digital humanities center in the Caribbean; Whose Knowledge?, a global feminist collective to center the knowledge of marginalized communities (the majority of the world) on the Internet, including Wikimedia projects; and Noircir Wikipedia, an initiative that aims to address the shortcomings in terms of references, articles and information on African and Afro-descendant diaspora culture and personalities on Wikipedia, whose work focuses on addressing biases stemming from colonial history, such as the euphemism for historical crimes, the use of racist stereotypes or a Eurocentric selection of sources.

The goal of the collaboration was to address the underrepresentation of perspectives from the Global Majority on Wikipedia, and promote research and editing spaces that help bridge the gaps in content production and dissemination that separates the North from the South. This activity was supported by the Knowledge Equity Fund of the Wikimedia Foundation.

When the place gives meaning to the event

The editing workshops were conducted at the venue of the Create Caribbean Research Institute on the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), in Kingston, Jamaica

For me, as the founder of the Noircir Wikipedia project, being in this building for the first time has been very significant. UWI, as it is known worldwide, was one of the pioneering universities of the Caribbean Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, especially through teacher and student activism. A Caribbean Black movement that challenged postcolonial, imperialist, and racist structures, aligning itself with the international Black Power movement while focusing on social, economic, and racial liberation at the local level.

During my stay in Kingston I visited with Schuyler the Mona Campus Library, and the UWI Museum, located in the Vice-Rector’s building, that tells the story of the Campus’s creation. This immersion allowed me to appreciate, in more tangible ways, the importance of having a presence in these academic spaces, dedicated to the creation and dissemination of knowledge.

The workshops

Together with Schuyler and the Whose Knowledge? team, Mariana Fossati and Sunshine Fionah Komusana, collaborated in the planning and organizing process with several preliminary meetings before the workshops themselves.

The workshops began on March 5th and were scheduled to be held in a hybrid format. We set up in the Institute’s classroom. Students, librarians, and researchers from the Mona Campus and other campuses were present, including a librarian from the San Agustin Campus in Trinidad and Tobago. About 20 people were also eagerly awaiting the start of the workshop online. In total, over the two days of the event, including both in-person and remote participants, we can say that nearly 70 people participated.

The workshop started with a warm welcome from Schuyler and an introduction to Visualizing Caribbean Literature (VCL), an interactive database created by Create Caribbean, which contains more than 3,000 literary works about the Caribbean experience, or written by authors who identify as Caribbean. Schuyler also explained how students and interns are trained in research and content contribution for the archives and digital platforms, and of course, how they have been trained in Wikipedia editing. Then she introduced me and gave me the floor to present the Noircir Wikipédia project, emphasizing the importance of using sources from the Caribbean region for the Wikipedia articles we were going to write and improve, and for the content of other Wikimedia projects, such as Wikidata.

For the workshops, all participants had previously received by email a template with the work list and instructions to create their Wikipedia accounts and start editing.

Several hybrid editing rooms were created. That is, in the same room, people were present both physically and virtually. Schuyler and I navigated between the physical room and the virtual rooms to answer questions and exchange information and strategies for identifying reliable sources. We also had the support of interns from the Institute in all the groups. Mariana Fossati, from Whose Knowledge?, also participated remotely and provided technical support.

I had very interesting exchanges with several participating librarians about their critical role in easing access to information for knowledge building work. They showed me archive websites that are not typically found through standard search engines, demonstrating how algorithms also perpetuate geographical inequalities in access to information. And of course, not to mention how much easier it is to have librarians by your side when searching for documents! 

Schuyler made people engaged and committed in the workshops, demonstrating the importance of facilitation, especially when collaborating with people who had never edited before. She smoothly managed logistical challenges as well, both online and in person. For instance, the first day of the event was affected by an unexpected global security incident in the wikis that prevented editing Wikipedia on March 5. Schuyler handled the situation by asking participants to open a shared document and continue working by saving their edits and references in the off-wiki document.

We collaborated smoothly and naturally over the two days. Both the novice and experienced editors showed great enthusiasm and a strong desire to continue editing, but they were also aware of the difficulty of creating a good Wikipedia article, and how much work goes into each statement within it.

Mirrors: the importance of diversity in the editing process

This event confirms for me how beneficial it is to bring together a diverse group in workshops, especially in academic settings. Librarians, archivists, students, interns, and professors—the diversity of experiences and ways of understanding the digital environment allows us to broaden perspectives and question established practices, generating more than just collaboration: creating collective learning.

Seeing the satisfaction of those who made it to publish or improve an article linked to their own culture, confirms the direct impact of this kind of initiative. New biographies, such as those of the novelist and poet Alick Lazare, from Dominica, or the writer Celeste Mohammed from Trinidad and Tobago, are now available on Wikipedia, along with more than 50 updated and improved entries on Caribbean literary figures. Each  new Wikipedia entry is knowledge shared with the world!

From this experience we learnt that a pedagogical project carried out in collaboration with librarians, teachers and students is an effective tool for illustrating various aspects of editing Wikipedia. This is especially true when using as a starting point databases produced in regions where written works and publishing are less represented in the digital world – in this case, the Caribbean region.

What databases shall we select for this kind of event? Digital platforms do not organize or collect data, or the information it contains, in the same way. The methods vary according to:

a) the material that is to be “stored”;

b) the resources available for this work (human and material resources); and

c) the selection of what, due to its importance, should/can be stored or archived.

What other sources from the Caribbean region are available to supplement the information we found in the databases during the editing process? Those of us who edit Wikipedia still have limitations on using the plurality of knowledge sources that the world offers us. These diverse sources of knowledge are not fully recognized by the policies and conventions established by the Wikipedia community, which tends to prioritize Eurocentric sources as references. These kinds of events, which provide us with access to regional knowledge, help us raise awareness among participants about the deep content gap that still exists in the online encyclopedia, and how important and beneficial it is for the region to work on reducing it.

The excellent work done by the Visualizing Caribbean Literature project and the DLOC Digital Library in the Caribbean, which are among the few Caribbean databases recognized within Wikipedia, cannot encompass the multiplicity of cultures and voices of knowledge in the region. We need to advocate for other types of archives, which often include audio and video recordings of oral history, to be included as valid sources for creating encyclopedic articles.

The Caribbean is home to a multitude of languages, many of which are well represented on Wikipedia. However, the region itself is poorly represented. This is no coincidence; the colonial designation of the region as a place of leisure and wealth extraction, rather than as a region possessing a rich and plural cultural heritage, has left its mark on how we value, preserve, and share this heritage.

Towards greater knowledge equity

We need to rethink our working strategies with respect to the Caribbean, and I believe this can serve other underrepresented regions.

I would like to propose some concrete actions:

• We need to relaunch statistics on contributions by region, update them, and focus a substantial portion of the community’s resources to work on the growth of regions that appear underrepresented in the statistics.
• Improve access to Wikimedia funds for these regions, in order to strengthen contributions to wiki projects. Adjust funding requirements according to the characteristics of the regions and the topics addressed, taking into account the structural inequality in access to material and human resources in many latitudes, considering the socio-economic context.
• Create a permanent program, with funding allocation, advice and/or mentoring for emerging initiatives in underrepresented regions and for user groups, thematic groups and projects related to these initiatives. Integrate local actors from the beginning of the projects.
• Review the validation criteria for knowledge sources for editing Wikipedia, on a recurring and collective basis at the community level, and work continuously expanding and updating validated sources.
• Bring support groups related to the theme of the events and the linguistic Wikipedia versions into the workshops of the emerging initiatives, through calls or invitations in the community.

Underrepresented regions like the Caribbean need affirmative action from the community and the Wikimedia Foundation. But this must be done responsibly, by examining the region’s specific characteristics and encouraging the community to be open to considering other sources, archives, formats, and models of description different from those of European schools of archiving and categorization. And this also entails a critical and non-Eurocentric reading of the archives situated in the Global North.

Open culture with knowledge justice

In a context marked by techno-feudalism, Wikimedia projects represent one of the few global infrastructures where knowledge can remain open, collaborative, and accessible. Defending and expanding this space implies actively working for equity and digital justice.

Because without knowledge justice, there is no free knowledge.

Ivonne González Núñez (AfricanadeCuba)