A Wikipedia edit-a-thon to celebrate Halloween and Samhuinn, the Gaelic Festival for the Dead Image Dates The dates for the Wikipedia edit events can be seen in the bulleted list below: Monday 31st October 12pm to 4.30pm – Project Room, 50 George Square. Tuesday 1st November 10am to 4.30pm – The Raeburn Room, Old College. Book for one day or both! Programme - Monday 31st October 2016 (Project Room, 50 George Square) The timelines of the Wikipedia edit events can be seen in the bulleted list below: 12:00pm - 12:15pm: Housekeeping and Welcome. 12:15pm – 12:30pm: Guest speakers. 12:30pm – 1:45pm: Wikipedia training. 1:45pm – 4:00pm: Research and editing. 4:00pm – 4:30pm: Transferring drafted text to Wikipedia's live space. New editors very welcome. Full Wikipedia training given. Please bring a laptop as no desktop computers are available. However, a few laptops are available if you need to borrow one. Please contact Ewen McAndrew using the email address below if you need to borrow a laptop. ewan.mcandrew@ed.ac.uk Lunch is not provided but tea, coffee & tablet skulls will all be available and food can be eaten in the room. Image Come join us as we set a place for the dead, through helping to create new biography articles and improving existing articles as part of a day of celebration. Have you ever wondered why the information in Wikipedia is extensive for some topics and scarce for others? On Halloween, Monday 31st October 2016, the University's Information Servieces team are running an edit-a-thon to celebrate the lives of those sadly passed on to mark Samhuinn: the Gaelic Festival for the Dead! You can find out more about Information Services by visiting their web page below: Information Services Each day will have different guest speakers discussing the traditions of Samhuinn, Celtic history & folklore and the importance of remembering the dead on this day. We will also have a carved turnip competition. Bring your best carved turnip along and win a prize (pumpkins need not apply!) Working together with liaison librarians, archivists & academic colleagues we will provide training on how to edit and participate in an open knowledge community. Participants will be supported to develop articles covering areas which could stand to be improved in order to improve Wikipedia's representation of notable lives, be they connected to the university, to Edinburgh, to Scotland or further afield. More information about Samhuinn Samhuinn is a Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter or the "darker half" of the year. Traditionally, it is celebrated from the very beginning of one Celtic day to its end, or in the modern calendar, from sunset on 31 October to sunset on 1 November. Samhuinn was seen as a liminal time, when the boundary between this world and the Otherworld could more easily be crossed. This meant the Aos Sí, the 'spirits' or 'fairies', could more easily come into our world. Offerings of food and drink were left outside for them. The souls of the dead were also thought to revisit their homes seeking hospitality. This article was published on 2024-11-12
