Wikipedia content is everywhere. When one uses Google—even just to check on the birth year of actress and rapper Awkwafina—a Google Knowledge Graph will likely appear and share core information from Wikipedia on the right side of the search results page. Wikipedia is integrated into our daily lives. From an article on composer Chen Yi to Korean K-Pop girl group Mamamoo, Wikipedia has a page for them all. But these contemporary popular Asian and Asian American musicians are, perhaps, likely Wikipedia entries. How can educators, researchers, scholars, and historians use this ubiquitous resource to teach and create digital memory for underrepresented groups?Working with the Music of Asian American Research Center (MAARC), I designed a Wikipedia assignment to introduce and expose graduate students at Westminster Choir College to musicological research on Wikipedia. In a class of graduate-level pre-professional singers, musicians, conductors, and composers, I crafted an assignment that included not only an overview of print and online encyclopedias but also delved into aspects of scholarly research. At the same time, I highlighted problems related to marginalized composers and musical works. By incorporating a Wikipedia assignment focused on Asian American female composers into the course, I could demonstrate the musicological issues of representation through the study of limitations in primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. After teaching the graduate course at Westminster Choir College, I enrolled in a Women in Red Wiki Scholars course (Spring 2020) through Wiki Education (https://wikiedu.org/). This course expanded my understanding of Wikipedia's history, capabilities, and pitfalls. This article will explore the gender gap in Wikipedia, efforts to write about Asian American female composers on the site, and my experience inside and outside the classroom with Wikipedia. Some actionable assignments are also included.In 2018, less than 20 percent of all Wikipedia's biographies were about women;1 there were far fewer entries on Asian American women. Based on an emerging list compiled by the Composer Diversity Project, at least 85 percent of Asian American composers lack Wikipedia pages.2Most undergraduate and graduate music students do not question reference materials. Textbooks and encyclopedias are seemingly neutral, but a quick perusal of educational resources reveals how much traditional music history biographies and narratives remain white- and men-washed.3 In his chapter, “Shifting Frames: Pedagogical Interventions in Colorblind Teaching Practice,” educator and activist Milton Reynolds details the negative effects of colorblind approaches in education. Colorblind teaching, as an unbiased approach to race in the classroom, warps both students’ and teachers’ understanding of the world and can thereby perpetuate a misrepresentation of facts, people, and events; it has negative outcomes for all students but particularly for students of color.4 One must critique the whitewashing of educational resources to fully impact the educational system.Wikipedia provides access to a worldwide audience as a tertiary source; however, as I demonstrated through the development of a classroom Wikipedia assignment and participation in a Wiki Education professional development course, I found this widely available and ubiquitous resource to have parameters that can be obstacles to contemporary composers. There are additional challenges in researching and publishing entries about Asian American female composers, depending on age, industry, and location.For comparison, the major English-language digital tertiary source for music is Oxford Music Online, which contains a number of Oxford University Press's musical dictionaries and encyclopedias, including their legacy resource, Grove Music Online. Grove Music Online is the twenty-first-century iteration of an encyclopedia project that George Grove began in 1873. The first printed edition contained four volumes and was conceived during the expansionist period of the British Empire. Its tone expressed the expected continental European-centric perspective of musical culture. The most recent printed edition is twenty volumes. Almost 150 years and eight editions later, this resource has made enormous strides to be inclusive of a wider array of music and musicians. The Grove reference digital toolbox has added a considerable amount of American music, jazz, opera, and female composers. This approach can be time consuming because it relies on board members to curate, judge, and approve subjects and topics. Furthermore, editors must find willing authors to write the articles.The current Grove Music Online is a subscription website, which is updated with new and revised articles on a regular schedule. Gaps in content persist. Print articles have been migrated and updated to a digital platform with the promise of new research and material to be published regularly. Yet the pipeline from research to publication can still be painfully slow. To date, Oxford Music Online's digital version is not as up to date as its print volumes. In addition, there are inconsistent searches within the database. A keyword search for “Asian American” versus “American Composer of [——] birth” yields different results. As a general search term, “Asian American” yields a paltry twenty-three items. Most are male jazz musicians and composers; only two are female jazz composers. If a student or researcher is interested in researching contemporary or historical Asian American female composers, there is no clear starting point, and a lacuna exists in the literature.In addition, Wikipedia has had problems with inclusion, as reflected in the gender of its editors and in its content. Research presented at the 7th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration found that both readers and editors were predominantly male and estimated that only 18 percent of Wikipedia editors were female.5 After this study, Wikipedia leadership actively sought to understand the reasons why women did not remain editors on Wikipedia and remedy them. In her 2011 blog post, “Nine Reasons Women Don't Edit Wikipedia (in Their Own Words),” the Wikimedia Foundation's Executive Director, Sue Gardner, identified women's lack of time, Wikipedia's difficult interface, the overt and subtle misogyny of male editors, and an unfriendly digital community, among other factors, as influencing women's absence on Wikipedia pages.6 When fewer women edit Wikipedia, a second gender gap emerges: the dearth of well-researched biographical articles about women. As a result, the representation within articles and subjects has been as skewed as the gender imbalance among editors.7In their close study of Wikipedia articles titled “First Women, Second Sex,” Eduardo Graells-Garrido, Mounia Lalmas, and Filippo Menczer uncovered gendered differences in Wikipedia's subjects and contents. Women and women's biographies were found most often in articles about arts, gender, and family. The content of women's biographies included more sex-related and marriage-related topics than those of men, which contained more cognition-related content. Graells-Garrido, Lalmas, and Menczer discovered that “her husband” and “first woman” were phrases that repeatedly appeared in women's biographies. In this way, women were either defined by their relationship to their partners or made hyper-exceptional; both are typical tropes that cast women within their predefined roles as wives, not individuals, or as unusual aberrations.8Since these studies, significant efforts have been made to encourage women's participation on Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia and the Wikipedia Foundation, set a goal to increase women editors to 25 percent by 2015. The foundation created virtual and in-person outreach events and grassroots opportunities. Moreover, it implemented structural features within the Wikipedia website and sought to create lasting academic and community connections. The Wikipedia Foundation created Wiki Education courses, fostered WikiProjects within Wikipedia, and supported in-person community edit-a-thons.9 While Wales's goal to expand women's editorship to 25 percent by 2015 was not met, there is evidence that some of the Wikipedia Foundation's efforts have been successful.10In Wiki Education courses, scholars and scientists are recruited, trained, and supported by knowledgeable and experienced instructors. In a twelve-week course, participants learn how to update existing articles, draft and publish new articles, and navigate the Wikipedia digital environment. The instructors also field thornier questions, from the history of Wikipedia to managing difficult editing situations with online anonymous editors. The scholars bring the content expertise. By engaging specialists in their respective fields, Wiki Education hopes to encourage a new wave of editors who continue to write and edit articles. In addition, if professors embed a Wikipedia-based assignment into their course, Wiki Education provides the technical support and collaboration while the professors supply the context and student participation.11A Wikipedia edit-a-thon is an in-person community event that designates a time and place for editors to gather and write new articles or expand on existing ones about a specific theme. Edit-a-thons are another way to expand the number of editors on Wikipedia.12 Events based on curated lists of women's biographies and coverage of women's topics have proven successful. At the college level, updating Wikipedia articles has made it into syllabi and university-wide edit-a-thons. In 2019, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Arkansas, Penn State University, Rochester Institute of Technology, and others hosted edit-a-thons sponsored by libraries or specific academic departments.13 In 2014, the non-profit organization Art + Feminism began hosting edit-a-thons to create and improve articles on female visual artists. Since the group's first gathering, 18,000 editors have generated and expanded over 84,000 articles at over 1,260 events.14Within music research circles, edit-a-thons have been scant at the professional association level. The Music Library Association held an edit-a-thon during their 2019 Annual Meeting in St. Louis. Much like other professional association meetings, events and activities are shaped around local themes. Librarians Anna Kijas and Angela Pratesi led the edit-a-thon with a list of St. Louis-based figures in mind. They began by introducing Wikipedia's Five Pillars, followed by a brief introduction on how to interact with the digital tool.15 In a session, a group of 30 librarians enhanced 47 existing articles with sources, citations, and links, and they also created six new articles for noteworthy St. Louis musicians.16WikiProjects have been created to further support and focus topics within the Wikipedia online community. Every WikiProject contains the same core information: mission, members, resources to write new or existing articles, a content assessment chart, upcoming events, and more. As with everything on Wikipedia, the actions and activities within these WikiProject pages are only as active as their participants. The virtual community's effort goes toward writing new articles as well as providing support to new editors.17 The very active WikiProject “Women in Red” has a dynamic page where editors are encouraged to share their new entries, participate in monthly themes, and support member work that may have been flagged for deletion.18 In her presentation, “Wikipedia's Content Gender Gap,” Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight shared the growth of women's biographies in the following fields as tracked by their WikiProjects (see Table 1).19WikiProjects are also critical digital spaces for tracking and monitoring new and existing articles through the Wikipedia Content Assessment system.20 Every Wikipedia entry has a Talk page where editors can leave comments and suggestions for each other. At the top of a given article's Talk page, other editors can get a sense of the quality and importance of the article through a standardized rubric (see Figure 1). Articles are assigned a grade to describe their “factual” completeness and organization. The rubric also suggests ideas for improvement through “reader's experience” and “editing suggestions.” The “importance” of a given article reflects more subjective criteria and can depend on the perspective of a particular editor. Any anonymous editor can provide an assessment. However, a subject-specific editor can provide knowledgeable and well-reasoned context to raise, justify, or defend a figure's importance. Wiki Education's deliberate work to engage and encourage scholars and scientists to participate in the online resource supports entries on multiple levels and seeks to bring new subject-specific editors into the process. By design, WikiProjects are a central space for subject-specific editors to organize and collaborate, which can be helpful for underrepresented subject areas.Each WikiProject can have slightly different criteria for grading and importance, as every article can have more than one assessment within Wikipedia. For example, a biography of an Asian American female composer can be in at least five different WikiProjects: Musicians, Women in Music, Asian Americans, Composers, and Classical Music (see Figure 2). Furthermore, this system allows WikiProject members to see at a glance the quality and importance of entries in their interest area, from the most basic (Stub- or Start-level) to the most complete (Good Article, A, or Featured Article). “Importance” can also signal the priority of that article within a given WikiProject: if the article is a “Start” grade and of “High” importance, an editor may be inspired to provide more information to improve the article.In the “Introduction to Musicology” graduate course, I introduced a Wikipedia assignment that served to teach students about tertiary sources and their inherent and historical biases. We had discussions about information literacy in reputable resources, created and improved Wikipedia entries, supported contemporary composers and musicians, and sparked awareness of representation in music and music history. I empowered them with the idea that they had more information and knowledge at their disposal today than George Grove did in 1873. The students found this assignment to be simultaneously exciting and daunting. It was exciting because they had access to seemingly endless knowledge about their composer; it was daunting because they had to learn to sift through a multitude of sources and navigate the boundaries of a publicly vetted digital resource. Even though the fifth fundamental pillar of Wikipedia is that “Wikipedia has no firm rules,” it can sometimes feel as though creating an entry is at the mercy of fickle editors. The boundaries imposed by the online resource and its editors have provided a real-world application to scholarly work done both in the course and outside the formal academy.The initial assignment was straightforward and simple. In collaboration with MAARC, we identified fifteen Asian American female composers who did not have Wikipedia articles. The students were asked to research one figure and find core biographical information, using any digital or print resource. I did not expect a fully fleshed-out biographical entry that encompassed the entirety of the composer's life and oeuvre but rather an introduction that would serve as a starting place for a biography. There were three components to their research. First, they found basic biographical and bibliographic information, including birth and death dates, current city, education, instrument, a photo, bibliography, discography, honors, and websites. Second, they identified two works by the composer that they believed to be significant (they wrote a brief description of each piece and created links to online music sources, such as YouTube or Soundcloud). Third, they identified any Wikipedia lists or categories where their composer might be listed, such as American Female Composers, American musicians of Japanese descent, Female classical composers, or Guggenheim Fellows. I was striving for Start-level articles or better. I had hoped that the students would write brief “Start” entries and upload them to Wikipedia, but we spent more time in the research portion of the assignment, and the expectation of teaching them to upload and code in Wikipedia's specific markup language became impractical. By partnering with experts at Wiki Education, the technical aspects of Wikipedia can be supported with their teaching resources for educators and mini-lessons for students.Many students found a wealth of information on their composer's personal website. Most twenty-first-century composers create individual websites to list their works, awards, media, and photos, and to share aspects of their biography. Wikipedia is strict about including “independent, reliable sources” to create a neutral point of view (npov). Drawing exclusively from composers’ websites is considered to be biased. To further complicate matters, when organizations, foundations, or granting organizations request biographies of composers, they often recycle the same biographies that are on the composers’ websites. This poses an additional challenge in determining the independence of the information. As singer Emily Tiberi noted, . . . I found one iteration of [Niloufar Nourbakhsh's] bio repeated over and over again on the internet. I assume it was a bio she wrote (on her website), and which she sent to competitions, to festivals. It's also possible the competitions, jobs, and festivals took her bio from her web page themselves. Her words were therefore “the only true story” about her that I could find in my research. She curated what we could see on the internet about her, and that is what we now accept as fact.21The same text can often be seen replicated in newspapers as well. Ultimately, when there is a secondary resource to validate and verify the composer's information, we used the secondary source as the citation. Conducting student Jillian Newton Burgam addressed the difficulty in searching for core biographical material. She recounted, “This project also showed me that comparing different bibliographic materials is a way of ‘fact-checking’ my own research.”22 Popular social media pages, such as Facebook and YouTube, plus blogs and composers’ promotional materials are not acceptable as reliable sources on Wikipedia because it can be argued that anyone can create a page or video without any editorial or neutral oversight. For composers, links to their official YouTube or SoundCloud channels can be included on their Wikipedia entries as an outside link, but they cannot be used as references within the text. As a tertiary source, Wikipedia insists on using the secondary source over the primary source, which is counterintuitive to scholarly researchers.One of the key facets that determines whether a figure qualifies for a Wikipedia biography is their “notability.” According to Wikipedia, composers, songwriters, librettists, or lyricists are considered “notable” if they meet at least one of the following criteria: Has credit for writing or co-writing either lyrics or music for a notable compositionHas written musical theatre of some sort (includes musicals, operas, etc.) that was performed in a notable theatre that had a reasonable run, as such things are judged in their particular situation, context, and timeHas had a work used as the basis for a later composition by a songwriter, composer or lyricist who meets the above criteriaHas written a composition that has won (or in some cases been given a second or other place) in a major music competition not established expressly for newcomersHas been listed as a major influence or teacher of a composer, songwriter or lyricist that meets the above criteriaAppears at reasonable length in standard reference books on his or her genre of music.23These criteria are tied to a notable composition and do not account for local and regional music-making or awards by musical organizations. Unless a diverse group of informed editors are participating, entries in Wikipedia demonstrate that the definition of “notable” skews toward composers and works that have already achieved widespread popularity and reinforce the extant musical canon. This is particularly distressing when one considers that there are many more detailed entries for the fictional lives of Star Wars characters than living composers, much less Asian American female composers. Below, I will share three case studies of articles and figures that highlight various facets and issues of creating entries for Asian American female composers on Wikipedia.24Farangis Nurulla-Khoja is a Tajik Canadian composer and 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship Award winner; she has an established international career, and her music is performed across North American, Europe, and Asia.25 Until our project in 2019, she did not have a Wikipedia article, despite her many past awards, compositions, and public performances. Nurulla-Khoja was the first biography that I wrote for Wikipedia based on research gathered by the class. I began by creating a draft in my Wikipedia “sandbox,” a digital space where users can practice, test, and organize research and content within Wikipedia's wiki syntax or Visual Editor for headers, formatting, and external links. When I was satisfied, I submitted the article to be reviewed by an anonymous Wikipedia editor. Within a day, an anonymous editor declined the article, claiming that “Submission is a Biography of a Living Person that does not meet minimum inline citation requirements and npov – Submission is not written in a formal, neutral encyclopedic tone.” I was stunned and personally bothered, but I reached out to a colleague for feedback and guidance about ways to improve it. After discussing the article and looking at the background of the editor, we determined that we had a particularly overzealous editor, who repeatedly rejected new submissions. At the same time, we realized that this method is not the only way to publish an entry on Wikipedia. After making some adjustments to the article, I submitted the article in a manner that did not require an anonymous editor to review it for publication. This alternative submission procedure was found by searching for her entry by name; when the individual was not found, there was a prompt to create the article. On the subsequent page, I copied and pasted the content from my “sandbox” in this editable space and hit “Publish Page.” In this process, there were no issues in publishing the article, and on the article's Talk page, multiple editors simultaneously graded it and assigned it to WikiProjects: Musicians, Asian Americans, Composers, and Classical Music. With the click of a mouse, I had published an entry for an overlooked female composer without long editorial committee discussions or debate by uninformed editors.In this next case, I compare the treatment of two Asian American composers. Niloufar Nourbakhsh is an up-and-coming Iranian composer who studies and works in Manhattan. Her piece “Aria for the Executive Order” gained national attention because it responded to President Donald Trump's executive order, which blocked refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from traveling to the United States in 2017. In addition to her compositional accolades, she is the founder of the Iranian Female Composers Association. Her early career has been documented by the New York Times, which is a reliable secondary source and reference for Wikipedia. I did not have any issue publishing her biography.By contrast, composer and harpsichordist Asako Hirabayashi (b. 1960) has had a long career in the Minneapolis area, teaching, performing, and composing for harpsichord, chamber ensemble, and opera. She has won numerous grants and awards and is well known in her community and field. It is more challenging to demonstrate “notability” with Wikipedia-approved sources because of her distance from a prominent cosmopolitan area and the lack of secondary sources. I published Hirabayashi's entry without incident in April 2019, using the search-function-and-publish route. Unfortunately, the entry was flagged with a banner that read “may not meet Wikipedia's guideline for notability for music” in August 2021. One way that musicologists can influence how Wikipedia treats living composers is to advocate for expanding the aforementioned criteria of “notability” for composers. How great would it be if we could enhance Wikipedia by highlighting the myriad musical communities and composers that exist and include the many local, regional, and national awards not currently noted on the site?26Tangelene Bolton is an up-and-coming biracial Filipina American composer and music producer, who works in the film, television, commercial, and video game industries. She also conducted the Hollywood Chamber Orchestra in the Future is Female concerts in 2017 and 2018. These concerts strove to highlight the many women who are working in the male-dominated field of film music.27 As of March 2022, there is a Point of View banner at the top of her article (see Figure 3). On her Talk Page, the editor posited that “When I reviewed the article, it read to have a bit of a promotional tone. This can come from surface-level coverage of the ‘best bits’ of someone's career, so can be improved with expansion or rephrasing.” Writing about a living composer is always tricky. I countered this editor through the entry's Talk page by pointing out that most biographies are the “best bits” of a person's career. Bolton has been successful in the competitive, male-dominated film music industry. Her presence on Wikipedia provides an initial record.The WikiProject Women in Music has 33,422 articles within its section, but the number of articles that have not been assessed is a striking difference between this WikiProject and the aforementioned WikiProjects (see Table 2).28While the WikiProject Women in Music has the same number of biographies, the number of unassessed articles is significantly higher. One explanation is that there has been much less activity in reviewing the biographies on Women in Music. This lack of activity is a perfect teaching assignment for students to consider who or what is present on Wikipedia; they could certainly assess the quality of the article through the Wikipedia Content Assessment system. A student might have more trouble judging whether the figure is of low-, mid-, or high-importance. Nonetheless, a knowledgeable scholar or instructor with a guided assignment could provide context for a student to make an initial attempt at determining the level of importance.There are many gaps in the coverage of Asian American female composers in Wikipedia. Jeeyoung Kim wrote music for the Silk Road Ensemble led by Yo-Yo Ma and the opera From My Mother's Mother, which was commissioned and premiered by Houston Grand Opera. Film composer Sujin Nam has numerous film and TV credits to her name: The Interview, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3, and Mad Men. Composer and professor Stella Sung has written for a wide array of genres, including solo instrumental music, chamber music, opera, film, and ballet. Many Asian American female composers have won major music competitions and awards, including Yu-Hui Chang, Misook Kim, Xi Wang, and Stella Sung. None of the accomplished composers mentioned above have a Wikipedia entry.However, Wikipedia's restrictions and guidelines can be opportunities for creative teaching and research, as well as vehicles for productive discussions. I discovered that this Wikipedia assignment engaged students in a critical and impactful way and yielded fruitful real-world results for students, their subjects, and the Wikipedia community. Conducting student Scott AuCoin remarked on how Wikipedia provides validation to a figure: “Though Wikipedia isn't the end-all, be-all, it is a way to show a fuller picture of who is out there, what they're doing, and how they're interconnected. . . it's important we tell everyone's story, and this is one small step to make that happen.”29To conclude, a Wikipedia assignment synthesizes students’ research and analytical skills in a real-world scenario. Whether one has students analyze an entry or compare and contrast the figure with another tertiary source, there are fruitful discussions to be had in critiquing “notability” and who gets to be included in either source. In focusing on Asian American female composers, I was able to expand my students’ musical repertoire and introduce them to living composers who are engaging in varied compositional styles but rarely acknowledged in comparison to their white male counterparts. In the process, the class moved toward securing the acknowledgment of the composers we studied in the online reference site, which is foundational to almost all internet searches. As in any classroom, this assignment appealed to some more than others. Conductor Jillian Burgam reflected: I knew that this group of composers was not a monolith, but I had learned about so few Asian American female composers prior to this project; I didn't know the breadth of the music they were creating. My research also broadened my understanding of the unique inspirations and styles that influence these women and the innovative ways they combine what we have deemed the “non-Western” and “Western European” styles.30Participating in WikiProjects is a great way of creating linkages to other like-minded projects and solidifying our composers in a public digital space or sanctuary. The WikiProject: Women in Red identifies one to three subjects to focus on each month.31As a historian, I cannot predict which of these composers and their music will become popular or make a lasting impact. What I can see is that there is a lacuna in Wikipedia's articles: the site currently omits many female composers who are actively working in their industries and communities. I have come to believe that notability is not a fixed criterion but a fluid principle shaped by perspective and experience. The individuals who choose to write for Wikipedia have the power to directly and immediately shape what the site considers notable. If more music scholars and librarians were to participate in assessing, reviewing, and writing articles, as well as lobby and advocate for wider definitions of “notability,” it would benefit so many more genres, figures, and biographies. Why would they not be included with the popularity and far-reaching nature of Wikipedia and its unlimited publishing space? Asian American female and male composers have been active participants in the musical world. With verifiable resources, Wikipedia is a legitimate place to preserve and recount their musical impact and lives. Wikipedia is a digital environment that reflects the users and editors that it engages. With the expansive nature of the internet and a myriad of editors, Wikipedia is changing the role of the encyclopedia from a static document that summarizes individuals, places, and ideas to a dynamic, organic environment that is capturing history as it is being made. . . one figure, one update, one editor at a time.Some ideas for Wikipedia Article Exploration:32Talk to your music library or university library.In the Classroom: Create a Wikipedia assignment with the help of Wiki Education (https://wikiedu.org/).Teach encyclopedic writing Write or edit a section of an articleTeach information technology. Some questions to consider: What are the impacts and limits of Wikipedia as a source of information?On Wikipedia, all material must be attributable to reliable, published sources. What kinds of sources does this exclude? Can you think of any problems that might create?If Wikipedia were written 100 years ago, how might its content (and contributors) be different? What about 100 years from now?Evaluate Wikipedia article quality and provide assessment on Talk Page. Some questions to consider: Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented or underrepresented?Check a few citations. Do the links work?Does the source support the claims in the article?Evaluate and edit two Wikipedia articles for content, tone and balance, sources and references, images and media, and organization.Write a new Wikipedia article.Participate in WikiProjects.Women in Red—RedList IndexWomen in MusicWikipedia's guiding principles are outlined in its Five Pillars as follows: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia;Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view;Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute;Wikipedia's editors should treat each other with respect and civility;Wikipedia has no firm rules.33