SOUTH BEND — Search for "South Bend" in Google, and take a look at the results.
The city's official website — www.southbendin.gov — is at the top of the list.
In second place is a Wikipedia article about the city.
The free online encyclopedia, which is written and edited by volunteer contributors, has become one of the world's most popular reference sources since the website launched in 2001. Wikipedia has millions of articles, about 125,000 active editors, and receives hundreds of millions of page views every month.
For those reasons, local leaders want more South Bend residents to contribute to Wikipedia articles about the region.
A group of organizations — enFocus, the South Bend Office of Innovation, the St. Joseph County Chamber of Commerce and the University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Libraries — hosted an "edit-a-thon" on Tuesday evening at Union Station Technology Center.
The goal of an edit-a-thon is to show people how Wikipedia works and how they can contribute to the encyclopedia's content.
"The hope is to get some community members in the room who will take a stake in South Bend-related Wikipedia pages," said Kathleen Ryan, a senior fellow at enFocus and lead organizer of Tuesday's edit-a-thon.
Edit-a-thons have been held worldwide for years and are often aimed at adding depth to Wikipedia articles about specific topics.
For example, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has hosted edit-a-thons about artists and artworks, and the Waitt Institute in Washington, D.C., hosted an edit-a-thon in June for World Oceans Day. The Hesburgh Library's Center for Digital Scholarship, in recognition of Women's History Month, hosted an edit-a-thon in March to build Wikipedia pages about important women in Notre Dame and South Bend history.