Gabriela Garcia
Gabriela Garcia, a trash archivist and waste beautifier, entered the Wikipedia workshop with a blend of excitement and nerves. Used to transforming discarded materials into art, Gabriela was about to take on a new challenge: organizing information into something lasting and accessible. “I’m nervous about understanding so many new things!” she admitted. Finding a topic with enough information, and being able to write a solid article, was especially daunting. "And in English!" she added, highlighting the extra layer of difficulty of writing in a non-native language.
Her journey into the Wikipedia editing process turned out to be a fascinating one. Gabriela quickly realized that once she started editing, the experience became all-consuming. “Alert! It is an addictive rabbit hole,” she said. Editing on Wikipedia pulled her from one topic to another, creating a chain of discovery where new ideas and questions constantly emerged. This sense of exploration wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to her, as her art also involved diving into chaos and finding meaning. “You end up finding information that works for you and other that doesn’t, but you have new ideas and questions,” she reflected, acknowledging the constant back-and-forth between discovery and curation that Wikipedia editing demanded.
“I find it so interesting being able to highlight and put on the Wikipedia map organizations that are so important to Miami’s cultural scene.”
Her first major contribution was writing the article on Bookleggers, a Miami-based organization. "I find it so interesting being able to highlight and put on the Wikipedia map organizations that are so important to Miami’s cultural scene," she shared. Gabriela saw Wikipedia as a platform that could give visibility to local institutions that might otherwise be overlooked. For her, it was an opportunity to cement these vital pieces of her city’s cultural fabric within the larger digital archive.
Gabriela’s experience with Wikipedia mirrored her artistic process in more ways than she initially expected. "It’s quite different," she observed about the task of editing. Yet, in the same breath, she acknowledged, "But in the same way as creating my art, I got lost in information and ideas until I had to concretize the ideas." Just as she does with her work, where she transforms waste into beauty, she found herself swimming in an ocean of data before narrowing her focus and shaping it into a coherent article. The creative process of organizing information, much like her art, required balance, intuition, and careful decision-making.
Growing up with the British Encyclopedia, Gabriela was accustomed to static collections of knowledge, and she found Wikipedia’s ever-evolving nature fascinating. "It is a knitting of relevant digital information that mutates with thousands of collaborators looking for how to create and verify the information," she said, marveling at how Wikipedia could simultaneously preserve and transform knowledge. It wasn’t a book that sat on a shelf gathering dust—it was a living document, continuously updated by a global community.
For Gabriela, the potential of Wikipedia to shape Miami’s cultural history was profound. “Many people say that Miami has no history, and this is something that is repeated a lot,” she reflected. But she saw a wealth of untold stories waiting to be documented and shared. "The idea that many Wikipedia pages can be created where many stories, places, events can be disseminated and verified," she said, sparked a vision of how the platform could counter this misconception and preserve Miami’s rich, yet often overlooked, heritage.
“It opens your mind to understand how verifiable information is generated!”
Gabriela’s advice to future Wikipedia editors was grounded in her own experience. “It opens your mind to understand how verifiable information is generated!” she exclaimed. For those starting out, she recommended bringing a list of topics that piqued their curiosity but were missing from Wikipedia, and emphasized the importance of seeking out strong, reliable sources. "Enjoy and ask questions," she advised, urging others to embrace the process with openness and curiosity.
As the workshop came to a close, Gabriela’s excitement about Wikipedia had only deepened. "I am excited to understand how Wikipedia puts together all the information," she said. The platform, she realized, was a complex system of contributions from countless individuals—each small piece adding to a larger, verified whole. “It is like discovering a portal on how information is grouped in a verified way,” she marveled, feeling empowered by her ability to contribute to such a massive collective project.
In the end, Gabriela’s experience with Wikipedia was much like her art: taking something that seems messy or overlooked and transforming it into something that enriches the world. For her, Wikipedia became not just a tool for documenting Miami’s culture, but a space where she could continue her work of turning the overlooked into the beautiful, the chaotic into the meaningful.
