Last I heard, Wikipedia doesn't want to carry an article for every university professor or scientist who has published some papers. In glancing through Wade's entries, it seems like many of them are just published scholars without any additional notability. I wonder if Wikipedia's notability rules are being uniformly respected here, or are they being selectively applied based on the gender of the person?
I think it's great that Wade is bringing more visibility to lesser-known female scientists, but if we are valuing that, I think we should do so regardless of the subject's identity. Maybe Wikipedia should relax its notability rules a bit for scholars.
If you are inspired to downvote this, I would be curious to know if you disagree with my proposal, or just dislike that I brought up the issue at all.
I was curious about this very thing. At first I thought this was a really cool thing she was doing. I think everyone should be rewarded for their hard work, research or discoveries.
I guess I can't say I'm a fan of the way she went about this though, after reading some of what she's written:
Her comment:
"The problem is not that she’s not notable, or that @Wikipedia editors are a bunch of sexist trolls waiting to jump on the bio of an impressive scientist"
Seems to be in reply to this comment:
"There is a lack of significant independent coverage. Getting an award from the local YWCA does not help her meet any notability criteria. As a for notability as a scientist, my search in Google Scholar found a grand total of 1 citation of papers she has authored or co-authored. Just because she works for the government doesn't mean she can't publish papers (and she has), the only restriction is if her work is classified. Her participation in the discovery of element 117 appears to have been very minor. Her name does not appear in the Oak Ridge publication "The Discovery of Element 117". Her Oak Ridge autobio says her part of the discovery of the new element was to "contribute ... to the purification of the Bk-249 used to help discover Z=117". Sounds like a very minor role in an undertaking involving a large number of people. I don't see convincing evidence that she is notable as a scientist or meets WP:GNG. I agree with the others who cited WP:TOOSOON as an issue."
This is all found on the wikipage that was part of the original article:
Which I honestly find pretty reasonable. If you were to make a Wikipedia article for every college professor, we'd have a pretty bloated Wikipedia, lol.
That said, I really do hope that maybe we could focus on quality vs quantity. I don't doubt that there are 1000 people out there deserving of a Wikipedia page... I also don't doubt that perhaps some of her examples don't really qualify, given Wikipedia's guidelines.
This tweet seems to be the source of that remark from her; it is difficult to say who exactly the sexist troll remark is directed at since it's worded in a sly way which says the problem isn't sexist trolls.
It's a very trollish way to accuse somebody of being a sexist troll. Like if I were to say to a third party "Jim and I had an argument.. the problem ISN'T that Jim is a fascist asshole, but rather that..." Strictly I'm not accusing Jim of being a fascist asshole, but really I am.
Yea... seems a bit immature too. Didn't address anything the wiki dude said and blamed "society at large" for not producing enough notability for wikipedia.
Also in that twitter thread she says:
"She may have discovered an element, .."
Ironically, it seems the wikieditors did more research because they posted
"Her Oak Ridge autobio says her part of the discovery of the new element was to "contribute ... to the purification of the Bk-249 used to help discover Z=117""
Using the very source that she used to create the article, it is known that she:
I really appreciate her effort and goal but with just this one article she's:
- spread misinformation (possibly deliberately)
- broke wikipedia's rules on "canvassing support"
- accused people of bigotry (for merely disagreeing)
All in all, not very helpful to her cause at all... instead of celebrating what is clearly an interesting person, we are now here debating accolades because the original author got carried away.
I don't know if she's trying to do that. To me it reads as humorous candor - baldly naming the thing people are probably suspecting and then saying that's not happening.
I imagine it would be harder to navigate, especially in a few decades, if every combination of First name, Last name had a couple entries. There's already 7 for my name. Sure, you could say its not that much harder to navigate... but you can't say it makes things easier or "better."
I would honestly defer to Wiki contributors and maintainers on this, as I'm sure they have better reasons... but my intuition just tells me that letting Wikipedia be a dumping ground for any person that published a paper would just not end well.
>Maybe it already is way too bloated, and a wikipedia 10% the current size is better?
Perhaps. I think they should do a lot more "merging" of topics.
Lowering notability to allow more entries will just lead to a flood of mediocre articles not backed by much, which wikipedia already has a problem with.
The end effect is new articles don't get the attention they need, existing articles will get less attention as a result of more articles to patrol overall -- I've already seen less popular subjects become targets of vandals or activists, sometimes its subtle perversions of facts; with only a couple page watchers, these are far more likely to pass under the radar.
Articles can go years with offensive or misleading info if not attended, which is fine for run if the mill articles, but not for pages about living people, where the content can affect their lives or employment.
I wanted to write a bit extra about wiki policy, less my opinion and more an interpretation of the current state of policy enforcement:
In theory wikipedia aims to be a mirror of the current times. As they say, if wikipedia was around in the 1500s it would say the sun revolves around the earth, according to notible sources at the time, like it or not.
A gender bias in wiki entries then in theory would also mirror biases in our current media, i.e, if news is only written about men scientists, then thats all there will be for notible sources. It would be more effective to petition news sources to write more comprehensively about women in science, which is the real problem, instead of just fighting policy on one website.
The end goal should be to fix the bias at the source, not lower wiki standards to fix a problem created elsewhere.
I have published, and I definitely don't want, need nor deserve a wikipedia entry. I'd say too many people already have one. If a scientist has made a bit of school, fine, but otherwise: no entry just for having published.
I think standard should be something like reasonably well known in relation to the field in question. And enough appearances in media at least print. It is rather hard standard to pin down, but at this point being scientist is not exactly rare job and neither is being professor. So to be notable you need rather decent level of visibility.
Lucky for you Wikipedia considers editing your own page to be a conflict of interest, and is frowned upon. Article subjects are routinely reminded that they do not own their article, as it should be a reflection of notible sources that exist
All the more of an issue: if an ex or disgruntled whatever starts a page about me, I am unable to correct it or get it deleted? For once I am glad us brits have such insane liable laws... :)
If it were entirely factual, based on notible sources, and met the usual criteria, then no it probably wouldn't be deleted.
If it is factually incorrect, or has no approved sources then it would be fairly easy to get help either deleting the offending material, or even having the article deleted outright. Wikipedia has a few ways to report issues, but even just asking an administrator on their talk page to take a look, is fairly common.
Wikipedia takes living persons more seriously, and has higher standards than other articles. Beyond just reverting, some edits are irretrievably deleted if warranted.
That relies on the person the article is about being notable enough to have sources. You won't get sources (let alone reliable ones) for my neighbour Barry. So any article about Barry (or any non notable person) is going to be unsourced...
That's one of the issues with articles about non noteworthy people...
Yep. I've also won awards and have published a paper (co-authored) but I imagine if I were to create a wiki entry it would be deleted under the same exact standards.
> I think it's great that Wade is bringing more visibility to lesser-known female scientists, but if we are valuing that, I think we should do so regardless of the subject's identity.
_we_ are not because the initiative and productivity of Jessica Wade isn’t there, not because of notability rules. Yes, some lesser known scientists were deleted but that seems to be a second order challenge. The “valuing” comes from the group or individual effort to make it happen which in turns forces a serious consideration of rule changes.
I think the gendered aspect here comes from Wade's willingness to disregard Wikipedia's rules and Wikipedia's general permissiveness toward her behavior in particular so far, not merely her initiative and productivity.
If it had been allowed, you can pretty much guarantee there would have been an effort to put every scientist on Wikipedia by now. Wikipedians love science and they love the niche, which is why notability thresholds exist in the first place. And they are taken seriously and enforced - that's why there's so much discussion of them on Wikipedia. For whatever reason, these rules matter to the community.
This is not to say Wade did anything wrong. But this is the context.
Hopefully this all spurs a reconsideration of the rules. The current situation is obviously unfair.
I think it's great that Wade is bringing more visibility to lesser-known female scientists, but if we are valuing that, I think we should do so regardless of the subject's identity. Maybe Wikipedia should relax its notability rules a bit for scholars.
If you are inspired to downvote this, I would be curious to know if you disagree with my proposal, or just dislike that I brought up the issue at all.