11 ms·

Nobel scientist's deletion from Wikipedia points to wider bias

92 points by cf100clunk 5y ago

darepublic 5y ago
Glad I got this entry in during the early days of wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduardo_Corrochio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduardo_Corrochio. It has been wittled down numerous times over the years but the skeleton of the man's life remains.
- sombremesa 5y ago
  Based on TFA, this page would've been long gone had this been a woman.
- akuchling 5y ago
  Is this page purely a Seinfeld reference?
  - darepublic 5y ago
    I see you have flagged my wikipedia article. Yes it was a Seinfeld reference. I tried to tie it to the Seinfeld wiki page for that episode a couple of times but it was always halted.
fsckboy 5y ago
misleading title, the scientist Donna Strickland had had her page deleted before she won the Nobel prize and therefore did not have a page at the time she won the prize.
- codezero 5y ago
  This is covered in the article. Also, most Nobel winners are notable for their work long before winning the actual prize.
- youeseh 5y ago
  Easy enough to fix: "Nobel scientist's deletion from Wikipedia before rise to prominence points to wider bias" I wish news outlets would stick to reporting the news.
  - cool_dude85 5y ago
    Before rise to prominence? Presumably she did not publish the work that won her the Nobel and win it on the same day. Surely publishing Nobel-level work in your field means you have already "risen to prominence."
    - jhgb 5y ago
      How do you tell before such an award is granted whether someone's work is Nobel-worthy or not? There's plenty of already-published works right now that will earn dozens of Nobels to some people in the next decade -- care to tell us which works we should be looking for?
      - cool_dude85 5y ago
        Luckily for me I'm not an admin on wikipedia, so I don't have to decide whose work is notable enough to justify a page. That's their problem. And it's fine for them to get heat when they make bad decisions, or when people notice that those decisions are systematically biased. I don't have to solve the problem to say it's bad.
  - cf100clunk 5y ago
    Or better yet: "You'll read this if we say 'Nobel scientist' instead of just 'Academic', right?" Anyway, as an admitted pedant, even I didn't make a big deal of the title.
  - rob_c 5y ago
    Modern research doesn't consist of magical researchers discovering new things in isolation. This is not some marvel movie. If someone has won the Nobel prize they've been changing and contributing in a huge way to their field of interest for many years.
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  No, that's the point, a woman doing such great work that she won the Nobel Prize had her profile deleted as "not notable".
  - rob_c 5y ago
    Thank you for saying it.
  - BeetleB 5y ago
    People are assuming quite a bit. If an article about a professor is written and has virtually no references, then it's not the admin's job to do research to see if she is notable or not. It should be tagged as "needs references" and if they are not provided, eventually deleted. In her particular case, the article didn't even exist - only a draft did - which was not approved because it had no references. The rejection notice specifically suggests resubmitting with references. The story/study about bias is interesting, but they picked a poor example to showcase.
    - rob_c 5y ago
      Frankly when did Wikipedia admins start getting praised for not doing a thorough job and acting as gatekeepers? This is likely the source of most biases. Again. Leaving an article and requesting additions from the public is drastically different to deleting it because it doesn't meet some arbitrary standard. This case proves that something in that process is making Wikipedia all the poorer for this being the case.
      - BeetleB 5y ago
        > Again. Leaving an article and requesting additions from the public is drastically different to deleting it because it doesn't meet some arbitrary standard. Correct, but irrelevant. There was no article. Only a draft specifically created and submitted to be reviewed. It was reviewed and fair feedback was provided. This is different from the process where an article already exists and is marked for deletion. Edit: See here for more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28237054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28237054 Edit 2: There apparently was another article in 2014 which was deleted. The information above is about the more recent AFC that was deleted.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  The current page was created in 2014. [edit: Although it looks like everything before 2018 got deleted in 2018? I don't understand all the notation on the history page. [0]] This is after she served in various roles (including president) at The Optical Society, and of course after developing chirped pulse amplification, for which she won the Nobel, during the 1980s. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Donna_Strickland&dir=prev&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Donna_Strickland&...
  - tptacek 5y ago
    Are we looking at different things? I just wrote a whole long comment on this after poking around on WP about it, and I'd be glad to know if I got things completely scrambled. Because what I see is a page created in 2018, and a _lot_ of intra-WP coverage of the process that led to there not being a page before 2018, all of which squares with what this article says.
    - jessaustin 5y ago
      I'm probably misunderstanding something, but I do see some 2014 dates at the bottom of the page linked above. ISTM wikipedia was informed of this scientist in some fashion in 2014, and those contributions were deleted or set aside or whatever. I'm happy to be educated on this, but at least we can say that the process is obscure. Of course the point is that GP's whinging about headlines is silly. Her Nobel paper was published in 1985.
      - tptacek 5y ago
        You're right, I missed the stub from 2014. It was speedy-deleted for copyright infringement.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - mjw1007 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Donna+Strickland https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=... says that the 2014 version was deleted as "Unambiguous copyright infringement". That will be why those revisions are no longer accessible.
andyxor 5y ago
most of wikipedia content is in public domain, how hard is it to "fork" wikipedia and start a new version without the army of their power editors and biased "admins", i.e. take an initial snapshot of the content as a seed but get rid of the centralized bureaucracy and censorship. Edit: looks like there is IPFS version https://blog.ipfs.io/24-uncensorable-wikipedia/ https://blog.ipfs.io/24-uncensorable-wikipedia/
- bena 5y ago
  And trade them for an entirely different army of weird and biased editors? Wikipedia has the same problem every major "community-driven" site does, those with the most time dictate the culture. And since there is no real compensation for that time, no one whose time is worth anything is going to be a major factor.
- jimbob45 5y ago
  Sure but those power editors and admins do a lot of heavy lifting that you're taking for granted. Someone's gotta be updating those articles and who's to say the editors you get for your fork will be any less partial than the ones on Wikipedia?
  - andyxor 5y ago
    i think it's better to have multiple versions of wikipedia articles, maintained via something like github repo the distribution would be via something like a search portal with ranking similar to Pagerank, or create an explicit mechanism of social voting on articles similar to Reddit. yes, it might also be biased but at least there will be no single source of "truth" and people can make their own mind which version to believe, and be able to do something like "sort by controversial" as they do on Reddit so see different opinions
  - rob_c 5y ago
    Could some fork drop the topical, media and "hot" topics and polish the hard sciences? Or historical facts which should be presented as being unbiased and isn't something which is now changing (unless we find an ancient dvd player in the pyramids). If this existed and Wikipedia worked with this "factopedia" to pull from it I'd very happily contribute. Potentially a wiki with some basic checks for having at least an undergraduate in the field of question?
ilamont 5y ago
pretty soon scientists are going to have to start doing what celebrities and corporations have been doing for years: paid swarms of contributors and PR teams who write articles that are too robust to be deleted, and negative facts/citations are kept to a minimum.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  I think some wikipedia editors (and editor brigades like "Philip Cross") are making a living from the activity you describe.
  - ilamont 5y ago
    Absolutely. Wikipedia itself acknowledges the problem: Many Wikipedians have seen the effects that paid advocates can have on an article. These paid editors tend to make obviously biased edits, be very persistent, and are easily identifiable. But some of them are much more sophisticated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-09-27/Special_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
    - jessaustin 5y ago
      That's a fascinating link; thanks! I have the sense that we are glimpsing the iceberg above the waterline. It's only when these actors make apparently silly mistakes around perceptive people that they can even be detected. Another example would be the whole weird Mexican social media political conspiracy that "Reply All" covered a few years ago. [0] How many of these organizations are doing this? When we do somehow detect one, can we learn anything from that? It's possible that intentionally revealing "secrets" actually serves some secret purpose. [0] https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4hl36/112-the-prophet https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4hl36/112-the-proph...
Grollicus 5y ago
Why does this article about notability deletions not link the notability criteria of wikipedia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#Basic_criteria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#...
- rob_c 5y ago
  I'd say it's a wiki go edit it but I refuse to given my contributions have been kicked in the past.
  - krisoft 5y ago
    Are you sure you are talking about the same thing? The article is not on a wiki.
    - rob_c 5y ago
      Why not edit the wiki to refer to the article?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jessaustin 5y ago
  "Notability" is an idiosyncratic, illogical, fringe, inconsistently-enforced criterion, and no one cares about it other than a tyrannical minority of wiki editors.
  - nsajko 5y ago
    > "Notability" is an idiosyncratic, illogical, fringe, inconsistently-enforced criterion Disregarding the rest of the sentence, would you mind expanding on this? TBH currently your comment just seems flippant, ignorant and without substance otherwise, but perhaps you could edit it to improve it?
rob_c 5y ago
Typical Wrote up a long description about how the equipment I used for my master's worked (fleshing out a stub article). Only to have some moderator (being extremely polite here) revert the whole thing because it was "uncited". When challenged I ended up getting temp banned for telling them "I know how it works I just built one". Haven't trusted or contributed since it's moving closer to a collective "what we want to know" information service which makes me want to invest more in an actual encyclopedia.
- rob_c 5y ago
  At this point I'm willing to go to go toe on this on a typical debate perspective. If I'm being voted down what is so great about the ignorance of the masses here? Wikipedia has some serious (and in come cases concerningly anti-science) biases. Which is honestly love for them to address at a community level.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - tempthrowaway1 5y ago
    Wikipedia is essentially just an echo chamber for western propaganda. Good luck if you have an actual primary source instead of some nonsense from a reliable "secondary source" like uncited junk from NPR.
    - rob_c 5y ago
      I like to dream. Now I remember why I liked encyclopedia encarta
- tedsanders 5y ago
  I know it's frustrating to write true things and have them deleted, but I hope you understand how bad it would be to generalize the rule "accept uncited/unverified claims as true if the account who wrote them says it's true." I say this as someone who spent weeks writing up a new Wikipedia article with 50 citations and then had it graded a C because I used too many primary sources instead of secondary sources. I empathize with you, but I also empathize with the editors.
tptacek 5y ago
What happened here was atypical for Wikipedia "deletionism" debates. Normally, when you read a story like this, someone created an article and someone else petitioned to have it deleted (with an "AfD") and there's a whole debate log you can read, and you could try to assess people's biases from the comments they left in the AfD. Here, though, no article was ever created (prior to 2018, when Strickland was awarded her Nobel). Instead, a beginner editor wrote a draft of an article through the "Articles for Creation" ("AfC") process. AfC drafts are, apparently, reviewed by admins before being promoted to the "mainspace" of real articles. You can read the draft here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=842614385 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=842614385 This is a stub article --- merely the beginning of a real article. And that's fine; it's how lots of good articles start out. But it's easy to see how an admin churning through AfC stub drafts might not have clearly understood the notability of the subject. The article links mostly to the professor's own research group. There are hundreds of thousands of academics whose position in the encyclopedia could also be established with links to their research groups! What I think is probably more important here though is that the original article, the one we talk about as being "deleted", was created with a special process where the author asked for permission to have it added. That's not how Wikipedia ordinarily works; you have to opt in to the permissions process. The author could just as easily have simply created a Strickland article in the mainspace, and the process that deleted it would have been more formal, would have included appeals, and there'd be a log of the reasoning. It likely would have survived. The author of the draft essentially asked for that not to happen, by using the AfC process. It seems important to add here: had it been an actual article, and had it been deleted through a speedy deletion or a full-blown AfD process, it would be more difficult to get a Strickland article onto WP in the future (not "difficult", just "more difficult"). But there wasn't, so, in the entire span of time prior to Strickland's Nobel, anybody could have created a stub article for her and her work. From what I can tell, nobody did. That, to me, is the more telling phenomenon here, not the draft deletion. Late edit Complicating this story a lot, something I missed earlier: there was a tiny stub article on the site in 2014, but it was speedy-deleted for copyright infringement. (Thanks, commenters below!)
- rob_c 5y ago
  Not sure I actually agree. If articles such as this get stricken off and she hadn't won a novel prize someone would just cite "deleted as before" when someone attempts to start a new article again.
JohnWhigham 5y ago
Some critics say it was gender bias, while others say it was a problem with notability, a gauge editors use to determine if a topic deserves a Wiki page. Wikipedia editors must be able to verify facts about any Wiki entry against published reliable sources, from publications to the press. Actual crux of the issue. Stop trying to turn every fucking thing into a gender war.
- rob_c 5y ago
  Yes, but there is a stark and important difference between "this looks sensible and isn't going to cause problems but needs improvements" and "must contain BBC or CNN link or it not be real" which I think has been lost on the editors of Wikipedia. If biases have been introduced in one way then there well could be additional biases which need to be checked for or which have come about through the first bias through correlation. Whilst I don't agree with turning everything into a gender war I do feel Wikipedia as a "factual resource" is open for correct ridicule if it's not being fair and unbiased. Otherwise it's not truely factual.
- avs733 5y ago
  The problem with this argument is that the rhetoric is the same whether or not it was gendered. If you see a pattern of people applying a standard disequitably, whether or not the standard is explicitly disequitable it’s worth discussing. It’s like when I went to high school with a bunch of other 1% kids who believe their success is entirely about their hard work.
- fitchjo 5y ago
  Why do you feel so attacked about the subject of this article such that you have concluded this is part of a gender "war"? If I understand your claim correctly, it is just that simply there weren't any reliable sources to verify the information because there are not any articles about these women; however, the article further examines (or at least considers) that exact fact as being part of the issue - that these women are not being written about at the same rate as men.
  - nsajko 5y ago
leephillips 5y ago
Misogyny is just one of Wikipedia’s numerous faults. But why pay attention? To me this has about the same import as someone somberly pointing out that an informative graffito was erased from the bathroom wall of their favorite restaurant.
- rob_c 5y ago
  I feel sorry for your bathroom wall being covered in factual information covering a variety of topics. Then again you never have to buy a newspaper... I like comparing Wikipedia to graffiti as it's heading in this direction at times but I'd think of it more like a notice board outside a town hall covered in signs for the next witch burning rather than a bathroom stall.
AHappyCamper 5y ago
What I don't like about this article (besides the very obvious conclusions that it starts out with and then hits you over the head with) is that it doesn't attempt to reach any wikipedia mod or reviewer for a comment. It's only the author's side and the author's narrative. Also, correlation does not imply causation. The fact that women's pages get deleted more often doesn't mean that there is a gender bias against women.
- nashalo 5y ago
  Clicking on this headline I knew for sure that the person was a woman, even if I knew nothing of the case. At some point we can't hide behind correlation is not causation anymore.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    >>Clicking on this headline I knew for sure that the person was a woman How? Like, I don't really have anything else to add - I'm just curious how could you possibly be so sure before you even opened the article. >> At some point we can't hide behind correlation is not causation anymore. Is it still hiding if it's true?
  - bobthechef 5y ago
    "Clicking on this headline I knew for sure that the person was a woman" And this proves what exactly? Putting aside that you didn't "know" anything, all it shows is that you made a correct guess. On what basis? Well, probably because the media have been yammering on about gender bias for years. So you're confusing your own prior bias with reality. Congrats. You've discovered confirmation bias.
    - beecafe 5y ago
      The usage of the word probably implies the same about this take.
  - prvc 5y ago
    In this case you may be perceiving a different type of bias than you assume.
nsajko 5y ago
The always present whining on HN against Wikipedia's core policies like verifiability and notability perplexes me. Surely most people here are familiar with the notion of maintainability? Insisting on verifiability and notability are merely prerequisites for maintainability. The real problem with Wikipedia is that it (the volunteer community) is not able to enforce even the core policies... And the foundation that owns Wikipedia only hinders the efforts of the community. I hope the world gets a better structured encyclopedia project one day. EDIT: perhaps the worst thing about Wikipedia is the anarchic decision-making procedures, the so called RfC. It's supposed to be a discussion that results in a "consensus" decision. Except that the Wikipedia term "consensus" isn't what one would usually think of as a consensus, and it's not well defined. Somebody who didn't participate in the RfC discussion usually makes the call on what the consensus is ("closes" the RfC). Except that they don't even need to examine the discussion very much, whoever does it can basically invent the consensus.
modzu 5y ago
the article is all about gender; because if gender cant explain this omission, the only other explanation left available to the media is race! good god.
kevinpet 5y ago
I know there are people who consider it important to raise the profile of prominent women because of perceptions of bias like this. This could be a self-perpetuating cycle if that initiative results in creating more profiles of women of borderline notability, you would expect people following a uniform standard to be more likely to nominate women's articles for deletion. She is notable now for having won a Nobel Prize. Good on the Nobel committee for ensuring she gets the recognition she deserves. It doesn't follow from that that she was notable before that happened. Wikipedia's notability standard is not "doing important work that will be recognized someday".
- pastage 5y ago
  The point being that using a uniform standard when you compare women and men will always have a systematic bias.
  - LatteLazy 5y ago
    If thats true then isn't equality of any sort impossible?
- MichaelGroves 5y ago
  > She is notable now for having won a Nobel Prize That's not right. The Nobel Prize didn't bequeath notability to her, it recognized the notability she already earned for herself.
  - nsajko 5y ago
    How so? And how is this relevant?
  - bloqs 5y ago
    From an Encyclopedic perspective, this is wrong
  - prvc 5y ago
    That's not the definition of notability used by Wikipedia.
bArray 5y ago
This article title is clickbait, it can be interpreted as her being removed after being awarded the Nobel Prize. > It found that women make up only 19 per cent of all profiles, but account for a quarter of page-deletion recommendations. So, 19% of profiles, "25%" (no percentage given) of deletions - it's not insanely far off being the ratios I would expect. There are going to be some bias in there due to historic roles of men and women in society (a large number of historic politicians will be men for example). > A well-known example is what happened to Canadian scientist Donna Strickland, who couldn't be found on Wikipedia immediately after she won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018 (although she does have a Wikipedia page now.) Tonnes of University Professors also don't have Wikipedia pages, despite being well published and contributing tonnes to their fields. At best they can hope to be a reference on a Wikipedia page. Some even prefer it like this. > Another issue is that most of Wikipedia's editors are men. Is there actually any evidence at all that gender is a notable factor? It just seems like speculation. From the original numbers, it seems like deletions are roughly equal to representation. What this article really _fails_ at though is to actually review the Wikipedia edits [1]. In 2014 it was requested for deletion due to 'G12. Unambiguous copyright infringement' [2]. Ultimately though, if you don't like what Wikipedia are doing, stop giving them money and start your own - there is nothing stopping anybody. For example, RationalWiki was created after their articles were attacked on Conservapedia [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Donna_Strickland&dir=prev&limit=500&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Donna_Strickland&... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:G12&redirect=no https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:G12&red... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalwiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalwiki
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  > Is there actually any evidence at all that gender is a notable factor? It just seems like speculation. From the original numbers, it seems like deletions are roughly equal to representation. I've also seen studies (I can't find them but I recall them) where they looked at Open Source contributors and the authors defaulted to male if there was no gender information available.
- ronald_raygun 5y ago
pomian 5y ago
This is so disappointing, and confusing. But then again, it is a human controlled organisation, so human errors, issues, politics? Over the years I have heard of people adding and correcting topics that they know about, are even experts in, only to have their edits removed or deleted. (No communication options either.) Is wiki status truly more important than verifying a 'posters' qualifications? So that is the disappointing part. A bit like down voting for personal reasons. But we expect more from Wikipedia.

92 points by cf100clunk 5y ago

Glad I got this entry in during the early days of wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduardo_Corrochio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduardo_Corrochio. It has been wittled down numerous times over the years but the skeleton of the man's life remains.

sombremesa 5y ago
Based on TFA, this page would've been long gone had this been a woman.
akuchling 5y ago
Is this page purely a Seinfeld reference?
- darepublic 5y ago
  I see you have flagged my wikipedia article. Yes it was a Seinfeld reference. I tried to tie it to the Seinfeld wiki page for that episode a couple of times but it was always halted.

fsckboy 5y ago

misleading title, the scientist Donna Strickland had had her page deleted before she won the Nobel prize and therefore did not have a page at the time she won the prize.

codezero 5y ago
This is covered in the article. Also, most Nobel winners are notable for their work long before winning the actual prize.
youeseh 5y ago
Easy enough to fix: "Nobel scientist's deletion from Wikipedia before rise to prominence points to wider bias" I wish news outlets would stick to reporting the news.
- cool_dude85 5y ago
  Before rise to prominence? Presumably she did not publish the work that won her the Nobel and win it on the same day. Surely publishing Nobel-level work in your field means you have already "risen to prominence."
  - jhgb 5y ago
    How do you tell before such an award is granted whether someone's work is Nobel-worthy or not? There's plenty of already-published works right now that will earn dozens of Nobels to some people in the next decade -- care to tell us which works we should be looking for?
    - cool_dude85 5y ago
      Luckily for me I'm not an admin on wikipedia, so I don't have to decide whose work is notable enough to justify a page. That's their problem. And it's fine for them to get heat when they make bad decisions, or when people notice that those decisions are systematically biased. I don't have to solve the problem to say it's bad.
- cf100clunk 5y ago
  Or better yet: "You'll read this if we say 'Nobel scientist' instead of just 'Academic', right?" Anyway, as an admitted pedant, even I didn't make a big deal of the title.
- rob_c 5y ago
  Modern research doesn't consist of magical researchers discovering new things in isolation. This is not some marvel movie. If someone has won the Nobel prize they've been changing and contributing in a huge way to their field of interest for many years.
Ensorceled 5y ago
No, that's the point, a woman doing such great work that she won the Nobel Prize had her profile deleted as "not notable".
- rob_c 5y ago
  Thank you for saying it.
- BeetleB 5y ago
  People are assuming quite a bit. If an article about a professor is written and has virtually no references, then it's not the admin's job to do research to see if she is notable or not. It should be tagged as "needs references" and if they are not provided, eventually deleted. In her particular case, the article didn't even exist - only a draft did - which was not approved because it had no references. The rejection notice specifically suggests resubmitting with references. The story/study about bias is interesting, but they picked a poor example to showcase.
  - rob_c 5y ago
    Frankly when did Wikipedia admins start getting praised for not doing a thorough job and acting as gatekeepers? This is likely the source of most biases. Again. Leaving an article and requesting additions from the public is drastically different to deleting it because it doesn't meet some arbitrary standard. This case proves that something in that process is making Wikipedia all the poorer for this being the case.
    - BeetleB 5y ago
      > Again. Leaving an article and requesting additions from the public is drastically different to deleting it because it doesn't meet some arbitrary standard. Correct, but irrelevant. There was no article. Only a draft specifically created and submitted to be reviewed. It was reviewed and fair feedback was provided. This is different from the process where an article already exists and is marked for deletion. Edit: See here for more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28237054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28237054 Edit 2: There apparently was another article in 2014 which was deleted. The information above is about the more recent AFC that was deleted.
jessaustin 5y ago
The current page was created in 2014. [edit: Although it looks like everything before 2018 got deleted in 2018? I don't understand all the notation on the history page. [0]] This is after she served in various roles (including president) at The Optical Society, and of course after developing chirped pulse amplification, for which she won the Nobel, during the 1980s. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Donna_Strickland&dir=prev&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Donna_Strickland&...
- tptacek 5y ago
  Are we looking at different things? I just wrote a whole long comment on this after poking around on WP about it, and I'd be glad to know if I got things completely scrambled. Because what I see is a page created in 2018, and a _lot_ of intra-WP coverage of the process that led to there not being a page before 2018, all of which squares with what this article says.
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    I'm probably misunderstanding something, but I do see some 2014 dates at the bottom of the page linked above. ISTM wikipedia was informed of this scientist in some fashion in 2014, and those contributions were deleted or set aside or whatever. I'm happy to be educated on this, but at least we can say that the process is obscure. Of course the point is that GP's whinging about headlines is silly. Her Nobel paper was published in 1985.
    - tptacek 5y ago
      You're right, I missed the stub from 2014. It was speedy-deleted for copyright infringement.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- mjw1007 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Donna+Strickland https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=... says that the 2014 version was deleted as "Unambiguous copyright infringement". That will be why those revisions are no longer accessible.

andyxor 5y ago

most of wikipedia content is in public domain, how hard is it to "fork" wikipedia and start a new version without the army of their power editors and biased "admins", i.e. take an initial snapshot of the content as a seed but get rid of the centralized bureaucracy and censorship. Edit: looks like there is IPFS version https://blog.ipfs.io/24-uncensorable-wikipedia/ https://blog.ipfs.io/24-uncensorable-wikipedia/

bena 5y ago
And trade them for an entirely different army of weird and biased editors? Wikipedia has the same problem every major "community-driven" site does, those with the most time dictate the culture. And since there is no real compensation for that time, no one whose time is worth anything is going to be a major factor.
jimbob45 5y ago
Sure but those power editors and admins do a lot of heavy lifting that you're taking for granted. Someone's gotta be updating those articles and who's to say the editors you get for your fork will be any less partial than the ones on Wikipedia?
- andyxor 5y ago
  i think it's better to have multiple versions of wikipedia articles, maintained via something like github repo the distribution would be via something like a search portal with ranking similar to Pagerank, or create an explicit mechanism of social voting on articles similar to Reddit. yes, it might also be biased but at least there will be no single source of "truth" and people can make their own mind which version to believe, and be able to do something like "sort by controversial" as they do on Reddit so see different opinions
- rob_c 5y ago
  Could some fork drop the topical, media and "hot" topics and polish the hard sciences? Or historical facts which should be presented as being unbiased and isn't something which is now changing (unless we find an ancient dvd player in the pyramids). If this existed and Wikipedia worked with this "factopedia" to pull from it I'd very happily contribute. Potentially a wiki with some basic checks for having at least an undergraduate in the field of question?

ilamont 5y ago

pretty soon scientists are going to have to start doing what celebrities and corporations have been doing for years: paid swarms of contributors and PR teams who write articles that are too robust to be deleted, and negative facts/citations are kept to a minimum.

jessaustin 5y ago
I think some wikipedia editors (and editor brigades like "Philip Cross") are making a living from the activity you describe.
- ilamont 5y ago
  Absolutely. Wikipedia itself acknowledges the problem: Many Wikipedians have seen the effects that paid advocates can have on an article. These paid editors tend to make obviously biased edits, be very persistent, and are easily identifiable. But some of them are much more sophisticated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-09-27/Special_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    That's a fascinating link; thanks! I have the sense that we are glimpsing the iceberg above the waterline. It's only when these actors make apparently silly mistakes around perceptive people that they can even be detected. Another example would be the whole weird Mexican social media political conspiracy that "Reply All" covered a few years ago. [0] How many of these organizations are doing this? When we do somehow detect one, can we learn anything from that? It's possible that intentionally revealing "secrets" actually serves some secret purpose. [0] https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4hl36/112-the-prophet https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4hl36/112-the-proph...

Grollicus 5y ago

Why does this article about notability deletions not link the notability criteria of wikipedia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#Basic_criteria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#...

rob_c 5y ago
I'd say it's a wiki go edit it but I refuse to given my contributions have been kicked in the past.
- krisoft 5y ago
  Are you sure you are talking about the same thing? The article is not on a wiki.
  - rob_c 5y ago
    Why not edit the wiki to refer to the article?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jessaustin 5y ago
"Notability" is an idiosyncratic, illogical, fringe, inconsistently-enforced criterion, and no one cares about it other than a tyrannical minority of wiki editors.
- nsajko 5y ago
  > "Notability" is an idiosyncratic, illogical, fringe, inconsistently-enforced criterion Disregarding the rest of the sentence, would you mind expanding on this? TBH currently your comment just seems flippant, ignorant and without substance otherwise, but perhaps you could edit it to improve it?

rob_c 5y ago

Typical Wrote up a long description about how the equipment I used for my master's worked (fleshing out a stub article). Only to have some moderator (being extremely polite here) revert the whole thing because it was "uncited". When challenged I ended up getting temp banned for telling them "I know how it works I just built one". Haven't trusted or contributed since it's moving closer to a collective "what we want to know" information service which makes me want to invest more in an actual encyclopedia.

rob_c 5y ago
At this point I'm willing to go to go toe on this on a typical debate perspective. If I'm being voted down what is so great about the ignorance of the masses here? Wikipedia has some serious (and in come cases concerningly anti-science) biases. Which is honestly love for them to address at a community level.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tempthrowaway1 5y ago
  Wikipedia is essentially just an echo chamber for western propaganda. Good luck if you have an actual primary source instead of some nonsense from a reliable "secondary source" like uncited junk from NPR.
  - rob_c 5y ago
    I like to dream. Now I remember why I liked encyclopedia encarta
tedsanders 5y ago
I know it's frustrating to write true things and have them deleted, but I hope you understand how bad it would be to generalize the rule "accept uncited/unverified claims as true if the account who wrote them says it's true." I say this as someone who spent weeks writing up a new Wikipedia article with 50 citations and then had it graded a C because I used too many primary sources instead of secondary sources. I empathize with you, but I also empathize with the editors.

tptacek 5y ago

What happened here was atypical for Wikipedia "deletionism" debates. Normally, when you read a story like this, someone created an article and someone else petitioned to have it deleted (with an "AfD") and there's a whole debate log you can read, and you could try to assess people's biases from the comments they left in the AfD. Here, though, no article was ever created (prior to 2018, when Strickland was awarded her Nobel). Instead, a beginner editor wrote a draft of an article through the "Articles for Creation" ("AfC") process. AfC drafts are, apparently, reviewed by admins before being promoted to the "mainspace" of real articles. You can read the draft here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=842614385 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=842614385 This is a stub article --- merely the beginning of a real article. And that's fine; it's how lots of good articles start out. But it's easy to see how an admin churning through AfC stub drafts might not have clearly understood the notability of the subject. The article links mostly to the professor's own research group. There are hundreds of thousands of academics whose position in the encyclopedia could also be established with links to their research groups! What I think is probably more important here though is that the original article, the one we talk about as being "deleted", was created with a special process where the author asked for permission to have it added. That's not how Wikipedia ordinarily works; you have to opt in to the permissions process. The author could just as easily have simply created a Strickland article in the mainspace, and the process that deleted it would have been more formal, would have included appeals, and there'd be a log of the reasoning. It likely would have survived. The author of the draft essentially asked for that not to happen, by using the AfC process. It seems important to add here: had it been an actual article, and had it been deleted through a speedy deletion or a full-blown AfD process, it would be more difficult to get a Strickland article onto WP in the future (not "difficult", just "more difficult"). But there wasn't, so, in the entire span of time prior to Strickland's Nobel, anybody could have created a stub article for her and her work. From what I can tell, nobody did. That, to me, is the more telling phenomenon here, not the draft deletion. Late edit Complicating this story a lot, something I missed earlier: there was a tiny stub article on the site in 2014, but it was speedy-deleted for copyright infringement. (Thanks, commenters below!)

rob_c 5y ago
Not sure I actually agree. If articles such as this get stricken off and she hadn't won a novel prize someone would just cite "deleted as before" when someone attempts to start a new article again.

JohnWhigham 5y ago

Some critics say it was gender bias, while others say it was a problem with notability, a gauge editors use to determine if a topic deserves a Wiki page. Wikipedia editors must be able to verify facts about any Wiki entry against published reliable sources, from publications to the press. Actual crux of the issue. Stop trying to turn every fucking thing into a gender war.

rob_c 5y ago
Yes, but there is a stark and important difference between "this looks sensible and isn't going to cause problems but needs improvements" and "must contain BBC or CNN link or it not be real" which I think has been lost on the editors of Wikipedia. If biases have been introduced in one way then there well could be additional biases which need to be checked for or which have come about through the first bias through correlation. Whilst I don't agree with turning everything into a gender war I do feel Wikipedia as a "factual resource" is open for correct ridicule if it's not being fair and unbiased. Otherwise it's not truely factual.
avs733 5y ago
The problem with this argument is that the rhetoric is the same whether or not it was gendered. If you see a pattern of people applying a standard disequitably, whether or not the standard is explicitly disequitable it’s worth discussing. It’s like when I went to high school with a bunch of other 1% kids who believe their success is entirely about their hard work.
fitchjo 5y ago
Why do you feel so attacked about the subject of this article such that you have concluded this is part of a gender "war"? If I understand your claim correctly, it is just that simply there weren't any reliable sources to verify the information because there are not any articles about these women; however, the article further examines (or at least considers) that exact fact as being part of the issue - that these women are not being written about at the same rate as men.
- nsajko 5y ago

leephillips 5y ago

Misogyny is just one of Wikipedia’s numerous faults. But why pay attention? To me this has about the same import as someone somberly pointing out that an informative graffito was erased from the bathroom wall of their favorite restaurant.

rob_c 5y ago
I feel sorry for your bathroom wall being covered in factual information covering a variety of topics. Then again you never have to buy a newspaper... I like comparing Wikipedia to graffiti as it's heading in this direction at times but I'd think of it more like a notice board outside a town hall covered in signs for the next witch burning rather than a bathroom stall.

AHappyCamper 5y ago

What I don't like about this article (besides the very obvious conclusions that it starts out with and then hits you over the head with) is that it doesn't attempt to reach any wikipedia mod or reviewer for a comment. It's only the author's side and the author's narrative. Also, correlation does not imply causation. The fact that women's pages get deleted more often doesn't mean that there is a gender bias against women.

nashalo 5y ago
Clicking on this headline I knew for sure that the person was a woman, even if I knew nothing of the case. At some point we can't hide behind correlation is not causation anymore.
- gambiting 5y ago
  >>Clicking on this headline I knew for sure that the person was a woman How? Like, I don't really have anything else to add - I'm just curious how could you possibly be so sure before you even opened the article. >> At some point we can't hide behind correlation is not causation anymore. Is it still hiding if it's true?
- bobthechef 5y ago
  "Clicking on this headline I knew for sure that the person was a woman" And this proves what exactly? Putting aside that you didn't "know" anything, all it shows is that you made a correct guess. On what basis? Well, probably because the media have been yammering on about gender bias for years. So you're confusing your own prior bias with reality. Congrats. You've discovered confirmation bias.
  - beecafe 5y ago
    The usage of the word probably implies the same about this take.
- prvc 5y ago
  In this case you may be perceiving a different type of bias than you assume.

nsajko 5y ago

The always present whining on HN against Wikipedia's core policies like verifiability and notability perplexes me. Surely most people here are familiar with the notion of maintainability? Insisting on verifiability and notability are merely prerequisites for maintainability. The real problem with Wikipedia is that it (the volunteer community) is not able to enforce even the core policies... And the foundation that owns Wikipedia only hinders the efforts of the community. I hope the world gets a better structured encyclopedia project one day. EDIT: perhaps the worst thing about Wikipedia is the anarchic decision-making procedures, the so called RfC. It's supposed to be a discussion that results in a "consensus" decision. Except that the Wikipedia term "consensus" isn't what one would usually think of as a consensus, and it's not well defined. Somebody who didn't participate in the RfC discussion usually makes the call on what the consensus is ("closes" the RfC). Except that they don't even need to examine the discussion very much, whoever does it can basically invent the consensus.

modzu 5y ago

the article is all about gender; because if gender cant explain this omission, the only other explanation left available to the media is race! good god.

kevinpet 5y ago

I know there are people who consider it important to raise the profile of prominent women because of perceptions of bias like this. This could be a self-perpetuating cycle if that initiative results in creating more profiles of women of borderline notability, you would expect people following a uniform standard to be more likely to nominate women's articles for deletion. She is notable now for having won a Nobel Prize. Good on the Nobel committee for ensuring she gets the recognition she deserves. It doesn't follow from that that she was notable before that happened. Wikipedia's notability standard is not "doing important work that will be recognized someday".

pastage 5y ago
The point being that using a uniform standard when you compare women and men will always have a systematic bias.
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  If thats true then isn't equality of any sort impossible?
MichaelGroves 5y ago
> She is notable now for having won a Nobel Prize That's not right. The Nobel Prize didn't bequeath notability to her, it recognized the notability she already earned for herself.
- nsajko 5y ago
  How so? And how is this relevant?
- bloqs 5y ago
  From an Encyclopedic perspective, this is wrong
- prvc 5y ago
  That's not the definition of notability used by Wikipedia.

bArray 5y ago

This article title is clickbait, it can be interpreted as her being removed after being awarded the Nobel Prize. > It found that women make up only 19 per cent of all profiles, but account for a quarter of page-deletion recommendations. So, 19% of profiles, "25%" (no percentage given) of deletions - it's not insanely far off being the ratios I would expect. There are going to be some bias in there due to historic roles of men and women in society (a large number of historic politicians will be men for example). > A well-known example is what happened to Canadian scientist Donna Strickland, who couldn't be found on Wikipedia immediately after she won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018 (although she does have a Wikipedia page now.) Tonnes of University Professors also don't have Wikipedia pages, despite being well published and contributing tonnes to their fields. At best they can hope to be a reference on a Wikipedia page. Some even prefer it like this. > Another issue is that most of Wikipedia's editors are men. Is there actually any evidence at all that gender is a notable factor? It just seems like speculation. From the original numbers, it seems like deletions are roughly equal to representation. What this article really _fails_ at though is to actually review the Wikipedia edits [1]. In 2014 it was requested for deletion due to 'G12. Unambiguous copyright infringement' [2]. Ultimately though, if you don't like what Wikipedia are doing, stop giving them money and start your own - there is nothing stopping anybody. For example, RationalWiki was created after their articles were attacked on Conservapedia [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Donna_Strickland&dir=prev&limit=500&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Donna_Strickland&... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:G12&redirect=no https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:G12&red... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalwiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalwiki

908B64B197 5y ago
> Is there actually any evidence at all that gender is a notable factor? It just seems like speculation. From the original numbers, it seems like deletions are roughly equal to representation. I've also seen studies (I can't find them but I recall them) where they looked at Open Source contributors and the authors defaulted to male if there was no gender information available.
ronald_raygun 5y ago

pomian 5y ago

This is so disappointing, and confusing. But then again, it is a human controlled organisation, so human errors, issues, politics? Over the years I have heard of people adding and correcting topics that they know about, are even experts in, only to have their edits removed or deleted. (No communication options either.) Is wiki status truly more important than verifying a 'posters' qualifications? So that is the disappointing part. A bit like down voting for personal reasons. But we expect more from Wikipedia.