4 ms·

Seems like this would have the opposite effect - increase the proportion of sub-notable women on Wikipedia makes it look like male researchers standout and fema

Seems like this would have the opposite effect - increase the proportion of sub-notable women on Wikipedia makes it look like male researchers standout and female researchers are mediocre. It also discounts the prestige of any Wikipedia article about a woman that deserves to have one - since people will know there is a much lower bar for women.

crazygringo 4y ago
100% no. You're assuming that these pages are all for "sub-notable" women, which is flat-out wrong. The ones that don't meet notability standards get deleted (as the article describes), just as happens with "sub-notable" men who people try to create pages for. Jessica Wade is simply filling in the gaps. Nobody is lowering the bar for women. And even if that were the case, nobody is randomly browsing thousands of Wikipedia researcher pages where they could even make a judgment like that. It's an entirely fantastical concern.
- nnopepe 4y ago
  I randomly picked one of her contributions and it reads like a travel blog of a random canadian[1], a second pick brought me to a dead french woman[2] whos claim to fame is being "one of the first" to do something By the sound of it Jess's reputation is so obnoxious people simply can't be arsed to contest her article creations anymore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphine_Farmer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphine_Farmer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genevieve_Hidden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genevieve_Hidden
  - crazygringo 4y ago
    I'm sorry but I just can't take your comment seriously. You think... "dead French women" don't belong on Wikipedia? Do you have any idea how many dead French men are on Wikipedia? I cannot fathom what leads you to describe someone as a "dead French woman"... or even as a "random Canadian", as if any Canadian that nnopepe has never heard of sure doesn't belong in Wikipedia...! I have no idea if these two meet the standards for notability or not. But I do know that being obnoxious never stopped deletionist editors before. I'm not sure there's anyone in the world more stubborn than Wikipedia deletionist editors.
    - bakugo 4y ago
      > I cannot fathom what leads you to describe someone as a "dead French woman" Maybe the fact that the article contains very little information beyond that and the fact that she was a surgeon? It also mentions that "She was the first to demonstrate that lymph node transplantation could be a safe procedure" but the cited source contains no mention of this as far as I can tell. > Do you have any idea how many dead French men are on Wikipedia? If you have any examples of articles of "dead French men" that are as barebones as this one, feel free to share.
      - itishappy 4y ago
        > If you have any examples of articles of "dead French men" that are as barebones as this one, feel free to share. Look through some of the links on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:French_surgeons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:French_surgeons At a glance I've found: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Sebileau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Sebileau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Lassus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Lassus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xavier_Delore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xavier_Delore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Ren%C3%A9_Sigault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Ren%C3%A9_Sigault
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  The central concept of this work is that adding more women to Wikipedia will inspire girls to become scientists. But now you're saying that nobody is going to notice the thousands of insignificant Wikipedia pages this woman has added. So, on the one hand, the Wikipedia articles are so meaningful they are going to change the career path of young girls, but so insignificant that nobody will notice there is a much lower standard for women to get Wikipedia articles than men. Hmmm. The article is about a woman creating Wikipedia articles for random female academics and scholars who are below the notability thresholds. It's not reasonable to say this isn't lowering the bar for women to get a Wikipedia article.
  - crazygringo 4y ago
    Are you deliberately misunderstanding this? The article says people below the notability thresholds get deleted. How are you not understanding that? Nobody is setting a lower standard for women. You are making that up in your own head. And obviously it's not about people randomly coming across articles of women researchers on Wikipedia. It's more like, oh my professor has her own page on Wikipedia, I didn't realize she was so respected. Can you understand that there's a complete difference between people visiting 1000's of pages and noticing some lower bar for women (unrealistic) vs discovering professors you know are notable enough to have pages (realistic)? "Hmmm" indeed.
    - ALittleLight 4y ago
      The article says that many of her articles are deleted for being unimportant and she contests that and brings them back. Beyond that, if the subjects were sufficiently notable, why is it they are only documented by an activist working on documenting less notable women? If common sense is insufficient, you could simply look at the articles she has added to confirm they are sub-notable. In general, a social activist doing activism by editing Wikipedia is a red flag.
      - crazygringo 4y ago
        > Beyond that, if the subjects were sufficiently notable, why is it they are only documented by an activist working on documenting less notable women? Again, you misunderstand totally. Subjects that are sufficiently notable, but had been missed on Wikipedia. This is filling in gaps, pure and simple. > If common sense is insufficient, you could simply look at the articles she has added to confirm they are sub-notable. Yes, please see "itishappy"'s comment above that lists men of similar notability on Wikipedia. So from her articles that are up now, it seems like they're perfectly fine. You are bringing utterly zero evidence that she is somehow lowering standards for notability, rather than filling in gaps. She's a contributor, not an editor. Notability rules aren't being changed/lowered. We should be welcoming people who want to fill in gaps on Wikipedia. People are motivated for lots of reasons, and "activism" is a perfectly valid one. It's not a red flag in any sense. Motivations are irrelevant -- correct/sourced and notable information is all that matters. Because Wikipedia is collaborative, anything that doesn't meet standards is quickly removed/fixed. So there's literally nothing to worry about here.

crazygringo 4y ago

100% no. You're assuming that these pages are all for "sub-notable" women, which is flat-out wrong. The ones that don't meet notability standards get deleted (as the article describes), just as happens with "sub-notable" men who people try to create pages for. Jessica Wade is simply filling in the gaps. Nobody is lowering the bar for women. And even if that were the case, nobody is randomly browsing thousands of Wikipedia researcher pages where they could even make a judgment like that. It's an entirely fantastical concern.

nnopepe 4y ago
I randomly picked one of her contributions and it reads like a travel blog of a random canadian[1], a second pick brought me to a dead french woman[2] whos claim to fame is being "one of the first" to do something By the sound of it Jess's reputation is so obnoxious people simply can't be arsed to contest her article creations anymore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphine_Farmer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphine_Farmer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genevieve_Hidden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genevieve_Hidden
- crazygringo 4y ago
  I'm sorry but I just can't take your comment seriously. You think... "dead French women" don't belong on Wikipedia? Do you have any idea how many dead French men are on Wikipedia? I cannot fathom what leads you to describe someone as a "dead French woman"... or even as a "random Canadian", as if any Canadian that nnopepe has never heard of sure doesn't belong in Wikipedia...! I have no idea if these two meet the standards for notability or not. But I do know that being obnoxious never stopped deletionist editors before. I'm not sure there's anyone in the world more stubborn than Wikipedia deletionist editors.
  - bakugo 4y ago
    > I cannot fathom what leads you to describe someone as a "dead French woman" Maybe the fact that the article contains very little information beyond that and the fact that she was a surgeon? It also mentions that "She was the first to demonstrate that lymph node transplantation could be a safe procedure" but the cited source contains no mention of this as far as I can tell. > Do you have any idea how many dead French men are on Wikipedia? If you have any examples of articles of "dead French men" that are as barebones as this one, feel free to share.
    - itishappy 4y ago
      > If you have any examples of articles of "dead French men" that are as barebones as this one, feel free to share. Look through some of the links on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:French_surgeons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:French_surgeons At a glance I've found: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Sebileau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Sebileau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Lassus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Lassus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xavier_Delore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xavier_Delore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Ren%C3%A9_Sigault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Ren%C3%A9_Sigault
ALittleLight 4y ago
The central concept of this work is that adding more women to Wikipedia will inspire girls to become scientists. But now you're saying that nobody is going to notice the thousands of insignificant Wikipedia pages this woman has added. So, on the one hand, the Wikipedia articles are so meaningful they are going to change the career path of young girls, but so insignificant that nobody will notice there is a much lower standard for women to get Wikipedia articles than men. Hmmm. The article is about a woman creating Wikipedia articles for random female academics and scholars who are below the notability thresholds. It's not reasonable to say this isn't lowering the bar for women to get a Wikipedia article.
- crazygringo 4y ago
  Are you deliberately misunderstanding this? The article says people below the notability thresholds get deleted. How are you not understanding that? Nobody is setting a lower standard for women. You are making that up in your own head. And obviously it's not about people randomly coming across articles of women researchers on Wikipedia. It's more like, oh my professor has her own page on Wikipedia, I didn't realize she was so respected. Can you understand that there's a complete difference between people visiting 1000's of pages and noticing some lower bar for women (unrealistic) vs discovering professors you know are notable enough to have pages (realistic)? "Hmmm" indeed.
  - ALittleLight 4y ago
    The article says that many of her articles are deleted for being unimportant and she contests that and brings them back. Beyond that, if the subjects were sufficiently notable, why is it they are only documented by an activist working on documenting less notable women? If common sense is insufficient, you could simply look at the articles she has added to confirm they are sub-notable. In general, a social activist doing activism by editing Wikipedia is a red flag.
    - crazygringo 4y ago
      > Beyond that, if the subjects were sufficiently notable, why is it they are only documented by an activist working on documenting less notable women? Again, you misunderstand totally. Subjects that are sufficiently notable, but had been missed on Wikipedia. This is filling in gaps, pure and simple. > If common sense is insufficient, you could simply look at the articles she has added to confirm they are sub-notable. Yes, please see "itishappy"'s comment above that lists men of similar notability on Wikipedia. So from her articles that are up now, it seems like they're perfectly fine. You are bringing utterly zero evidence that she is somehow lowering standards for notability, rather than filling in gaps. She's a contributor, not an editor. Notability rules aren't being changed/lowered. We should be welcoming people who want to fill in gaps on Wikipedia. People are motivated for lots of reasons, and "activism" is a perfectly valid one. It's not a red flag in any sense. Motivations are irrelevant -- correct/sourced and notable information is all that matters. Because Wikipedia is collaborative, anything that doesn't meet standards is quickly removed/fixed. So there's literally nothing to worry about here.