Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red/Archive 120
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Who is watching?
I'm feeling depressed about the future of Wikipedia. The number of articles is constantly growing, not least our own contributions on women. The number of editors is not growing. So the ratio of articles to editors is growing. When people tell me that they don't trust Wikipedia because anyone can edit, I assure them "People are watching the articles, so vandalism gets reverted pretty promptly".
Then I looked at Elizabeth Gaskell: major English novelist, longstanding article, 10,000 pageviews a month for many years. I looked at this version. And I found the puzzling phrase "A bibliometric Mrs. Gaskell and me: Two Women, Two Love Stories, Two centuries Apart, by Nell Stevens was published in 2018".
It didn't make any sense. I eventually tracked down the introduction of the word "bibliometric" to this edit from May 2020. It also introduced a lot of American spellings, and changed "the conversation and society to be met with in the house" to "the conversation and society to be met within the house", amongst other nonsenses. It was one of a series of edits made by an editor whose native language is not English: it looks as if they used some sort of spellchecker. In this Sept 2020 edit to Strategic bombing, they changed "to night flying" to "tonight flying", making nonsense. These were good faith editors by an editor lacking competence in the English language. Presuambly their spell-checker didn't like "Bibliomemoir" and had well-meaningly substituted an inappropriate word it knew, and the editor didn't understand English well enough, or check their edits well enough, to stop the damage.
But no-one had noticed. Fortunately their editing is sporadic and they haven't edited since Feb 2022. I reported them to ANI hoping to get them blocked to protect the encyclopedia, but was laughed out of court.
So why did no one notice damaging edits to a popular article? Do I keep a careful enough eye on my watch list, checking all edits to all the hundreds of articles I have created? No, I sometimes try to have a wikibreak and stop checking my watchlist. Do you keep an eye on all of your creations? There are editors who monitor "recent changes", but most of this editor's work had slipped past them (I spend an afternoon going through their contributions, and very few of their mistakes had been picked up and corrected).
We are custodians of an increasingly inaccurate encyclopedia. In many cases the person who created an article will have lost interest in editing many years ago. Vandals and incompetent editors can make changes which no-one will notice. I don't know what we can do about it, but I urge you all to keep an eye on your watch list and keep an eye out for the incompetent, as well as the bad-faith, editors who may be damaging our encyclopedia. Things can only get worse. I'm beginning to feel guilty for creating all those solid little well-sourced stubs, leaving them vulnerable to whoever comes along if I don't happen to check my watchlist carefully enough. (I know this isn't specifically a WiR problem, but we do urge people to create articles and celebrate them: we need also to encourage editors to do the less spectacular maintenance work of keeping an eye on them.) PamD 11:42, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
- Just checked how old the Gaskell article is: it was created in June 2002 by @Deb: who is still actively editing, surely one of our longest-standing editors! She's presumably created many many articles over those 20 years and can't be expected single-handedly to spot all unconstructive editing on all of them! PamD 11:48, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
- When you create a new article these days, it automatically gets put on your watchlist. I am pretty sure I removed Elizabeth Gaskell from mine because she's a popular author and I felt sure that many others were watching it. I often pick up vandalism on other articles I watch, for example Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, both of which are regularly messed with by schoolchildren, homophobes and others. But inevitably there are going to be time when no one is watching. There are many far worse articles than the Gaskell one, articles that will never be fixed because no one really cares about those topics. On the other hand, we have accomplished a heck of a lot in 20 years and I don't think we should be discouraged. If readers take Wikipedia articles as gospel and quote from them, they can end up looking silly. Wikipedia can be used more profitably as a way of finding reliable sources. Deb (talk) 11:57, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks, @Deb:, and congratulations on your years of service to the encyclopedia. I'm just worried that there is going to be more and more general degradation of articles - though some articles are being watched: an alert boxing editor spotted and reverted the change of a surname from "Yampier" to "Vampire" by the same spell-checker-dependent editor, after just a month. (I'd forgotten that juicy example till I had another look at the ANI report). PamD 12:03, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks for bringing this up, PamD, and initiating an interesting discussion. With over 2,500 creations, it's not surprising there are problems with some of your articles from time to time. Despite your concerns, my general impression is that the articles we create generally improve in quality. I spend some of my editing time assessing progress on women's biographies and can assure you that quite often, biographies of women created as stubs progress to Start, C and even B with little or no assistance from the original creators. I agree with you nevertheless that we should try to "watch" what is happening with our own creations but at some point is seems to me our time is better devoted to more new creations — there's so much still to be done. Fortunately, the efficiency of our bots in detecting vandalism and unhelpful modifications continues to increase. Overall, it therefore appears to me that the quality of our articles is increasing. I am, however, as worried as you are that the number of new contributors is not growing as fast as it used to. For this reason I had suggested we should run a contest specifically aimed at attracting new editors. As not everyone agreed, it has not yet got off the ground but I hope we can run it, possibly with prizes, early next year. In the meantime, now that we have a new approach to WiR registration, we can perhaps all make an effort to encourage more editors to join. It's surprising how often new contributors take up the offer.--Ipigott (talk) 17:42, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
- Interesting subject. I think I pay pretty close attention to recent changes on my watchlist. And I have a few articles on my watchlist that I didn't even work on: my hometown, a relative, etc., subjects I'd know well enough to spot vandalism and fix it. School articles seem prone to vandalism, which I guess isn't surprising. So I watch the articles for schools I've attended or worked at. I don't always fix the changes when I think they're not done well, unless they're egregiously misguided; I try to AGF, and remind myself that the articles aren't "mine". But most of the articles I watch definitely don't attract the kind of attention that an Elizabeth Gaskell would. Penny Richards (talk) 19:01, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
- I'm somewhere in the middle here. I, like Penny Richards, think most articles I write aren't geared to popularity and don't attract a lot of attention, but like PamD, I write a lot of articles. I try to keep up with the watchlist, but I know I miss stuff. In truth, I don't know what to do about things like this person, who monthly makes changes and then reverts them/is reverted on Violeta Chamorro. Yes, it's a waste of editors' time to have to make sure it was reverted, but they so far have always been reverted. Still it is frustrating. A couple of other articles I've worked on also get regular vandalism (not by the same person, but repeated stuff by different users), but for the most part, I do see improvements on balance. Declining contributors is a problem, but not one I can do anything about, as I am not a big social media user and have no local WP chapter in which to encourage participation. SusunW (talk) 19:37, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
- It's certainly important, when you spot something bad (incompetence or vandalism) to check the editor's other edits as far as feasible. I don't think enough people do this. Many articles are effectively unwatched - the brief 2022 page history of Giovanni Bolla is alarming. Johnbod (talk) 21:20, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
- PamD I empathize with your feeling depressed about the Sisyphean task that are parts of Wikipedia. It can be incredibly frustrating to see how easy it is for randomness to to mess up a perfectly good article. The spell checking issue is enough to put anyone off. Equally frustrating to be cast aside in your request to block the meatbot. I can go through phases where I get bugged when some random editor over-links everything in an article, and then I look at the editor's history of hundreds of articles that have been over-linked. It is not vandalism, it is just not right. What OCD itch are they trying to scratch? It boggles the mind. That said, I do watch all the pages I created and revert when necessary (as opposed reverting something that is not my style). My take is that I am going to try to keep one little part of the encyclopedia correct. I can't fix it all, but I can do a little bit. Ditto being an active participant in AFD...not just commenting, but working on the article before adding my comment. Hope that the feeling fades, but much better to vent here and then carry on! WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 01:19, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
- My watchlist is my landing page for entering Wikipedia. That said, I can be tricked by editors making innocuous edit summaries that hide their changes. So, that requires viewing what they did. At other times, editors make unreferenced/nuisance edits, publish, and then make a decent edit and summary, which can again shield the problems they've created unless you View history and work back through the changes you haven't previously seen. Time-consuming and tedious. I'm always grateful when another editor does the reversion before I notice the problem.--Oronsay (talk) 06:26, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
- PamD I empathize with your feeling depressed about the Sisyphean task that are parts of Wikipedia. It can be incredibly frustrating to see how easy it is for randomness to to mess up a perfectly good article. The spell checking issue is enough to put anyone off. Equally frustrating to be cast aside in your request to block the meatbot. I can go through phases where I get bugged when some random editor over-links everything in an article, and then I look at the editor's history of hundreds of articles that have been over-linked. It is not vandalism, it is just not right. What OCD itch are they trying to scratch? It boggles the mind. That said, I do watch all the pages I created and revert when necessary (as opposed reverting something that is not my style). My take is that I am going to try to keep one little part of the encyclopedia correct. I can't fix it all, but I can do a little bit. Ditto being an active participant in AFD...not just commenting, but working on the article before adding my comment. Hope that the feeling fades, but much better to vent here and then carry on! WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 01:19, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
- Gaskell's been hit a few times by editors who don't seem to know what they are doing. I cleaned it up somewhat from some word salad in January 2020; that seems to have been before these edits. Will try to keep dropping by as I think it is just about obscure enough to be underwatched (not many watchers visited recent edits) but well known enough to attract school children. Espresso Addict (talk) 03:08, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
- I had been considering posting a new section on a somewhat related theme, based on a recent situation I am not fully able to view due to revdelled edit history. There was a post at BLPN on 23 Oct 2022, quickly followed by an AfD based on WP:BLPREQUESTDELETE. During the AfD discussion, I wondered if page protection could be an alternative to deletion, but my request at RFPP was declined. This situation generally seems related to the question of who is watching, because it appears there may have been BLP violations since the article was created, that were repeatedly re-added, have not been completely removed from the edit history, and the best option appears to be deleting the article, because page protection is not available under these circumstances and requires relying on others to watch the page for what appear to have been serious and repeated BLP violations. My thinking generally is about our page protection policies, and the issue of whether anyone is watching and responding to problems in articles seems potentially related. Beccaynr (talk) 17:02, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
- PamD In general articles improve over time, so I disagree that we are on a downward spiral Wikipedia wide. However, it is true that many articles are not being watched carefully and that mistakes and or vandalism can go unnoticed for years. This is not a new problem as I still come across pages with issues dating back to the early years of the project (ie 2002-2006) which have not been fixed. Fifteen to twenty years is a long time for nobody to take action on a particular issue.
- That said, in times like this when you are feeling depressed, it is good to remind yourself of our policies at WP:IMPERFECT and Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a work in progress. It’s good as well to consider that by its nature the project is always going to lend itself to issues like these because of Wikipedia’s egalitarian openness to global participation to all people. It is both a strength and a weakness of the project. There is no way of preventing these kinds of issues without fundamentally changing the philosophy and culture of the project at large (ie limiting access to who can edit and how people can edit). Changing that would be a bad thing in my view. Best to work towards acceptance that this is a problem that can’t be entirely controlled (the serenity prayer works for me; but do what works for you) and just resolve to do what you can to improve things while recognizing perfection is not possible.4meter4 (talk) 20:27, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
- I agree that most articles are improving, or just staying the same. One exception is articles that need updating every so often - some general and science ones, and more obscure biographies. Most of the work on most articles still gets done in a short period after creation - that is at least as much the case for ones in the scope of WiR as others. Johnbod (talk) 02:26, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- When we look back at times when we only had printed encyclopedias at our disposal (i.e. most of my lifetime!), I think it is simply amazing that we now have on-line access to articles covering every sphere of interest. Those of significant importance are regularly updated providing an accurate picture of the people, places, topics and events they cover. There are now about 370,000 biographies of women and perhaps 100,000 more articles about women's works and activities. In the old days, we were happy to consult an encyclopedia in book form, even if it was printed 10 to 20 years earlier. Today the majority of our articles receive some kind of attention at least once a year, many incurring substantial improvements in content. I consider this to be a major achievement and am proud to be one of the countless contributors who help things along. In terms of size, the Chinese on-line encyclopedia Baidu Baike has about four times as many entries as Wikipedia but as far as I can see, it is no match in terms of depth, accuracy and number of users. For me, our continuing efforts are well worthwhile.--Ipigott (talk) 06:44, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- I very much doubt that "Today the majority of our articles receive some kind of attention at least once a year" is true as far as the actual text goes, rather than fiddling with short descriptions, infoboxes, categories, vandalism & reversions, bot edits of various sorts, and so on. I used to have a training demonstration tracking the changes to a fairly popular article (Greenwich Park) over a period of several years. The edit history looked pretty busy, but in terms of text it boiled down to changes of about 20 words, most in adding a single sentence. Then the Olympics came.... Johnbod (talk) 12:33, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- When we look back at times when we only had printed encyclopedias at our disposal (i.e. most of my lifetime!), I think it is simply amazing that we now have on-line access to articles covering every sphere of interest. Those of significant importance are regularly updated providing an accurate picture of the people, places, topics and events they cover. There are now about 370,000 biographies of women and perhaps 100,000 more articles about women's works and activities. In the old days, we were happy to consult an encyclopedia in book form, even if it was printed 10 to 20 years earlier. Today the majority of our articles receive some kind of attention at least once a year, many incurring substantial improvements in content. I consider this to be a major achievement and am proud to be one of the countless contributors who help things along. In terms of size, the Chinese on-line encyclopedia Baidu Baike has about four times as many entries as Wikipedia but as far as I can see, it is no match in terms of depth, accuracy and number of users. For me, our continuing efforts are well worthwhile.--Ipigott (talk) 06:44, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- Good points, 4meter4, and I am reminded of a hopeful approach from something else long ago, which is essentially that if there is to be effective advocacy for change, it may be best made as an appeal to the fundamental philosophy and culture of Wikipedia. For example, is this an egalitarian encyclopedia, when it can be effectively closed to the existence of women's biographies that are subject to repeated BLP violations? Greater protections would technically limit the ideal of open access, but this ideal may have a disparate and negative impact on the subjects this Wikiproject is specifically focused on promoting and protecting. We are not going to get to perfect, of course, but maybe we can consider who benefits and who is harmed under the current approach, and whether this is truly aligned with fundamental Wikipedia principles. Beccaynr (talk) 07:45, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- PamD My view is that if I create an article, then I have a responsibility to monitor it. All "my" articles stay on my watchlist. As others have pointed out, things can slip through, especially when an editor does something naughty, then finishes with a seemingly inocuous edit that one might be disinclined to check. Looking at Userviews, PamD's article creations average 16,907 views/day. Mine average 258,240 views/day. Even if I cannot find the time to check changes as they happen, I almost always catch them before they scroll off the bottom of the watchlist. As others have said, I also think articles tend to get better over time, not worse. Edwardx (talk) 13:40, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- @Edwardx: But what happens when you stop editing, for any reason? How many article creators, over the 20 years of Wikipedia, are still actively editing? A subset of those will be still watching "their" articles. The editor who set me off on this rant edited badly across a random set of articles, and almost none of their changes were noticed and corrected until I did a blitz on them: there seems no pattern in what they chose to edit. I noticed the Elizabeth Gaskell problem as a reader, because I went to the article to see whether it mentioned a particular connection and read the "legacy" section (it didn't, but now does, mention her connection with Silverdale, Lancashire). OK, so maybe Americanisation of UK articles doesn't matter, but in a lot of places they garbled the words of articles too. Ah well, keep on keeping on, as they say. PamD 14:13, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- Continuity on watchlists is inevitably going to be problem PamD. There is really no way around that. Inevitably all people will leave at a certain point in time. I have sadly lost many editing friends over the years for various reasons. Some of them have died, others have aged and are no longer able to be active as they once were, and still others have become busier with work and other real life off-wiki concerns. To my knowledge, none of my close editing colleagues left because they were jaded with the project, but left because of life issues. We are never going stop the problems of attrition. The only way as an organization that we can continue to grow participation by responsible editors is to actively work at attracting new volunteers and work towards mentoring individuals into becoming solid editors, in addition to providing a healthy community environment where people can collaborate and socialize in a positive fashion. Volunteering at WP:AFC or even the help desk is one way to encourage that kind of growth; although often those spaces are frustrating places to work because of people trying to use wikipedia for their own agendas which don't necessarily match wikipedia's scope and purpose. Perhaps WIR should consider what more we can do as a project to grow more new editors with a focus on women. I think WIR has had the success of attracting editors to a valuable editing focus. Some of them have probably new to wikipedia, but I suspect, that many of them are like me and were already active in the encyclopedia in other projects. I am not sure what more could be done to recruit new people, but it is something to consider.4meter4 (talk) 16:29, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- You have hit the nail on the head, 4meter4. Our future success relies on attracting more new contributors. The most reliable way I have found is to look carefully into the editors behind those new articles which present minor problems such as lack of categories, primary rather than secondary references, use of first names rather than family names, over linking, etc., etc. These are clear signs of lack of experience. I therefore often look more carefully at what those new contributors have been doing and if I can find evidence of an interest in writing about women, I invite them to join the project. A few of those who have joined this month are a result of this kind of encouragement. Other experienced members of Women in Red could of course help in the same way or perhaps set out specifically to encourage at least one of their editing colleagues each month to spend more time writing about women. Attracting new members is increasingly important at the moment as we seem to be losing some of the enthusiasm we had in earlier years.--Ipigott (talk) 17:17, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- I used Wikipedia for many years before joining in as an editor last December, encouraged by a call from Sandi Toksvig to help achieve better gender balance in the encyclopedia. My contributions were noticed and I was warmly invited to join WiR and have been encouraged in my learning by several helpful and tactful editors. I learn and then I plateau. Then I learn a bit more. But the ideas above, of having useful practical tips every day and having a mentor are really good ones. For my part, I started by editing and creating pages about things/people I felt I knew a reasonable amount. Then, a post on my talk page encouraged me to join in the discussion here. Next, I would like to learn how to find and work on a woman in red about whom I currently know little. Which one to choose, where to look for research clues (since I am currently only really using internet search engines for leads), and how to achieve a decent class B or C article? This is a beginner's voice. Just saying.... Yes, please encourage us to keep learning. Balance person (talk) 15:10, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
- @PamD: Forgive me for dredging this up a week or more after the fact, but I've been chewing over my thoughts for a while before posting them.
- I used Wikipedia for many years before joining in as an editor last December, encouraged by a call from Sandi Toksvig to help achieve better gender balance in the encyclopedia. My contributions were noticed and I was warmly invited to join WiR and have been encouraged in my learning by several helpful and tactful editors. I learn and then I plateau. Then I learn a bit more. But the ideas above, of having useful practical tips every day and having a mentor are really good ones. For my part, I started by editing and creating pages about things/people I felt I knew a reasonable amount. Then, a post on my talk page encouraged me to join in the discussion here. Next, I would like to learn how to find and work on a woman in red about whom I currently know little. Which one to choose, where to look for research clues (since I am currently only really using internet search engines for leads), and how to achieve a decent class B or C article? This is a beginner's voice. Just saying.... Yes, please encourage us to keep learning. Balance person (talk) 15:10, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
- You have hit the nail on the head, 4meter4. Our future success relies on attracting more new contributors. The most reliable way I have found is to look carefully into the editors behind those new articles which present minor problems such as lack of categories, primary rather than secondary references, use of first names rather than family names, over linking, etc., etc. These are clear signs of lack of experience. I therefore often look more carefully at what those new contributors have been doing and if I can find evidence of an interest in writing about women, I invite them to join the project. A few of those who have joined this month are a result of this kind of encouragement. Other experienced members of Women in Red could of course help in the same way or perhaps set out specifically to encourage at least one of their editing colleagues each month to spend more time writing about women. Attracting new members is increasingly important at the moment as we seem to be losing some of the enthusiasm we had in earlier years.--Ipigott (talk) 17:17, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- Continuity on watchlists is inevitably going to be problem PamD. There is really no way around that. Inevitably all people will leave at a certain point in time. I have sadly lost many editing friends over the years for various reasons. Some of them have died, others have aged and are no longer able to be active as they once were, and still others have become busier with work and other real life off-wiki concerns. To my knowledge, none of my close editing colleagues left because they were jaded with the project, but left because of life issues. We are never going stop the problems of attrition. The only way as an organization that we can continue to grow participation by responsible editors is to actively work at attracting new volunteers and work towards mentoring individuals into becoming solid editors, in addition to providing a healthy community environment where people can collaborate and socialize in a positive fashion. Volunteering at WP:AFC or even the help desk is one way to encourage that kind of growth; although often those spaces are frustrating places to work because of people trying to use wikipedia for their own agendas which don't necessarily match wikipedia's scope and purpose. Perhaps WIR should consider what more we can do as a project to grow more new editors with a focus on women. I think WIR has had the success of attracting editors to a valuable editing focus. Some of them have probably new to wikipedia, but I suspect, that many of them are like me and were already active in the encyclopedia in other projects. I am not sure what more could be done to recruit new people, but it is something to consider.4meter4 (talk) 16:29, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- Believe me, I understand how frustrating it can be to find that someone has done something detrimental to an article and that it's gone unchallenged for months. Just tonight I reverted some asinine, juvenile vandalism on Wikidata that's been around since April. And - also tonight - I revisited one of my older articles to find that another editor rearranged my prose. Not so bad, except that in so doing several sentences were divorced from their references, and nobody had made an attempt to put that right. I did what I could; I try not to show ownership over any article, but I don't like it when my references go astray.
- That being said, I think things are light years better than they used to be. For every article I come across that has unchallenged vandalism, or that's been completely rewritten from its original version, I find a dozen or more where the vandalism's been put right, or someone's made an attempt to smooth out the rough edges and clean up the problem areas. So someone is watching, even if it isn't you. Or me. Also: the kind of thing that sticks around for a while is, I found, buried so deep in the prose that all but the least casual reader tend to overlook it. Not the most ideal set of circumstances, perhaps...but I tell myself that on the plus side, it suggests to me that almost nobody is paying attention to the bad information, so nobody is ingesting it.
- It's not ideal, I agree. But I think we're farther along on the trajectory than I would have expected even five years ago. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 04:38, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
If Women in Red could provide useful tips
- Slightly off-topic, but to the point about "minor problems", I have been wondering if Women in Red could provide useful tips for new/not-so-new editors on a regular basis – e.g. "tip of the week" or "tip of the month" (could be linked to from the newsletter, for example). Cielquiparle (talk) 17:36, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- Cielquiparle, IMHO, this is a brilliant idea! If the tip became an add-on to the monthly invitation, it would also be viewable to pagestalkers of the editors who receive the monthly invite -- and that might induce the pagestalker to become a WiR member. --Rosiestep (talk) 18:34, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- You could offer 1 tip a month for newbies and 1 tip a month for advanced editors, for example. I believe WiR is generally raising the quality of women's bios as well as generating more of them, but this would be another way to spark learning and encourage retention. Cielquiparle (talk) 19:09, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- I fully support your suggestion, Cielquiparle. Perhaps you would like to propose a tip to be included in the December invitation?--Ipigott (talk) 05:46, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
- You could offer 1 tip a month for newbies and 1 tip a month for advanced editors, for example. I believe WiR is generally raising the quality of women's bios as well as generating more of them, but this would be another way to spark learning and encourage retention. Cielquiparle (talk) 19:09, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- I love this idea! So a newby tip would be something like "Don't forget to search slight spelling variations of your subject's name, like Katherine/Katharine or Elizabeth/Elisabeth, especially for historical subjects"? Penny Richards (talk) 20:57, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
- So I see we already have a suggestion for December.--Ipigott (talk) 08:15, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
- I like this. There are User pages that throw up a different quote each day...you could have the WikiProject page (or Talk page) rotate a new "quick tip" every day. We could probably easily aggregate 365+ "quick tips" like this, just asking members to submit. It would be an easy way to cover off basic skills for newbies (e.g. use the watchlist; use Findlink/"what links here"; add categories; avoid overlinking; do better searches, etc.)...and throw in others that are handy even for more experienced editors.
- In addition to "quick tips", it could be interesting to link to one essay a month/ Could be an existing essay, or a new one. Topics such as:
- Double the lede (and don’t bury it) – why the lede is important
- Reliable sources: Why you shouldn’t cite Findagrave but can still mine it for clues
- Telling their own stories: More than wives, mothers, sisters, daughters
- Women and the problem of “so many names”
- Biographies of living women: Cautionary tales
- Historical biographies of women: How to look for sources
- Businesswomen and entrepreneurs through an encyclopedic lens
- Cielquiparle (talk) 21:34, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
- I love this idea! SusunW (talk) 22:22, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
- Some other quick tips could be:
- Newspapers can be accessed by subscription through the WP library for newspapers.com or newspaperarchive.com, but also through free on-line English and other language archives.
- The Internet Archive (archive.org) and HathiTrust (hathitrust.org) have open-access full-text search capability for books and journals.
- Internet Archive Scholar has historic reviews of works by academics and writers.
- Some other quick tips could be:
- I love this idea! SusunW (talk) 22:22, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
- Cielquiparle, IMHO, this is a brilliant idea! If the tip became an add-on to the monthly invitation, it would also be viewable to pagestalkers of the editors who receive the monthly invite -- and that might induce the pagestalker to become a WiR member. --Rosiestep (talk) 18:34, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- Slightly off-topic, but to the point about "minor problems", I have been wondering if Women in Red could provide useful tips for new/not-so-new editors on a regular basis – e.g. "tip of the week" or "tip of the month" (could be linked to from the newsletter, for example). Cielquiparle (talk) 17:36, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks to Victuallers, we already have Woman of the Day on our WiR talk page. If we can put together a sufficient number of tips (starting with 31 to cover each day of the month), we could perhaps add Tip of the Day in the space below.--Ipigott (talk) 06:45, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
- Tip about findability. It's only in the last year or so that I've recognized how poorly, in general, I've dealt with linking to the woman's biography I just created. So now, in my sandbox, I have a list of pages of where to add Jane Doe after I create a woman writer's biography. Maybe other editors have similar lists and we could pool them together on a WiR subpage? --Rosiestep (talk) 13:29, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
- I often go back to Megalibrarygirl's most excellent essay Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Essays/Writing women into the encyclopedia. The essay reminds me that "Writing about women on Wikipedia doesn't stop after you've created a biography." There is a wealth of information on following up on integrating an article into Wikipedia. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 20:39, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
- It is quite possible that there are many here who are technical and already know this, but I discovered today (after years of literally typing out foreign language texts from google book views to be able to translate them) that the icon which looks like a snipping tool will allow you to select text and then take you to a window where you have the option to translate it. What a timesaver! SusunW (talk) 19:40, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
- Integrating into Wikipedia projects tip I've recently begun using: If your subject was an eloquent writer or speaker, or had some interesting reviews, or was in some other way quotable, adding them to Wikiquote gives them another foothold in the Wikimedia universe. In the past month, I've added five of my new articles' subjects to Wikiquote (Henrietta Meeteer, Ethel Hampson Brewster, Esther Loring Richards, Grace Porterfield Polk, and just today Azalia Emma Peet), with the hashtag #SheSaid in the edit summary so it'll get noticed by that project. It's pretty quick to do on the same day, when the sources are already at hand. Not a tip for beginners, I know, but it's a stretch goal for folks who are already good at navigating here. Penny Richards (talk) 20:02, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
Seems to have been a prolific French composer of stand-alone songs who's very poorly documented now. Scholarly pages ideally don't look like this: http://composers-classical-music.com/a/AragoVictoria.htm Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.2% of all FPs 07:15, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
Would anyone be able to help with this rejected draft on a two-term mayor in Michigan? Thanks. FloridaArmy (talk) 11:25, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
Indonesian women writers
The BBC ran a feature on the arts in Jakarta tonight, and one of those featured was writer Asma Nadia. Looking her up led to this page: Women in Translation Month - Indonesian women writers from IDWRITERS, a site about Indonesian writers. A cursory glance indicates that some might be notable, and lack articles in English - I know at least one or two do have articles, and at least one has an article in Indonesian, but not English. I'm going to try and tackle Asma Nadia tonight or tomorrow, but I thought I'd throw this out there in case anyone else might be interested. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 04:07, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
- Looks like Asma's Indonesian Wikipedia article should be a useful source of info and references to start off with when you do begin working on it. SilverserenC 04:36, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
- Let me know if I'm missing alternative spellings on these names, but here's a list of missing articles. Should we also be looking into the translators as well?
- Cok Sawitri ([1][2][3][4]), Hanna Fransisca ([5][6][7][8]), Mona Sylviana ([9]), Lan Fang ([10][11][12]), Dewi Anggraeni ([13][14][15][16]), Ratih Kumala ([17][18][19][20]), Anindita S. Thayf ([21][22][23][24]), Dorothea Rosa Herliany ([25][26][27][28][29]), Shinta Febriany ([30][31][32]), Zubaidah Djohar ([33][34][35][36]), Nukila Amal ([37][38][39][40]), Eliza Vitri Handayani ([41][42][43][44][45]), Victoria Tunggono ([46][47]), Abidah El Khalieqy ([48][49][50][51][52][53]), Dina Oktaviani ([54][55]), Melani Budianta ([56][57][58][59][60]), Erni Aladjai ([61][62][63][64][65]), Feby Indirani ([66][67][68][69][70][71][72]), Aprila RA Wayar ([73][74][75][76]), Reda Gaudiamo ([77][78][79][80]), and Rassi Narika ([81][82][83])
- The list is made! SilverserenC 06:50, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
- @Silver seren: Awesome, thanks. I'm always in favor of looking for information about translators, too, if that's possible...to answer your other question. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 18:27, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
- I thought the editors at WP:WPWW might be interested in this conversation so I added a link. --Rosiestep (talk) 18:41, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
- Ser Amantio di Nicolao, Rosiestep, I've finished adding some cursory sources to all of the names above, some stronger than others. Hopefully that gives a jumpstart to anyone who wants to tackle one of the authors. SilverserenC 20:12, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
- Great! I'll take on Reda Gaudiamo Mujinga (talk) 11:53, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
- Ser Amantio di Nicolao, Rosiestep, I've finished adding some cursory sources to all of the names above, some stronger than others. Hopefully that gives a jumpstart to anyone who wants to tackle one of the authors. SilverserenC 20:12, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
- I thought the editors at WP:WPWW might be interested in this conversation so I added a link. --Rosiestep (talk) 18:41, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
- @Silver seren: Awesome, thanks. I'm always in favor of looking for information about translators, too, if that's possible...to answer your other question. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 18:27, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
- Let me know if I'm missing alternative spellings on these names, but here's a list of missing articles. Should we also be looking into the translators as well?
Sources for Women's literature in ASEAN
Do we have any article about Women's literature in ASEAN or South east Asia. If not then I will support a draft. I would be interested in writing about "ASEAN Literary Festival". Will appreciate help in finding sources. Bookku (talk) 12:59, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
- Bookku: That's an excellent idea. We don't have any general articles but we have List of Filipino women writers, List of Indonesian women writers and List of Malaysian women writers and we also have categories for Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. There are articles on the literature of most of these countries which provide interesting background, sometimes mentioning prominent women writers: Burmese literature, Cambodian literature, Indonesian literature, Philippine_literature, Singaporean literature, Thai literature and Vietnamese literature. Most of them would however benefit from better coverage of women writers. The first 20 or so names on the Goodreads list of South Asian Fiction by Women may deserve special attention. As I see you are interested in festivals, you might also like to look at Singapore Writers Festival.
- Once you make a start on this, I would be happy to help you along.--Ipigott (talk) 10:10, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
- Many thanks, I shall try to begin sooner and keep you updated. Bookku (talk) 11:09, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
- It seems Singapore Writers Festival already exists but awaits updates since long. We do have Category:Literary festivals in Asia by country noting for my own record. Bookku (talk) 15:36, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
- Many thanks, I shall try to begin sooner and keep you updated. Bookku (talk) 11:09, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
Could I please have some help with this rejected draft on a historian and author? FloridaArmy (talk) 11:18, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
- FloridaArmy, your intro spelled her name incorrectly, so I corrected that. I am hip deep in alligators, but there are plenty of sources about her. She was a founder of the women's studies program at URI[84] and an oral history review gives an idea of the things that influenced her.[85] There are tons of reviews and discussions of her work, as well as newspaper articles.[86],[87],[88],[89] and [90],[91],[92],[93],[94],[95],[96],[97],[98], [99],[100],[101], [102], etc. If I find time to circle back, I will, but perhaps someone else can help. SusunW (talk) 18:21, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
Project members may wish to comment here. All opinions welcome. Also, any assistance in locating sources with significant coverage would be appreciated. I was able to locate this source. Thanks.4meter4 (talk) 17:56, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
I tried to fix up this previously deleted draft. A reviewer wants a couple cites fixed. She was a celebrity crime figure in Kansas City and then became an evangelist. FloridaArmy (talk) 22:51, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
- FloridaArmy Hello, I fixed these citations and made some minor copy editing. PigeonChickenFish (talk) 23:29, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
Monitoring Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam
Might be a good idea for more Women in Red members to periodically monitor Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam. The "Suspicious new articles" lists articles that have been flagged as possible spam, including biographies about women. Obviously many of those articles are just that – purely promotional articles written by suspicious/COI/paid editors – but there are probably also quite a few that are stubs created in good faith that can be easily fixed. (And if you do fix an article, like everyone's favorite Dawn Dickson, it might be an idea to update the "Status" column of that page, because otherwise we'll keep having these problems where one or two months later, the article keeps getting sent back to draft, regardless of how much work was done in improving it.) Cielquiparle (talk) 14:34, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
- "Keeps getting sent to draft" indicates that someone is blatantly violating Wikipedia draftification procedures and should be stopped from draftifying things until they learn to behave. Per WP:DRAFTOBJECT, "a page may only be moved unilaterally to the draftspace a single time". —David Eppstein (talk) 16:53, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
- To be fair, as I recall, the draftification occurred once, but there was prolonged unexplained edit-warring over tags. Anyway I just deprodded Elisabeth Griffith today and worked on it a bit. Personally I wouldn't have pegged it as spam...but was interested to see that that it was listed on that page. FWIW, I've now added a note to that page about it, so it doesn't look like an empty box that still needs addressing somehow, at least content-wise. Cielquiparle (talk) 17:08, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
How to destroy the documentation of Women in Science on Wikimedia Commons.
At the MRC NIMR Wikipedia edit-a-thon on 25 July 2013, many people worked on women in science, and some files from the MRC NIMH archives were released for them. For example, that documentation shows that User:Seat 5a worked on Brigid Balfour. And we know this is correct.
The thing is, that diff I linked a moment ago shows File:Brigid M. Balfour (1914-1994).tif - and that's been deleted. As has every single file released for that editthon.
I'm trying to provide documented proof of all this, but I'm not an admin. I can't peek into deleted files to see what documentation was provided at the time. If anyone can help, commons:Commons:Undeletion_requests/Current_requests#Files_uploaded_by_User:SHopkins1_and_User:Fnorman-london needs you. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 05:09, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
- I see the image can still be found on Google and on YouTube, and that you restored it up to FP. It's strange there is no history of it's deletion. Which other images from the editathon have been deleted?--Ipigott (talk) 09:55, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
- From Commons:Deletion_requests/Brigid_M._Balfour_photos in which you took part, this seems to be a major case of mass deletions. It certainly looks to me as if further investigation is necessary.--Ipigott (talk) 10:17, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
- Commons:Deletion requests/File:Mary Lobban.tif may also be of interest.--Ipigott (talk) 10:23, 13 November 2022 (UTC) There are lots of file deletions on Commons User talk:SHopkins1.--Ipigott (talk) 10:27, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
- On the face of it, this looks as if the commons images lacked evidence of permission related to the "files from the MRC NIMH archives were released", and were deleted as providing insufficient proof of the licence asserted. A bit unfortunate, but very normal and to be anticipated. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:16, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
- What surprises me is that Richard Nevell who apparently helped to organize the editathon has not responded. It also seems strange to me that those on Commons do not know him! Does WMUK not have anything to do with Commons? I always thought that Wikimedia was related to all projects but from the Commons responses it looks as if those attached to the UK unit are only recognized in connection with Wikipedia.--Ipigott (talk) 15:00, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
- It's a big place. No reason why whoever marked the images with a permission-needed tag, nor the deleting admin, should know of WMUK or Richard's involvement in Wikimedia projects. Commons only has so much bandwidth to cope with deflicted files. It's difficult to see how this whole thing went down, given that all we're left with are messages to a user saying "something's wrong with your file"; and I don't know who was best placed to notice the need to evidence permission in the circumstances of the event, but the answer to "How to destroy the documentation of Women in Science on Wikimedia Commons?" is, "add images without appropriate permissions and then don't monitor them or the posting account thereafter. That'll normally work. --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:44, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
Ideas for December and getting started on 2023
I've made a start on the WiR Ideas page about suggested topics for December and also the beginning of 2023. All are welcome to drop by and help.--Oronsay (talk) Oronsay (talk) 19:31, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
Sportswriter Jane Gross has died
Jane Gross, the first female sportswriter to work in a pro-basketball locker room, has died. Thriley (talk) 20:08, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
For Elizabeth II / Royal fans
This article (from the "suspicious articles" list) looks like it has potential for expansion and improvement: Mary Russell (maid of honour) Cielquiparle (talk) 11:48, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
Could anyone help with Mrs. Minnie T. Wright? She seems to have been a somewhat influential African American (mixed heritage as best I can ascertain) club woman and musician who performed on piano and composed some popular songs in the early 20th century. Thanks!!! FloridaArmy (talk) 00:20, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
Does this source count to be reliable one?
Does this source count to be as reliable one?
- Sewell, Jessica Ellen. Women and the Everyday City: Public Space in San Francisco, 1890-1915. United Kingdom, University of Minnesota Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780816669738 Partial preview available on google books
Bookku (talk) 11:01, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
- @Bookku: I view books from academic presses as being generally reliable. Obviously it depends on what you're using it for, but odds are good. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 13:48, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
- That matches my opinion as well. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:39, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
Wikidata question regarding Missing articles by education/Australia/University of Sydney
I just created this redlist, Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by education/Australia/University of Sydney, using this item, University of Sydney (d:Q487556). If someone is employed at or an alumni of University of Sydney Business School (d:Q7896374), The Women's College, University of Sydney (d:Q7775585), St John's College, University of Sydney (d:Q7593580), University of Sydney School of Chemistry (d:Q7896390), Wesley College, University of Sydney (d:Q7983886), St Paul's College, University of Sydney (d:Q7595160), University of Sydney School of Public Health (d:Q101006588), University of Sydney Cumberland campus (d:Q63091662), University of Sydney School of Physics (d:Q7896394), etc., will they automatically be included on this redlist or does each item number have to be added to the redlist? Also, what needs to be added to the redlist so that there is a "sum total" at the bottom of the page? Thanks. Rosiestep (talk) 01:17, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
- The list does not include Judy M Simpson (d:Q39961484), who is linked to University of Sydney School of Public Health (d:Q101006588), so it seems to be confined to females linked to University of Sydney (d:Q487556). TSventon (talk) 04:28, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
- Fixed. The query now asks for people who were educated at or employed by the university, or any thing which is part of (P361) the university. A summary=itemnumber parameter for the wikidata list template provides the summary. (diff) (I also changed ?wfr to ?wen, b/c that's a more appropriate variable name for the question "is there a wikipedia EN article".) --Tagishsimon (talk) 05:54, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
- Should there be a column for number of site links? For example Ida Holst (d:Q20772533) has an article on da Wikipedia. TSventon (talk) 07:31, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
- Who is to say? But I've added that column. --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:24, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
- Ipigott, I checked a couple of women listed as researchers and they were added by QuickStatementsBot, a bot with the same owner as Listeriabot, so probably little human time was spent.
- Tagishsimon, thank you, that identifies 47 women where more information is available and hopefully won't crash Listeriabot. TSventon (talk) 18:55, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
A number of these women would've been developed by me and others in preparation for edit-a-thons in Sydney, my home town. After Rosiestep created this redlist for USYD, I made one for my alma mater, the Australian National University. I'll check tomorrow if it needs tweaking to include ANU research schools, etc.--Oronsay (talk) 13:23, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
- Glad to hear it, Oronsay. I think there are many other schools in Australia (and elsewhere) deserving of these educational redlists. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:43, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks, Tagishsimon. I used other schools on the WiR Redlist Index with "Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by education/" as my guide when I created this school's redlist, and I think all/many could use the extra column and/or have the same issue of being limited to just the school's item number and aren't inclusive of all the parts of the school. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:43, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
- BTW, I handled the naming differrently "Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by education/(country)/(school)" instead of "Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by education/(country) - (school)". I'm not sure if others how others feels about the naming. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:43, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
- Also, as one of our offerings this month is "Women in education", I thought improving/creating WiR university redlists (Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Redlist index#Educational institution) would be useful. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:43, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
- BTW, I handled the naming differrently "Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by education/(country)/(school)" instead of "Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by education/(country) - (school)". I'm not sure if others how others feels about the naming. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:43, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks, Tagishsimon. I used other schools on the WiR Redlist Index with "Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by education/" as my guide when I created this school's redlist, and I think all/many could use the extra column and/or have the same issue of being limited to just the school's item number and aren't inclusive of all the parts of the school. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:43, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
- fwiw, I suggest we bring the current set into line with Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by education/US - Indiana and Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by education/Australia/University of Sydney, which both now 1) have all the columns 2) take care of the P361 'part of' subsidiary organisations business 3) get the country of citizenship label manually, avoiding one of Listeria's failure modes. If so, it is necessary to grab the whole of the contents of {{Wikidata list}}, not just the SPARQL query, and amend the parent institutions QId on the second line of the SPARQL. I'll probably make this so for all of the existing lists sometime soon.
- On naming, we're a little all over the place, not just within this set, but across the whole redlist index. The politician / painter / poets by country lists have a /(painters) - (country) name format. Within Educational institutions, Australia seems to be the only example of /(country) / (university) naming, most others being /(country) - (university), or just /(university). --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:34, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
- While I welcome the work by Oronsay and collaborators on Sydney in connection with the recent meetings there, I'm not sure how useful it would be for Women in Red to continue targeting individual universities around the world on the same basis. If our redlists are intended to help us create biographies, then I would suggest more attention should be given to compiling or extending "crowd-sourced" redlists, possibly by country rather than by individual institutions, complete with links to good independent sources. And to return to the Sydney list, it would be good to see a few new biographies added to this month's focus on education. I'll try to add one or two myself.--Ipigott (talk) 07:18, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
There are a few articles related to the Mahsa Amini protests are up for AFD (indirectly related to the event, "Geofocus Central & Southern Asia"). The articles could also use help with expansion, copy editing, and clean up. If anyone can help, it would be appreciated. The articles are Killing of Kian Pirfalak and Killing of Khodanur Lojei. PigeonChickenFish (talk) 21:09, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
Tanya O'Carroll, suing Facebook over data collection
I just made a draft for Tanya O'Carroll. She is suing Facebook for ignoring her demand to not have her personal data collected. Any help gathering sources would be appreciated. I think she should meet GNG. Thriley (talk) 20:09, 22 November 2022 (UTC)
Tracking our event logos
Do we have a WiR subpage where we keep track of all the logo images we've used by numbered/named event? If not, I think it would be good to start it, perhaps using this name though open to a more suitable option: Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Logos. On that page, putting the logos into a table which included columns for (a) year, (b) type (e.g., Education, Climate), (c) whether it was a monthly/annual/contest/ongoing, year-long etc. type of event, would be useful for sorting. It would be nice to have future conversations such as, "Every year, for our 'Women who died in 202x' event, we include a candle, so which candle should we add this year?"; "We use this element (e.g. 4 point orange border) to symbolize that the event is our Year-Long-Event, so let's remember to include it this time."; "I'm tired of seeing a pencil every time we have a Writers event, so maybe switch it up going forward and go with a pen or quill instead." --Rosiestep (talk) 15:45, 22 November 2022 (UTC)
- Most, if not all the logos are on the commons under Category:Women in Red logos. I'll try to make sure they are all in that category. It looks pretty complete. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 22:21, 22 November 2022 (UTC)
- Also you can see the archive of our invitations (with logos), at Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Outreach/2022. There you can also go back through the years by clicking the year buttons at the top of the page. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 17:20, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
Hi all. I just was wondering how our missing article lists were created as I am finding discrepancies and errors in some of the content as I am going through this particular list on US actresses. For example, the first entry on the American born Argentine actress Mary Lewis said she was alive in the 19th century, but then I located es:Mary Lewis (actriz), which had her clearly as a 20th century entertainer (and more of a dancer/singer in tango, who acted in a secondary way to those other art forms) I also located this reference entry on Elizabeth Ford Johnson which makes it pretty clear she was born in England and began her stage career there before coming to America; and then went back and forth between the United States and England. She was certainly an important actress in the United Stated, but it appears her career was just as much in England and I don't think she ever became an American citizen, although she did die in New York. Describing her as American doesn't really seem accurate. All of this to say, where did these lists come from and how should I address errors as I find them?4meter4 (talk) 04:07, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
- Listeria, the code which produces redlists from wikidata, has a bug or issue dealing with dates which are stored in WD with century precision. Mary Lewis's WD item has her death as "20th century". Sadly, Listeria renders this as "19th century". There's little prospect of the issue being fixed. According to the Spanish wikipedia article, both WD and Listeria are wrong, and she died in the 21st century, in 2006; I've made amendments in the wikidata item. --Tagishsimon (talk) 04:51, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
- As to where the lists come from, how to fix: They come from wikidata items for the subjects, and generally a link is provided in the redlist to the wikidata item - the Qxxxxx number. Contents of wikidata items come from editors, and as with WP may be more or less accurate, better or worse referenced, &c. The Elizabeth Ford Johnson USA thing is unreferenced, and so IMO can & probably should be thrown away; it does seem unlikely she became a US citizen. However where a WD statement is inaccurate, but sourced to a reliable source, the data is deprecated by amending its rank, rather than deleted. Address errors as you find them, by editing the wikidata item. Lists (apart from the many broken lists - another story entirely) should update themselves periodicaly, or you can cause them to be updated by hitting an 'update this list' hyperlink found top-right of the redlist table. --Tagishsimon (talk) 06:01, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
Ratio of FA bios about women
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Featured articles § Gender breakdown?. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 16:41, 24 November 2022 (UTC)
- tl;dr - ~16% which is lower than ~19.3% --Tagishsimon (talk) 06:06, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
- I've suggested we could restore some of the 20 former FAs listed on WikiProject Women writers. Maybe it would be possible to draw up a list of all the former FAs about women but I can see from WP:Former featured articles that many under Media, Music and Politics are also relevant. This is really a matter for WP:Women in Green rather than for Women in Red.--Ipigott (talk) 07:15, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
I would be happy to have some help on this rejected draft. FloridaArmy (talk) 03:49, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
- Surprised to see this was rejected. I can't access all the sources from Europe but the first two appear to offer substantial independent coverage.--Ipigott (talk) 06:59, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
- Agreed. FloridaArmy (talk) 10:21, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
- This article in The Progress-Index is or is close to significant coverage. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:41, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
- More in this WVTF piece. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:46, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
- Lengthy profile in The Chesterfield Observer. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 20:07, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
- More in this WVTF piece. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:46, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
- This article in The Progress-Index is or is close to significant coverage. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:41, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
- Agreed. FloridaArmy (talk) 10:21, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
- FYI. This was rejected by a new editor of less than six months, who has rejected numerous AFD candidates. Most likely, they are learning the ropes at Wikipedia. One alternative would be to create a subpage of your user space and work all you want on this. Then move it to main space when you think it's ready. — Maile (talk) 12:26, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
- The first reference is clearly not independent. JoelleJay (talk) 19:18, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
- Hmmm, one book, in 2008 with this non-academic publisher Morgan James Publishing, possibly a pay-as-you go one. Not sure this makes it. Johnbod (talk) 19:06, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
- I agree she doesn't meet the prof or author standards, but she soars past the general notability guideline for having very substantial coverage in reliable independent sources. Her work exposing the history of African Americans in Virginia has been widely reported on and featured. Her book and her teaching are just one part of her work. FloridaArmy (talk) 10:42, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
Women in Red December 2022
See also:
Tip of the month:
Other ways to participate:
|
--Lajmmoore (talk) 20:52, 26 November 2022 (UTC) via MassMessaging
Mary Gannon and Mary Stevenson (actress) tangle
Hi all. I just created an article on the actress Mary Gannon the other day who was on the list of Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by occupation/Actresses - US. There was a redirect at that page to Gannon and Hands originally and zero disambiguation; so I missed an article on the same woman that already existed at Mary Stevenson (actress). However, none of the sources, including her obituaries, actually call her by her married name of Stevenson and she never performed under that name. So the article should never have been titled Mary Stevenson. Regardless, we now have two articles on the same person in main space, and I am not sure what the proper remedy is for a situation like this. Merge prop? Request deletion of the newer article, and move the old one to Mary Gannon? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.4meter4 (talk) 15:02, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
- A merge one way or the other is required. You maybe now have the domain knowledge? Decide which title you like, move any content from the one you don't like which is not already on the one you do like, turn the one you don't like into a redirect to the one you do like. Not really any need for discussion. If, on the othet hand, you don't want to do the merge yourself, leave a {{merge}} on both articles. Finally, if you do redirect one to the other, there'll probably be a wikidata merge to be done, which you can do or I will, if that's unfamiliar territory. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:37, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks, I merged as you suggested.4meter4 (talk) 17:17, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
- As I created an article first, surely the second article should be merged into my article (and then possibly renamed, if there is consensus to do so) 𝕱𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖎𝖆 (talk) 17:28, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
- @Ficaia: The order in which articles are created does not inform the decision on which article is retained, which redirected. You're welcome to open a discussion on the article's talk page about the appropriate title for the article if you feel such a discussion is needed; and to make any amendments to the current article given your knowledge of the subject. See also WP:BRD --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:54, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
- There's no need to patronise me by linking one of our most basic policies when I'm already engaged on the article talk page. There's also no reason not to retain the first article created, which just seems like basic courtesy to the creator to me. 𝕱𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖎𝖆 (talk) 18:13, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
- We worked out a way to make it possible for both of us to get what we want and follow policy. It really doesn't matter to me which article history is more directly accessible at the article's page; just that the two pages get merged and that the article title reflects the currently published scholarship (aka Mary Gannon).4meter4 (talk) 18:37, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
- There's no need to patronise me by linking one of our most basic policies when I'm already engaged on the article talk page. There's also no reason not to retain the first article created, which just seems like basic courtesy to the creator to me. 𝕱𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖎𝖆 (talk) 18:13, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
- @Ficaia: The order in which articles are created does not inform the decision on which article is retained, which redirected. You're welcome to open a discussion on the article's talk page about the appropriate title for the article if you feel such a discussion is needed; and to make any amendments to the current article given your knowledge of the subject. See also WP:BRD --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:54, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
- As I created an article first, surely the second article should be merged into my article (and then possibly renamed, if there is consensus to do so) 𝕱𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖎𝖆 (talk) 17:28, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks, I merged as you suggested.4meter4 (talk) 17:17, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
- Request for input. Project members please comment at Talk:Mary Stevenson (actress)#Merge proposal. All opinions welcome.4meter4 (talk) 18:00, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
- Update. The issue has been happily resolved. Thanks Ficaia, Tagishimon, and other project members who helped solve the issue.4meter4 (talk) 03:20, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
Catherine Mary Winslow naming
I would appreciate input from project members at Talk:Catherine Mary Winslow#Requested move 26 November 2022. All opinions welcome.4meter4 (talk) 03:21, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
Query about renaming a page
Ethel Kirkpatrick has a Wikipedia page of her own which is just a stub at present . I would like to expand it. Among other things, I would like to mention Ethel's older sister, Ida, with whom she lived and travelled and who was also an artist and printmaker. Is it allowable for me to rename the page? If so, should it be 'The Kirkpatrick Sisters' or 'Ida and Ethel Kirkpatrick'. Or something else? I could have asked this question on the talk page but thought it might be a while before I got an answer that way. All suggestions gratefully received by this relative newcomer. Balance person (talk) 21:03, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
- Is Ida not independently notable? Or was their notability explicitly involving things they did together and were covered in sources only together? SilverserenC 21:45, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
- It is rare for us to have a single article on two people, and typically only happens when their notability is inseparable. In this case, Ethel has a very clear claim to WP:ARTIST notability in having works in the collections of multiple major museums (NGC, V&A, BM). But this does not make a case for Ida, whose notability is much less clear. So I think it would be a mistake to change the article to focus on both of them, but also a mistake to try to spin off a separate article for Ida without a clearer claim to notability. Instead, I think mentioning Ida in the article on Ethel, but keeping the article focused on Ethel, may be the way to go. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:14, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
- I agree about Ida, but Ethel's notability is not beyond challenge. All the museum works are prints, two each in the NGC & V&A, which mean a good deal less in terms of notability. Johnbod (talk) 23:59, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
- I can't access it, but is the entry over here about her? SilverserenC 00:15, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
- Yes, but the full content is
British, 19th century, female. Active in Harrow. Painter. Seascapes, flowers, landscapes. Ethel Kirkpatrick exhibited at the Royal Academy starting in 1891.
Eddie891 Talk Work 01:56, 28 November 2022 (UTC)- As David Eppstein suggests, add citable information about Ida on Ethel's page and create a redirect page for Ida to Ethel's page. One article named for two people creates problems down the road. In future more may be written about Ida and then the redirect can be turned into an article. (Very frustrating that Oxford Art Online is STILL unavailable on wiki library). Birth and death dates for Ida are problematic. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 02:41, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
- Yes, but the full content is
- I can't access it, but is the entry over here about her? SilverserenC 00:15, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
- I agree about Ida, but Ethel's notability is not beyond challenge. All the museum works are prints, two each in the NGC & V&A, which mean a good deal less in terms of notability. Johnbod (talk) 23:59, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
- Good idea. Thanks very much. Balance person (talk) 12:37, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
- It is rare for us to have a single article on two people, and typically only happens when their notability is inseparable. In this case, Ethel has a very clear claim to WP:ARTIST notability in having works in the collections of multiple major museums (NGC, V&A, BM). But this does not make a case for Ida, whose notability is much less clear. So I think it would be a mistake to change the article to focus on both of them, but also a mistake to try to spin off a separate article for Ida without a clearer claim to notability. Instead, I think mentioning Ida in the article on Ethel, but keeping the article focused on Ethel, may be the way to go. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:14, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
Research proposal on Gender and Wikidata
We are working on a research proposal for the Wikimedia Research Grants' call, now open. Our proposal aims to make a research contribution by reducing the gender gap in Wikipedia by visualizing gender diversities collected in Wikidata. Therefore, we seek to provide a search engine and a navigational system using the ontologies of Wikidata in order to provide access and more visualization of the diversity of gender identities in Wikipedia.
We would love to count with wikiwomen that work on reducing the gender gap in Wikipedia. We already have Wikimujeres, Wikidonne, Viquidones... We would like to work with Women in Red too. Could this be possible?
Please tell something before the 16th of December that is when we have to submit the proposal. Nferranf (talk) 20:33, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
- Nferranf: It's always interesting to hear of initiatives designed to reduce the gender gap. As you are already a member of Women in Red, you can of course count on our collaboration. Can you enlarge on your proposal or provide a link to a draft? Perhaps you can give examples of the gender identities you have in mind and let us know how you think we can help you along. I should point out that Women in Red is not restricted to women but is open to all.--Ipigott (talk) 07:30, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
- Sure, thanks @Ipigott for your interest!
- Apart from the clear and persistent gender gap, in terms of content about or written by women, in some Wikipedias such as the Italian or the Catalan, there is specifically a bias in terms of access and visualization of content on the diversity of gender identities. In these cases, categories like “women” or “non-binary person” are banned for information retrieval. This decision, which rejects gender categorization, develops some dysfunctions.
- Besides, Wikipedia in all languages uses a navigational system based on categories, which in Information Science will be called folksonomies (social tagging) based on natural language terms. This collaborative knowledge classification has many advantages such as the simplicity of tagging or the proximity to the user's vocabulary, but it can also bring disadvantages such as inequality, it can reflect cultural, social or political bias and includes all the problems of non-controlled vocabularies.
- Wikidata is the ontology that could bring organization and a better representation of what is known in Wikipedia. In fact, Wikipedia already generates categories that emerge from Wikidata, like “living people". Wikidata has the particular challenge of modelling gender as structured data. This proposal is built upon the research of sister projects such as WiGeDi that are improving the Wikidata ontology, but making it even more inclusive of gender identities.
- Our proposal aims to make a research contribution by reducing the gender gap in Wikipedia through visualizing gender diversities collected in Wikidata. Therefore, we seek to provide a search engine and a navigational system using the ontologies of Wikidata in order to provide access and more visualization of the diversity of gender identities in Wikipedia. Nferranf (talk) 07:45, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
- Nferranf. Thanks for these explanations. However, at the moment, according to WDCM, only a minute proportion of Wikidata entries are not coded straight male or female, namely 2,101 out of 8,270,677. Will you be able to provide more extensive data, for example on analysing entries containing more than one aspect of gender information (if such information can be accessed or developed)? In any case, as the available information on non-CIS is so limited, how could your Wikidata-based research significantly impact the gender gap?--Ipigott (talk) 10:16, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
- The model of discrete properties has shown that distinguishing male and female genders is far effective that the pre-coordinated categories in Wikipedia. Definetely, characterization of non-CIS people is a challenge, but once again Wikidata spectrum of ontologies is in a better position. And this gap is not only linked to the ontologies, but to a previous commitment in introducing non-CIS biographies in Wikidata, or in Wikipedia... Nferranf (talk) 07:37, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
- Just to chime in @Nferranf, there's two points from edits I've made that might be useful to consider:
- 1) I'm not sure the women-led projects you mention are the best to lead on this kind of work - surely this should be led a group like "Queering Wikipedia" for example?
- 2) I'm concerned about the potential for "outing" people who do not want their gender to be public knowledge. You don't need to provide evidence for gender on Wikidata, which might mean that some people who weren't open about their gender identity might be forced to be.
- 3) Many of the gender diversities that might be measured are outside western understandings of the binary - some Pasifika genders outright reject the idea of "trans-ness" as its not part of their culture, and I think there really needs to be some consultation made with people outside Europe, perhaps through ESEAP, and other regions, to check whether this kind of measurement would be suitable and even be welcomed?
- 4) Pressingly, not all gender diversities are recognised in WikiData categories for sex or gender (see Kalisito Biaukula who is vakasalewalewa as an exmaple), so it seems there's more work to be done on Wikidata about this.
- 5) I went to WP:WikiProject LGBT to see what discussion on this was like there, but there's no post. I think there, and WP:WikiProject Gender Studies would be good places to consult on this.
- 6) Likewise I looked for a similar discussion on Wikidata, and couldn't see one. I really think you need to discuss this project there too.
- 7) Wikidata Gender Diversity (WiGeDi) that you mention finishes in May, so I'm wondering how you can build on the project when it's not complete?
- I'm very passionate about representation and the role Wikimedia can play, which is why I have so many questions. Lajmmoore (talk) 08:35, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks a million Lajmmoore for all these constructive comments and suggestions. It all looks to me as if far more emphasis should be given to gender coverage not only on Wikidata but on the basis of biographies in the various language versions of Wikipedia. I fully agree that in many countries it is simply not acceptable to assign or discuss non-CIS gender but it may be possible to work on the basis of partnerships. There's certainly considerable food for thought on these matters, maybe as a topic for a well-sourced academic research paper. I've always been surprised that today's interest in LGBT+ has not been adequately reflected on Wikipedia or related projects.--Ipigott (talk) 16:41, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
- The model of discrete properties has shown that distinguishing male and female genders is far effective that the pre-coordinated categories in Wikipedia. Definetely, characterization of non-CIS people is a challenge, but once again Wikidata spectrum of ontologies is in a better position. And this gap is not only linked to the ontologies, but to a previous commitment in introducing non-CIS biographies in Wikidata, or in Wikipedia... Nferranf (talk) 07:37, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
- Nferranf. Thanks for these explanations. However, at the moment, according to WDCM, only a minute proportion of Wikidata entries are not coded straight male or female, namely 2,101 out of 8,270,677. Will you be able to provide more extensive data, for example on analysing entries containing more than one aspect of gender information (if such information can be accessed or developed)? In any case, as the available information on non-CIS is so limited, how could your Wikidata-based research significantly impact the gender gap?--Ipigott (talk) 10:16, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
"In The News" nominations
Just wondering if the project has a space for entries that feature on the "In The News" section on the main page? I've done some cleanup on Christine McVie to get it through WP:ITNC and I thought a successful placing on the main page following some editing would be the sort of thing we'd be interested in. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 16:35, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
- Ritchie333: We certainly encourage improvement of articles for submission to ITN. One of this month's priorities is Women who died in 2022. McVie could certainly be added to the list of new or improved articles. If the article appears on ITN, then ITN should be added after her name. Hope this helps.--Ipigott (talk) 16:51, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
DOD of first female Spanish librarian
I've just been writing about Ángela García Rives, the first woman to become a librarian in Spain. It seems strange to me that as she came from a well-established family, it has not been possible to find her date of death. Maybe SusunW or others who know where to search can help.--Ipigott (talk) 15:58, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
- I'll see what I can do Ipigott but I am handicapped at the moment. Working in a construction zone and my computer is in the shop. Having to work on borrowed devices, which means all of my passwords, etc are ... SusunW (talk) 16:49, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
- No rush, SusunW. Take your time. It just seemed very strange to me that those at the BNE where she worked could not find out when she died.--Ipigott (talk) 08:21, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
- In this blog page, written by the librarian Julian Marquina, he says that she retired in 1962 and died in 1968: "En 1962, tras un año de su jubilación, se le concedió la Encomienda de la Orden Civil de Alfonso X el Sabio. Su muerte llegó en 1968, año en el que había sido propuesta como candidata a la Medalla del Trabajo." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nferranf (talk • contribs) 16:35, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
- No rush, SusunW. Take your time. It just seemed very strange to me that those at the BNE where she worked could not find out when she died.--Ipigott (talk) 08:21, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
Hello, Women in Red,
I just postponed the deletion of this draft. I was thinking that if it doesn't warrant a stand-alone article, maybe some of the content could be used in an article about women in the American West or women in medicine. I'm unsure of the sources, I just read the article and it seemed like an interesting story about a potential trailblazing couple. Thank you. Liz Read! Talk! 00:10, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
- She seems to be better known as Ada M. Weed. I have added a few sources to the draft; I think she will be notable given the sources I have found so far. DaffodilOcean (talk) 04:29, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
- Page is now at Adaline Weed - I would welcome any additions or comments. DaffodilOcean (talk) 02:04, 3 December 2022 (UTC)
Image of Virginia O'Hanlon
Hi all, is anyone able to track down publication information for File:Virginia O'Hanlon (ca. 1895).jpg that would establish it as being definitively in the public domain? Eddie891 Talk Work 14:24, 3 December 2022 (UTC)
.jpg){kind=link}
Hi!
Hi, Im a new editor for this project and Ive never edited a Wikipedia article before. So I look forward to this experience and I came over here from your twitterverse! EuthCrit (talk) 06:01, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
- That's great, EuthCrit. Welcome to Wikipedia and to Women in Red. In addition to clicking into some of the interesting links on your talk page, you might like to look through our Essays. When you feel ready to create your first biography, you should read through our Ten Simple Rules. Please let me know if you run into any difficulties or need assistance. Happy editing!--Ipigott (talk) 09:02, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
- @EuthCrit *waves hello* - everything @Ipigott said!
I saw you make some edits on the Mary Bateman page as its one I watch - they look great!Lajmmoore (talk) 12:33, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
Stubs potentially in danger from deletionists
With the news of recent passing of Julia Reichert they should receive attention before some quality king over notability editor decides we do not need these articles.
—¿philoserf? (talk) 14:15, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
- Ahem,
quality king or quality queen
. Please be more gender-equitable with your disdain, thank you. JoelleJay (talk) 05:05, 6 December 2022 (UTC)- Thank you for aiding me in seeing my own blindness. —¿philoserf? (talk) 16:41, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
Vote for your favourite Wikimedia sound logo
Hi everyone,
Voting in the Wikimedia sound logo contest has started. From December 6 to 19, 2022, please play a part and help chose the sound that will identify Wikimedia content on audio devices. Learn more on Diff.
We received 3,235 submissions from 2,094 participants in 135 countries. We are incredibly grateful to the team of volunteer screeners and the selection committee who, among others, helped bring us to where we are today.
It is now up to Wikimedia to choose the Sound Of All Human Knowledge.
Thank you. -- MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 20:56, 7 December 2022 (UTC)