Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red/Archive 84

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Help for copyright issue pls - Barbara Zecchi

Hi everyone, I'm stuck as to how to help with the article on Zecchi. It was blanked for a suspected copyright violation but the creator has given an explanation on the article's talk page of why he/she thinks it's not a copyright violation. It's been sitting there for about 6 or 7 days now with nothing happening. I've posted on the copyright problems page here but no response. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_problems/2020_September_4 Any thoughts? TIA! MurielMary (talk) 10:26, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

OMFG I've never before seen that blank-the-page-with-a-warning template, what a ridiculous piece of overkill that is. And if you go look at the COPYVIO report, the matches are all things like titles of articles she's written and other names of things that you cannot reword. At least as far as I could see. Further, the author of the article explained on the talk page that both the sources cited are open access on September 4th, and nobody has revisited. I'd immediately pull that thing off there personally, but it says it requires an admin or other muckity-muck to do it. Hey Maile66 or Megalibrarygirl can you take a look? --Krelnik (talk) 15:14, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
Nathan2055 I've un-blanked this so the issue can be corrected. There is no way it can be corrected by the editor, if the whole page was blanked out. Let's give this editor time to correct the issues, whatever those may be. Looking at the copyvio detector after reverting this, it looks like the majority of what it flaged as copyviois diffs are names of institutions and other issues that are not genuine copyvios. This looks to me like it was an erroneous blanking. The individual issues can be dealt with, but it's not the entire text of the article. — Maile (talk) 15:33, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
@Maile66: I absolutely agree with you. Thanks for hopping on this so fast! Megalibrarygirl (talk) 15:54, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
Thanks everyone for the quick response, much appreciated! MurielMary (talk) 05:10, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

I have also just removed the copyvio tag at the top of the article. Here's what it flagged: diff If we are to avoid job titles, fields of study, academic departments, etc. as copyvios in every article, Wikipedia as a whole cannot survive. This was an extreme case of overreaction, and should never have happened. — Maile (talk) 12:59, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

I had this happen to me years ago when I did an article with too much close paraphrasing. It's scary, but it was also a learning experience. The better approach is to stubify the article, leaving content in history for a couple weeks, but then they DO have to revdel the copyright violations. One has to be very careful with open source content, as it is still plagiarism if not properly cited. Also, the content may have been copied from some other source. I am pinging a respected editor, @Diannaa:, who routinely reviews copyvio issues to look at the article and comment. Montanabw(talk) 17:21, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
Long and ago and far away in Wikiland, I also had some content sections completely reverted deleted, by a really zealous editor who didn't waste time explaining, except for a curt word or two in the edit summary. And for while, they stalked me through a few articles doing that. They never encouraged dialogue ... just wholesale deletions from article to article. They could have resolved the whole issue by giving me one of those welcome templates that explained sourcing. Or just leaving me a note of explanation. But their style was otherwise. Dialogue goes a long way to helping new editors do it correctly. — Maile (talk) 18:28, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Joanne Pransky

A new user posted at the teahouse saying that this person is non-notable. Anyone here able to improve the article to establish notability, or alternately to confirm the user's beliefs and prod/etc.? Calliopejen1 (talk) 21:30, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

She's been around long enough to qualify under GNG, but difficult to warm to anyone who seeks to trademark their job title - "World's First Robotic Psychiatrist®" - not least given the likes of William Grey Walter or Valentino Braitenberg, both of whose work predates Ms. Pransky's antics. --Tagishsimon (talk) 05:53, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Jayne MacDonald and wider women's issues

I recently began writing a profile on Jayne MacDonald. Sadly Jane (aged 16) was the fifth victim of the British serial killer known as The Yorkshire Ripper (Peter Sutcliffe). I noticed that none of his 13 known victims had anything written about them - they were just line items on his profile.

Jayne was particularly notable for two reasons: 1. Her death marked a significant change in the investigation because she was regarded as an 'innocent' victim. The previous 4 murders (and possibly more that have never been established) were seen as not as important because the women were dismissed as prostitutes or of low morality. This is an old theme in police investigations of murdered women, but was particularly notable in this case (this issue has been extensively covered). Had the police not seen the investigation as less important, less urgent (the investigation was bungled) more women might not have died. The press only became interested and resources thrown at the case after Jayne was killed. The case is also significant because of the widespread fear it engendered in the North of England amongst women, which altered their behaviour - they were told by authorities not to go out at night or alone. Feminists actually protested this and it was the start of the reclaim the night movement (see Reclaim_the_Night) The impact of these murders on women in the North of England was huge. 2. Jane is also significant because her mother took an unusual step. She sued her murderer and won (the first time this was ever done). This was therefore a landmark case in British law.

Jane's murder was covered internationally, as well as her mother's victory in court. However, having put together the basic article which I was going to add more details to and link to these issues, an editor immediately came along and delinked my profile of Jane from the Yorkshire Ripper's profile and then proposed by article for deletion, citing an essay 'murder of'. This says that everyday murders are not worthy of an article about the victims (fair enough). But he misapplied the criteria laid out in this article to attempt to delete the article about Jayne.

What this brings up is a much bigger issue. While I agree that most murders are local matters (we can't have an article for every DV murder, for example), the victims of notorious cases are often female. This article (murder of) is being used to create a situation where victims are only line items on a murderer's article - effectively revictimising the woman by removing any information about her, the impact of her death etc. It creates a situation where men become notable by murdering women but their victims are deemed unnotable, unimportant and just a means to and end (the fame of the murderer). I have a real problem with that.

I have found a lot of murdered women - extensively covered in the press - that are not noted on wikipedia. Effectively what is happening is deletion of the impact of these crimes against women so that the crime is only recorded/told from the male perspective. So while there is much detail about what the murderer did to the women and what happened to him when he was caught, there is no detailing of who the woman was, and often little detail on the impact on her family and wider society. You will note that women have tried to 'take back' this case and retell the story from women's point of view (see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-50016862) You will note that the profile about the murderer (Peter Sutcliffe) almost celebrates him. Sections include 'legacy' and 'media'. It focuses a lot on what he did, his mental state etc but not on the horrendous impact he had on women or women's reactions to what he did.

For me this opened up an entire issue about how murders are recorded on wikipedia so that they do not tell everything from the male perspective. eg his first recorded attack was against a woman he said was a prostitute. But what evidence do we have for that? Police saying she was a prostitute doesn't count unless substantiated because we know that police have a track record of saying women were prostitutes just because they were out at night or liked a good time. So women are by default labelled as such because in the historic press they are recorded as such, whether accurate or not.

I apologise for the length of this talk item but I wanted to lay out my concerns and get opinion on this. I find it perverse that a woman victim has to be a subsection of her murderer's article and be framed solely within his crime. I also find it strange that so many male editors are so defensive of their serial killer profiles (often badly written) and women's perspectives on these crimes (what we see as important eg their impact) are deleted to focus on what men think is important (eg the investigation, punishment and notoriety).SandrinaHatman (talk) 05:30, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes. Very long essay. See WP:BLP1E. Murders are sad things. Victims are rarely notable, except for their being murdered - the 1E. The murder is sometimes notable. The murderer is sometimes notable. You have made the case that Jayne MacDonald's murder is notable, for the 1 & 2 reasons you cite. You have not made the case that she is notable, if we accept the long-standing rule that 1E does not notability make; your point 2 relates to the action of her mother contingent primarily on the murder, and not on the victim. As to your other points; doubtless articles on murders and murderers can be improved by the addition of well-referenced information which views the victim, murderer, murder, effects of the murder, &c, from new frames which have perhaps not occurred to the "many male editors ... so defensive of their serial killer profiles". --Tagishsimon (talk) 05:47, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
The same editor has now proposed to delete this article too: Mamie Stuart. This was an international mystery, received extensive coverage worldwide and was in the news just this year. The only thing it has in common with the above is that it is also a female victim and was written by me. I do not understand your rule 1E please can you explain in non-wiki speak.SandrinaHatman (talk) 06:28, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
Again, if someone was not notable before becoming a crime victim, it is very unusual for them to become notable for becoming a crime victim, even though the crime itself may be notable. Stuart looks headed for a keep but in this case it is probably because the article is focused on the crime (and possibly mistitled) rather than on the past life of its victim. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:32, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
As is so often true, the murderer overshadows the murdered, especially when it comes to men killing women. This is a wrong that should be righted. The women murdered should be made notable as his victims just as he is made notable as their murderer. There is nothing notable about this man outside of his murders. He is a blight on humanity whose only claim to fame is the vicious taking of another human life and a male dominant culture ready to acknowledge his claim to fame while subduing, diminishing and outright denying the worth of the women's lives he took. It's disgraceful and sikening, the claim this man is notable, while his victims, the ones who made him "famous", are mere afterthoughts.Tsistunagiska (talk) 06:42, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
You are mistaken in claiming that this situation is asymmetric in this way. It is equally true that if a person was not notable before committing a crime, then it is very unusual for them to become notable for becoming a criminal, even though the crime itself may be notable. Also, we are not here to right great wrongs, but to make an encyclopedia; it may seem unfair that someone who could potentially have become notable has had that chance stolen from them, but that doesn't make them notable. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:47, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
The same treatment should be given to the murderer then. If we do not need to know about the victims prior to the crime then we do not need to know the early life of the murderer. It is irrelevant as it pertains to the crime itself. Otherwise if we are to be subjected to the entire life of the murderer then his victims deserve no less.Tsistunagiska (talk) 06:50, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
If it is the crime that is notable then the "characters" surrounding the notable crime should receive equal representation if one is to claim a neutral POV. However we are left with an article detailing the murderer's entire life like a biography while his victims warrant only being listed, black letters while their murderer is blue. And when an article is written it is immediately put up for deletion.Tsistunagiska (talk) 07:03, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
@SandrinaHatman: Thank you for a very-well argued case, highlighting one of Wikipedia's systemic biases. Please don't apologise for its length. Tagishsimon may be correct that Jayne does not meet our current notability standard (though I thin you show that she is notable for more than one thing; I urge you to summaris your points on the deletion discussion page) - the question is how can we improve that standard, to redress our project's systemic bias? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:06, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
SandrinaHatman I find this entire discussion illuminating as well as disturbing. First, I point out that Wikipedia:"Murder of" articles is an essay, not a guideline or policy. 2nd, BLP1 is not applicable as she is not living. Per WP:Crime the criminal or victim in question should be the subject of a Wikipedia article only if one of the following applies...The victim or person wrongly convicted, consistent with Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Subjects notable only for one event, had a large role within a well-documented historic event. Styling an article the "murder of" is objectifying, basically saying that the only notability is from being a victim. But that isn't the case. Jayne MacDonald was different from the other victims. As an "innocent", she made people take notice that anyone could be a victim of her perpetrator and pointed out sexism in the police investigation. Much like we don't have an article titled The murder of Anne Frank, but rather one titled Anne Frank, MacDonald's notability was posthumously created because "she" (not all the victims, not just the crime) became a symbol of "everywoman" and the subject of a landmark legal decision. SusunW (talk) 16:15, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Although I don’t like the titling convention, at least we can keep the story by arguing the EVENT was notable, and we have many articles about victims under the heading, “murder of”. Murder of Natalee Holloway, for example.). That’s one way to make victims’ voices heard, and a longstanding consensus to keep such articles. I hate the objectification too, particularly when Lawnchair Larry gets an article under his own name, but that’s a different battle. Montanabw(talk) 16:57, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

I agree it may be a different battle {I wouldn't call it a battle but a war at this point), but every action needs a catalyst. When we can point out the obvious bias against an "important" character in a well documented event such as this, it can then be surmised that "less important" characters are being marginalized even more so while the ones who brought about their demise are immortalized with a lengthy article detailing their entire life. How are the victims any less, or for that matter any more, notable than the murderer?Tsistunagiska (talk) 17:22, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
I've always felt this way - about how disturbing that murderer's names get remembered and their lives get detailed, while victims are often left unnamed and a small fact in history. If a murderer is "notable" for killing people and being noticed widely (to put WP:CRIME in simple terms), then those "people" who have been killed have an equally large, significant role. It feels morbid to say it in that way, but it's true. Victims are the other half of murders, and in that sense, they seem equally significant. I know that Wikipedia isn't here to "right great wrongs", but I think everyone knows that news sources are often skewed towards tragic or disturbing events, because that is what gets more views. But Wikipedia is not news. It's an encyclopedia, here to provide information. Killers take up news cycles and get a spotlight, and I feel like that proportion affects how Wikipedia editors view notability, even if victims do receive significant coverage, and biographical coverage at that.
Also, naming conventions and manual of style conventions are an additional battle, but I do find them problematic and disturbing in this way. The word "Legacy" is horrifyingly disturbing when applied to murderers and those who are known/"notable" for hurting others. I know that's a common word we use on Wikipedia, but I do not see how it is neutral, especially when applied to killers. And in reality, I don't see how this word is based in a logical argument, other than that this is just a Wiki term we use. Other encyclopedias do not use this word in the way we do, as far as I can tell. For example, the online Encyclopædia Britannica names the final section on their Hitler article, "Hitler’s place in history", while we name a similar section "Legacy". In a search for neutrality, we are choosing how we immortalize and regard these people in history, and we'll often apply similar words we use on regular biographies, as if they apply in the same way as articles of people who have hurt hundreds or millions. This is not neutral - just as equality is not the same as equity, we can't apply the same standards to different types of articles and call that "neutral". - Whisperjanes (talk) 18:09, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
@Whisperjanes: Much love, sister. That was beautifully written. I'm not sure how "Legacy" is a more neutral word than the phrase "place in history". Seems nearly synonymous. If anything, "Legacy" has a more positive connotation attached to it. Can one always remain neutral when telling the truth? How can one stay neutral on the topic of "Adolf Hitler" and "Nazi Germany"? The answer, to me, is that one can in the sense of neutrality being the truth as it has been documented and not allowing ourselves to be pulled into the many conspiracies and theories surrounding the truth in such a way as to diminish or negate the realities.Tsistunagiska (talk) 13:19, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Everyone chatting here should post at the AfD, as one way of the other, there is not yet a clear consensus. Montanabw(talk) 17:10, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Closed as "keep". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:37, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Women artists at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

I had not noticed this before - it's been a while since I've been on the SAAM website - but the Smithsonian American Art Museum currently breaks women artists out of its comprehensive collection database and makes it easier to browse them. Lots of fodder for expansion there, especially in some of the craft/decorative arts. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 16:13, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Problems with our membership list

As some of you probably know, I look at the updates to our membership list each day, welcome those who have just joined the project and add their names to our mass messaging lists. When I first looked at it today, I noticed two new names for 15 September, Agillianchu and JoGDelta. I had just welcomed Agillianchu and was ready to welcome the second person I had seen but JoGDelta was no longer there and in the meantime I had forgotten the name. I thought it might be a cache problem - but it wasn't. I then looked at the revision history and found that between 01:38 and 11:08 on 17 September, there had been no less than 16 updates, most of them adding and deleting these two names. As of now, they have both been deleted with an editing comment "Tag: Manual revert". I see from the history of Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Members/Inactive that they have in fact been added to and deleted from the "inactive" list but it is no longer possible to view the list. Harej is listed as being responsible for Reports bot but I understand he is no longer active. Can anyone advise on what's going on and find out if we can stop all these adjustments. It's important that the names of new members should be properly maintained, especially over the first few days of their membership.(cc: Rosiestep, Victuallers, MarioGom).--Ipigott (talk) 12:52, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

The problem seems to have been sorted out. Thanks to anyone who acted on this.--Ipigott (talk) 11:28, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Dictionary of Welsh Biography looking for writers

The Dictionary of Welsh Biography is looking for writers: https://biography.wales/bylchau. Gamaliel (talk) 11:43, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Unreferenced women BLPs

There are still over 320 unreferenced women BLPs documented here. Some like Tara Newley, who is genuinely notable (just not with citations to anything), should be easy if we accepted the Daily Mail and Daily Express as suitable sources for a BLP ... but we don't. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 20:24, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

  • I added two sources there, will see if I can find any more. I'll look into the others as well. Eddie891 Talk Work 20:42, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
It's 419 actually :( See User:SDZeroBot/Unreferenced BLPs/Women for an annotated list. – SD0001 (talk) 15:18, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, the annotations are very helpful in finding articles to clean up on topics that I am comfortable working in. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:41, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
SD0001, David Eppstein Yes, great resource! Thanks. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 17:08, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Sonia Raman

New bio started with Sonia_Raman - first Indian-American woman to be named a coach in the National Basketball Association. Help appreciated! -- Fuzheado | Talk 19:28, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

I tried but couldn't find her YOB, so I added categories, Authority control, Default sort, replaced stub with better option and added Grizzlies roster template. Oronsay (talk) 20:14, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
@Oronsay: Lovely thanks so much. Even after 18 years of editing Wikipedia I keep forgetting to add navboxes! -- Fuzheado | Talk 10:54, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
@Fuzheado: This is just the sort of editing I enjoy. BTW, when I clicked "What links here" to check she wasn't an orphan, I discovered a pile of names and, clicking through to one of them, found the navbox. Oronsay (talk) 18:44, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Childbirth in Uzbekistan

Not a woman bio, but thought I'd call your attention to this in case anyone is interested. This ended up being draftified as a result of a not-well-attended deletion discussion, and it is 3 mos away from G13 deletion. In case anyone is interested in editing it... Calliopejen1 (talk) 21:33, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Sohn Won-pyung

Anyone want to take this under their wing? I've discovered a treasure trove of drafts about Korean literature written presumably as a class or GLAM project, a shocking number of which (even for jaded me) were declined and/or G13 deleted. This one needs some NPOV work but I think is likely to qualify for an article, especially in light of the overall quality of the articles that seem to have been part of this project. Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:20, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Same with Draft:Ku Kyung-mi, Draft:Kim Yeonkyung (this one may be questionable), Draft:Kim Sa-i (Poet), Draft:Kim Kyoungin, Draft:Kim Eui-kyung, Draft:Kim Eon Hee, and Draft:Jo Eun. Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:30, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
I fully agree with you, Calliopejen1, that these articles deserve to be added to ãrticle space. I am really surprised to see how many different editors refused to accept them, frequently on inappropriate grounds. Most of them seem to be pretty well sourced and contain significant details. I'm not sure how best to revive them. Any offers?--Ipigott (talk) 09:01, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
Sad: if you look at the contributions list and talk page of the creator of Draft:Sohn Won-pyung you find a whole lot of careful work in October and December 2019 which has gone to waste or is languishing at AfC, declined with comments like "encyclopedia's are not always considered to be reliable." The editor hasn't been back. PamD 09:51, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
And not one of the editors who were declining the drafts at AfC bothered to leave a Welcome message on the editor's talk page. (Done it now, just in case they come back). PamD 10:08, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
This is such an ongoing problem, personally I would never advise a new editor to use either the Draft space or AFC at all. Both seem like recipes for a disappointing encounter with another editor. Ask for forgiveness, not permission is my rule of thumb. --Krelnik (talk) 14:57, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
I completely agree with you, Krelnik. The process is quite disappointing and discouraging to new editors. It's not so much the denial but the reasons for denial and the way people pile on without doing proper research. Add on top of that the sometimes attacking nature of a lot of comments. That is the case with all processes here though. You can't even get something moved or re-titled without a lot of opinions and responses consistent with someone only reading the small, limited character wording attached to the request without doing any practical background research themselves.Tsistunagiska (talk) 12:45, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

I know this is kind of a radical idea, but what about an RfC to abolish AfC? Montanabw(talk) 17:16, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

@Montanabw: Tempting idea, but we need some way to filter out the paid editing, the total rubbish, etc. We just need to somehow make sure that good-faith non-paid editors don't get trapped by it. Non-trivial! PamD 17:39, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
There is a TON of garbage that goes through AfC. A TON. The big garbage generators for AfC are companies/organizations, products, and living people. I volunteer there with the goal of quickly approving articles that seem plausible and don't have a profit motive for existing. E.g. almost all articles about dead people should be approved so that any deletion processes are transparent to the community. I don't know that eliminating AfC makes sense, but I wish it were easier to find those articles. There is now ORES sorting for AfC articles, but it does not do a good job of separating the wheat from the chaff. There is a new, very valuable bot report User:SDZeroBot/G13 Watch that I try to review on a daily basis to find good articles that have been deleted. (I'm an administrator which makes that a lot easier, because I can read the deleted articles.) I recommend that others have a look at the report and pursue at WP:REFUND anything that looks good. The problem with relying on the report is that there is at least a six-month lag time where the new editors have been discouraged and lost. But with the report at least we can save most of the good work. Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:22, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
Oh, I know there’s a lot of junk—pornstars, middle management, etc., I am just so tired of fighting to preserve articles on historic people who “don’t google.“ Montanabw(talk) 03:05, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
@Montanabw: yeah I get it. BTW you may be interested in the discussion I started at WT:AFC about this batch of articles and the issues they raise more generally. Calliopejen1 (talk) 03:32, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

AfC can be such a mess. I approved the woman academic Florence Banku Obi who is notable, but it was originally denied with the reasoning that it isn't written in a formal tone (it is) and "The parts in bullet points need to be re-written as paragraphs/text" (not even a reason to not accept a draft, but it is a reason for a cleanup tag). I will try to keep a closer eye out at unapproved drafts. SL93 (talk) 04:45, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

@PamD and Ipigott: FYI, I started a discussion about this topic at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation#Major_AFC_fail_re:_Korean_literature. Calliopejen1 (talk) 21:27, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Moving user space articles to draft space

While most new users create their first articles in their user space, I have recently noticed several cases in which AfC reviewers move the articles to draft space, explaining that this is a more appropriate starting point. Once there, they are listed as drafts by tools such as AlexNewBot and can be picked up and sometimes even deleted before the user has finished working on them. They are also deleted if they are in draft space for too long. If users do submit them to AfC, there is a pretty good chance they will be rejected. I always recommend that new users should develop their articles in their user space, especially as they can work on more than one article at a time and are under no time constraints. I wonder if there is any way this process can be stopped.--Ipigott (talk) 08:21, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

FYI, if an article has an AfC template, it can be deleted after 6 months whether or not it's in userspace. So the moves don't actually change anything with respect to deletion processes. If someone is moving non-AfC tagged drafts to draftspace, that would be an issue, but I don't think that is happening in any systematic way. The way people notice the drafts to move them is because they have AfC templates on them. Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:16, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
Do you have any examples? As Calliopejen1 says, userspace drafts shouldn't be being moved unless they have {{AfC submission}} on them. – Joe (talk) 18:04, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Participate in user research to design data diversity tools - humaniki [Registration Open]

Merger of Denelezh and WHGI projects into 'humaniki'

What do Wikipedians need to make more diverse content? Better redlink listmaking? Highlighting more translation opportunities? Building editathon and campaign tracking software? Something else?

‘Humaniki’ is the merging of two previous Wikimedia data tools for diversity-focused editors - Wikidata Human Gender Indicators (WHGI) and Denelezh. Both of these previous projects enabled statistics about the biography gender gap in Wikimedia projects, but now need extra work to make those insights actionable for editors. This new WMF-grant-funded project seeks to do that work by participatory co-designing features with the editor community. The results of this study will help provide design recommendations to help develop useful features for the community -Sejal Khatri (talk)

Call for participation:

We are looking for people interested in participating in this research! Are you a diversity-focused editor? or Do you have feature suggestions? We would like to get your inputs. Research participants will receive a $10 gift card, to compensate editors for their time.

Fill the form in this link: LINK

Interested in learning more about us? - read our first blogpost

Thanks for this, Sejal. Hope you receive some useful responses. You can in fact use user:Sek2016 here without invoking Meta. It works fine on the EN wiki where I see you have already made a number of contributions. But maybe your Meta talk page is a better place for you to receive reactions, especially if you are expecting responses from other language versions of Wikipedia too.--Ipigott (talk) 10:19, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Help: A woman subject wants the article updated about herself - and she's written the articles about her husband and her business

Hi everyone. This refers to User_talk:Missvain#Prerna_Gupta.

I don't have the capacity to assist her right now, so I'm reaching out to my friends here to see if anyone can help. I also tagged it with a help tag for kicks. The subject is Prerna Gupta. Turns out I wrote the Wikipedia article about her in 2012 (I didn't even remember, ha!). She wants the article about herself updated and she also drafted articles about her husband and the app she has created. I did tell her about the COI policy and that she'll have to recuse herself and that I'd look for help. Is anyone able to help? I'm sorry I can't right now, but, if someone is able to help her out, I'd be super grateful. Thank you! Missvain (talk) 20:17, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

I added sentence about 2015 startup Hooked. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 21:12, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
I've just seen Prernagupta1 has joined Women in Red and intends to write articles about South Asian women. All the more reason to help her along.--Ipigott (talk) 10:58, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Dillian Gordon

Hello! I'd be grateful for support with this draft on a very notable art historian and curator who worked for many years at the National Gallery in London. I've listed many publications, including several articles in scholarly journals (Burlington and Apollo), to reflect her activities over many years. The nature of art history is that an individual, newly discovered Italian renaissance altarpiece panel might not merit a whole book to itself, but it will be covered in an article, and that article carries academic weight (it's not just a trivial bit of journalism). Hoping for assistance in getting this article approved - many thanks in advance! CourtauldGill (talk) 09:17, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

I think you must by now have enough edits (I think only 20 are needed?) to a) move drafts into mainspace yourself, or b) to start articles in mainspace. AfC is a useful but flawed channel, best always avoided. Having confidence in e.g. WP:NBIO and WP:NACADEMIC and being able to cite the grounds for notability in an edit summary (and to check that notability is asserted in the article in a way which maps to either of those) is helpful. Bottom line, be bold. I've promoted this one - Dillian Gordon. (Equally, alternatively, continue to bring these issues here - we will always promote notable bios on the spot.) --Tagishsimon (talk) 09:23, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
Tagishsimon: The royal "we"? I think it's fantastic you are so quick on the move with all these AfC drafts. Greatly appreciated.--Ipigott (talk) 10:17, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Hello, and thank you (belatedly) for your help and support. Really appreciate your encouragement to publish articles without going through AfC, which I've now started doing. Still finding my way around as a 3-month novice, but slowly gaining confidence! Thank you again  :-) CourtauldGill (talk) 14:53, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Women's contest

Did you arrange for a contest afterwards? Would one in October or November be ideal?† Encyclopædius 18:04, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Encyclopædius: There seems to be quite a lot of support for a series of three-month "virtual" contests (i.e. no physical prizes) covering the various continents, starting with Africa from October to December. I suppose we'll be announcing it in a week or so together with our priorities for October. Maybe you would like to help us along. See our ideas page.--Ipigott (talk) 20:19, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

@Ipigott: Tak skal du have. Tre måneder er lang tid!† Encyclopædius 10:30, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Encyclopædius: Selv tak! Hvad synes du om Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Meetup/178?--Ipigott (talk) 10:42, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@Ipigott: Meget godt, Asien har altid brug for arbejde! Jeg tror dansk også ville være nyttigt, men kun lidt for nu! Undertekster :-)† Encyclopædius 10:50, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

October editathons from Women in Red

Women in Red | October 2020, Volume 6, Issue 10, Numbers 150, 173, 178, 179


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Join the conversation: Women in Red talkpage

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--Megalibrarygirl (talk) 15:09, 21 September 2020 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Wikidata redlist on Macau

Anyone will to create a redlist on Macau (Q14773)? It's the only one missing for our continental contest on Asia due to start on 1 October.--Ipigott (talk) 08:53, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Created! Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by nationality/Macau. Gamaliel (talk) 12:03, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
Gamaliel They sure take their badminton seriously in Macau! :) WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 19:02, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
Oh wow! They sure do. I wonder if we can boost representation on Wikidata of other occupations in Macau, or at least other sports... Gamaliel (talk) 19:41, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
Don't worry. From Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by occupation/Badminton you can see they're all over the place thanks to a Wikidata source. For most of them, there are no articles anywhere!--Ipigott (talk) 19:52, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Second opinion about a username

I would like a second opinion about a username. I asked an administrator who didn't see a problem with the username. On the reliable source noticeboard at the request for comment on the Mail on Sunday a single purpose account is being used in my opinion to disparage a female editor. The account Iesbian has a name that mimics the appearance of Lesbian, however, instead uses the capital letter "i" for the "L". The account has only made three minor edits in the past before they commented on the request for comment. I see the placement of the word "lesbian" in red below a female editor as rude and inappropriate. No one else seems to have complained, so am I being overly sensitive? --Guest2625 (talk) 06:48, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Probably, yes. The user's comments appear sane, measured, appropriate to the discussion; not trolling. The name does not obviously fall foul of WP:USERNAME unless you choose to be offended by the word lesbian; and I'm not very clear why you would choose to be so offended, absent any other indication. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:34, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the input. I agree lesbian is a great word. More editors should embrace LGBT identifying usernames. I would have been much more concerned if the username had been misogynist, and they'd responded to a male editor. :) --Guest2625 (talk) 01:39, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Meetup page categorisation

The /Meetup subpages clutter Category:WikiProject Women in Red quite a bit; at the same time, a lot of them are only categorised in the year subcategories Category:Women in Red edit-a-thons. I suggest all these pages are moved to the year categories to clean the main category up. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 18:15, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

It is very easy to turn an aquarium into bouillabaisse, it is impossible to reverse the process. I think it is valuable to have the categories and don't know what would be lost by moving them. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 18:58, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
@WomenArtistUpdates: It would be helpful if we were consistent. Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Meetup/136 has Category:WikiProject Women in Red and Category:Women in Red 2019, while Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Meetup/135 only has the latter. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 21:38, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
1234qwer1234qwer4 So the recommendation, specifically, is to check each numbered Meetup page to ensure that is has both the category with year, like Category:Women in Red 2019, and the overarching maintenance tag Category:WikiProject Women in Red? If others agree, I can go through and do that. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 22:52, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
I'm supportive as better categorization helps with findability. Plus, if someone has time+inclination, I think it would be okay to create additional ones, e.g. for all the "geofocus" events or some such, if you think that would be helpful. --Rosiestep (talk) 23:05, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
WomenArtistUpdates, Well, I suggested to remove the main Category:WikiProject Women in Red category, but if others share your opinion that overcategorisation is okay here, I'd go with that. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 07:05, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
I sympathize with 1234qwer1234qwer4's interest in cleaning up the WiR categories but if we embark on this enterprise, we will need to be very careful. If you take Category:Women in Red edit-a-thons, for example, you will see that it contains subcategories by year such as Category:Women in Red 2015, Category:Women in Red 2016, etc, which contain not only our WiR meetups but also pages relating to metrics, templates and article titles. Here the first step might be to remove the "year" categories from pages which should not have been included. I see that under Category:WikiProject Women in Red there are indeed one or two pages which could be decategorized (e.g. User:Andrew Davidson and User:Rosiestep). It might well be useful to change the categories of all our meetup pages to the appropriate year under Women in Red edit-a-thons and also create a new subcat for Category:Women in Red/Metrics under which year categories such as Category:Women in Red/Metrics/2015, etc., could be created. All the metrics pages under our main category could then be categorized accordingly.
By and large, however, it looks to me as if our categories have been maintained pretty well over the years and to the best of my knowledge, until now nobody has questioned them. Furthermore, if we create more subcategories, we will all need to apply them correctly, which might be easier said than done. I therefore suggest, that apart from minor cleanups, we continue to apply our categories as we have in the past.--Ipigott (talk) 10:41, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
@Ipigott: "apply our categories as we have in the past" means categorising the meetup pages as inconsistently as now? 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 11:08, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
1234qwer1234qwer4: I'm not sure the inconsistencies you point to cause any serious problems. But it may be useful to seek further opinions, for example from Ser Amantio di Nicolao or Headbomb. As for suggesting the meetup pages should be categorized by the years, one of the problems for me seems to be that the year categories are not sufficiently explicit and have therefore attracted other items. If they were to be changed to Category:Women in Red editathons 2015, etc., there might be less of a problem. We could also perhaps have Category:Women in Red metrics 2015 and so on. But all this will entail quite a lot of work and there is no guarantee editors will apply all the categories correctly.--Ipigott (talk) 12:31, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
Hi all and Ipigott, Rosiestep, My offer still stands to check each numbered Meetup page to ensure that is has both the category with year, like Category:Women in Red 2019, and the overarching maintenance tag Category:WikiProject Women in Red. If someone could ping me with a "go ahead" I will proceed. This task will not involve removing or moving any categories, just adding a consistency to all the meetup pages. I don't know much about adding and deleting categories (and it is not on my list of things I want to learn about) but from what I have witnessed from monitoring the pages on my watch list it seems to me that removing categories or moving categories to sub-categories is problematic. I think we may have implied it, but it is worth mentioning to 1234qwer1234qwer4 that Women in Red is an active organization and that we are frequently asked, by a variety of academics and journalists for statistics about our work. The granular categorization is helpful for providing information about our project and the issue of addressing gender bias on Wikipedia. That is one of the reason the group is concern about changing things. Best, WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 17:22, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

I decided to drop by and see if anything needed my help. Looking at things, it seems clear to me that having 135+ meetups in Category:WikiProject Women in Red directly makes things harder to navigate/is pretty cluttered. So I removed those, and made sure they are all categorized in one of the sub-categories of Category:Women in Red edit-a-thons. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:54, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

In general, Category:WikiProject Women in Red could use a good pruning / further categorization. I removed a bunch of sandboxes and user pages from it. Moved some people that misused userboxes to the WIR Member category, with the exception of Rosiestep since she founded the project. Doesn't matter to me in the end if she stays in that category, or if she's only categorized in the member category, but I'll leave that to her decision. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:05, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
Continued below at #Categorization update Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:05, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mercedes Barcha

Input from those who can readily evaluate Spanish-language sources would be helpful. XOR'easter (talk) 17:07, 23 September 2020 (UTC)


Category:Women by occupation and century

I've been doing some work on Category:Women by occupation and century over the past few weeks, and have added a few categories to what was already there. I thought it might be time to take stock of what we've got and brainstorm some other categories if need be. Right now, we have access to the following categories and their children:

I think that should cover the major disciplines - are there any other categories anyone can think of that might be useful? --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 01:36, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@Ipigott: Category:Women dancers by century had occurred to me, too - perhaps something for me to tinker with this evening. For the rest, I'm easy either way, so long as we think there are the numbers to support. Philanthropists in particular I'll give some thought - I'm going to be working on breaking down the Category:Philanthropists by century category some over the next few days, so I might be able to fold that into my work then.
For now, I've been filling categories out mainly using people from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. There are some fields (judges, lawyers) where the possibility of pre-19th- or 20th-century figures in the field is negligible enough that I didn't bother searching. Other fields (educators) are likelier spots for earlier figures, but I haven't gone back before the 19th century in any of my searching. In particular, I rather expect that we could make a decent category out of Category:18th-century women educators, and possibly a century or two before, even.
One set of categories which I expect will need some attention is Category:Businesswomen by century and its children. Even given the current numbers in the various categories, it strikes me that there are probably a lot of articles missing - largely, to be honest, because I think business categories in general are often poorly categorized around here.
Incidentally, I was also thinking that creating Category:19th-century children's writers, Category:20th-century children's writers, and Category:21st-century children's writers might not go amiss. Those aren't gender-specific, but would still likely fall heavily under our purview anyway. If there's no objection I'll create and populate 'em over the next few days. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 13:42, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
You probably want to involve BrownHairedGirl. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 15:13, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

I have a few concerns about this, mostly relating to the continued poor quality of the prolific work of Ser Amantio di Nicolao (SaDiN). I have raised these issue before with SaDiN on his talk, and received only passive-aggressive stonewalling. Since I have been pinged here, I will raise them again.

  1. SaDiN continues to do long series of AWB edits with unnecessarily vague edits summaries, which make it unnecessarily difficult to monitor his work. I just checked his recent contribs, and find this most recent set of 500 edits. As far as I can see from spot checks, every one of those edits is to add Category:20th-century non-fiction writers ... but I can't be sure with out individually inspecting every single edit because SaDin still fails to take the few seconds needed to replace the default edit summary with add [[:Category:20th-century non-fiction writers]] or even to click the "do not use section edit summaries" option. That means that the edit summaries are all of the form "→‎External links: add category" or "→‎References: add category". In each case, the section title is superfluous (because all categories are added at the bottom of the page), and "add categories" is just the default edit summary. When doing a series of many hundreds of identical edits, failing to take the few seconds to set an informative edit summary leaves hundreds of edits obscure.
    Since SaDIn is well aware of this issue and well aware that it is so very trivially easy to fix, it is very hard to find any plausible explanation that this is anything other than a conscious decision to obscure the nature of the edits.
  2. This matters, because the unhelpful edit summaries disguise the fact that SaDiN's recent edits have left over 600 articles in Category:20th-century non-fiction writers which should have been diffused into by-nationality subcats.
    For example, in this edit[1], SaDiN added Geoffrey Boothroyd to Category:20th-century non-fiction writers rather than to Category:20th-century British non-fiction writers.
    The article was already categorised in a way which would have allowed a competent AWB user to include it in a group of articles to add to the century-by-nationality categories.
  3. SaDiN has a long long history of this sort of categorisation: using AWB or CatALot to dump hundreds or even thousands of articles in unnecessarily broad categories, leaving it to others to diffuse them. I cannot know SaDiN's intentions, but it is clear from his very long runs of similar edits that he is running some sort of unauthorised bot (see WP:MEATBOT), and that his actions are compatible with a goal of maximising his edit count by setting up very long AWB runs rather than maximising the benefit to readers by tailoring the edits. If that is not SaDiN's goal, then he can demonstrate his good faith by changing his approach.
  4. This repeated SaDin exercise of mass-populating parent categories is actually a backwards step for categorisation.
    Far from being helpful, it's not even neutral; it's actively unhelpful. Take that example of Geoffrey Boothroyd: the version before[2] SaDiN's edit had the page in two writer categories: Category:British non-fiction writers and Category:British male writers.
    The edit that should have been done was was a single piece of sub-categorisation: Category:British non-fiction writers → Category:20th-century British non-fiction writers.
    But instead, SaDiN added Category:20th-century non-fiction writers. So now an editor who wants to categorise the article correctly has two changes to make: the sub-categorisation which I described above, and per WP:SUBCAT remove Category:20th-century non-fiction writers. Whatever tools are used, this makes the job harder: it's a more complex exercise using AWB, and with WP:HOTCAT it involves an extra step: when one categ is changed, the page is edited in situ; but if more than one categ is changed, the page has to be opened for preview. That slows the task, and if there are a lot of categories to be fixed, the doubling of time is a significant barrier.

I appreciate that there is great value in categorising women: I have done a lot of that myself. But the main effect of SaDiN's practices is to make it harder for others to do the job properly. And if I sound grumpy abut this, it's because I have a) repeatedly invested dozens of hours of my time in cleaning up the vast messes left by SaDiN's unauthorised bot indiscriminately populating categories which are already diffused, and b) wasted yet more time in futile attempts to ask SaDiN to respect the most basic elements of en.wp categorisation, such as WP:SUBCAT. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:45, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Completely endorse these comments, I'm afraid. Johnbod (talk) 16:52, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
It will be interesting to see how this turns out. Will BHG succeed in her quest for the perfect categorisation? - Chris.sherlock (talk) 17:24, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
Ah, Chris, we'll never get anywhere near perfection. But it would be nice if en.wp's most prolific unauthorised bot desisted from sneaky edits which actively make things worse. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:20, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
it’s not surprising you won’t get near perfection. Categories are essentially sets. Imagine if you could intersect categories. Then you’d just need to have a category of “women”, and a category of “writers”, intersect the two and it gives you “Women who are writers”. Right now you do a lot of busy work, and pigeon-hole people because of a technical issue. But you go around telling people they are “sneaky”, when they are just trying their best to work within the limitations of the category system. Best of luck with that! - Chris.sherlock (talk) 20:12, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
No, there are ways to do things, and ways not to, as worked out over many years by editors working in this area, and patiently pointed out by Bhg above. Unfortunately the area has always attracted a number of rather obsessive editors who just like doing lots of edits, and don't give enough thought to the effect they have. Johnbod (talk) 20:30, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
Those ways of editing are ridiculous and I’m happy to leave others to their ridiculous busywork. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 22:54, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
Chris, you do not appear to be even attempting to add anything of value to this conversation. You do appear to be trying to provoke a reaction. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:02, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
  • I agree with others in this thread that Ser Amantio di Nicolao's rapid-fire automated categorization edits, coupled with not indicating the cat(s) added or removed, are disruptive. He has admitted elsewhere that he does these rapid-fire edits because he is bored (in his words, "to fill up my day"). He takes very little (if any) time to engage with others. The upshot of his years of editing this way has led to massive overcategorization (articles that should have maybe >10 categories now have an impenetrable forest of 30 or more), articles full of categories that are clearly WP:NONDEFINING, and the consequent massive overpopulation of categories. Categories that were once correctly populated with subjects who fit the category because it was DEFINING to them, now have an impenetrable forest of meaningless nondefining entries and are therefore virtually useless. Softlavender (talk) 08:21, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
I think there are two sides to this interesting discussion. Our development of categories for women, especially the non-diffusing ones, has required a great deal of finicky work over the years. Once we have decided on a useful additional category, it is frequently necessary to add subcatories by nationality or time period. Most of the spade work has consisted of going manually through hundreds of general categories (i.e. covering both men and women) picking out the women one by one. Thanks to the efforts of Ser Amantio di Nicolao, we have been able to progress more quickly on some of these items, saving the rest of us time and effort. I do agree nevertheless with BrownHairedGirl though that at times these developments lead to over-categorization with little chance of seeing how it came about. It would indeed certainly be very useful if the edit summaries could provide a trace of what actually was automated so that in cases of doubt we can review the items covered batch by batch. I am also a little worried by SAdN's automated additions to wikiproject listings on talk pages, most recently in connection with women writers and women in music. Several thousand biographies have been "enhanced" in this way, leaving not only a requirement for huge assessment efforts but also a need to check whether all the biographies assigned these new wikiprojects really deserve them. (Many don't.) I am no expert on "automated" updating of categories and wikiproject assignments but it might be useful to develop a few rules to facilitate both understanding and progress.--Ipigott (talk) 14:13, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for that account, @Ipigott.
I agree that there is scope for mass editing to build these categories. The problem is that SADiN does it badly, as well as sneakily ... and as I described above, the apparent early gains are an illusion, because they actually make it harder to finish the job. (BTW, an editor above objected to me calling these edits "sneaky". I do so because they breach WP:SUMMARYNO: Avoid vagueness. While edit summaries can be terse, they should still be specific. SADiN's edit summaries lack the specificity to convey what he is doing to many thousands of articles).
For those who haven't done this work, let me describe the techniques a little more by taking an example I have worked on: Irish women politicians by century, which I cleaned up after one of SADiN's indiscriminate runs with his unauthorised bot had left it an unholy mess, with all the women simply dumped in a vast sprawling mess of Category:20th-century women politiciansand Category:21st-century women politicians.
WP:AWB has list-making tools which allow lists to be compared. Using these tools in steps, it's fairly simple to construct selective lists. The job is even easier using WP:Petscan, which allows much more selectivity.
What SADiN seems to have done was simply to create an intersection of people by dates or birth and death, intersect that with Category:Women in politics+ItsManySubcats, and dump all that lot into "Category:nth-century women politicians" ... an indiscriminate group which made no distinction between e.g. an Irish local councillor and an Asian head of government and African parliamentarian. A useless blob.
There is a much better ways of dong this: to categorise women by the type of office they held, and split those cats by century. So for example I took the existing Category:Women Teachtaí Dála, and diffused the contents into two new subcats: Category:20th-century women Teachtaí Dála and Category:21st-century women Teachtaí Dála. That created two every useful sets of modest size, which make meaningful topics of study. I then did the same for Irish senators, and Irish MEPs, and then for MEPs across Europe: see Category:20th-century women Members of the European Parliament+subcats and Category:21st-century women Members of the European Parliament+subcats.
That is detailed work, and even though I have developed tools and techniques to semi-automate some of it, it takes time. But the end result is genuinely useful: see e.g. Category:20th-century Irish women politicians and its subcats.
However, doing that work was made significantly more difficult by SADiN's spamming, because I couldn't just Category:Women Teachtaí Dála, and diffuse in the subcats. i wrote some tools to do that bit in one pass, but I then had do a further set of edits to remove them from the spammy parent categories. You can see the two steps in the edit history of e.g. Celia Lynch:
  1. December 2016:[3] SADiN spams the page into Category:20th-century women politicians, with one of his characteristically sneaky edit summaries
  2. December 2019‎:[4] BHG does a first-pass cleanup by diffusing to Category:20th-century women politicians in by-nationality cats.
  3. 11 April 2020‎:[5] BHG placed her in Category:20th-century women Teachtaí Dála
  4. 26 April 2020‎: [6] BHG removes Lynch from Category:20th-century Irish women politicians per WP:SUBCAT
That's a total of 4 edits, where the only one which should actually have been needed was #3. The rest is just make-work created by SADiN.
And all that is is just one article. Similar messes ae repeated across hundreds of thousands of articles where SADiN has spammed on an overly-broad century category, when the existing categories already allow for creating a more specific set.
I first raised this with SADiN in early 2017: see User talk:Ser_Amantio_di_Nicolao/Archive_33#Lots_of_superfluous_cat-a-lots. That is more than 3½ years ago, but the all the same problems persist.
Even the sneaky editing continues: since my first post here at 16:45, 21 Sept, SaDIn has made another 645 AWB edit which do not explain what category is being added: start here.
SADiN continues to ignore the responses in this thread. My post two days ago has replies from several other editors, but no reply from SADiN.
Since SADIN will not discuss these problems, and wont even take the very simple step using edits summaries that show what he is doing, I don't think there is any basis for assuming that we are dealing with a good faith editor who seeks consensus: this is just massive-scale WP:FAITACCOMPLI, performed sneakily. I think it's time for an ANI case to put a halt to SADiN's use of mass-editing tools such as AWB and Cat-a-Lot. Is anyone willing to work with me to build that case? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:55, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
You are correct that I have not responded to this thread yet. There are a variety of reasons for that; I will not go into them here. However, I will make the following points:
a.) I have rarely - almost never - received complaint about my use of edit summaries until now. As there are three editors in this thread remarking upon my use of them, I will make an effort to change; three is near enough consensus that I'm willing to listen.
b.) My understanding of categorization may be imperfect - in fact, I am certain that it is. Furthermore, I will certainly cop to overzealousness now and again. But I do often try and revisit the work I've done to refine it. I may not be perfect - I try to remember. Often I forget. But I resent any implication that my actions are in anything other than good faith.
c.) If you wish to develop a thread at ANI, I welcome it. I am more than happy to discuss my behavior in front of a larger group, and take their considerations to heart if need be.
There is more I could say, but in the interests of comity I will refrain. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 16:22, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
@Ser Amantio di Nicolao, all these issues were raised with you at length in 2017. You chosen to stonewall and ignore, and you have not improved since then.
If you were acting in good faith, it is highly unlikely that you would have:
  • persisted with this conduct over the last three years
  • persisted with contested behaviour while it was being discussed here
  • Suddenly appeared with proclaimed eagerness to discuss only when matters were heading to ANI.
If you want to make your claims of good faith remotely credible, then stop your mass edits, and start discussing.
Finally, the problem is no way a matter of you being overzealous. It is matter of you being indiscriminate and sneakily flouting basic categorisation principles by making huge numbers of ill-considered edits which are both hard to analyse and hard to clean up. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:43, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
@BrownHairedGirl: You may believe me, or you may not. But if you wish to discuss my editing behaviors, take it up at ANI. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 17:54, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
@Ser Amantio di Nicolao, the usual way to deal with issues with someone's editing is on their talk page or on a project page.
I tried and tried and tried to engage you on your talk page, but you just stonewalled. Several editors have raised issues with you here, but you have ignored all of those issues except the edit summaries. So ANI it will have to be.
Given the extraordinary volume of your edits, and the sneakiness of most of them, it will be a non-trivial task to assemble the evidence, and that will take some time. But I will do it ... and I will do it with a lot of sadness, because I retained some small degree of hope that this could be resolved through discussion rather than through sanctions. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:05, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
@BrownHairedGirl: Very well. I shall respond once I see it at ANI. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 20:14, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
SADiN, you decided to stonewall at length on your talk page, and to stonewall again here, and to respond only at ANI. That is not the behaviour pattern of an editor committed to working consensually. The sheer persistence of this stonewalling is why my tone here is so critical: you used up my goodwill years ago, and you continue to reject opportunities to restore it. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:52, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Mlle Fonti

Here's an interesting one. Created a bunch of roles in Offenbach's operas. A number of photos exist.

...So what's her first name? Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 7.5% of all FPs 06:50, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes - as you've possibly seen, slim pickings. http://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2020/03/girls-of-bouffe-parisiens-noriac-years.html --Tagishsimon (talk) 07:11, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
Interesting but not too helpful as it tells us "Mademoiselle Fonti. We are never told her first name, and it is probable that even the surname was a pseudonym. We know not when she was born, or where, and as for her death ... it seems to have been 'too soon', as a reference in 1884 tells us, but when and why ...?"--Ipigott (talk) 10:32, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
I wonder if we could at least get an article on her together? Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 7.5% of all FPs 18:01, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
@Adam Cuerden: Perhaps the Grosses Sängerlexikon has something? It's surprised me in the past with articles about unexpected people. Alas, most of the requisite volumes appear to be behind a paywall at Google Books, and my German is so nonexistent as to be completely useless. Still, if someone has access to a copy it might be worth a look. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 18:22, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
I might have access once the libraries reopen... Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 7.5% of all FPs 06:14, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
Is there any reason why we should not have an article on Mlle Fonti or Mademoiselle Fonti? We already have Mademoiselle Monrose and Mademoiselle Parisot.--Ipigott (talk) 08:32, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Jina Valentine's and Heather Hart's work

The Chicago Trib has written a great article about Jina Valentine's and Heather Hart's work on getting Black artists and institutions represented on Wikipedia. More than 1200 articles in 6 years is an incredible accomplishment, kudos! The idea of having a photo booth at edit-a-thons to get photos for articles is sheer genius by the way :D (Check out the BLT bingo card too!) -Yupik (talk) 18:10, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Good find, Yupik. Good to see their activities are continuing.--Ipigott (talk) 19:39, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
Yupik, This is such an awesome find. They have worked hard and the proof is in the results. Congrats to them and I hope they keep pressing for the recognition and representation that Black American culture deserves here on Wikipedia and elsewhere.Tsistunagiska (talk) 19:46, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities

I've just found out that the Australian Academy of the Humanities, one of the country's national academies, maintains what appears to be a full catalogue of obituaries of its former fellows, which are routinely published in its annual proceedings. They are freely available here. I don't doubt there are many women among that list; one such red link is Sylvia Hallam, a "pioneering" archaeologist who died last year. It seems to me that these are fairly low-hanging fruit for this project – easy passes on WP:PROF and freely accessible, concise biographies. Would anyone be interested in creating some sort of Wikipedia-friendly set of links for these people? (There are probably a lot of red-linked men there too who need articles.) —Noswall59 (talk) 11:16, 23 September 2020 (UTC).

It looks like I should be able to process this list pretty easily with OpenRefine and I can import any missing people into Wikidata. Let me see what I can do. Gamaliel (talk) 14:44, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
Actually this might even be easier, someone has already created a Mix and Match catalog for this. Gamaliel (talk) 15:08, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
The Mix and Match for FAHA has not added Award received = FAHA, nor is there an Identifier for it; in any case all the women have been matched. I just did a SPARQL query and found only 67 women fellows, 20 of whom have no bio. This means there are a number of Wikidata entries that do not have FAHA recorded, one of whom is Sylvia Hallam. Does this mean it's a job for OpenRefine? Oronsay (talk) 20:57, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
I created the Hallam item today, and you're right, it didn't add her FAHA affiliation. I'm curious what the catalog is for if it's not adding anything to Wikidata? Odd. Gamaliel (talk) 21:37, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
It drives the creation of items, I guess; (and has keys/IDs against the possibility of a ID property) --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:47, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
But I can download enough information from Mix n Match to add the FAHA affiliation via OpenRefine. I will wait until some more of these names are matched. Gamaliel (talk) 21:42, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
I've been through all the women on the FAHA Mix n Match and checked Wikidata for them. I'm confident that those still in the Mix n Match don't have Wikidata items, although some do exist in author strings. Oronsay (talk) 22:43, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
Although not usually a completionist, I've been back through the Mix n Match and was able to match a very few men. The names remaining do not have Wikidata items. Over to you @Gamaliel: Work your magic, or let me know if there's more I can do to help. Oronsay (talk) 00:30, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
This might take a while to do properly, unfortunately. Right now I'm going through this list to create new items and make sure there are genders for the existing items. If anyone wants to help it would be appreciated. Gamaliel (talk) 12:44, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
It is tricky. I am going through the preliminary matches and finding that many are incorrectly matched. Oronsay (talk) 00:37, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks all for looking into this: I don't really understand what you're doing, but it sounds useful! —Noswall59 (talk) 16:38, 25 September 2020 (UTC).

Can article title suppression lead to systemic bias?

I have been contemplating to raise issue of link between article title suppression which can lead to systemic bias, at WP:Vilagepump policy either as general discussion or RfC. I would be submitting some examples along with refs there. But since considerable instances are directly or indirectly do seem to touch with Women related articles too, that is my personal observation, I thought first I discuss here.

I will give an example I came across today. I have been supporting few of women rights related articles and few among them relate to South Asia incl. Pakistan. It is but natural once in a while I will visit article Violence against women in Pakistan. This time reason was an unfortunate rape incidence (https://www.dawn.com/news/1578807) which moved Pakistani sentiment a bit, and taken up by women's rights organization and got media focus. As elsewhere quite a number of cases of Violence against Pakistani women too is affected by Gun culture there as in this case too.

So just I gave a thought to find and cross link see also sections of articles related to Gun culture in Pakistan with Violence against women in Pakistan, but then I realized 'Gun culture in Pakistan' article's original title was very much Gun culture in Pakistan and was in due course first renamed / redirected to Gun politics in Pakistan and then to Gun laws in Pakistan.

May be renaming/redirecting served temporary objective of transferring a stub article to article with more content, but on other hand chances of a stub article getting developed as per title objective get reduced and focus of readers and likely editors automatically unknowingly shifts to new topic what they are reading in this case Gun laws.

This is just one example, I have seen similar things happening about many important titles too. Personally I feel this contributes to systemic bias.

Just I wanted to know if any one else has come across such cases and issue ?, If any then please do share and discuss.

Thanks Bookku (talk) 15:26, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

@Bookku: Is Gun law in Pakistan the original article still, like nothing has been changed within the article from original text that would change the overall context? The article as written has just changed titles to what it is now?Tsistunagiska (talk) 15:51, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

The brief chronology of the history of article shows When started in 2005 it's name was Gun culture in Pakistan in 2011 it was transferred without discussion to Gun politics in Pakistan with edit summary to match title consistency, in 2016 transferred to present title Gun law in Pakistan so original intended title was broader in that one could cover all related facets. Now under limited scope title covering Gun culture as a social tendency and issues become difficult.

Let me give different example article title Asian art is redirected to History of Asian Art so if some one wants to add contemporary Asian art would feel awkward. Recently I saw one article title 'Criticism or XYZ religion' has been transferred to anti XYZ sentiment; Coming back to women's topics Sexual politics title is utilized for book, so if if some one want to add nonbook info in the article will feel awkward.

Bookku (talk) 18:09, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

@Bookku: I very clearly see your perspective and I agree, in principle, with your assessment. I think the ones who moved the article were looking at it from inside a particular box. The article had a title. The title was Gun culture in Pakistan. Yet the article only talked about Gun law in Pakistan. To remedy this, the original mover tried to strike a balance by moving it to Gun politics in Pakistan. In doing this it eroded away any intent to include culture specific to Pakistan and instead move it in the direction of political scope. Thus Gun law in Pakistan becomes the natural course of revisions to the title because "politics" seems so vague when, within the box, this particular mover viewed the subject as specific; "Gun Law". It has totally moved away from the possible intent to discuss violence or any other gun related topics inherent to, or affecting, the culture within Pakistan.Tsistunagiska (talk) 18:44, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Categorization update

Following #Meetup page categorisation above, I took it upon myself to structure Category:WikiProject Women in Red more intelligibly. The highlights are that the category is mostly for the 'core/main' WIR pages. You don't have all meetups listed, but you have the main meetup main page (which contains links the actual meetups). Likewise you don't have all essays listed, but the rather the main essay page (which contains links to the actual essays).

Further

This should make the category a lot more browsable for those who use it, and included the main WIR navigation bar at the top. I've also updated the sortkeys of a bunch of pages, so they would be where you expect them to be in the categories. Several are under ? because I don't exactly know if those pages should be renamed, or categorize in one ofthe other sub-categories. But they'll at least standout out as something that you might need to think about down the road. I also purged sandboxes from the category, since those were not meant to be categorized in the first place, and move user pages to the member categories.

Do feel free give the category a different structure/purpose, but I thought this would give you a more solid baseline on a go-forward basis than a category that had about 150 assorted pages in it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:04, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Headbomb: Thanks very much for responding to my ping and sorting all this out. As usual, you have taken a very effective approach. Now we just have to hope that editors will follow in your footsteps. Well done!--Ipigott (talk) 08:18, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
Headbomb Thanks for doing this. So, going forward, if we make new pages for meet-ups by using the previous meetup page, following the categorization in place will keep things rolling along, just make adjustment for 2021, 2022 etc.? Ipigott is there a place we can store this Categorization update structure? Maybe on the talk page of Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Essays? It will just get archived from this page. Thanks. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 16:27, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
WomenArtistUpdates: I don't think we need to store it anywhere special. You can see the structure under Category:WikiProject Women in Red.--Ipigott (talk) 19:13, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
@WomenArtistUpdates: just make adjustment for 2021, 2022 etc. That's the idea yeah. I mean, you could always come up with a different structure, but if this one works, you might as well keep it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:00, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
Thanks Headbomb. I think it works well and is very elegant and intuitive. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 01:09, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Glynnis McDaris

The stub Glynnis McDaris (about an artist/curator) is miserable, and ripe for prodding. It has been so for over a decade, when it was stripped by two SPAs of most of its content -- but the deleted content was unsourced, so I'm not complaining. McDaris's own website is "coming soon" (i.e. is useless); but her conveniently unusual name does get ghits. I've been spending too much time editing WP recently and am not tempted to work on this. Anyone here interested? -- Hoary (talk) 22:47, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

@Hoary: Unfortunately, I can't find any substantial mentions of her or her work (only passing mentions or photo credits). I did a quick look in Google, Google Books, Internet Archive, Newspapers.com, and NewspaperArchive. It seems she has co-edited an art book and been a photographer for various magazines, but I'm really not seeing anything that shows notability. With the editing patterns, my tentative assumption is that the article was heavily edited/created by COIs or people who knew her, especially since the last major edit that removed content from the page said it was done at the request of McDaris. Unless I'm missing something or someone else can find sources, I think it might be best to prod. - Whisperjanes (talk) 17:59, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
Hoary and Whisperjanes, I could find anything notable to add to the article either. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 18:20, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
Thank you, both. I've prodded it. -- Hoary (talk) 22:40, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Women in Asia contest starting soon

Don't forget our Women in Asia contest starts on 1 October with virtual awards for October, November and December. Prizes will be awarded each month to those who create most new biographies with at least 160 words of running text but you can also list shorter articles.--Ipigott (talk) 15:20, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

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