This is one of the main reasons I started https://theymadethat.com (IMDB for everything, not just movies). Not many people have the privilege to have their own Wikipedia entry. The qualifications for getting one also seem very arbitrary.
Donna Strickland won her Nobel prize in Physics before she got a wikipedia page
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Re: Donna Strickland won her Nobel prize in Physics before she got a wikipedia page
#12It's a real problem -- "only 18% of biographies are of women" on wikipedia and "between 84 and 90 percent of Wikipedia editors are male".
I also remember reading in the past year about how the male skew in wikipedia editors leads to all sorts of bias. They approve all sorts of wikipedia entries on fictional sci-fi characters and reject entries for female leaders worldwide (in the west but even more so when it comes to developing nations)
Source for the stats: https://www.wired.com/story/using-artificial-intelligence-to...
Re: Donna Strickland won her Nobel prize in Physics before she got a wikipedia page
#13Wikipedia has arbitrary rules for a lot of people, some youtubers have pages but others with bigger reach don't. Some blogs are considered proper critics but youtube critics aren't.
Re: Donna Strickland won her Nobel prize in Physics before she got a wikipedia page
#14It's a real problem -- "only 18% of biographies are of women" on wikipedia and "between 84 and 90 percent of Wikipedia editors are male". I also remember reading in the past year about how the male skew in wikipedia editors leads to all sorts of bias. They approve all sorts of wikipedia entries on fictional sci-fi characters and reject entries for female leaders worldwide (in the west but even more so when it comes t…
Why is there so much bias? Do these men just hate women? Is it cultural?
I really don't understand this.
Re: Donna Strickland won her Nobel prize in Physics before she got a wikipedia page
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
the other two winners, male, had pages https://twitter.com/clancynewyork/status/1047098079097380864 , there's a broader argument about bias here
How can an encyclopedia that anyone can edit be biased? Anyone could have added her page, no one did, until now.
Someone created a wiki page for her back in May, but it was deleted because a Wikipedia editor decided she wasn't "notable". Anyone can edit Wikipedia, but it still has the bias of the most recent editor.
https://twitter.com/resolvingdust/status/1047135142978801664
Re: Donna Strickland won her Nobel prize in Physics before she got a wikipedia page
#16It's a real problem -- "only 18% of biographies are of women" on wikipedia and "between 84 and 90 percent of Wikipedia editors are male". I also remember reading in the past year about how the male skew in wikipedia editors leads to all sorts of bias. They approve all sorts of wikipedia entries on fictional sci-fi characters and reject entries for female leaders worldwide (in the west but even more so when it comes t…
Why is there so much bias? Do these men just hate women? Is it cultural? I really don't understand this.
I'm not saying its malicious or deliberate, but any non-diverse population will tend to exhibit some bias.
I don't think its that surprising that a group of men share different view points about worthy posts than a group of women would. The point is wikipedia doesn't have good coverage in this regard. I'd say the same thing for a group of American editors vs a group of African editors. Or a group of wall st professionals vs blue collar workers.
Wikipedia's editors have a diversity problem in light of their goal to be the "world's encyclopedia".
Re: Donna Strickland won her Nobel prize in Physics before she got a wikipedia page
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
the other two winners, male, had pages https://twitter.com/clancynewyork/status/1047098079097380864 , there's a broader argument about bias here
How can an encyclopedia that anyone can edit be biased? Anyone could have added her page, no one did, until now.
The editors didn’t think she was notable enough. This is an editing problem not a submission problem.
Re: Donna Strickland won her Nobel prize in Physics before she got a wikipedia page
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
the other two winners, male, had pages https://twitter.com/clancynewyork/status/1047098079097380864 , there's a broader argument about bias here
How can an encyclopedia that anyone can edit be biased? Anyone could have added her page, no one did, until now.
Actually she had a page, but it was deleted. And then someone recreated the page, and it was rejected in review. QED
Re: Donna Strickland won her Nobel prize in Physics before she got a wikipedia page
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is there so much bias? Do these men just hate women? Is it cultural? I really don't understand this.
I'm not saying its malicious or deliberate, but any non-diverse population will tend to exhibit some bias. I don't think its that surprising that a group of men share different view points about worthy posts than a group of women would. The point is wikipedia doesn't have good coverage in this regard. I'd say the same thing for a group of American editors vs a group of African editors. Or a group of wall st professio…
I suspect the underlying bias is, "have I heard of this before?" If not, it's more likely the entry gets rejected. The more homogeneous the population of editors, the more narrow their experience scope. This is amplified by external biases that make women's contributions less visible - it's harder for new awareness to be built.
Just a theory.
Re: Donna Strickland won her Nobel prize in Physics before she got a wikipedia page
#20Also an indictment of the godawful WP draft process. That article by a new editor sat in the till for two months before getting rejected in a manner that made it unclear that it could be later revised and accepted.
The actual article that went up doesn't look like it went through the useless draft process at all. It was drafted and published directly to the main namespace, ironically enough by copying Gérard Mourou's article and then deleting everything from it.