Nobel scientist's deletion from Wikipedia points to wider bias

Post by Permit » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #24

What happened here was atypical for Wikipedia "deletionism" debates. Normally, when you read a story like this, someone created an article and someone else petitioned to have it deleted (with an "AfD") and there's a whole debate log you can read, and you could try to assess people's biases from the comments they left in the AfD. Here, though, no article was ever created (prior to 2018, when Strickland was awarded her…

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

rob_c wrote: post #54

crazygringo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are hundreds of thousands of academics whose position in the encyclopedia could also be established with links to their research groups! Yup, that's really the crux of it. Wikipedia isn't meant for every tenured professor to have a page, the same way an actor with only one IMDB credit doesn't get a page either. And sadly that stub article doesn't seem to clearly explain why this particular professor does. In…

So how small of a contribution is too small? Or is a negative result still a result? The lightbulb came about through small revolutions and breakthroughs but nobody remembers the early ones to show the idea of the concept. I'm not saying we need 7-8Bn pages for every human, but frankly a professor has made an impact on their field of they're at that level. It's not "just another job" in the same way that a CEO gets a…

Post by rob_c » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

tempthrowaway1 wrote: post #57

rob_c wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I'm willing to go to go toe on this on a typical debate perspective. If I'm being voted down what is so great about the ignorance of the masses here? Wikipedia has some serious (and in come cases concerningly anti-science) biases. Which is honestly love for them to address at a community level.

Wikipedia is essentially just an echo chamber for western propaganda. Good luck if you have an actual primary source instead of some nonsense from a reliable "secondary source" like uncited junk from NPR.

Post by cool_dude85 » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

jhgb wrote: post #50

cool_dude85 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, when you're wrong, and especially when you're exceptionally wrong as in this "corner case", it makes a lot of sense to try to understand what kind of process failure and institutional biases may have played a part in the bad decision. That's what the article's about.

One of the problems with binary classifiers is that you can't simultaneously make low errors in both directions. That's not "an institutional failure", that's practically a law of nature. You have to live with the fact that sometimes you're wrong. What errors to make is the core of the feud between deletionists and inclusionists.

Post by tptacek » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #55

tptacek wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we looking at different things? I just wrote a whole long comment on this after poking around on WP about it, and I'd be glad to know if I got things completely scrambled. Because what I see is a page created in 2018, and a _lot_ of intra-WP coverage of the process that led to there not being a page before 2018, all of which squares with what this article says.

I'm probably misunderstanding something, but I do see some 2014 dates at the bottom of the page linked above. ISTM wikipedia was informed of this scientist in some fashion in 2014, and those contributions were deleted or set aside or whatever. I'm happy to be educated on this, but at least we can say that the process is obscure. Of course the point is that GP's whinging about headlines is silly. Her Nobel paper was p…