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Nobel scientist's deletion from Wikipedia points to wider bias

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Re: Nobel scientist's deletion from Wikipedia points to wider bias

#81

Post by kevinpet »

I know there are people who consider it important to raise the profile of prominent women because of perceptions of bias like this. This could be a self-perpetuating cycle if that initiative results in creating more profiles of women of borderline notability, you would expect people following a uniform standard to be more likely to nominate women's articles for deletion.

She is notable now for having won a Nobel Prize. Good on the Nobel committee for ensuring she gets the recognition she deserves. It doesn't follow from that that she was notable before that happened. Wikipedia's notability standard is not "doing important work that will be recognized someday".

Re: Nobel scientist's deletion from Wikipedia points to wider bias

#82

Post by avs733 »

JohnWhigham wrote: post #27

Some critics say it was gender bias, while others say it was a problem with notability, a gauge editors use to determine if a topic deserves a Wiki page. Wikipedia editors must be able to verify facts about any Wiki entry against published reliable sources, from publications to the press. Actual crux of the issue. Stop trying to turn every fucking thing into a gender war.

The problem with this argument is that the rhetoric is the same whether or not it was gendered.

If you see a pattern of people applying a standard disequitably, whether or not the standard is explicitly disequitable it’s worth discussing.

It’s like when I went to high school with a bunch of other 1% kids who believe their success is entirely about their hard work.

Re: Nobel scientist's deletion from Wikipedia points to wider bias

#83

Post by jhgb »

rob_c wrote: post #74
vidarh wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I get this is frustrating, original research is explicitly against Wikipedia rules.

And citing out of print inaccessible paper journals is not regarded as evidence. (Apparently) Again I provided diagrams explaining how a piece of scientific equipment work in detail and this was disregarded because I didn't attach a link from some news outlet. This is just brain damagingly stupid.

> And citing out of print inaccessible paper journals is not regarded as evidence.

[citation needed]

I've seen plenty of references to "out of print inaccessible paper journals" in Wikipedia articles. They haven't been deleted.

Re: Nobel scientist's deletion from Wikipedia points to wider bias

#84

Post by bobthechef »

nashalo wrote: post #58
AHappyCamper wrote: post #51

What I don't like about this article (besides the very obvious conclusions that it starts out with and then hits you over the head with) is that it doesn't attempt to reach any wikipedia mod or reviewer for a comment. It's only the author's side and the author's narrative. Also, correlation does not imply causation. The fact that women's pages get deleted more often doesn't mean that there is a gender bias against wo…

Clicking on this headline I knew for sure that the person was a woman, even if I knew nothing of the case. At some point we can't hide behind correlation is not causation anymore.

"Clicking on this headline I knew for sure that the person was a woman"

And this proves what exactly? Putting aside that you didn't "know" anything, all it shows is that you made a correct guess. On what basis? Well, probably because the media have been yammering on about gender bias for years. So you're confusing your own prior bias with reality. Congrats. You've discovered confirmation bias.

Re: Nobel scientist's deletion from Wikipedia points to wider bias

#85

Post by andyxor »

AHappyCamper wrote: post #51

What I don't like about this article (besides the very obvious conclusions that it starts out with and then hits you over the head with) is that it doesn't attempt to reach any wikipedia mod or reviewer for a comment. It's only the author's side and the author's narrative. Also, correlation does not imply causation. The fact that women's pages get deleted more often doesn't mean that there is a gender bias against wo…

after interacting with some wikipedia "mods" i got an impression it's a complete waste of time, kind of like talking to religious fanatics or nerdy leftists, they seem to have unlimited time on their hands and will DDoS you with endless bureaucracy

Re: Nobel scientist's deletion from Wikipedia points to wider bias

#86

Post by fitchjo »

JohnWhigham wrote: post #27

Some critics say it was gender bias, while others say it was a problem with notability, a gauge editors use to determine if a topic deserves a Wiki page. Wikipedia editors must be able to verify facts about any Wiki entry against published reliable sources, from publications to the press. Actual crux of the issue. Stop trying to turn every fucking thing into a gender war.

Why do you feel so attacked about the subject of this article such that you have concluded this is part of a gender "war"?

If I understand your claim correctly, it is just that simply there weren't any reliable sources to verify the information because there are not any articles about these women; however, the article further examines (or at least considers) that exact fact as being part of the issue - that these women are not being written about at the same rate as men.

Re: Nobel scientist's deletion from Wikipedia points to wider bias

#87

Post by rob_c »

MichaelGroves wrote: post #79
crazygringo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being downvoted because everyone knows Wikipedia is built on citations. There's no way for any reader or editor to know whether you know how it works or not. So Wikipedia is built primarily around not even primary sources but secondary sources for a good reason. Yes it may lose out in some valuable knowledge such as yours in the process -- but it achieves a greater good of minimizing Wikipedia being flooded by…

> You're being downvoted because everyone knows Wikipedia is built on citations. Got a citation for that supposed common knowledge? I couldn't resist myself, but seriously, wikipedia purports to be built on citations but how often have you tried checking citations to see if they contain the information a wikipedia article claims? Many times I have found that information in a wikipedia article is nowhere to be found i…

Ah the old life imitating art problem.

Had a professor at UG who showed a similar mistake. His solution. Only buy and trust books from reputable authors.

Not a great fix, but he wasn't wrong.

Re: Nobel scientist's deletion from Wikipedia points to wider bias

#88

Post by renewiltord »

rob_c wrote: post #39
tedsanders wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's frustrating to write true things and have them deleted, but I hope you understand how bad it would be to generalize the rule "accept uncited/unverified claims as true if the account who wrote them says it's true." I say this as someone who spent weeks writing up a new Wikipedia article with 50 citations and then had it graded a C because I used too many primary sources instead of secondary sources. I empa…

Yes and no. I'd argue having an unpolished article in need of work is better than a stub as it encourages interaction. Not to mention being told to stop using a paywall for citing a journal (which is now out of print) as a source.

The danger of the unpolished article thing is that if there is a falsehood on it people will publish the equivalent of this article but with the title: How a Wikipedia Lie Ruined This Man’s Life. Or some such thing.

Re: Nobel scientist's deletion from Wikipedia points to wider bias

#89

Post by cool_dude85 »

jhgb wrote: post #73
cool_dude85 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You have to live with the fact that sometimes you're wrong. You don't have to live with the fact that your institutional process for sending articles to this binary classifier is biased, per the published study discussed in the article. Women's profiles make up 19% of the profiles on wikipedia but 25% of deletion nominations. Even if your classifier was totally gender-blind (unlikely), by virtue of the process that…

The problem is that those numbers apply to articles that have already been written. Such small discrepancy could easily be explained by other things, such as editors writing new articles with their own bias. If you then apply even objective criteria to those articles and end up with deleting a larger portion of some group, I don't see how you can claim that the deleting classifier is biased without knowing what was d…

"Such small discrepancy"? Women's articles are 30% more likely to be nominated than by random chance. That's actually quite a large discrepancy to be explained away by handwaving about how editors might be biased in including too many non-notable women. The journal article even claims it's exactly the opposite:

"Studies show that women’s biographies are slightly more notable than men’s (Wagner et al., 2016)"

Re: Nobel scientist's deletion from Wikipedia points to wider bias

#90

Post by beecafe »

bobthechef wrote: post #84
nashalo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clicking on this headline I knew for sure that the person was a woman, even if I knew nothing of the case. At some point we can't hide behind correlation is not causation anymore.

"Clicking on this headline I knew for sure that the person was a woman" And this proves what exactly? Putting aside that you didn't "know" anything, all it shows is that you made a correct guess. On what basis? Well, probably because the media have been yammering on about gender bias for years. So you're confusing your own prior bias with reality. Congrats. You've discovered confirmation bias.

The usage of the word probably implies the same about this take.
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