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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

#121

Post by bloqs »

MichaelGroves wrote: post #110
kevinpet wrote: post #81

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 Priz…

> She is notable now for having won a Nobel Prize That's not right. The Nobel Prize didn't bequeath notability to her, it recognized the notability she already earned for herself.

From an Encyclopedic perspective, this is wrong

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

#122

Post by jessaustin »

mgbennet wrote: post #120
jessaustin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be a valid justification in general, but I'm curious in this particular case. Was this an infringement of another encyclopedia? Perhaps that publication could have been identified in the deletion note? Maybe even cited in the page itself? Basic facts about a human (birthdate, alma mater, publications, etc.) are not subject to copyright anyway, so a long flowery essay about the scientist could have been edi…

It's perfectly possible to find the source of the infringement with a little investigation. The user who created the page has a comment on their talk page notifying them that Donna Strickland page has been nominated for deletion due to "unambiguous copyright deletion". [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:SteplightJohnson#Spe... ] There's a link to the source that was copied, [ http://www.osa.org/en-us/about_osa…

So do you agree with the original deleting editor that quoting a press release is copyright infringement? We seem to be venturing farther and farther into Crazytown here...

Good job on chasing this down!

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

#123

Post by prvc »

MichaelGroves wrote: post #110
kevinpet wrote: post #81

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 Priz…

> She is notable now for having won a Nobel Prize That's not right. The Nobel Prize didn't bequeath notability to her, it recognized the notability she already earned for herself.

That's not the definition of notability used by Wikipedia.

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

#124

Post by DerpyBaby123 »

MichaelGroves wrote: post #110
kevinpet wrote: post #81

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 Priz…

> She is notable now for having won a Nobel Prize That's not right. The Nobel Prize didn't bequeath notability to her, it recognized the notability she already earned for herself.

I think it is right, as a result of winning the Nobel Prize, she received significant coverage in multiple published sources. At least, I don't see any current wikipedia sources from before the time she was recognized as a Nobel winner.

From wikipedia[1]: >People are presumed notable if they have received significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject.

From this definition, it seems you can't 'earn yourself notibility' directly, except as to earn it indirectly by having independent reliable sources publish about you.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#...

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

#125

Post by BeetleB »

Ensorceled wrote: post #119
BeetleB wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are assuming quite a bit. If an article about a professor is written and has virtually no references, then it's not the admin's job to do research to see if she is notable or not. It should be tagged as "needs references" and if they are not provided, eventually deleted. In her particular case, the article didn't even exist - only a draft did - which was not approved because it had no references. The rejection…

We're not "assuming" anything. The article has the following quote: > "But then [they] realized, 'Oh dear, it's even worse than we thought.' Because she did have a Wikipedia page. But it was nominated for deletion and then deleted." If the article is misleading that's on them, not on us for believing the CBC did their homework.

Sorry, but the onus is on you as well.

> Because she did have a Wikipedia page. But it was nominated for deletion and then deleted."

The assumption people are making is that the Wikipedia page was appropriately written. If the page was just one line: "Blah blah is a tenured professor at a university", it changes the perspective completely.[2]

Additionally, as a reader, you should read a bit critically: Did you not think to ask yourself "Why was it deleted?" and then evaluate how well the article is written? Other commenters clearly did. As another commenter pointed out, they didn't interview any admins - all they did was get a statement from the Wikimedia foundation. It took less than an hour for me to find the article that was deleted, and trace through the Wikipedia process to see why it was deleted and what Wikipedia's policies are.[1] This is all absent from the article.

It's a pity, because the actual study probably is good and interesting, but that got buried because of shoddy journalism.

[1] In that the policy would recommend deletion even if this was a man.

[2] And oh boy I've found pages like that of professors I've known. And many of them really didn't do work warranting a Wikipedia entry.

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

#126

Post by 908B64B197 »

kevinpet wrote: post #81

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 Priz…

> 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.

It's also demoralizing for women/minorities.

When you lower the bar for achievements for some groups it paints them as less capable than others.

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

#127

Post by akuchling »

darepublic wrote: post #2

Glad I got this entry in during the early days of wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduardo_Corrochio . It has been wittled down numerous times over the years but the skeleton of the man's life remains.

Is this page purely a Seinfeld reference?

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

#128

Post by mgbennet »

jessaustin wrote: post #122
mgbennet wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's perfectly possible to find the source of the infringement with a little investigation. The user who created the page has a comment on their talk page notifying them that Donna Strickland page has been nominated for deletion due to "unambiguous copyright deletion". [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:SteplightJohnson#Spe... ] There's a link to the source that was copied, [ http://www.osa.org/en-us/about_osa…

So do you agree with the original deleting editor that quoting a press release is copyright infringement? We seem to be venturing farther and farther into Crazytown here... Good job on chasing this down!

Well, the article was copy pasted from a web page with a big old "Copyright ©2013 The Optical Society" at the bottom. So yeah, it's textbook copyright infringement; press releases (or publicity blurbs, in this case) are protected by copyright law. I don't think the Optical Society was likely to pursue legal action against Wikipedia for this, but it's perfectly reasonable for Wikipedia to enforce a policy of "don't copy paste copyrighted material into articles."

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

#129

Post by ronald_raygun »

bArray wrote: post #101

This article title is clickbait, it can be interpreted as her being removed after being awarded the Nobel Prize. > It found that women make up only 19 per cent of all profiles, but account for a quarter of page-deletion recommendations. So, 19% of profiles, "25%" (no percentage given) of deletions - it's not insanely far off being the ratios I would expect. There are going to be some bias in there due to historic rol…

It depends on how many profiles there are. If there are 100 profiles, and a specific 19% made up 25% of deletions, then that could be just chance. If there are 1M profiles, on the other hand, then it's definitely biased.

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

#130

Post by Ensorceled »

BeetleB wrote: post #125
Ensorceled wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not "assuming" anything. The article has the following quote: > "But then [they] realized, 'Oh dear, it's even worse than we thought.' Because she did have a Wikipedia page. But it was nominated for deletion and then deleted." If the article is misleading that's on them, not on us for believing the CBC did their homework.

Sorry, but the onus is on you as well. > Because she did have a Wikipedia page. But it was nominated for deletion and then deleted." The assumption people are making is that the Wikipedia page was appropriately written. If the page was just one line: "Blah blah is a tenured professor at a university", it changes the perspective completely.[2] Additionally, as a reader, you should read a bit critically: Did you not th…

I see. The onus is on me to personally verify the details of a large, well respected news source.

But you are defending a Wikipedia editor for deleting a entry on a prominent scientist whose work eventually earns her a Nobel prize without any research at all...

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