Talk:Annie Easley

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 August 2020 and 5 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Hawetzel.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 14:23, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Importance

I added the importance tag to this article. We need to have some sort of information on here that explains what exactly she did that is notable to a general audience. Perhaps she worked on a high profile project? Perhaps she worked on a developing new technology? Perhaps she reached a higher rank than any black woman in her NASA division had previously? Whatever it is, we need to make sure the article notes it, because currently it looks like a vanity page. (i'm not saying it IS a vanity page, just saying it reads like one.) --Quasipalm 13:48, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree. To me this is a notable individual but the article doesn't bring this out. Her accomplishments, if they were those of a white male from the urban North, would not be notable. However, she was educated in the Jim Crow South in an area that 20 years later became one of the major battlegrounds for civil rights. The voting rights act didn't pass until 1955, after she got the NACA job. The civil rights act didn't pass until 1964 or 1965.

She must have been one of the first African-American women to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the growth of federal laboratories. How did she overcome the barriers of inferior educational opportunity? Did her schools happen to be exceptionally good? Did the backgrounds or influences of her parents or teachers play a role? What was Xavier like at the time? It is a historically African-American Roman Catholic University, so I'm assuming that it was co-ed but 100% African-American at the time. The Catholic Church isn't very strong in the South; how did it happen that she went to a Catholic University?

A lot of our readers are young, and many are not Americans. We have to provide some background and context for an article like this. Otherwise, they will wonder, as Paul did, why is this person important? See discussion below, copied from Wikipedia:Help desk

-Walter Siegmund 15:38, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, here's the issue that made me look into an RFC: I applied the PotentialVanity tag to an article that already had the Cleanup tag, since it seemed borderline notable; it appears to me that PotentialVanity is more specific than just Cleanup, and therefore a better tag under the circumstance. The article in question is Annie Easley. The PotentialVanity tag has since been reverted to Cleanup by a somewhat unhappy user, apparently the article's creator. Basically,did I use the tag properly?

Thanks for any info you can give about either the PotentialVanity tag or about RFC. Paul 04:35, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I think the subject is noteworthy and at least one of the editors is well-respected on Wikipedea. If you really want to pursue it, you can nominate it under the Articles for Deletion process which doesn't permit the removal of the tag until the process runs its course. But, my wisdom is that it is a good addition to Wikipedea; I doubt if we have very many articles about African-American computer scientists, male or female, born in the 1930's. -Walter Siegmund 05:07, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Borderline, in my opinion. I'd allow it to stay; it has verifiable references, and it's not disruptive to the rest of Wikipedia. --Ashenai (talk) (Galatea!) 11:16, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough--I personally wouldn't nominate this for deletion because, as Galatea said, we're no worse for having it. So long as background and notability are clear, then clean it up and let it be on its merry way. Paul 15:50, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Gah! I'm Ashenai, not Galatea. The Galatea in my sig is just a link to Project Galatea, which is... well, click and see. :) --Ashenai (talk) (Galatea!) 15:35, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

I placed the potential vanity tag there because it addresses a more specific problem than simply "cleanup." However, I respect your opinion that it is not, in fact, potential vanity; I would be interested to see what other users have to say as to whether or not I applied the tag properly. As for the page itself, I'm not certain if Ms. Easley meets the standards for notability, but again, I refer the question to the larger WP community. Paul 04:30, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Please see my comment at Wikipedia:Help desk in response to Paul's question. Best wishes. -Walter Siegmund 05:24, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

The story of this article is as follows. I had NEVER heard of this Annie Easley in my life, until one day my daughter came home with an assignment from school. It was during the African American day or African American week or something like that. She had to make an article about an important African American personality. One of the names in the list was Annie Easley. I am not sure if she chose to do that one or if it was assigned to her. My daughter asked for my help because she tried to locate references on the Internet and she couldn't find many. I told her to check in Wikipedia and there was no article, or if there was there was not much info on it. So, I helped her find some references on the Internet, and then also decided to start (or improve) the article about Annie Easley in Wikipedia and did some work on it gathering information from different sources I could find (very few at the time). I guess that if she was on a list of "important African American people" given to my daughter at school, then the people there are notable enough for a good portion of the population (African American people), which in turn means that those people are notable enough to be in Wikipedia. I would also recommend to User:PaulHanson and others like him not to be so "trigger happy" and avoid converting "clean-ups" into "destroy-ups" if they don't know enough about the subject. It is not nice to see our work of hours destroyed because somebody "thought" it was vanity or whatever. Regarding the question about the "potential vanity" tag, it is my opinion that it should be use when there are strong signs that the author of the article is writing about himself, when there are no other references to that person on the internet(not the case of Annie Easley...you can find several school essays posted on the Internet about her) and when the editor has no ID or has not written about any other article that that one--AAAAA 06:01, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I just did a google search on "annie easley" and found 385 results, many of which (maybe most) being non-wikipedia-mirrors. The first one is a very brief essay by a third grade kid posted in 1999[1]. Just this fact makes it notable enough for me. I doubt that a third grade kid will willingly post a "vanity" page in 1999 about some old lady, unless it was assigned to him at school.--AAAAA 06:15, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Response to AAAAA

As I mentioned, I have no problem with WP keeping the article, assuming that Ms. Easley is notable (which has been somewhat established.)

I don't quite understand AAAAA's reaction to me placing the potential vanity tag on the article. The article, at the time I placed the tag, didn't make a clear case for notability/importance, however it did not appear that there was no notability whatsoever, so being unsure, I tagged it with PotentialVanity. Keep in mind that this is PotentialVanity-I wasn't sure, and the presence of the word "potential" I think is a good indicator of that. However, this seemed to stick in AAAAA's craw, as he removed the tag and seemed a bit put off in his comment on my talk page. It is somewhat funny that AAAAA makes it out as if I was trying to "destroy" his work. Firstly, because that isn't what I was trying to do (and unless I wipe his hard drive, I pretty much couldn't do, anyway) and also because another user accused me of being a Destroyer concerning another article. It is also good to keep in mind that even a well-written article, possibly the work of many hours, might be speedy deleted if it is out of place on WP. Again, the Easley article doesn't seem to be, but the fact that someone took the time to compile the info and make an article of it really means nothing in this context. (Of course, those who do so deserve credit, and if AAAAA gathered this info and posted it then credit he does deserve. I'm just saying that it's no argument against deletion.)

Thanks everyone and wikilove to all. Paul 06:26, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

AAAAA, thank you for commenting. It is both interesting and helpful to know something of the background of the article. I appreciate the contributions you have made to Wikipedea. Paul's actions have increased the awareness of the Annie Easley article, and THAT IS A GOOD THING. I count six edits by three different editors since Paul's RfC. I would still like to add something of the context, e.g., Jim Crow segregation, etc. On the other hand, Paul might have used the importance tag as [User:Mendel] did, or left a message on your talk page or the Annie Easley talk page, and that would have been A COURTESY that would have been appreciated, I think. That said, Wikipedea needs vigorous editors AND vigorous contributors and I hope that we all appreciate one another. -Walter Siegmund 14:48, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Preserving source

This source was given for Ms. Easley's birth info.

• "Easley, Annie". Contemporary Black Biography, 2007. Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 26 October 2013.

That source has this information wrong. Her married name was Easley - not her birth name. --Lightbreather (talk) 16:54, 31 July 2014 (UTC)