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Risk to WikiDonne

Hello all, This discussion on Italian Wikipedia came to my attention. It includes the suggestion that @Camelia.boban - who leads WikiDonne a sister project of ours - be blocked. As far as I can tell, the discussion shows serious misunderstandings on Italian Wikipedia about the work that projects like ours do, and undermines the amazing work that WikiDonne does. I post this here to see what efforts we might be able to undertake to support the work of WikiDonne and demonstrate support for it from another Wikipedia? Lajmmoore (talk) 13:38, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

A quick summary of the 99k bytes of Italian on that page would be useful! Johnbod (talk) 14:12, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
It's all looking grimly Stalinist over there, at least through the lens of google translate. My impression is that Camellia.boban seems to be getting it in the neck for her "attitude", but I've yet to find a pointer to anything at all outrageous that she may have done. A great deal of tone and behaviour policing going on, some of it fully batshit insane. There seems to be a view from some that alignment with WikiDonne makes a person an outsider to be viewed with suspicion; and more generally, that pushing back against the gender gap and not accepting the status quo (e.g. in AfDs) is disruptive behaviour worthy of sanction. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:20, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
The choicest elements are an extended discussion of whether it's better to play golf or tennis on the morning after deciding that Camelia.boban has done a bad attitude; and some outrage that during a prior it.wiki block, Cb continued to work on meta, rather than sitting on the naughty-step and reflecting upon their many shortcomings. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:32, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Is there a wider discussion area here on English Wikipedia that we can bring our concerns about this to? SilverserenC 21:54, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Probably not, and tbh I doubt that the it.wiki peeps would give a flying doodab about any en.wiki view of their conduct. It looks antediluvian and rank to me, but I suspect for the most-part, language wikis are a law unto themselves. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:04, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
That only goes so far, as we've seen with the actions taken on Arabic and Persian language Wikipedias just last month. If Italian Wikipedians are trying to actively attack editors involved in their version of Women In Red, that is something that should be brought up to the WMF. SilverserenC 22:17, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Well, that's framing. afaics, the IT editors, if asked, would claim they're dealing with a disruptive user, not "actively attack editors involved in their version of Women In Red". I've seen no evidence of disruption; I've gained an impression that the discussion starts from the solid presumption that Cb is disruptive and gets worse from that point. But I'm not an expert on whatever's going on there, I don't know the history, have not seen the diffs. I don't think appeal to a higher authority is an avenue, but ymmv. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:14, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Camelia's complete withdrawal from editing on the Italian wiki represents a great loss for WikiDonne. Let's hope she will be able to maintain interest in the project on Meta and in the other language versions where she is active. Hyruspex, better known as Nattes à chat or Natacha Rault, who created the French equivalent Les sans pagEs, ran into similar problems not too long ago. She might be able to offer some advice. It certainly doesn't seem to be easy to run projects designed to provide better coverage of women in other languages. Maybe, Rosiestep, these developments should be reported in The Signpost.--Ipigott (talk) 07:15, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Why in the world you need to bring up stalinism (through automated translation) and "grim" on top of that? Why a response to disruptive behaviour of a single editor *must* be based on misunderstandings of what WikiDonne aims? What are precisely these misunderstandings, by the way? Precisely? How a response (appropriate or not) to disruptive behaviour of a single editor can undermine WikiDonne? You don't need to support WikiDonne, because the Italian community does so already by itself (obviously any kind of support is welcome, though: only, you don't need to come to the rescue). Don't you think that label the Italian community as "stalinist" is undermining it?

Pushing back against the gender gap is not disruptive at all, but, at the same time, you cannot justify anything under the umbrella of a good cause. We started discussing if it was appropriate for the Community to notify WikiDonne AfDs concerning women. Most of the people there (including me) held that this notice was not appropriate. AfD is a system for managing, controlling, and supervising possible undesirable contents. The system has no direct link to the gender of the person in question: notability is thankfully no gender-based, same as the ability of our trusted physician is not bigger or smaller because of gender. The problem for it.wiki was and is the lack of articles dedicated to notable women; the right cause of WikiDonne is to fill this serious gap. In short, AfDs are related to not-notable biographies and not to women in particular.

At some point in the discussion, Camelia recapped saying that the fundamental opinion of those against notifying WikiDonne was as follows: 'it is in the nature of things that women support each other and become hysterical if an article concerning a woman on it.wiki is deleted'. Maybe Tagishsimon doesn't see anything outrageous about that, but many did. And, no, it's not about playing golf or tennis in the morning, it's about mutual respect, no matter the causes, no matter the gender. Nobody "attacked" WikiDonne nor any editor in particular. It's just that we take the 4th pillar very seriously, simple as that. Camelia was blocked for seven days for personal attacks (something not new to her). Then, a procedure called "Utenti problematici" was open to decide what to do with her. In this kind of procedures the Community tries to find a way of mending wounds on both parts. That's why in this procedure we asked Camelia to step back from this disruptive behaviour: she admitted that her behaviour was something to beg pardon for, but insisted that it was a fifty-fifty responsibility. And it could well be so, but you should know the history behind, the everlasting victim complex, the need to feel unwanted to give meaning to her choices and practices. Mind, there are many women on it.wiki that feel themselves misrepresented by her urge to be at the center of attention. Sure, it.wiki needs more women among its editors: to understand this you don't need to fantasize about a bad environment for women. We have happy women among us (including sysops) and we wish to have more.

Sure, this is not any happy ending, for Camelia and for the rest of us. But it was Camelia that decided that retiring was her best choice. Nobody saw this as the only possible scenario: we just asked respect for all and everyone. If you cannot guarantee that, maybe your best choice is to withdraw from editing. We wish for the creation of a WikiProject:Feminism on it.wiki, a project to enhance it.wiki capability to illustrate this area of knowledge and a project to which notify any related AfD. In the meantime, I hope that you all put yourselves in contact with WikiDonne members to help them fill the gap they fight, but, please, the last thing we need is the creation of more cages and eclosures, and this mutual distrust that Camelia unwisely cultivated over the years. --Pequod76 (talk-ita.esp.eng) 14:27, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

@Pequod76: Thank you for your detailed response. I will answer the questions you have raised, in detail, in another post later today. For now, could I ask you one more thing: The Italian community has, we understand, decided that WikiDonne should not be informed of AfDs. Has the IT wiki community decided that any other IT wikiprojects should not receive notice of AfDs? In other words, is this a general thing with projects and AfDs, or is it a specific thing which has been applied only to WikiDonne? --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:37, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
@Tagishsimon: no, this is a perspective reversal. A proposal was made to notify WikiDonne, not other wikiprojects. Had it concerned other wikiprojects, such as Wiki Loves Monuments (see), it would have been the same.
The current consensus is: you nominate for deletion the biography of a woman politician from Lombardy? ok, then what is the question? should she be notable a) as a living being, b) as a woman, c) as a politician, or d) as a Lombard? well, c). Then you notify Politica, not Biografie, WikiDonne, or Lombardia --Actormusicus (talk) 20:21, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
@Actormusicus: Thanks. So if it is a politician, it is okay to notifiy the politician project. If it is a sportsperson, it is okay to notify the sports project. If it is a women, it is NOT okay to notify WikiDonne. Do I have that right? --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:31, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Good question Tagishsimon. I am curious, since women were routinely barred from being professionals globally until the 20th century, are there wikiprojects on it.wp, which represent community workers, social improvement workers, organizations, and the activities women were legally allowed to participate in? If no such wikiprojects exist, then wouldn't WikiDonne, representing all women's activities be the logical project to notify? I am trying to understand the logic of not notifying any project where a more diverse input could be given. People are rarely one dimensional and often are notable for more than one thing. SusunW (talk) 21:07, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Um, we've commonly found here on English Wikipedia that AfDs on women (and on minorities in general) are more likely to have a deletion result even with relevant notability being equivalent to that of male biographies. There's been quite a lot of actual scientific research done on Wikipedia as a whole finding as such. It is one of the catalysts for this WiR project in general in addition to the lower number of women articles as well. So, the claim on Italian Wikipedia that AfDs are fully neutral and don't have biases in results because they only look at notability is false on its face. People have biases. Editors have biases. And that bias does result in worse outcomes for coverage of women and others. SilverserenC 21:06, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
At the very least, it's a missed opportunity; WiR spends a reasonable amount of time saving articles from AfD by dint of working on them to improve them sufficiently to demonstrate unambiguous notability. Hard to do that once they've been deleted. I can only presume IT wiki does not want that to happen on IT wiki. Difficult to understand why you would not inform as wide a basket of projects as possible.
I am quite anxious to get Actormusicus and/or Pequod76 to confirm our understanding of AfD notification on it-wiki so that we properly understand the background, before I feed back to A & P just exactly why what I'm seeing on it-wiki (and here) looks so very very bad. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:22, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
But to set the scene, here (translation by google) is the AfD contribution which first got CB taken into the problem user process in 2018, at least on a plain reading of Wikipedia:Utenti_problematici/Camelia.boban/1:
keep Researcher who stands out from the others in her work, given that not all researchers publish in PNAS, JPG, Science and Nature. That she "invents" a variant of a technique (along with two others, but she is the one who comes up with the idea of ​​using contrast in protein-based sensors to monitor the physiological state of a cell). The treatise Biology: The Dynamic Science by Peter J. Russell dedicates an entry to her (page 128), I hope you don't also think of him that she wants to alleviate the pain of family members with this insertion. An opinion on the Biology project had been asked, the user <<ping|Samuele Madini>> had expressed his opinion on the matter, I think it is appropriate to listen to him again. Given the specificity of the topic, I think involving projects that are more relevant than those included can shed more light. --sig
Google translates the infraction here as "a recurrence of selective calling" ("una recidiva di chiamata selettiva"). --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:33, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
And I guess that's shades of Michael Gove's "I think the people of this country have had enough of experts". Someone who might know something about the domain of this AfD & thereby frustrate it? Not happening on it-wiki, by the looks. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:48, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
it.wiki is a relatively small community: we don't have wikiprojects about "community workers" or "social improvement workers"; I don't think we have anything specifically dedicated to "organizations". Anyway, wikiprojects can be "empty shells": what is really important, and more so for a small community, is the presence of real "good ol' users". Another important factor is the presence of good reliable sources.
@SusunW: when we talk of, say, 18th century or earlier is very rare that we are in the "AfD domain". The sources tell us what is notable, not the efforts of users.
Speaking about the logic of not notifying WikiDonne, this was the line of reasoning: on it.wiki we call wikiprojects "progetti" or "progetti tematici". Typical "progetti tematici" are "progetto:matematica", "progetto:filosofia", "progetto:chimica" etc., all organized in a specific namespace (e. g. it:progetto:filosofia). To create a "progetto tematico" in it.wiki you need at least three active users. A "progetto tematico" could be then "progetto:femminismo" (we don't have it yet). In the same namespace we have other "projects" that we do not consider "progetti tematici". As you can see in it:Portale:Progetti, in the last section, called "Wikipedia", we collect these different initiatives; almost all of them are under the "progetto" namespace. For instance, we have the "progetto:accoglienza" (that corresponds to your "adopt a user"), "progetto:accessibilità", "progetto:categorie", "progetto:connettività" (as your 'orphanage'), "progetto:voci fondamentali" ('vital articles'). I don't know why nobody put in that section "GLAM", which is a project on it wiki (it:progetto:GLAM): it should be there. Anyway, you understand that nobody would notify any AfD to, say, "progetto:accoglienza" or "progetto:antispam" or "progetto:cococo" ('copyright investigations'). We call these kind of initiatives "progetti di servizio", which means that these projects are only indirectly related to main namespace. WikiDonne is one of these initiatives and is devoted to fill the gender gap.
From it:Progetto:WikiDonne/Chi siamo ('who we are'): Il progetto WikiDonne in Wikipedia in italiano è stato creato il 4 agosto 2016 da Camelia per la partecipazione all'editathon HerStory del 12 agosto e viene gestito dal WikiDonne User Group e altri utenti che svolgono attività volte ad aumentare la diversità e diminuire il gender gap nel mondo wiki. Siamo utenti interessati a ridurre il divario di genere esistente e i pregiudizi sistemici, aumentare la presenza delle donne fra i collaboratori dei vari progetti, la copertura delle voci e dei temi che riguardano le donne, i pregiudizi di genere, minoranze o altri gruppi e argomenti sottorappresentati.
Which means: Wikidonne was created in 2016 by Camelia to partecipate to HerStory and is managed by the WikiDonne User Group and other users involved in activities aimed at enhance diversity and fill the gender gap in the wiki world. We are users interested in reducing the existing gender gap and the systematic biases, increasing women presence among users in various projects, the covering of articles and themes related to women, gender biases, minorities and other under-represented groups and themes. (sorry for the poor translation).
As I have already explained, AfD is a system to manage maybe-not-desirable content. On it.wiki only "progetti tematici" get AfD notices (and they are not compulsory). WikiDonne is not a "progetto tematico": we don't want any "progetto:donne", because notability to us is not gender-based. Nobody is notable just for being a woman or a man. Being a woman or a man is no activity.
This leads us to Silver seren's observation: AfDs on women (and on minorities in general) are more likely to have a deletion result even with relevant notability being equivalent to that of male biographies. Maybe so, but you don't solve this problem with a kind of reverso-ghettoed-project as a "progetto:donne" would surely be. And you don't solve the problem whit a potential opposite bias. We want the articles on notable women we lack. We don't want "whatever content" to say to ourselves that finally we have oh so many articles on women. WikiDonne works fine when select biographies beforehand and write articles (plus other things WikiDonne does outside wp and I can't say jack about that). WikiDonne has no reason to intervene on AfD. Maybe it's not the case for en.wiki, but on it.wiki we generally understand that if you want to really cover a subject you stay away form AfD area, you concentrate on undebatable notable content. Moreover, AfD decisions are often arbitrary. AfD area is made of articles that could or could not be part of the encyclopedia without affecting the bulk of absolutely desirable content. AfD is not about "saving articles": sometimes deletion is salvation. Sometimes you save articles. Sometimes you save wp from articles wp doesn't need to host.
the claim on Italian Wikipedia that AfDs are fully neutral...: well, this claim is just nonexistent. Nobody on it.wiki is so naive to think such things. I have said something else: I said that notability is not gender-based per se. Now, one can choose to add biases to biases or not. I see a big difference between "progetto:Wikidonne" and a "progetto:donne". The first aims at filling the gender gap, looking for notable women overlooked by it.wiki. This aim is completely legit. The second would consider notable persons for what they are **not** in the eye of notability: women. Sure, there are many people to whom notability is directly related to their being a woman (like Franca Viola) or minority (like Rosa Parks). But if I think of Grazia Deledda or Selma Lagerlöf, well, these are authors and notable for being authors. On it.wiki we don't have specific categories for women or men. Again, notability is not gender-based per se and this has nothing to do with editor's individual biases.
Also, on it.wiki we don't believe in "experts", we believe in reliable sources. Btw, joining a wikiproject doesn't make you any expert. A self-proclaimed expert, at best. But, again, we write stuff based on reliable sources. Anyone who claims to be an expert is asked to use and show solid sources, if needed, same as the laymen. I have been editing 16 years now: this seems pretty basic to me.
WiR spends a reasonable amount of time saving articles from AfD. This is precisely what we refuse to have, a project involved in intervene in an AfD about a she-skier or a she-painter or a she-architect or a she-anything just because she's a she. Because "she" is not a subject, nor a theme, and "progetti tematici" are about "subjects" ('temi', 'argomenti'), like ski, painting, architecture. And feminism. Tagishsimon doesn't agree with this view? Well, great, no problem, we can talk about it... But... oh, no, wait!, somebody doesn't agree with Tagishsimon? Heresy! At the stakes! Let's go feed the world what an unpleasant environement it.wiki is!
Now, I have to say that I find quite unpleasant that you all jumped to hasty conclusions. I don't think Tagishsimon is "anxious" to get a better understanding from Actor or from me. Tagishsimon sees something "so very very bad", and sees all this bad "on it-wiki (and here)". And here! Wow. I took time to explain you as honestly as I could what happened. You feel the strangest desire to judge something you cannot understand, not only because of the language barrier but most of all for the "context barrier". You happen someday to spend a couple of hours reading about something a community has gone through over the years, has *lived*. This doesn't mean that the Italian community has any "infallibility wand": maybe the community decision of not having a "progetto:donne" and "women categories" is wrong. Maybe the community decision of not notifying WikiDonne is wrong. Maybe the community decision of rejecting Camelia's blatant lack of respect was wrong. But we have gone through something, we felt it on our skin, not read it over a cuppa tea, we established a consensus and took decisions. Tagishsimon understood all of it some rainy afternoon better than the Italian community people did over years and years. Oh yeah, sure. In a profusion of very toxic tweets Tagishsimon showed that has made up his/her mind long before I intervened here. This is not an honest exchange of views. Tagishsimon mocked me on twitter because I said that there are happy women among us on it.wiki. The reason for this mockery is my being a guy. Everybody's a "guy" on Tagishsimon's tweets, even users that (I know for a fact) are women. But oh they said the wrong (=guy) thing. Bias is tricky, I understand that, so I'll take all this sad stuff sportingly. --Pequod76 (talk-ita.esp.eng) 03:34, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@pequod76: did anybody else in the world's history so blatantly fail to realise that women are politicians, sportspeople, scientists etc.? Non mi sovviene. Y'know, we need more than a bunch of articles from the beginning. Going back to that job --Actormusicus (talk) 08:50, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
3 things:
1. The discussion was about creating "donne" (women) as a topic for the categorization of the so-called "dirty work" (AfD, articles with uncertain notability, articles that lack sources, this sort of stuff). That would raise a technical problem, since those templates support only two topics. So, the effect of the proposal would have been that an AfD about a woman in politics would have been notified to the project biographies, to the project women and not to the project politics. That seems quite illogical to me. Surely, we could add another topic, but since there are no conventions and guidelines related to the women as a group, it just seems an unneccessary work.
I've suggested to create a topic named "femminismo" (feminism) that was intended to mean "feminism and women condition", but nobody has explored that possibility so far.
2. In the discussion stats were made about the rate of survival of the articles about men and women in the last year, and it turned out that the rate of survival of women is higher (9% higher).
3. Again it's quite difficult to understand why on earth en.wiki should meddle into internal it.wiki affairs without even being able to understand the language. That has almost comic consequences since some of the "quotes" mentioned above are actually made up. I guess they come from a bad translation of google translator.
If you think that the issue of the categorization of the dirty work on it.wikipedia has the same importance than admins manouvred by the Saudi and Iranian government, well feel free to bring the issue to meta. Friniatetalk 09:48, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, so thanks for that, @Pequod76:. I can see you're making a sincere effort to explain what's going on on it-wiki. I'm afraid we're probably going to have to agree to disagree on which is the more toxic: my snark here and on Twitter, or the it-wiki community forcing Cb off it-wiki because of Cb's wrong-think. One involves a little butthurt for you, but can easily be written off in the way you've done so above. The other seems much more serious and long-lasting, both for the individual concerned, but also for the representation of women in it-wiki.
I will not rehash the whole twitter thread - Italian wikipedia: is it institutionally sexist? From what I've read so far, yes, it would seem so here; it contains the bare bones of what I've read, at length, over my cups (plural) of tea.
I've long held the view that cultures are for the most-part invisible to the people who live within them. That's why anthropologists and sociologists have a job. I think perhaps the it-wiki culture is invisible to you: it's your normal normal, and so you find it entirely reasonable and unremarkable. Please let me assure you that from outside, it looks completely unreasonable and all of those other things you probably object to: Stalinist, grim, a witch-hunt, chauvenistic, compacent, self-serving, &c. I don't use any of those similes and modifiers lightly nor without full consideration. I mean each and every one of them and I stand by each and every one of them.
The central dynamic I'm seeing is this. You have, in your wisdom, decided that 'women' is not a domain which is entitled to AfD notifications. And then you have taken what seem to be entirely reasonable corollary conclusions - that WikiDonne is other than part of the it-wiki community, and that the decision rests on a chauvenistic outlook - as personal attacks; and that being established, you have made it clear that unless the perpetrator recants, they will be expelled from it-wiki.
So one place where we differ is that I do not see Cb's argumentation as a personal attack. That was one of the most puzzling things when I started to read through the threads: where was the smoking gun? Cb in the thread I read is framed and established as a problematic user, and it took several readings before I appreciated that what looks to me like entirely unremarkable assertions of Cb's opinion have been as high treason.
To pick out a couple of things from your thread, above: This is precisely what we refuse to have, a project involved in intervene in an AfD about a she-skier or a she-painter or a she-architect or a she-anything just because she's a she. As I made clear in the twitter thread, and I think alluded to above, this seems to me to be a) greatly counterproductive, if you take the good faith view that users intervene in AfDs to seek to argue for notability where they in good faith see it; and ideally by addressing any deficiencies in the article. You refuse to have that sort of thing. It's perplexing: why on earth - and I speak here from years of watching WiR intervene in AfDs on en-wiki - would you do that? Italian wikipedia has one of the worst gender gaps of the large wikis, fullstop. You are where en-wiki was 6.5 years ago. I know how hard people here have worked to address that balance. Your lip-service to loving WikiDonne whilst erecting roadblocks preventing them from doing good work is not what is required if you are to improve the representation of women on it-wiki. And b) you explicitly delegitimise the notion that there is an issue on it-wiki by considering the domain of women - "This is precisely what we refuse to have" - when all evidence suggests that there is this exact issue on it-wiki.
And then b) Also, on it.wiki we don't believe in "experts", we believe in reliable sources. Well good for you. Except that the thing with experts is, they often have expertise, including especially knowledge of reliable sources and an ability to contextualise, say, a researcher in the context of research in her field. And so again, explicitly, you don't want this sort of thing. And indeed far from wanting the knowledge and expertise of someone who may know something about the subject area, you instead use the suggestion that that person be involved as evidence of wrongthink on the part of the user who suggested it, sufficient to launch a <<problem user>> process.
Well, you have now got what you wanted: a troublesome user feeing they can no longer work on it-wiki which is, let's face it, as good as a block; same effect. Nice and quiet AfDs, undisturbed by anyone who may have domain knowledge, undisturbed by anyone who wants to put in the extra work which is so very often needed to evidence the notability of the AfD subject. You have reserved the gatekeeping of AfD notification powers to yourselves. You've established, per your comments above, that there is not in fact a causative gender gap issue to be dealt with, because notability to us is not gender-based. Nobody is notable just for being a woman or a man. Being a woman or a man is no activity, as if that makes any sense whatsoever. And you have also got something which you probably didn't want, which is people like me calling you out in no uncertain terms on what seems to be a thoroughly ill-considered and rotten state of affairs. My time is limited and I have many other things that I'd like to be doing rather than looking at this sorry business, and that is in part why I'm being as snark, trenchent and offensive as I can be: to try to get through to you that there is something very wrong on your wikipedia. You can now maybe take the time to wonder whether there's any substance in what I've said, or you can swat me away as a tea-drinking dilettante who has decided for absolutely no reason whatsoever to spend hours criticising your wiki, as if that's a thing that happens. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:29, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Tagishsimon: Nobody forced Camelia off it.wiki. This is just what you want or need to believe. And it wasn't about wrong-think. You just cannot insult other volunteers: this is something the "righteous people" tend to miss.
You think I think "it.wiki culture" is entirely reasonable and unremarkable. This assumption is completely wrong and there's no need to discuss it. This "culture", you said, looks completely unreasonable from outside. So, while you granted me the totally unreasonable idea that it.wiki culture is entirely reasonable, you don't hesitate to label it as completely unreasonable. Well, I don't feel at ease with black and white diagnosis: when you apply them to complex issues the outcome is normally poor.
You have been looking for a smoking gun. This is precisely where the "context barrier" comes up. It's like imagining dear lieutenant Columbo entering a room with four people and a dead body and not realizing all of them are family. Context is essential to understand. I don't think that knowing the context automatically means concur, but at least you cease to need sociology and anthropology, tools involved precisely when you are unfamiliar with an environment and feel lost.
I think the most important flaw in your analysis is mixing the AfD issue with Camelia's issue. The two things could have been independent, with the second not coming up at all, but Camelia brought her well-known disrupting attitude to the discussion. The Community didn't have the same "personal attack" issue with ANY other member of WikiDonne. So, the real "central dynamic" is that objecting to AfD's notices to WikiDonne was just an opinion, challenged as the opposite idea. In the process of discussing this you simply cannot stop the dialogue and insult an entire bunch of people there by conjecturing that they say what they say because they are impaired chauvinist guys. This can be ok for your twitter outbursts, but it's not acceptable on wikipedia per wp:FAITH: When disagreement occurs, try as best you can to explain and resolve the problem, not cause more conflict, and so give others the opportunity to reply in kind. Consider whether a dispute stems from different perspectives, and look for ways to reach consensus. This approach was maintained by all other WikiDonne members. Wp:FAITH is NOT an optional and it is quite ironical that you talk to me about the good faith of people intervening in AfDs after the giant shitstorm you delivered on twitter. To me, assuming other people's good faith is the basics and I strongly aknowledge WikiDonne members' good faith. It was Camelia's long-term disrupting behaviour that ruined the vibe. To me, though, the distrust that she evoked against WikiDonne arguing notability was nothing more than a purely academic hypothesis. The discussion was much more nuanced before she brought the axe in.
Some users that defended Camelia aknowledged that her approach was disrupting. "Camelia exaggerated and was wrong in extrapolating the sentence on feminine hysteria from the comments of other people intervened in the debate"; "When I read Camelia's post I really hoped that she had striked it and begged pardon for the inadequate slant or at least that she had explained herself. In short, I was really hoping she tried not to exacerbate the situation too much. But instead...". Beatrice, one of WikiDonne founders, gave her overall impression here, and I think she gives justice to the WikiDonne members point of view about what could have led Camelia to write what she wrote.
Ok, then, even if you cannot see a smoking gun that is as big as the proverbial elephant, you need to understand that smoke came up long ago. You can get *some* context here and here. Camelia herself established as a problematic user inside and outside wp. She felt sorry in different occasions before this last one. She wasn't "framed"... give me a break on that.
Then, if you want to discuss how counterproductive can be the idea of not notifying AfDs to WikiDonne, well, this is absolutely legit. But you cannot do that by assuming male chauvinism or plain stupidity.
There is no "lip-service" on my part. I didn't talk about any "love" towards WikiDonne. I said "this is fine", "that is ok". All this "percentage talking" to me is meaningless. IMVHO, using an automated tool to get a list of obscure sportswomen is not writing an encyclopedia nor filling the gap. I care about the gap: simply I don't agree with the strategy. Should I discuss this issue with WikiDonne members or with the same Camelia, I would never come up with wild accusations of "female hysteria" like you do freely and generously when you mention male chauvinism.
About "experts", you wrote: the thing with experts is, they often have expertise, including especially knowledge of reliable sources and an ability to contextualise, say, a researcher in the context of research in her field. I concur and I don't know what are we discussing here. Being an expert (per se) doesn't make anybody a good wikipedian. Speking of expertise, it:Utente:Mastrocom put it this way: "per quanto riguarda le biografie di donne mi sembra abbastanza chiaro che il progetto non abbia competenze specifiche su un argomento trasversale come le biografie" (poor translation: about women biographies, it is rather clear that [WikiDonne] doesn't have specific expertise on a subject so cross-sectional as biographies are). Check Mastrocom's sex in order to know what to think of his?her? statement. I'd say: there's no cross-sectional expertise to assess articles so diverse as a she-skier, a she-architect, a she-surgeon and so on. WikiDonne members and it.wiki members in general are not in any way prevented to write about all the notable women they want. You don't fill the gap by squandering efforts on doubtful biographies eligible for deletion. Filling the gap is not about mere numbers. You wrote that I refuse "the knowledge and expertise of someone who may know something about the subject area". But there's no such subject area as "women". You can think of "women condition", you can think of "feminism". The only thread that links the she-skier, the she-surgeon, the she-architect and the she-politician is being a woman and this sounds sexism to me. You don't fight sexism with more sexism, but, hey, this is about strategy...
"you have now got what you wanted"... "Nice and quiet AfDs, undisturbed by anyone...": I leave this toxic comments undisturbed.
"I'm being as snark, trenchent and offensive as I can be": yeah, I think everybody got it very clear. Someone should do something about it, by the way. Pequod76 (talk-ita.esp.eng) 17:14, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
What I'm getting from @Pequod76's responses is a sincere and measured attempt to explain the administrative reasons for not notifying WikiDonne: only two "thematic projects" can be included in the notification template, and it.wiki very reasonably considers biographies of politicians to be under the "biographies" and "politics" projects more than the hypothetical "feminism" project if the politician is not known for gender activism. It may be the case that it.wiki ought to expand the number of projects that can be notified, but it's not "extremely sexist" that they don't replace a (far more relevant) thematic project with a service project that has nothing to do with the subject beyond her gender. Apparently it.wiki does not categorize based on gender either; why is en.wiki's hyper-specific categorizing and automatic classification of gender as a "defining attribute" of a subject inherently superior (let alone more pro-feminist; a sizeable body of feminism/gender studies scholarship considers such gendering to be a counterproductive holdover of patriarchal oppression)?
I also do not see it.wiki's perspective on "women biography percentage" to be some systemic, ignorant, chauvinist attack on feminism. Pequod challenges the effectiveness of dumping a database of sportswomen onto Wikipedia and calling that "better gender representation", and I have to agree with them. If proportion of standalone biographies is our only metric (and I'm not saying this is actually the case for WiR), then the more marginal the coverage we accept for women, the greater the gap will become when those same standards are inevitably applied for men. That is, in it.wiki's eyes, if rescuing a woman's bio from AfD requires far more effort finding sources or needs brigading, it is in effect licensing creation of way more men's bios as well. Thus, having GNG expectations that don't require "expert" input or exceptional source-finding (e.g., a "women's AfD taskforce") to meet will produce an outcome much closer to the "real" proportions of notable women to men. At least that's my interpretation of their argument. JoelleJay (talk) 01:08, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
  • So...what I'm getting from the it.wiki responses above is that the Italian community is extremely sexist in ways they just don't comprehend when confronted with it. Not to mention seemingly a number of other issues on how an encyclopedia is made and what the purpose of various processes are for. SilverserenC 17:31, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
    Oh yeah, sure, it is so cheap to say that! We can say it and repeat it without a care in the world. But this was clear from the start and we were here just to reinforce the original assumption: we have an entire community that is sexist, no, "extremely sexist", and even unaware of its sexism: the circle closes so finely! I think that it is completely reasonable and believable to summarize it this way. And a little reassuring, don't you think? We have also "other issues", because a drop of that is not denied to anyone. This people don't know "how an encyclopedia is made". I don't know what they're doing! But I think I see the light, now. Pequod76 (talk-ita.esp.eng) 18:33, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

We would like to provide some data for the discussion from our work in our research project (W&W https://www.ub.edu/wikiwomen). We are working on two aspects related to what is being discussed here, one, analysing the arguments supplied and sequence of votes in AfD discussions of men, female and non-binary biographies and second, the information sources used to background them. We are focusing now on the English Wikipedia but we will also do it on other Wikipedias of Spain (Spanish, Catalan, Galician and Euskera).

We have seen that there is a relevant difference among the discussions in AfD just regarding the number of participants and votes. Male biographies need 6.3 votes on average to “save” a biography while women need at least 9.7 votes to be part of Wikipedia content. There are contrasts such as the longest male AfD biography to be accepted was 11 votes, while a female biography could need 24 votes to be accepted. Longer discussions means more effort: a gender bias.

Therefore regarding the need to make aware the activity of AfD to groups concerned with equal content regarding gender identities (i.e. Viquidonne), we think it is a must. Otherwise, we will help to keep the gender balance in terms of content unbalanced as it is now. English Wikipedia has lists about gender for AfD, to make this process easier. (list of Women-related deletion discussions, list of Women in academics, etc.) A good practice that we encourage.

Another opinion shared in this discussion has been that notability is not gender-based. But it is. If notability is based on verifiable, reliable and independent sources that can be found to provide support to a biography, then regarding female biographies we have a problem with this rule. We have seen that STEM female biographies have 52% of their references based on mainstream media. This is especially relevant to women who do not easily attract mainstream media interest and therefore appear sporadically. Only 24% of news sources are women, that is to say, people seen, heard or read about in the media, are women. Additionally, the news topics where women are most visible garner the least coverage -Macharia, S. (2020). Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP). The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication, 1-6.). The case of Spain is even worse, women are represented as the main character at just 7.3% (Matud, M. P.; Espinosa, I.; Rodríguez Wangüemert, C. (2019). Women and men portrayal on television news: a study of Spanish television newscast, Feminist Media Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2019.1681489 -.

We are working on the project stated above and we have a Research Grant Proposal (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Programs/Wikimedia_Research_Fund/Wikidata_to_Gender_Rescue_on_Wikipedia_(WiGeData_) ) on how Wikidata could help to make visible gender imbalances and therefore Wikipedians could work on that. We are now in the phase of collecting comments and aspects of improvement, so if you want to make comments there, they will be well received.

Nferranf & Hiperterminal (talk) 09:37, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

That is another question, and I fear much more complex since it involves the second pillar. Should wikipedia "correct" the gender imbalance that is present in the sources? In a certain measure yes, of course, if you find authoritative sources that maybe are just more difficult to find. But I fear that in most cases the answer can only be "no". Guidelines as Wikipedia:No original research don't allow us to do that. And quite frankly, I would consider dangerous to make exceptions to this and other guidelines, because it would open the door to every kind of politically oriented point of view. And if I could personally agree when it comes to correct the gender imbalance, I could think to other cases of politically oriented POVs that for sure I wouldn't like to help.
Coming to your research about AfDs it would be interesting and certainly welcomed by the it.wiki community if you would extend your research also to our case. As I said before, a quick statistic seems to show that there is not such an issue in our community, and that could be explained by the fact that the AfD's procedures on it.wiki work mainly on a consensual basis, the votation processes are extremely rare. But maybe the 2022 was an exception, that could also be the case. If you have any question or need any help in understanding specific mechanisms within the it.wiki community I'd be happy to help :-) Friniatetalk 10:09, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Friniate In truth, we've had similar discussions here on en.WP where people misunderstand the goals are not to correct history and sourcing imbalances, but rather to improve our diversity when possible. It would be impossibile to reach equality, as sources simply do not exist. I write about women all over the world and know that there are many, many sources available that show the omission of women from academic research was intentional and widespread. We cannot correct 4000 years of neglect. What we can do it look for records of notable women in the works of historians after the 1970s, who pushed for the historic inclusion of women and other under-represented groups. Before this period we can look at journals created by women's groups and newspapers that outline the contributions of women and weigh notability. Because women weren't likely to be covered in mainstream sources, one needs expertise in researching and finding alternative authoritative sources, so I understand why Camelia was asking for WikiDonne to be notified. Perhaps a simple solution to the problem would be to have someone who is technically inclined, create an automated alert anytime a woman's article is nominated for AfD, like we have here on WIR. (I have no idea how to do that, but if you are interested there is an alert button at the top of our main page that shows all of the alerts related to women.) SusunW (talk) 15:14, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
@SusunW it's rather uncommon though that that kind of articles (historical figures and so on) is proposed for deletion. Normally the women that are proposed for deletion are contemporary actresses, sportswomen, and generally speaking living women. In the last year most of the articles about not-contemporary women proposed for deletion were noble children died at young age that a discussion decided not to be generally notable (the discussion and the deletions were of course about children of both sexes). It's difficult to understand which specific knowledge could bring Wikidonne in these cases. There may be exceptional cases as you say, but we are not speaking about en.wiki, we are much smaller than you, so for some - I guess - 5? 10 max? AfD of that kind in a year it's probably not worthy to modify the templates and the issue can be easily handled manually.
More useful would be IMO a topic "feminism" which could include not only the biographies of women elated to the topic but all the articles related to feminist movements and more generally the social conditions of women.
In any case it's really difficult to see why my opinion should be sexist. I'm simply reasoning about an issue within the encyclopaedia, that's all. Friniatetalk 15:30, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Moreover, the general notability criteria on it.wiki are stricter than on en.wiki, so there are a lot of biographies of (generally living) women that would be considered notable on en.wiki, but not on it.wiki. That doesn't mean in itself that it.wiki is sexist, because the same is valid also for men, parties, companies, lists and so on. Friniatetalk 15:33, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Friniate I agree that feminism or articles related to the women's movement are good umbrella articles for women's inclusion and moreover that it.WP has the authority to decide its own rules of notability. That said, surely you can understand our concern for a sister project and Camelia. I appreciate your willingness to engage with Nferranf and Hiperterminal's project. (You will note that I find no value in speculating about your personal beliefs. Whether you are or are not sexist is irrelevant if your personal biases do not impact the neutrality of and diversity represented in the encyclopedia.) SusunW (talk) 15:50, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
@SusunW Actually my biases have impacted in the issue, because I'm not cool if someone calls me "sexist". If it's done with a reason, then I do my best to change my behaviour. But if someone does that and then is not able of providing me with an explanation of the reasons why my behaviour or my opinions should be sexist, then I consider it an insult, plain and simple. That was the issue with Camelia, on my account at least (and I guess on the account of the other users too): she accused all the "expressed opinions" in that discussion (of course those which didn't agree with the proposal) of being sexist. The "problematic user" procedure was opened because (at least from what I've understood, I wasn't involved in the previous episodes) there had already been many cases in which she behaved like that. During the procedure most of the users have said "look, that's not cool, try to change your attitude for the sake of the work's environment". She answered providing anonymous quotes of years ago that would prove a sexist environment (IMHO, analyzing the context, only one of them is actually sexist and there should have been sanctions, but that is by the way), but you don't answer to a toxic behaviour with another toxic behaviour. At the end it was up to her. She could have said "look, I'm sorry, I won't make general accusations without proper reasons anymore". She choosed instead to say that she wasn't interested in working with the it.wiki community anymore.
I can understand your concern, that you are friend of her, and everything. But please try to understand our position. That doesn't mean obviously that everything is fine. There are issues of gender imbalance on it.wiki. But saying "you are all sexists, the project is shit" and stuff like that doesn't help at all. On the contrary, it produces a reaction of defence of the project and of the community against an (attempted) shitstorm.
Nevertheless we're here, out of pure goodwill, to discuss with you about internal it.wiki issues, in a language that it's not our mother tongue, in a project that is not our home wiki, because we believe in cooperation and dialogue between sister wikis. Friniatetalk 18:53, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Just to clear the picture and get rid of unpleasant statements about the allegedly "sexism" on it.wiki, here you are the figures about AfD on biographies for year 2022, collected between Jan, 1 and Dec, 22:
Total number of AfD's targeting biographies: 949, men's biographies = 769 (81%); women's biographies: 180 (19%)
Rejected AfD's (biographies kept) vs. total by gender: men: 120 (15,6%); women: 43 (24%)
Figures talk by themselves. They show that all statements about "it.wiki sexism in deleting women's biographies" are absolutely out of any reality. We accept criticism, but we cannot accept strong insinuations or, even worse, strong accusations based on a clear distorted perception if not misinformation about how it.wiki operates. AfD's process on it.wiki has been consolidated since years, and there are no reasons nor hints that in previous years things went different. If we have to discuss, please let's do it based on real facts and not on prejudicial interpretations of "what you've been told". Bottom line, checking sources and fact is the key approach in Wikipedia, please stick to it before pointing your finger against other project you don't appear to know how they operate in the reality. --Superspritz (talk) 16:46, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
To me, the numbers you quote clearly show women being nominated for deletion at a higher rate (compared to their fraction of the total articles) and at a higher rate of spurious nominations (kept once nominated). There are many possible explanations for those numbers; they do not prove sexism, but they certainly are not evidence against sexism, as you would seemingly have us believe. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:38, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Excuse me, since you mention evidence, what are allegations of sexism based on? --Actormusicus (talk) 17:56, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
David Eppstein, based on which mathematics 18% is an higher rate than 82%? Can you show me "your" figures demonstrating your strange theory? Come on. This is absolutely out of any reality. If you are not able to demonstrate your arguments, don't come up with reversing things just because they show you're totally wrong and you don't know how to get out from this dead end street. --Superspritz (talk) 18:19, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
@Superspritz, I think David is saying that the percent of biographies nominated for deletion that are on women (19%) is higher than the percent of total biographies on women (some lower % than 19), which suggests a higher incidence of nomination. JoelleJay (talk) 19:49, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Exactly. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:15, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Does occur to me, on thinking about it, that @Pequod76:'s comment about Cb: ... the everlasting victim complex, the need to feel unwanted to give meaning to her choices and practices is a very direct and unambiguous personal attack, ironic in a situation in which Cb's generalised comments were purposefully construed as personal attacks causative of the action which led to their withdrawal from it wiki. A situation in which the in-group enforces laws on out-groups, but does not feel bound by those same laws. There's probably a word for that. --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:28, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Looking forward to you blocking yourself for seven days and then taking yourself to the <<problem users>> process. That's what happens in these situations, yes? --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:25, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
I think we should use a lot of caution when interpreting AfD outcomes out of context. For example, do women's biographies also "require" more participants to be deleted? Perhaps those AfDs just have a lot more participants in general due to the extra deletion category. Perhaps editors are willing to put in more effort searching for sources for women's bios than for their male counterparts with equivalent potential sourcing? And what is the composition of the participants? As in, how many are regulars at AfDs for the main sorting category (e.g. politicians) and how do they !vote on other biography AfDs? And this is all ignoring the quality of the arguments, too. JoelleJay (talk) 19:38, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Lorraine Louie, graphic designer

Wonderful write up about Draft:Lorraine Louie in the New Yorker: The Artist Whose Book Covers Distilled the Nineteen-Eighties. Thriley (talk) 03:55, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

ITN Nomination for Stella Chiweshe (my first)

Hello all, but especially ITN-nominators! I've just nominated my first article under recent deaths, and I wondered if someone could take a look? The nomination is here. Her article that I've updated the references on, is here. Lajmmoore (talk) 22:15, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for this @Lajmmoore, looks good! I added you as updater on the nom and then I think ITN may want references verifying the discography. Apart from that should be all set! Innisfree987 (talk) 22:53, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks very much @Innisfree987 - I've added references to the discography, but another pair of eyes to check the sources are OK would be great. I don't know if our musical friend @Gerda Arendt might be able to take a look? Lajmmoore (talk) 10:35, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
As a note for others - I found the ITN nomination much easier than DYK, so if you see that a woman has died recently, it's much easier to nominate them than you might think (especially if you've had to put a lot of effort in th learn the DYK ropes). Lajmmoore (talk) 10:06, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

New interface

For those who do not like the new interface, you can go here and under "Skin" change from Vector (2022) to Vector legacy (2010). Then remember to save your change. Everything will then return to normal (at least for those who do not have to log in every time they use Wikipedia).--Ipigott (talk) 17:16, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm going to give it a day or so to see what I think, but right now, my vote is UGH! A full 1/3 of my screen it taken up by the task bar and it took me forever to find my watchlist. SusunW (talk) 18:06, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you! The new design seems like its more for readers, and less for editors. PigeonChickenFish (talk) 22:01, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
I am not crazy about it either, but I am going to take their suggestion to try it "for at least one week prior to deciding whether to switch to one of our older skins". WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 22:43, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
I switched late last year--it's fine for me, after a while. (Ever since Flickr's 2013 awful redesign, whenever a website changes its "skin", I try to forget the old one ever existed, no matter how much I liked it. At least Wikipedia's leaving the legacy option available for now.) Penny Richards (talk) 23:12, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
I'm trying to be patient and learn how to use it, but it seems to be getting tweaked daily and worse each time. Initially the toolbar took up one-third of my screen. Today, they have split it into two sections and the actual editing space in the middle is crowded between these two tool sections, i.e. 1/2 of my screen is now toolbars. And then there is the whole content table at the bottom of the left-hand toolbar. By the time you scroll all the way down there to find what section you want to edit, you are already at the place in the document, i.e. what's the point of having a content box if it isn't at the top and will take you to the sections below? I shall never understand how programmers think, as these changes don't seem to be of benefit to editors who are actually trying to write articles. I'm trying hard to let them have time to make it better, but the mess of all of these changes is making it very hard to edit. SusunW (talk) 22:50, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
I was forced to revert today because I could no longer find the What links here tab in the new dropdown left-hand menu, nor the WEF:Framework I use to create new Wikidata items. I may have another go at the new look when things settle down. Oronsay (talk) 23:51, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
WEF Framework will have disappeared because the brainics who decided to implement Vector 2022 by changing all of our preferences, did not bother to migrate custom CSS and custom Javascript from whichever skin we were using, to the new skin. Just as if it didn't matter; its the dogfood thing: if you're unaware of the importance of these two things, e.g. because you don't actually use wikipedia to do anything, then it is easy to see why you'd overlook the matter. Just wouldn't come up in testing. My new favourite feature is hiding each of the sidebar menus, and then spending the rest of the day trying to work out how to get them back. Insofar as hiding the menus does not return the sidebar space to the article, there seems precious little point in having the ability to hide them. The print version is now fairly unconventional; the table of contents forms the first page(s) of the print, but does not identify what it is the table of contents for. And the bullets used against each ToC entry do not actually align with the ToC entry, but float slightly above each entry. The ToC manages to have 15 entries per page, so, think, lots of white space for no good reason. (That would be Tools, Printable Version, presuming you;ve not lost the tools menu by hiding it.) --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:11, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
I wrote a thread. There really is quite a lot broken, and quite a lot which just does not look like it's under the control of the developers. There's no way this should have got through acceptance testing, but here we are. https://twitter.com/Tagishsimon/status/1617722237351792640 --Tagishsimon (talk) 05:16, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Draft:Eleanor Heartney

My draft submission for theater critic and author Eleanor Heartney was rejected and I'd be happy to have some help with it. Thanks. FloridaArmy (talk) 11:58, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

I suggest that you give more information about her publications (date, publisher, isbn) - eg one is a CUP book with reviews such as this: find a few more and that should satisfy notability. But even showing publication details, not just titles, in her "Selected publications" would be a start: at present there's no indication whether they are CUP books, self-published pamphlets, contributions to other books, journal articles, or what, so it is difficult for an AfC reviewer to assess her status. PamD 12:19, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
And Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres would contribute to notability too (not sure whether it might not even bestow it automatically - anyone here know about French honours?) - rather than just "a French government award" which could be anything. PamD 12:30, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
In France, Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres is a very high honour indeed. It is perhaps like your National Medal of Arts or National Humanities Medal. Eleanor Heartney is not listed as a recipient on fr:wp here, here, or here — which doesn't imply that the claim is untrue, only that a good source is needed (see WP:CIRCULAR). Some of the biographies making or repeating this claim may simply be mimicking each other. That said, her writing in ArtNet, as well as some of her published books and work look fascinating. Cheers, Cl3phact0 (talk) 15:39, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
PS: If you know what year the award was granted, I would be glad to help locate a suitable reference in the French press or gov't chronicles.
@Cl3phact0 2008, according to the Christies ref PamD 18:50, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
And another source here, penultimate paragraph. PamD 18:56, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
PPS: There is one incidence of "Eleanor Heartney" + "Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres" on fr:wp here, although it relates to the artist Orlan being a recipient of the honour.
2008.[1]

Thank you, PamD (and FloridaArmy, thank you for bringing Heartney to my attention). If it is an accurate claim, there will be French records. However, regardless of French Knighthoods or other honours, her scholarship and published work alone (as well as her role as a public intellectual) would seem more than ample to merit an article in this Encyclopaedia. Many a lesser light to be found. Cl3phact0 (talk) 21:29, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Looking at the French gov't site, and unable to find this promotion (on either of the published lists for 2008):
Nomination ou promotion dans l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres juillet 2008
Nomination ou promotion dans l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres janvier 2008
It may be that this is not the right year, but I did glance at 2007 and 2009 as well. Cl3phact0 (talk) 16:03, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ https://www.nypl.org/audiovideo/reckoning-eleanor-heartney-helaine-posner-nancy-princenthal-sue-scott-art-book-series-eve

Death of Jane Gemmill

I was unable to find death info for Jane Gemmill, MBE, Scottish temperance activist born in 1855. If anyone has time to research it, that'd be great. Thanks. Rosiestep (talk) 21:33, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

I found DOD of 20 February 1943 on Ancestry but there's no death certificate or other ref material attached. She had 2 daughters and her husband died in 1896, again no refs for this info. Oronsay (talk) 20:55, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, Oronsay. I'll see if I can find anything to confirm that date. --Rosiestep (talk) 12:58, 3 January 2023 (UTC) No luck at Newspapers.com. Maybe someone with access to old British newspapers could take a look? --Rosiestep (talk) 13:56, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
I checked the British Newspaper Archive and can see the following:
  • 1907: DEFEAT OF LADIES AND SOCIALISTS. As the result of yesterday's polling in the Scottish Burghs, no lady has gained a seat on the Town Council. Mrs Jane Gemmill, who contested the Fourth Ward of Partick in the temperance interest was at the bottom of the poll. Edinburgh Evening News - Wednesday 06 November 1907. Similar report in Dundee Courier - Thursday 07 November 1907.
  • 1916: Temperance appeal signed by Gemmill as Hon. Secy. Dundee People's Journal - Saturday 24 June 1916
  • 1918: Speaking at temperance meeting. A LEAD TO SCOTLAND. COME AND HEAR WHAT PROHIBITION HAS DONE FOR AMERICA AND CANADA. Fife Free Press, & Kirkcaldy Guardian - Saturday 16 March 1918. Similar report in St. Andrews Citizen - Saturday 30 March 1918.
  • 1918: Appointed to OBE for her work with the Partick War Savings Assoc. Daily Record - Tuesday 11 June 1918
  • 1918: One of the signatories of letter to women electors from the British Women's Temperance Association. The Scotsman - Saturday 16 November 1918
  • 1919: Speaking at temperance meeting. West Lothian Courier - Friday 14 March 1919
  • 1920: Submitting the annual report of the Temperance Assoc. Edinburgh Evening News - Tuesday 13 April 1920
  • 1921: Several reports in Belfast News-Letter. "Progress in Scotland. Mrs. Jane Gemmill, M.B.E. (Glasgow), said she was pleased to have had the privilege taking part in the first year’s work of the White Ribbon movement Ulster. Scotland they had pitched battle last year, and had done very well for the first attempt. The enemy had been entrenched in the pockets, prejudices, appetites, and customs of a very old country, and they had to fight a hard fight, but they had succeeded to such an extent that they had now 40 dry areas, and in other places they had carried limitation, and about 350 licences had lapsed in 1921. If 12 per cent, of the votes of the nation were transferred at the polls they would carry no licence all over the country. In conclusion, she urged the workers to remember that they must carry the public with them, and without organisation, education and combining all their forces they could not make much progress. (Applause.)" Belfast News-Letter - Friday 04 November 1921
  • 1921: Speaking at meeting. Dundee Courier - Saturday 23 April 1921. (Lots of meeting activity in the 1920s - haven't listed it all.)
  • 1921: Submitting annual report. Dundee Courier - Wednesday 27 April 1921
  • 1921: Speaking at meeting. Wishaw Press - Friday 09 December 1921
  • 1923: Conference of the BWTA. "Considerable discussion took place on the resolution from the Glasgow District Union, moved by Mrs Gemmill, urging all branches to take an active interest in the registration of voters". Aberdeen Press and Journal - Thursday 12 April 1923. "Mrs Gemmill ... said, with regard to interviewing candidates, it was necessary to know their views on the temperance question". The Scotsman - Thursday 12 April 1923
  • 1924: Conference of the BWTA. "Mrs Gemmill, in her presidential address, impressed upon the delegates the necessity for doubling their membership". The Scotsman - Saturday 09 February 1924
  • 1925: Her daughter marries (second marriage). Other daughter still single. Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser - Saturday 21 February 1925
  • 1925: Conference, JG elected as vice-president. The Scotsman - Thursday 25 June 1925
  • 1925: BWTA responsible for catering at Highland Games. "The British Women's Temperance Association provide an excellent service to the public in supplying meals at their familiar marquee. Special provision is made this year for quick lunches. For twenty-five years the Association have now been catering at these shows. Mrs Gemmill, the president of the Executive of the Glasgow district, is in charge." Dundee Courier - Thursday 16 July 1925
  • 1926: Conference, JG elected president. Dundee Courier - Thursday 22 April 1926, The Scotsman - Thursday 22 April 1926. "She is, however, determined to hold office only for one year, when she wishes to make way for a younger president." The Scotsman - Friday 23 April 1926
  • 1927: Spoke at meeting. Hawick News and Border Chronicle - Friday 04 March 1927
  • 1928: Conference. "Mrs Gemmill, Glasgow, president of the Council, presided, and in her opening remarks said she did not see that all those interested the liquor trade, however great the wealth and influence they might bring forward, could be able to stand successfully against the women of Scotland if the women exercised their influence with winsomeness, reasonableness, and power. (Applause.)" Dundee Evening Telegraph - Tuesday 17 April 1928. "Mrs Gemmlll, M.B.E., Glasgow, president of the Annual National Council, in reply, said that that was not the first, second, nor the third time they had visited Aberdeen, where they always found a hearty welcome. Glasgow and Edinburgh did not take much notice of their doings unless they were doing something silly. (Laughter.) She remembered one time long ago when they met at Aberdeen. The reporters reported all their work quite conscientiously, and the close she said to a reporter, "You are attentive to us Aberdeen." He just looked at me, said Mrs Gemmill, and said, " Madam, we always do things well in Aberdeen." (Laughter and applause.) After referring to the great importance of the work of reaching the young, to which they were devoting their energies, their hearts, and their lives, Mrs Gemmill said that she was glad to know that their work was appreciated in the police courts of Aberdeen and the country." Aberdeen Press and Journal - Tuesday 17 April 1928. There is a photograph of the delegates, including JG, in Aberdeen Press and Journal - Wednesday 18 April 1928. The Dundee Courier - Thursday 19 April 1928 notes that JG is standing down as President.
  • 1929: Conference - JG submitted resolution about carrying on temperance education. The Scotsman - Friday 22 March 1929
  • 1934 (so a gap of a few years): JG of the correct address reported as subscribing to the collection for the Gresford disaster. The Scotsman - Saturday 13 October 1934.
Nothing after that point (one possible other subscription in 1939, but not enough details to know if it is the right person). Nothing in 1943. So I'm sorry, that's a long-winded way of not being very helpful, but let me know if you want further details of any of the above to add to the article. Tacyarg (talk) 02:13, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Murder of Zara Aleena

Does this article qualify for the scope of this project? I saw a report on Prime Minister's Questions about it, went to look at the WP article for some basic background, and found there wasn't one, so I started one. I haven't seen before any "death of" or "murder of" articles for low-profile subjects who would otherwise not be notable. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 12:45, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Sadly there are all too many: see Category:2021 murders in the United Kingdom, predominantly female victims. I guess notability depends on whether the coverage of their death appears to have long-term significance, rather than being yet another individual tragedy. PamD 13:05, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
I'll duck the scope question, but note that the failures within HMPS and the Probation Service and the antecedents of those failures - Chris Grayling's "reform" of the Probation Service in 2014-5 - make this a notable murder comparable with the Murder of Zahid Mubarek. Both have implications for operational practice, and the most recent for public policy. --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:15, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Tip of the month for February

The tips of the month have been an additional asset to our recent invitations. I hope someone can come up with a useful tip for February and add it to our Ideas page.--Ipigott (talk) 21:26, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Looks as if we are progressing on this.--Ipigott (talk) 17:26, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Interesting article on Gregory vs. Gloria Hemingway

Those interested in how to refer to individuals who decide to change their sex or related name should read "The Culture Wars Look Different on Wikipedia" by Noam Cohen, recently published in The Atlantic. I was interested to see that while the English article and the Wikidata entry are now Gloria, other language versions maintain Gregory.--Ipigott (talk) 13:20, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Women in Red in February 2023

Women in Red Feb 2023, Vol 9, Iss 2, Nos 251, 252, 255, 256, 257, 259


Online events:

Tip of the month:

  • Explore Wikipedia for all variations of the woman's name (birth name,
    married name, re-married name, pen name, nickname)

Other ways to participate:

Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter

--Lajmmoore (talk) 07:26, 30 January 2023 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Draft:Elisabeth Hubbard Lansing

I started an entry on this children's book author and would be happy to have help. Thanks! FloridaArmy (talk) 19:51, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Watercolorist and illustrator Susanne Suba[1] is also MIA on Wikipedia FloridaArmy (talk) 19:55, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

And illistrator Dorothy Bayley Morse / Dorothy B. Morse did a lot of published illustration work. FloridaArmy (talk) 20:10, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm working on Suba. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:36, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/susanne-suba-papers-6510

Articles for creation draft submissions on Women

Hi, just a reminder that AfC has Wikipedia:AfC sorting including Wikipedia:AfC_sorting/Culture/Biography/Women updated every 8 hours to help interested editors find related drafts to improve and review.

After the mini January backlog drive the AfC backlog is climbing again so we could really do with more reviewers.

Any Women in Red project members who would like to help get some of these currently 158 Women related subjects out of draft you would be very welcome.

Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 12:03, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

The way you have presented this, KylieTastic, seems very positive. I must say I usually become involved when reviewers mistakenly call for deserving articles to be refused or deleted. Do you think there is any possibility of encouraging them to look more carefully into the background of the women they so hastily tag for refusal or even deletion, especially those which have been refused on earlier occasions. In many cases, thanks to the inclusion of valid sources, they come up to acceptance standards. That said, thank you for posting here and encouraging our members to become more active in this connection. I know a number of them are already constant contributors and keen supporters of AfC.--Ipigott (talk) 17:10, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Hey Ipigott, AfC is a semi-failing process with not enough active reviewers for the 250-300 submissions a day and when draft is too often a dumping ground for some. Yes, the quality of some reviews is below what would be ideal but with the endless spam, promotion etc it's easy to get jaded. Also at the moment if all reviewers did deeper/longer reviews the backlog would be back to over 6 months which in many ways is much more negative to submitters that a quick decline with pointers on how to improve and where to ask for help. What I hope is that if we get more people from projects such as this helping in areas they are interested in both the quality of reviews and feedback to submitters for these would improve but also if the load reduces their hopefully will be improvement overall. Most of the current submissions listed at Wikipedia:AfC_sorting/Culture/Biography/Women have not even had any review and I always for sorry for those who just sit waiting for any feedback for months. I live in hope things can improve and in this case notable women have the articles they deserve. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 17:33, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for your useful explanations, KylieTastic and for your enthusiasm. If AfC is a failing project, then perhaps we should try to work on some other way of attracting articles from new contributors. In any case, I'll see if I can help out. I'll gladly promote deserving AfCs to article space but I would like to be relieved from the time-consuming AfC explanations on talk pages, etc. I would just make the move, remove all the AfC stuff and add authority control, defaultsort, categories, etc., and carry out any required copy editing. I would then of course congratulate the creator on writing an acceptable article and offer suggestions for future improvement. Is that OK?--Ipigott (talk) 19:06, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Ipigott I would not go as far as say it was failing, just semi-failing and only because there are too many submission vs active reviewers. In theory having all new submissions from new editors reviewed before being visible to the world is more than sensible as too many want to treat this encyclopedia as a blog or social media outlet. I'm not sure what you mean by "time-consuming AfC explanations on talk pages" the AFCH script-tool is made to make reviewing easier and makes removing the AfC stuff and adding defaultsort, categories, etc. quicker or can be skipped - the only time-consuming part is when declining writing explanatory additional (optional) comments and answering the questions on your own talk page when the submitter does not understand (or did not read) the decline reason(s) and links. However per WP:BOLD any experienced editor is well within guidelines to just move, improve and tidy the manual way, but I would recommend anyone to try the tool as it (especially for accepts) makes it quick and easy to move, tidy and do basic markup (although I always do several more manual steps). Either way, getting any notable article from draft to mainspace is a win and the route is not important. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 19:30, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Yes I was going to suggest: @Ipigott, if you just skip the ones you don’t find acceptable, then you’ll be spared the commenting. I am sure AfC welcomes any reviews, even if just the acceptances as long as they hew to notability policy. Thanks, I do agree with Kylie that speeding up response time could help us retain new contributors! Innisfree987 (talk) 19:38, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

LGBT and Wikipedia

Hello! I've started a new article: LGBT and Wikipedia. I've added a brief mention of Art+Feminism and I'm curious if there's secondary coverage allowing mention of this group's efforts as well. I know Women in Red does not specifically focus on LGBT+ content, but neither does A+F and WiR has had campaigns for notable LBT women. Figured I'd ask!

More generally, I invite project members to expand and improve this new entry. It covers a lot of different (but related) topics, so I'm struggling a bit with how to best structure the article and present various claims to readers. Talk page suggestions also welcome!

Thanks and happy editing, ---Another Believer (Talk) 01:06, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Another Believer: You seem to have made a good start. From this there also seems to be an anti-LGBT campaign in Indonesia. Is this reflected in Wikipedia? Not too sure how to look for pertinent sources.--Ipigott (talk) 06:43, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
I hope these help! SilverserenC 07:02, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, both! I will post these sources on the article's talk page for future reference. ---Another Believer (Talk) 14:36, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
I would caution against using any primary research articles as sources (not that all of the ones listed here are primary). JoelleJay (talk) 21:33, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
@JoelleJay I'd very much welcome your feedback on the article's talk page if you think any of the sources should not be used as citations. Thank you! ---Another Believer (Talk) 23:13, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

February 1 Black women in food and drink editathon

This Smithsonian event looks fun! Innisfree987 (talk) 20:21, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

It does. We definitely need people to jump on the articles created after the editathon, so they don't end up at AfD unnecessarily. (It can be a challenging category.) Cielquiparle (talk) 18:04, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Women in geography

Hi, I wanted to quickly stop by to point a list of women geographers to translate. This stems from the wonderful work of @Hamuli on fr-pw who added more than 100 women geographers in French within a university project. I have started to put them on Histropedia here, but there are many many missing in English ! Here is a possible international working list from the work done meta:Les sans pagEs/Women in geography to translate.

Warm regards Natacha LSP (talk) 13:29, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Natacha LSP, for informing us of this interesting development. As the names seem to be on Wikidata (sometimes with or without accents), they should appear on our EN Georgraphers redlist. If you want to make them more visible to EN contributors, you could always add them to our crowd-sourced geographers.--Ipigott (talk) 15:18, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Basque flagicon

I wanted to add the Basque flagicon next to Maixux Rekalde's name on 253 and 251 as she was associated with the Basque Country in particular, not Spain in general. But I couldn't figure out how to convert a flag into a "flagicon". Perhaps someone else has interests in this sort of thing and can sort it out; no worries if not. --Rosiestep (talk) 23:03, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

flagicon|Euskal Herria seems to work! Mujinga (talk) 23:08, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
@Rosiestep: (EC) Already provided for in {{flagicon|Basque Country}}? Comme ca: Basque Country (autonomous community)? --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:09, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks! (Now that I look at it again, I think I was trying to add the flagicon as "Basque country". My bad.) --Rosiestep (talk) 23:13, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
Ah, Euskal Herria, @Mujinga: ... Basque language. Things I learn. {{flagicon|Euskal Herria}} does indeed redirect to {{flagicon|Basque Country}}. Basque Country (autonomous community). Just to add another reminder here for next time we forget all of this, country flagicon data hangs out in two main places, Category:Subnational country data templates and Category:Country data templates of countries. --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:19, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
  • Believe it or not, Rosiestep, I had Maixux Rekalde listed as a candidate too. I was impressed by the high quality of the Google translation from Basque. Pity there was not more about her activities as a pacifist. I'm afraid I'm not yet up to making searches in Basque.--Ipigott (talk) 15:27, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

"Using Women in Red as a model..."

Here's a nice article by Will (Wiki Ed) dated 31 Jan 2023 regarding a grant Wiki Education Foundation has received. Very nice mention of WiR. WikiEdu, we wish you much success! Rosiestep (talk) 16:38, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, @Rosiestep! You and WiR are an inspiration to us. I hope this project can have a similar impact to all the amazing work WiR does! Will (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:55, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
Will (Wiki Ed) This looks like a really interesting development. If easy-to-use facilities can be used to examine spheres of interest which are not sufficiently represented on Wikipedia, we could not only help to fill some of the missing gaps but could investigate additional ways and means of identifying candidates for inclusion. Collaboration between WikiEdu and Women in Red has enormous potential. I hope we will be kept informed of progress and allowed to experiment with any new features which become available.--Ipigott (talk) 20:49, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
@Ipigott Thanks for being interested and invested. I'm excited about the prospect too. I am eager to share and update you - and anyone else who might be interested - as I can. We're still working on our timeline, but I will post here as soon as we have an update for you. Will (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:26, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Barbara R. Duncan

This is an interesting subject for anyone interested in folklore and Native Americans. Barbara Duncan and her full name, Barbara Reimensnyder Duncan, should be linked. Here is a short bio on her and some of her accomplishments. FloridaArmy (talk) 13:46, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Listeria

Couple of housekeeping notes on Listeria stuff:

  1. I've marked a set of Listeria reports which find en-wiki human articles with no gender in wikidata, for deletion. They're all replaced by the single Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Metrics/Wikidata humans no gender report. I think maybe only three or so of us used these reports, but just in case.
  2. Magnus has performed some maintenance on Listeria, and it now seems to be working better, although not all of our issues have been dealt with. Since sometime in 2021, it has updated redlists sporadically or not at all. Now it is updating somewhere between many and most lists on perhaps a 3-day schedule.

--Tagishsimon (talk) 16:32, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I see most of those I'm interested in have recently been updated.--Ipigott (talk) 21:38, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
Thank you, Tagishsimon; you made my day! --Rosiestep (talk) 22:03, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Banana Chan

Draft:Banana Chan was recently deleted, would anyone be interested in getting it restored and building it up for article space? [1] BOZ (talk) 16:25, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm not finding substantial coverage in reliable independent sources for her. FloridaArmy (talk) 14:01, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
OK, got you. You did ask to have the draft restored though, so hopefully someone can find something for her. Thanks! BOZ (talk) 06:57, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Linda Mosca

Draft:Linda Mosca was an abandoned draft, and she always struck me as interesting as a female wargame designer in a very male-dominated field. [2] Would anyone be interested in getting it restored and building it up for article space? BOZ (talk) 16:47, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

She's noted in some books here. If she's not independently notable per Wikipedia standards she can be merged to the firm she worked at. FloridaArmy (talk) 13:52, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Makes sense, thanks. BOZ (talk) 06:57, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
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