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Moving the needle

LE15 Gender overall in 2018

The Wikimedia survey results have been published and the particpation levels look unchanged as far as gender goes. More disturbingly, the age seems to have crept up, which means to me that our editor population is aging and we are not only failing to attract new women editors but we are also failing to attract students and other young people the same way we did in e.g. 2006. What happened to our community to make it so hard to join in? Jane (talk) 10:33, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

I'm sure this has been discussed elsewhere several times, but primarily I would say it's the difficult user interface (compared to Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp etc, having a talk page discussion like this is too hard), which in turn leads to boilerplate templates and a proliferation of policies that present far too much of a learning curve. Throw in general aggressiveness, accusations of "spam", "sockpuppetry", "COI" and "canvassing" and you end up where we are. I don't think "desysop all admins who don't write at least DYK worthy content, and ban automated tools from anyone else who doesn't either" is a starter, so I'm not sure what we can do. Sitting down side by side with an experienced editor can help, but getting to the level where you're comfortable working on anything anywhere is generally too much of an effort for people to undertake. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:04, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
I'm not sure making it too easy is a good thing but certainly a little easier - not to edit but to understand the various policies and pages and how tos and all that...I dunno - do we ever get feedback from people who tried and failed and work with that? I have met some people who give out about the biteyness towards them (as newbies, as women, etc) but when I looked into it, basically they didn't get bitten, they just didn't like that they got reverted at all (anecdotal only, just a few people I met).... There is a disconnect between the idea that anyone can edit and anyone can say anything anywhere on the wiki. I'm not sure it's that the user interface is that hard as that unlike anywhere else on the net, you have to justify everything you write here. You can't just say what you want and move on. It is harder, more like building a computer or knitting a jumper as a hobby than posting about your day on FB. Perhaps the sales pitch is wrong. Should we stop talking about how easy it is, and talk about how rewarding a hobby it can be. ☕ Antiqueight chatter 11:29, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Playing devil's advocate slightly, Wikipedia's interface and documentation might be "difficult" compared to Facebook et al., but it wasn't unusually difficult when I started editing (when you had to learn a different markup language for every forum/bulletin board/mailing list), and it isn't difficult when you consider what it's for: researching, writing, editing and type-setting the world's foremost reference work. Faulty comparisons with social media sites, where self-promotion is the norm, also helps explain the extraordinary proportion of new editors with COIs: most people under 25 have probably never used a traditional encyclopaedia, so don't have a clear idea of what Wikipedia is, so end up seeing it as yet another place to have a "profile". I think we might have to accept that the days where anyone can leap straight into editing are gone, and instead focus on more effective ways of inducting and training new editors. – Joe (talk) 11:51, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
Yes I think you're on to something. Certainly my younger nieces and nephews have never needed to crack open an encyclopedia, and I believe my own daughter at one time used one as insulation against a draft in the winter. Jane (talk) 12:49, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
  • (Insert rant about how the WMF is still not measuring ethnic and religious diversity in their survey about diversity.)
I feel a bit like a broken record. (I've even pitched this over skype to the WMF but no one seems to care all that much.) But the two major barriers to entry are 1) interface, and 2) policy. We've done all this work with visual editor to lower the first barrier, and we've done nothing to lower the second.
The average new editor does not have the buy-in to commit to the 5-10 hours of required reading needed in order to just get a handle on how much policy is out there. The average new editor is just going to start editing, muck it up, and then get frustrated with what looks like an insider clique speaking a foreign specialized language, because that’s what it is.
One way to lower that bar is to have digestible ~10 minute videos summarizing each major policy page. I even wrote up a first draft of a script a few months ago to illustrate what I mean. But basically,there’s no reason to expect a new editor to take the time to read a 10 page essay on reliable sources, even when they’re pointed directly to it, and even if they know what they’re being pointed to when someone goes [[WP:ABCDEFG]].
Half of our regular editors need to be pointed to a policy a half dozen times before they actually take the time to read it in full. So you fix that by giving editors something digestible where they can passively learn, and then if they have questions, they can go directly to the policy itself and figure it out, but do so in a situation where they’re broadly acquainted with what’s there and what it covers. GMGtalk 13:47, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

Speaking as a fairly young person myself (not quite 25!), I have a few comments. I joined Wikipedia last year (and stayed) for a few different reasons: I enjoy writing and editing, I wanted to improve sub-standard articles on topics I cared about, and I had also just finished my undergraduate university degree, which meant that my research and citation skills were much stronger than they used to be. Lastly, when I found Women in Red, I started connecting more with other editors & online community members, which meant I wasn't just editing (and learning/struggling) alone anymore.

Being able to teach yourself how to edit Wikipedia properly is great, but it's complex. It takes time. I think it can be intimidating (and sometimes discouraging) if you don't already have the inner drive/motivation to do that. I didn't have any Wikipedia-savvy friends/family/mentors to show me how to edit Wikipedia, so I had to start from scratch by myself. My first new article was deleted because I didn't understand how the notability guidelines worked. While Wikipedia does have training resources (e.g. the Teahouse or Help Desk), they're not always easy for a new person to locate, and it's not really the same as being able to just talk to somebody face-to-face. I suspect more young people would be willing to edit Wikipedia if there were more real-life peer groups or training sessions they could access: groups where they could ask questions and learn their way around more easily. I keep thinking I would like to develop a group like this in my community, but I don't really know how to begin. Maybe this is something we should be having more discussion about? Alanna the Brave (talk) 13:49, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

I'm amazed you've stuck with us to the point you're now churning out GAs, Alanna; I would have expected people like you to have given up ages ago. Possibly it's because you've found a niche area that not too many editors work on, so you can use your writing and researching skills easily and learn as you go, without other people getting in the way. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 13:55, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
I entirely agree with your point about policy Alanna the Brave but disagree (somewhat) with the solution. I think it would be helpful for some people to have videos but I read a lot faster than I can watch a video and so they drive me nuts and I will avoid anything which requires or even requests me to get my information that way. I honestly think it isn't so much the form that the information is in as that the information is fragmented and ill defined. We need a project to turn the policies into clean simple documents. Then if people want to create videos or gif collections which explain them, that's great. But we should not have 6 different pages from policy to essays on a subject that indicate how, why, when etc. But then I'm not under 25. But I still think it's the confusion of policy that causes the issue, not the interaction methods. ☕ Antiqueight chatter 14:04, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
I mean, you and I are probably the type of people who prefer to read the policy directly, because we're the type of people who stuck around, read hours of policy, and figured out what we're doing. This is aimed at people who come here, get overwhelmed, and nope on back to instagram and twitter. Half of what we do at the Teahouse is summarize policy in digestible bits, because your average denizen of the internet doesn't have the the time to figure it out on their own. GMGtalk 14:10, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
I have to confess that I myself still cannot say I am proficient in all of these policies and guidelines, but I know where to locate them (I guess this is somewhat related to "institutional memory"? A term I strongly dislike). I agree that the interface needs to be better, and I think WMF folks are aware of it, although they are probably mostly too disconnected from the actual community to come up with creations like Visual Editor. Reading about editors like Alanna the Brave always bring a smile to my face (a quick reply: have you already read about Wikipedia:How to run an edit-a-thon?); the community aspect is what makes everything click together (that was my experience back when I first started), but I think sometimes that very aspect is slowly drifting away outside of projects like Women in Red. Alex Shih (talk) 14:30, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick tip Alex Shih – I hadn't seen that "How to run an editathon" page before, but it certainly looks like something I could use in the future! Alanna the Brave (talk) 16:28, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
If you mean me here- then nope. I struggle to follow the policies and have survived by a process of luck and copycatting. My first article was deleted because I didn't understand notability - I didn't even know there were guidelines. So it's not that I don't agree. Alanna the Brave is entirely correct that the policies are a major obstacle IMO. I don't read policy here - I skim it looking for the key words that affect what I'm currently working on. I use find and google search and look for where people answered the question already and I go ask people who were nice to me once upon a time..I avoid offering to help in the Teahouse because I am never sure I know what I'm doing without the addition of trying to help someone else do it. So I totally think we need to get the policies into a more digestible format but I think we should do that as much by eliminating the debris that has built up around the policies as by creating a new way to interact with them. We need to prune first - or mostly. Actually of course, creating a video as well could be done simultaneously but as soon as we make changes to policy it becomes another thing that needs to be updated. ☕ Antiqueight chatter 14:31, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
Well, in that respect, that's why they have to be written as broadly as possible covering mainly core policy content that is unlikely to change. That's what I tried to do in the script linked above. (Now that I'm thinking about it, I may try to start a second one today.) Instruction creep is a problem too, but it's just one I don't think the community is going to get behind any radical changes in.
But for my part, I would much rather welcome new users with a template that has embedded videos for N, V, RS, NOT, and OR, than welcome them with a million policy links. GMGtalk 14:38, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
Apologies GreenMeansGo I misread the above as originating with Alana where as it was your position I was discussing. I can get behind offering video as an option for the new user but only as a secondary information source, with text, not instead of or dominating over. I know too that people using computers in public spaces will skip video as they can't listen to the sound and it requires good hearing to follow verbal instruction. I think it's a good idea to have them available for those who do prefer it as an option.   ☕ Antiqueight chatter 17:02, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
No worries. My intention was to essientially end each video with some boiler plate statement like "Hope this was helpful, for more information see the policy itself." To make it clear that this was just an explanatory suppliment, and did not itself carry the weight of policy. In my imagination, it was also supposed to be written basically for teenagers at about a 10th grade level.
Anyway, the things would be easy enough to write. It's just getting the WMF to cough up enough money for a couple half decent actors and the production involved. Either that, or get the right volunteers in one place to make it happen. I don't pretend to have any solutions to either of those problems though. GMGtalk 17:23, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
Gender of community audiences for 2018

It's interesting to note the discrepancy between the makeup of organizers vs. editors (see chart). This is my experience too, going to edit-a-thons and other in-person events. I'd be curious to see how that breaks down regionally, too, since the data is across Wikimedia projects. I feel like these discussions typically bring up the technical element and the policy element. Both valid points. IMO technical barriers have been drastically reduced since the refinement of VE and the citation tool. Policy is still a challenge, but that varies based on the kinds of articles/edits someone enters into, and is too much of a bear to try to change rather than develop ways to onboard people without policy becoming a problem. There are ways to do that, such that they're prepared for the kinds of interactions they'll have and policies that will come up, and I know most everyone here has a lot of experience doing just that. Something I wonder about though, is that big group of people who do get it, who we do bring in according to best practices, and who are interested in editing Wikipedia... but don't. That's a really big group. I talk to people all the time who are excited about Wikipedia, found editing rewarding, and just don't follow up and do it. If you were to ask them, they'd say "yeah I want to get around to it". Of the people I talk to, these are primarily academics, librarians, and nonprofit sorts. People are busy. In-person events are clearly bounded and digestible, feeling good about doing something that you know you can schedule and won't stretch out towards infinity. Does anyone have experience with doing structured off-wiki follow-up with the people who express that they like editing and/or want to do so but just haven't? Even collecting emails at events or using the email function on-wiki to send personalized (i.e. probably not mass messages unless they look personalized) follow-ups with clear tasks (i.e. these articles I'll list, this topic to correspond to a particular holiday/event, etc.)? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:37, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

That's a good point. Though I've never really been involved with on-campus outreach events, I've often thought that trying to get academics directly involved in editing is futile. They just have too many other things to do. It'd be more productive to convince them that Wikipedia editing is a valuable thing for their graduate students and brighter undergrads to do. – Joe (talk) 16:14, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
I agree that there are barriers to getting academics to edit, but for those who are interested to do so -- and there are an awful lot -- I've long thought there were ways it should be possible. So see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Fellows for an ongoing effort. Our pilot program of 9 academics resulted in 1 GA, a couple substantial new articles (e.g.), substantial improvements to 10-15 other articles during its 3-month run, at least one ongoing active editor (currently working on another GA), and 4 people teaching with Wikipedia. It was successful enough that Wiki Ed decided to expand the program (there have been 6 more cohorts while I've been on leave from Wiki Ed, and we'll start several more in the next couple months). There are several people who fall into the category of "excited to edit, but just haven't" and how to re-engage them has been on my mind. Getting them to teach with Wikipedia is one way, but I wonder if specific tasks/articles that I know are relevant to them would be worth doing, too... — Rhododendrites talk \\ 16:29, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
I'm working on the idea of getting people to edit as a hobby rather than a thing which should be done. Or to see what they and theirs get from adding to the work. I think if it is something people think they should be doing it will remain like exercise - a good idea not followed up on. But whether it will work or not, well - I should have a better idea at the end of October. I'm starting small. As I said above - I'm uncomfortable trying to lead too much in this since there is so much I haven't read myself, so much I don't know. ☕ Antiqueight chatter 17:02, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
Late to the party (as when am I not?), but I would wager that at least part of the problem is that beginning to edit has become so much more complicated than it was way back when. When i started editing, it was pretty easy to pick up the syntax on the fly - there were only two or three things you needed to know. And you didn't really need to know policy...it was enough to just sit and watch for a bit before making a few test edits here or there. The atmosphere didn't hurt, either - it was a bit looser back then, a bit more Wild West. Which has its disadvantages, sure, but it meant that I could make mistakes without too much fear of horrible consequences. I'm not opposed to a lot of the changes that have taken place in the years since, but I think it's important to realize that they may have more to do with being a barrier to entry than perhaps people realize. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 18:49, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

Interesting responses here! I agree it used to be a bit more Wild West and also that the policy pages are confusing and messy. I believe we didn't have them back in the beginning and I have avoided them quite well and try to make a point of ignoring all comments that go [[WP:ABCDEFG]]. I am a big fan of copy/paste and copycatting to keep articles sticky in the sense they stick around from year to year. Now and then you run into page squatters and then I just shrug and leave the page alone. I am always quite pleased to see pages grow that I have started and often feel I am at my best when I discover some group of things worth making stubs for, especially when these stubs grow substantially within a year. These days I have pretty much moved completely over to Wikdata, but I feel that Wikipedia is the first port-of-call for new editors. Odd really, because it is much easier to "knit a sweater of edits" on Wikidata than on Wikipedia. I agree we need to teach people how to make it a hobby like knitting rather than try to make them do stuff on our priority list. Not sure how to explain that though to newbies (and believe me, I have tried). Jane (talk) 19:01, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

I am aware of some of the policy pages, generally older ones. In the sense that they exist and I know that. But I can't cite chapter and verse on any of them. I don't feel that it's hampered me at all, as an editor. If we could convey that to new people, maybe that could help some of them stick. I agree, though: Wikipedia should be a hobby, not an avocation. Trouble is, it's not a hobby for everyone, just as knitting isn't. And I'm not sure the focus on bringing new editors in recognizes that, necessarily. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 19:20, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
For those that would benefit from watching training videos, there's a set at Wikipedia:Meetup/ArtAndFeminism/Resources that break editing Wikipedia into chunks under the heading: 1. Get started: Learn to edit! Perhaps new editors could be directed to them? Oronsay (talk) 21:42, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
  • I've been on the road for the past couple of days and have not been able to contribute to this discussion until now. I must say I have to agree with those who say editing Wikipedia (particularly the English version) is far more difficult than contributing to the social media or even to some of the most popular informative blogs. I also have to agree that the level of control on Wikipedia is particularly intimidating for many of the competent young women who try to come along and contribute positively to improving coverage, not only of women but to all the other areas of interest. Somehow I think we should try to develop a more user-friendly interface for younger people (both boys and girls) with more supportive assistance from administrators and article reviewers. This could be aimed at facilitating contributions on new articles (perhaps even as a competitive challenge). In my opinion, we need to do something about the dominances of male technically oriented players soon or the battle will be lost. I think we may be able to devise a wikiproject, maybe "WP ComeInAndContribute" (or something along those lines). Isarra: Project X may even be able to devise an attractive user interface. I think we need initially to support younger contributors from both sexes but if it gets off the ground we could provide additional incentives for women. Rather than just discussing difficulties, we need to come up with something new and attractive.--Ipigott (talk) 19:59, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
    • I think this sort of thing would be great, but it's a cultural issue as much as a technical issue when it comes to engaging younger people IMHO. Most recruitment pitches in my part of the world are definitely not aimed at younger people - I'm in my 30s and I can usually expect to be, if not the youngest person, definitely the youngest woman if I come along. I'm not sure how exactly, but it's definitely a gap that I can see: my peers think my Wikipedia editing is a big quirk because even though they use the site, they've never been sold on contributing to it. And I don't think that was always the case - I think this is something that's been a bit lost over the years, because I certainly had some my-age peers here once upon a time. The Drover's Wife (talk) 00:01, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Yes I would agree that there were younger 30-somethings around a few years ago and they seem to have disappeared. There is an interesting email conversation about the survey results in general, but this email from Kerry Raymond seemed to me to be more specifically about women and also offers a few insights here. Jane (talk) 19:07, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

It's interesting you both bring this up, @Jane023: and @The Drover's Wife:, as I myself am a younger 30-something (34, to be exact), and I can see a lot of reasons why Wikipedia would appeal to our demographic. Specifically; we came of age as adults at about the time it came into existence. So it wasn't an integral part of our schooling, yet, but it became part of the way we thought about learning. I graduated high school in June of '02, and I distinctly recall watching Wikipedia grow in prominence in varied Google searches when I was doing research in undergrad, through 2003 and 2004. It was slowly beginning to insert itself into the conversation in those days - it hadn't become the juggernaut then that it is now, so people had more of a chance to get familiar with it on easier terms. I wonder...maybe if they felt the barriers to entry then were too great, they've only gotten worse since? --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 19:28, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
What makes the current hardcore Wiki-addicts so "special"? Why did we stick around to become regulars who dream in wikimarkup and eat WP:### alphabet soup by the gallon? Why is that addiction so hard for current newbies, or is it really? We're spending a lot of energy on trying to figure out why today's newbies don't stay, but do we have any idea why the veterans have stayed. What got us hooked back when we were newbies, just as afraid of messing up as todays first time contributors?Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:05, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
First, there were things needed I knew I was good at. And then I found a friendly reception, and people who were willing to teach me, and tolerate mistakes. And they were also willing to my arguments. (But I was also already quite used to working on internet forums, and not afraid of publishing, and had learned to cope with something I wrote being rejected). DGG ( talk ) 15:49, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
I found one topic where I could tell that an article really needed work, and then I found some other things I could check in on fairly regularly, like seeing if there were any new science or math deletion discussions, so participating became a habit. XOR'easter (talk) 16:08, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Donna Strickland

Couple of articles today about Donna Strickland, and how she wasn't even the subject of a Wikipedia article before winning the Nobel Prize yesterday.

Offhand, it looks like another failure of AfC. But this one's bad...I've seen it on my Facebook feed already twice this morning. It's about the best proof we have that a.) we need to reform the AfC process, if not nuke it all together, and b.) we should probably consider revisiting the standard for notability among academics based on this. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 17:25, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

It's a shame that no one bothered to write a decent article about her before yesterday. The one in 2014 was deleted as copyright violation, and the one in May was declined as having insufficient references to reliable sources. This is not a failure of AfC, or of notability guidelines — this is a case of no one having bothered to write the article. This WikiProject can help by writing more articles about women, or by contributing to AfC drafts about women that are not quite ready for mainspace. Bradv 17:32, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
  • There's no such thing as bad publicity. We've just gotten tens of thousands of dollars in free advertising about the gender gap and women in science. GMGtalk 18:40, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Well, there is a bit of silly entitlement there I can't help but think. "How dare these people not write an article on this subject and give it to me for free!?" But there's also a bit of an irony in the sense that in the time it took any of these people to write any of these news articles, someone could've just as easily written an article here and solved the problem (at last for one subject). It a bit of...well...if you're outraged about Wikipedia's coverage WP:BEBOLD, right? Makes me kindof wonder what would happen if the WMF just took out a full page ad in a major paper that said "DO YOU THINK WIKIPEDIA SUCKS?" ... "Good, come help us make it better."
Maybe this is fodder for a Signpost article, although I've never taken the time to write one. GMGtalk 19:38, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
@GreenMeansGo: I like the cut of your jib. I've made similar arguments myself, off and on, in private conversation over the years. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 19:42, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
  • A more interesting question, imo, is why she is still an Associate Professor, few of which are notable. Something for the not-terribly-famous University of Waterloo to answer perhaps? The draft did not make a strong case for her, & I doubt this case can be used to change NPROF. Citation indices were not brought into play, which might have changed things. Johnbod (talk) 18:45, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
    • Answered in The Chronicle of Higher Education on 2 October: she didn't apply, and still hasn't decided if she intends to in the future. I note that the top of the salary bracket for Associate, Assistant, and full Professors is actually the same (though the floor is different) at Waterloo. If Strickland were already well up the salary scale the change in title wouldn't necessarily come with a salary bump, and if she's not looking for a senior administrative post or a job at another institution – that is, if she's happier running her lab and doing science – then it may not have been worth her while to put up with the meetings and paperwork.
      Looking at the University of Waterloo's Department of Physics faculty list, I count 6 female profs out of roughly 40 faculty members. That's about 15%, which isn't great—but is in line with the share of physics PhDs awarded to North American women over the last couple of decades. Of those 6, I see 3 full Professors (50% of female profs). It's a small sample, but the fraction of male physics profs at Waterloo who are full Professors is also about 50%. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:31, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Women in Red's stated objective is "to turn redlinks into blue ones within the project scope: women's biographies and works by women." Until yesterday, when she won the Nobel prize in physics, Donna Strickland was a redlink on Wikipedia. (Note that it automatically became a blue link upon post-award creation of her own BLP.) Why did Women in Red not take the lead in creating Strickland's page before March 2018, when single-purpose account User:Campbpt0 submitted one that was declined in May? Thereafter, why didn't Women in Red resubmit an improved draft that would pass muster? It seems to me that Women in Red failed miserably in its self-defined task. KalHolmann (talk) 18:58, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
    How many biographies of women have you written, KalHolmann? – Joe (talk) 19:42, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
@Joe Roe: Thanks for asking! I didn't create them, but of my top six edited Wikipedia pages, four are BLPs of women: Chelsea Manning, Christine Blasey Ford, Joy Reid, and Reality Winner. Currently, I am among the top two editors of Christine Blasey Ford, both by number of edits and by added text. Unlike Women in Red, however, I profess no stated objective to turn redlinks into blue ones within women's biographies. So there's that. KalHolmann (talk) 20:01, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
So, zero. WiR, on the other hand, has written many thousands and is therefore objectively not a failure in its own terms. Criticising volunteer-driven projects for not doing something you could have done yourself makes you look rather foolish. – Joe (talk) 06:02, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
It's just as much a failure of WP:PROF that it is not better known and accepted by AFC reviewers. I'll repeat here what I posted a short while ago at WT:WikiProject Articles for creation#Article in Quartz:

"It's not our [AFC's] fault that academics suck at PR or that the general media cares more about the Kardashians than Nobel laureates. Quartz has one hell of a cheek to be bitching about our lack of an article on a subject they have never even mentioned before."

(The entire discussion there is probably worth reading too.)
BTW David Eppstein how many AFC reviews do you do in an average week? It's easier to complain from the bleachers than to WP:SOFIXIT. -- Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:19, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
@Dodger67: My article creation rate in the last month was lowered by some travel. So I only promoted four articles from draft space to mainspace, draftified one mainspace article (and later participated in its re-promotion), deleted one draft, created approximately 52 new articles and three new drafts, most of them relevant for this project. Is that too low for me to legitimately participate in this discussion or criticize the problems I have experienced with it? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:31, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Not that long ago I was submitting to AfC, and my recollection is that submitters do not currently specify which criterion or criteria they think their article passes. Dodger67, would it help if they had to do that, even if just for sorting into piles for potential reviewers? Bakazaka (talk) 20:33, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
Bakazaka I doubt that would be useful, most writers of AFC submissions wouldn't know a notability criterion if you beat them over the head with it. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 22:53, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

This is NOT a failure of AFC. I'm not an active participant at AFC, but I'm pretty sure the guidelines for reviewers do not include the statement if a submission doesn't meet our standards, it is your duty to spend whatever time necessary to do a thorough search on the Internet and worldwide libraries to determine whether an adequate article could be written and if so, write it (curiously, I've seen some editors act as if this is the rule, but it is not.)

This is NOT a failure of WIR. This article, to be sure, falls within the remit of WIR, but the WIR goals are to write more articles, and the deadline for completion of all valid articles wasn't last week. Are there lessons to be learned?

Absolutely.

The editor who created the draft in May didn't do a bad job for an editor with only two edits in their history. There are some red flags in that article which, if seen by the right person might have resulted in a different conclusion, but I don't think the initial conclusion that the draft is not yet ready for prime time was flawed. I do note the editor abandon the draft. Perhaps the big bold "submission decline" left the impression that this is a done deal and they should abandon it. perhaps we should consider wording that is much more positive. (The challenge being that I've seen many such drafts where the best advice is to abandon, so some work is needed on how to determine when to encourage and when to discourage.)--S Philbrick(Talk) 20:47, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

@Sphilbrick: You've got the timing wrong. The draft was submitted 28 March 2018 and was declined on 23 May 2018. The creator did not abandon his draft due to a big bold "submission decline." He walked away from it two months before it was declined, having made no effort in the interim to improve it. KalHolmann (talk) 20:58, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
@Sphilbrick: There are certainly drafts that don't make the case for notability and are properly declined on that basis, but this isn't one of them. In its draft version, it included the claims "co-invented Chirped pulse amplification", "fellow of The Optical Society", and "OSA president", each of which can be referenced a separate criterion of WP:PROF (and only one criterion is needed for notability). It is absolutely a failure of the reviewer to understand the notability criteria and apply the proper one. A draft is supposed to be in the form of an article, not in the form of an argument for why the article is notable, so it should not be necessary to include the information that making a major intellectual discovery counts for WP:PROF#C1, being a fellow of a society for which this is a high honor passes #C3, and being president of a major society passes #C6. If the reviewer does not know these things (or at the very least know that they should be checking the claims in the draft against the criteria of WP:PROF), they lack the competence to be a reviewer of drafts about academics. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:27, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
David Eppstein it is IMHO quite unreasonable to expect most regular AFC reviewers to know that "Chirped pulse amplification" is a "major intellectual discovery" or that membership of a particular society is a "high honour" or that another society is "major". The failure in this scenario is the lack of interest and participation in AFC by subject specialist editors. I can literally count on one hand the number of Wikiprojects that ever bother to respond to requests for assistance with evaluating the notability of subjects of AFC drafts. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 22:53, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
Dodger67 I am not asking for reviewers with expertise in chirped pulse amplification. I am asking for reviewers with a very minimal level of competence: that they understand that there is a guideline for academic notability that should be applied to drafts like this. The review of the Strickland draft is incompetent even according to that extremely low bar. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:20, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
I agree that the draft would easily have passed multiple counts of WP:PROF, and in ways that should not have required specialized subject knowledge to recognize. XOR'easter (talk) 01:46, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
I endorse the above comment. The Google scholar citation profile at the time of rejection of the AfC clearly passed WP:Prof#C1. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:38, 4 October 2018 (UTC).
KalHolmann, I'm not sure why you presume the editor is male. Do you know this? I don't know how you arrive at your conclusions about timing, unless you happen to know the editor. I understand it was submitted in March and declined in May. Many editors do not edit in between the submission and receipt of the results of the review. In fact, I seen examples of editors wondering if it's permitted to edit in the interim. We all know it is, but brand-new editors might not. Unless you personally know the editor I don't know how you know when they abandoned it. It seems plausible that they submitted it, waited for the results of the review and then abandoned it. having handled hundreds of requests at OTRS from editors waiting for review, I know that many editors simply wait once they submit it for review. I don't know why they walked away, nor did I state with certainty why they walked away but I throw out for discussion that the review message might be better worded. Do you disagree? S Philbrick(Talk) 21:34, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
As regards one of Eppstein's points, the Optical Society elected about 100 fellows this year (our category for them holds 100 in total) & I doubt it is sufficient in itself for notability. The presidency probably is - only the 2012 guy before Stickland is now a redlink. Johnbod (talk) 02:15, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
@Sphilbrick: Does it matter whether User:Campbpt0 is male or female? I used he merely because the overwhelming majority of Wikipedia editors are male. In this instance, it's irrelevant. KalHolmann (talk) 21:46, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
KalHolmann, Well, it's disrespectful to make a probabilistic assumption (and I'm speaking as an expert on probability). I'd say it is a bad idea to be making such an assumption anywhere, but more so on the WIR talk page. many people, myself included, occasionally fall into the bad habit of making assumptions about gender, race, age, sexual identity and other attributes, but it's a habit worth breaking. S Philbrick(Talk) 22:27, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
Well I don't want to get into the business of throwing individual AfC reviewers under the bus. If you review enough drafts, you're going to get one where some people disagree with your decision. We should thank people who review enough drafts to eventually get one that raises a fuss; not come down on them like a ton of bricks for not being perfect. This one just happened to draw a lot of off wiki attention.
I don't like PROF, or any SNG for that matter. So I don't write or do heavy work on articles where I can't argue for straight up GNG. If I came across this draft I probably would have left it for someone else, and if I was forced to make a decision I probably would have declined it same as they did, because I'm not comfortable having BLPs in mainspace with zero independent secondary sources. You can disagree with me all you want, but I disagree with you, and that means it's not an egregious and uncontroversial objective error.
The more interesting question is whether we could have captured this editor, who came here ready made to write a bio on a woman in academia. In that we have unequivocally failed, and that's more important than any individual article. GMGtalk 22:03, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
@GreenMeansGo: Should Wikipedia put special measures in place to "capture" users who come here ready made to write a bio on a woman in academia? KalHolmann (talk) 22:15, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
Yes, we have some that have been arguably moderately successful. The Teahouse was one such initiative, as was User:HostBot, which automatically welcomes new editors there. We have other initiatives, like Wikipedia:New pages patrol, which have been designed to increase quality of new articles, but which have probably done so at the expense of being WP:BITEY around the edges. AfC is supposed to be a way for users to get feedback on their articles prior to publishing, but it's understaffed/ill-designed to the point where the backlog is at about 4,000 drafts. (I can't talk because I've not done any really serious AfC backlog clearing in three or four months. But I can't do everything, and I've been doing other things like mostly running WP:FFU for the past year and a half.)
Long story short, we are full up on ideas, but not on ideas that increase retention without drastically increasing the work load on our experienced volunteers, who are the ones we depend on to review new articles, review new drafts, answer emails on OTRS, and do all sorts of other things to help new editors, but which run into a zero sum game issue, because those are also the experienced editors who would otherwise be writing all of our new content and improving existing articles. GMGtalk 22:47, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
@GreenMeansGo: No, no, you quite missed my point. I'm asking if Wikipedia needs special measures to capture users who come here to write a bio on a woman in academia? KalHolmann (talk) 22:50, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
We need special measures to capture all the people who write about all the things. If we can get special measures for any of the people, who write about any of the things, that's a step toward all the people who write about all the things. Since our purpose is to make more knowledge more free for more people, and about half of those people are women, that's especially important, because that's not only half of our societies, but half of our potential user base, that will continue to make more knowledge more free for more people when we're dead and gone, so long as we can capture them. GMGtalk 23:27, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
@GreenMeansGo: I take it you are saying in a roundabout way that Wikipedia does not need special measures to capture the writer of a bio on a woman in academia. We need special measures—but not that special. KalHolmann (talk) 23:39, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
Umm...I'm not sure why you're drilling down on that issue in particular, but yes we need that in particular. And I'm happy to support any measure that makes it happen. I'm writing the encyclopedia my daughter will read, and so are you, and I would like that she should be able to access free knowledge about people like herself. GMGtalk 23:58, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
I used to do a lot of work at AfC, but after I while I realised the process was ineffective. Amongst the project members and regular reviewers, we all accepted that it was broadly the responsibility of the article creator to get the article into shape, and if it wasn't basically DYK-ready, it wouldn't be accepted. The problem was, nobody really asked the writers what they thought! We've also had problems with over-enthusiastic reviewers for years; and since WP:ACPERM, AfC has ended up with a lot more promotional rubbish, which means it's harder to spot actually notable stuff like Strickland.
Eventually, I worked out that drafts got so delayed and authors got so fed up of stuff getting declined, that I decided it would be quicker if I just took the draft myself, improved it and passed it.
A particular success story I've had recently is this post on Editor assistance/Requests from somebody who'd pretty much given up on getting Renee Powell improved. Fortunately, I managed to make email contact with the editor, and explained I had improved it a bit, then Megalibrarygirl came along and improved it even more. The editor was very grateful for the work we had done and thanked us both to take the time out to improve the article in a manner that she wanted. If I'd stuck to Wikipedia policies and processes, none of that would have happened. It's just a question of doing a bit of lateral thinking, and realising that it's a lot simpler for me to just roll up my sleeves and do stuff. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 23:07, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
... and looking at the Vox piece, there are a couple of factual inaccuracies, claiming the article was reviewed by a "moderator" (AfCs can be reviewed by anyone with 30 days' tenure and 500 edits who asks for permission), and gave the impression that the review was a final answer (it isn't) and didn't mention that a review can be challenged on the AfC Help Desk (in which case it might have been passed). However, Wikipedia is in the real world and I can't really fault the writer of the Vox piece for making a bunch of assumptions that would appear perfectly reasonable from an outside point of view. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 23:21, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
My standard advice to would-be editors is to completely avoid AFC, and instead do enough editing of existing articles to be allowed to create articles directly. AFC is broken. Far too many reviewers view it as purely a honeypot for spammers, and view reviewing purely as a process of finding excuses to decline articles, rather than as a way of encouraging new content and new editors. As for your "this new editor who gave up after two months of waiting and never returned should have known about and taken advantage of our bureaucratic appeals processes", the less said the better. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:24, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
Would it be worthwhile to write to Vox, or are their inaccuracies too minor to warrant an erratum? XOR'easter (talk) 01:50, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Why was the original article deleted rather than left up with templates indicating its weaknesses? That seems inexcusable. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 07:55, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

It wasn't deleted, it was redirected to the newer version. You can click here to view the history of the older draft, and click here to see the version that was submitted for review back in March. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 09:42, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
Wow--the March version definitely should have been retained and tagged with some templates for improvement. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 13:17, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
It was retained. It was not deleted. No one bothered to improve it and promote it to mainspace. That's not AfC's fault. Natureium (talk) 17:17, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

We didn't have an article on Donna Strickland until Tuesday 2 October, and that is a shame given there were opportunities to create one earlier, but we do now and that is a good thing.

I don't expect to see much press coverage praising us for having an article on Frances Arnold, but complaining that we didn't have one on George Smith until Wednesday 3 October (clearly evidence of the widespread misandry of Wikipedia editors, etc etc.). Or that we still don't have an article on one redlinked former president of the OSA, Tony Heinz, who is professor of physics at Stanford.

PS: There are some statistics given at Talk:Donna Strickland: according to that, since 2001, about a third of Nobel laureates did not have an article when the prize was announced. 213.205.251.33 (talk) 09:59, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

I am absolutely certain had I seen Draft:Donna Strickland back in March, I would have probably pinged a WiR regular and asked them to look at it, and we probably would have enjoyed beefing it up and making a DYK out of it. But I haven't got eyes everywhere, and the simplest answer to why this project didn't help is we didn't know the draft existed. I like picking up oddball topics like Ruth Guler (who was womankind's answer to Basil Fawlty and created by a longstanding editor, but tagged CSD A7 nontheless), they're just difficult to spot from the herd of promotional chaff sometimes. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:09, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
How many other Donna Strickland-like articles are missing from Wikipedia? I don't know. But lots of us, all over the world, roll up our sleeves and work day after day creating articles about notable women. I wish there were more of us, in more varied parts of the world, with more varied interests, covering more topics. Maybe the case of Donna Stickland will inspire a few others to join in the work. The issue certainly has received plenty of attention by the press. The 1000 Women in Religion Project will occur in early November in Toronto, in connection with the Parliament of World's Religions. Will there be a "Donna Strickland" in the articles they create? --Rosiestep (talk) 15:40, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
@Rosiestep: We currently have around 23,000 declined AfC submissions, which in turn contains 7,000 submissions declined as non-notable people. Amongst that lot, there are probably some Donna Strickland-like submissions; drafts tend not to get tagged with projects (like WikiProject women) until they are accepted. And equally, I suspect some are declined due to "not enough sources" that could be improved and passed with relative ease. I can dig into the category (or badger Enterprisey to write a tool for me) and see what we can find. I've added a source to Draft:Elizabeth Alker and if I can find any more sources about her, I could pass the article - I'm just stuck because I can only find bits and bobs. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 15:56, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
.... and here's a starter for ten - Draft:Adelaide Hamilton. That sounds like something we could pass with the right book sources. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 15:59, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
.... and I'll follow that up with Draft:Georgina Adam, declined with the message "I see u may need help with your sources please look at this link for help inlineing your sorces into t he article thanks" The author has been indefinitely blocked for "failure to communicate". That's not good :-( Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 16:05, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
Ritchie333 and pagestalkers, is it possible to create a bot which could create a list for us, like a Wikidata SPARQL list, which would contain the AfC submissions declined as a non-notable biography regarding women (using AI to determine if the article is likely about a woman) to include the standard columns we have on our Wikidata lists such as birth year, death year, birth city, death city, image, citizenship, occupation, Wikidata Q number, and so forth? I think a list would be quite helpful and I know that many others like working off of lists. I, for one, would be interested in pre-XX-c women writers; Art+Feminism enthusiasts in the month of March might like to focus on artists. The big picture idea is that these article have already been started, but none of us want to sink a lot of time in going through the pile. If a bot could sort them in list form, we might be able to improve some of them and get them into article space. We might also be inclined to connect with the editor who created the article, give them encouragement, and develop new members. I'm adding our Librarian in Residence to the convo, Megalibrarygirl, as she's good with lists/indexes, and EpochFail as he has made me something in the past. --Rosiestep (talk) 17:33, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping Rosiestep. I'm interested in this idea. Could you write up a proposal of what you want such a list to look like and I can work out what we might need from ORES to get it going? One thing I think I'll ask for is some edits to https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory to include a mid-level category for Women. We'd then be able to do some intersections with other categories and get lists like Women + Literature = Women Writers, Women + STEM = Women Scientists, Women + Art = Women artists, etc. I'd also be interested in seeing other bits of cleanup to the directory that you think make sense. E.g. maybe "Biography" should be a top-level category and "Women" can appear under that. Right now, the only place that Women come up is "Women's Health". I'm thinking that seeing some queer categories for WikiProjects like Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBT studies and Wikipedia:WikiProject Gender Studies. For clarity, we train our topic model using this directory so whatever appears there and has some WikiProjects beneath it will appear the AI we can use to route article drafts to subject-specific work-lists. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 21:12, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
Ritchie333, what? You're wrong on both the points.The AFC was commented upon (in a very poor fashion) by a random editor, after his block and quite later, DGG declined it under the NOTPROMO, which was quite-fine enough.Originally, Swarm blocked the author, due to his constant inability to engage in any talk-page-discourse and move-warring to re-main-space BLP articles that did not abide by INLINECITE.That he indulged in UPE-socking further compounds the scenario.
That's not good.That's pretty excellent.∯WBGconverse 15:01, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
That's not my point - my point was, couldn't these be improved by anybody so they would pass a review? Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 15:33, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
Ritchie333, couldn't these be improved by anybody is a meaningless query, at-least to me.
That's somewhat akin to asking Why there exists so many articles which can be taken to a GA, but are yet to be? There is no deadline and nobody is forbidding you (or for the sake of it, any editor) to improve these things.The sugar-coated decline template quite-encourages the author to re-submit their draft, pending the sought improvements. ∯WBGconverse 15:55, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
Quite unconvincing.Nothing much over Newspapers.com.And, I'm unsure as to the exact claim of notability that made you think her to be a prospective blue-link. ∯WBGconverse 15:36, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
But this is the whole point of the various press articles about Donna Strickland! The reviewer followed the process exactly as written, adhering to the instructions and within policy. Yet bad press still ensued. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 16:26, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Here is a bit more thoughtful response from WaPo. Although I can't help but wonder about an editor with 61 edits who feels the have a relative familiarity with the site’s standards to the point where they are running edit-a-thons. GMGtalk 22:56, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Proposal for a spreadsheet of women's biographies that were declined as non-notable in the AfC submissions process

Hi EpochFail. There are a lot of biographies written about women and submitted through the AfC process. Some of them get approved and others are declined. This proposal focuses on the ones that are declined and end up in Category:AfC submissions declined as a non-notable biography. This A-Z list is unwieldy to navigate. I propose that a bot puts these names into a table resembling our Wikidata-generated redlists (examples here.) We would want the list to contain only women's biographies, and to contain some/all of the columns we typically see on the Wikidata-generated redlists (e.g. article, description, occupation, country of citizenship, date of birth, date of death, place of birth, place of death, image, item), understanding that each article may not have all fields filled in. If we had such a list, and if the person had a Q item which led to a biography in another language Wikipedia, our polyglots might be inclined to work/improve those articles enough to get them to main space. If the person were a pre-XX-c woman writer, I would be inclined to focus on that article. During March's Art+Feminism, editors might be interested in the artists on that list. We recognize that not all articles can be salvaged from that category, but I'm assuming that some could be. An additional benefit of this process would be that our veteran editors might interact and mentor newbie editors. But the main focus would be to review rejected articles in a well-established spreadsheet format vs. the current A-Z list. To address your points: I'm very supportive of including queer categories. Also, I looked at https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory but wasn't sure how to incorporate that into this proposal. Please let me know if you have questions or seek clarifications. Thank you. --Rosiestep (talk) 23:15, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

this is obviously very promising but it seems like a more efficient solution would to be to eliminate AfC or at least require some training for the editors who volunteer at AfC. Why go through the hard work of this spreadsheet when an easier solution, as should have been the case with Strickland, is that an AfC volunteer understands that a person with a Google Scholar article with over 4000 "cited by" satisfies notability? AugusteBlanqui (talk) 07:48, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
AugusteBlanqui, have you ever served as an AfC volunteer in any fashion? ∯WBGconverse 15:23, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
Thank you Rosiestep for this write-up. I want to do two things. First, @SQL:. I think we could work together on a bot that maintains an initial version of the lists that Rosiestep is discussing. I assume you are busy and may not have time for this. But I thought it was worth pinging you here since you have built bots to support new page review that use ORES in the past.
Second, I want to clarify re. the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. There are too many WikiProjects to build an effective topic model using a single WikiProject as an output label. So instead, we can use ontologies of WikiProjects to help narrow the higher level categories that the topic-focus of WikiProjects represent. E.g. I would expect WP:WikiProject Women artists to appear in two places in such an ontology: under Biography>Women and under Culture>Art. In this way, the ontology is a really useful way to disentangle the mixture of topics that represent WikiProjects and thus the articles within their scope. Regretfully, there's no such thing as a "Women" category in the current version of the WikiProject Directory. So our topic model can't differentiate Biographies about "Women" from other types of biographies in the new article queue. The fact that we might like to identify articles about Women is a key indicator of this gap.
I propose that someone (could be me, but I'm desperately overworked because I'm also User:Halfak (WMF) so it'll take me a long time) fix the WikiProject Directory ontology so that it more effectively represents the category structure that makes sense for how we want to think about Wikipedia's content. I don't think we need to start from scratch, but we can certainly make some repairs. Generally, I think it makes sense to promote "Women" to the ontology and to sort WikiProjects that focus on "Women" or have a strong gender component under that category.
--EpochFail (talk • contribs) 16:42, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
Thank you, EpochFail; and if you need anything more from me, just ping. :) --Rosiestep (talk) 18:35, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

I've knocked up a very crude Python script, which those with a technical inclination can find the source code at User:Ritchie333/afcbios.py. All it does is looks through AfC submissions in the category discussed above, and outputs any with the phrases "She is", "She was", "Her work" or "Her book". Obviously, that won't catch everything, but it's a start.

I've put a dump of the script output at User:Ritchie333/AFC WIR biographies; have a look through that and see if there's anything that catches your eye to improve. I've just beefed up Eloise Page, which really and truly should not have been declined; although the original draft was short, it showed notability (even the reviewer thought so!) and cited two reliable sources perfectly. Had the draft appeared at NPP, I don't think it would have even gone near AfD. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 20:29, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

@Rosiestep: (and others), I've updated the list, so (if the script can figure it out), it will print the opening sentence of the biography, which makes it easier to look and see which ones are worth improving. I've also split into blocks of 50 to make it a bit more manageable. There's a bit of discussion started already on the talk page, but hopefully this is of use to somebody, and a step towards what you wanted. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 15:03, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
Ritchie333, As I said on that talkpage, I love that the list is no longer just alpha, but also contains the draft article's first sentence. I will certainly review it and see if there are any I want to improve. I hope others do so, too.
Pagestalkers, Is there any way that we can get metrics for how many we "rescued"? (cc: EpochFail) --Rosiestep (talk) 15:59, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
I just improved/rescued Amalia Heredia Livermore. --Rosiestep (talk) 17:05, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
Ritchie333: You have done a great job in creating User:Ritchie333/AFC WIR biographies. This looks like a good basis for action. We could also try to alert page reviewers to their shortcomings. This morning, I also "rescued" Patricia Reif. Thanks very much for an effective approach to combating these unjustified refusals.--Ipigott (talk) 19:20, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
Megalibrarygirl, as you are our Librarian in Residence, what do you think of moving this list from Ritchie333's sandbox to a Women in Red redlist so it has greater exposure? If you think this would be ok, would you please do so, using whatever naming convention you think is suitable; and add it to our Index? Thank you! --Rosiestep (talk) 20:33, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
@Rosiestep and Ritchie333: I've moved it here. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 23:05, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
I "rescued" Rowan Hisayo Buchanan. Very helpful list approach. Bakazaka (talk) 23:43, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
This is a brilliant idea and I really hope WIR sticks with it. AfC really isn't set up to deal with the (incredibly common) situation where the person might be (but isn't clearly) notable and the submitter is not capable or interested in getting it to a state where it could pass AfD, and there's the potential to save quite a lot of articles that would otherwise go down the gurgler with some assistance from experienced editors. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:38, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I agree with the editors above like User:AugusteBlanqui and User:David Eppstein that AfC is dysfunctional; should be avoided and that the best thing we can do with it is to shut it down. I'm not convinced that making a list of its rejects is a good use of our time. That's because it's not difficult to find women who should have articles – you just need to keep your eyes and ears open. For example, I was watching a gardening programme yesterday. This featured several prominent women gardeners. I jotted down some notes about the women and plants and started a stub about one of them – Margaret Owen (plantswoman) – but haven't found time to do more. So, the problem is not finding suitable subjects; it's finding the time and resources to do something with them.
As a further example, I just patrolled AfD and found an article about a pioneering woman: Jean A. Stevens. That wasn't getting much attention; it had been relisted twice. And it's in a deletion list: Women-related deletion discussions. That page lists many such discussions but it appears that none of them are getting much attention and it doesn't appear that WiR regulars are patrolling this list. So, again the issue is not that we lack lists of things to do; the issue is finding the time and resources to get them done.
So, we perhaps need less pontitificating, coding, criticism, tagging and battleground behaviour. Wikipedia editors should be editing and anything which takes them away from this activity is counter-productive. I shall now go off and start another article about a woman. Andrew D. (talk) 21:25, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Thanks for this list of rejected articles. I've just dived in to the "P" section of the A-Z listing and rescued Peace Uzoamaka Nnaji, a Nigerian politician, clearly notable as an elected member of Nigerian House of Representatives. The reviewer wasn't happy with the single, government, source, and wanted more extensive coverage. The creating editor made just this one edit, in March 2018, and a brief note on her talk page, and hasn't been back since. She wasn't welcomed on her talk page, or given any advice there on how to improve the article to get it through AfC. How sad: further evidence that AfC just doesn't work.
Could the list pleaase be linked more prominently from the WiR page? And do we add a WiR banner to articles we've rescued, inspired by this list? ("WiR Rescue Squad"?)
And as for Andrew D.'s comments about Jean A. Stevens being in the Women-related discussion list: I look at that most days, hover my mouse over the articles, and decide whether to go further. LDS is one of several topic areas I avoid, and I couldn't summon much enthusiasm for yesterday's spate of beauty queens and figure skaters! PamD 08:13, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

God, AfC makes some terrible decisions - I just came across a member of the Cameroon Senate on this list who had been declined for non-notability: her article was in bad shape, but whoever read it didn't read the stub article enough to notice that it was an absolute pass per WP:NPOL. Another one I saved earlier is a fairly prominent Australian author who I was very surprised didn't have an article already. And reading up there's another national MP caught up in AfC. This is such a necessary exercise. The Drover's Wife (talk) 09:13, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

I just salvaged Cathy Wong, current speaker of the Montreal City Council. May need some work yet, but I think it will stand for now. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 15:20, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
A couple of drafts I have passed after adding 1-2 sources and let them through, knowing full well they have issues. A lack of perfection has never been a reason to delete anything, and things can be fixed by regular editing. Somebody's had a go at improving Kaz Hawkins, okay they haven't adhered to the MOS but so what? It can be fixed. I've been out of the loop on AfC stuff for some time, and it seems in my absence, the bar for passing has got higher. At the end of the week, I'd like to tot up and see how many declined drafts we rescued, and see what the current AfC regulars can do to fix it. The problem with just getting rid of AfC full stop is if a portion of the community wants to delete an article, where does it go to be "safe"? Do we just leave draft space to be something manual, and get rid of the AfC process altogether, or get rid of drafts and have people userfy stuff? Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 19:49, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
I think this comment takes the biscuit - "The Encyclopædia Britannica is not a reliable source"! Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 23:08, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
That's pretty egregious, but mistakes like that (usually in favor of rejection) appear to be par for the course for AFC. On the other hand, that article genuinely was not ready for acceptance. I left a more detailed comment explaining why its sources are inadequate. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:19, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
  • headdesk* I think AfC serves a certain purpose in reducing the amount of crud that goes in to the public encyclopedia, but so many new editors aren't capable of getting an article on someone whose notability could be disputed to the point where it could pass AfD - so this kind of endeavour is really, really valuable to fill the gap. Though perhaps there needs to be something to teach reviewers blocking articles and sources that can't be disputed to do better. The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:25, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I'm checking the ones currently in red. Checking through the D's, there is only one that possibly should not have been declined Draft:Chrys Ingraham declined as non-notable, but the person is notable as author and professor & the article clearly shows it -- however, the content is a downloaded CV formatted as a CV.,sourced only to her website, username is " Ingrac", and contains promotional text: "Ingraham received wide acclaim for her critical work on weddings and heterosexuality. " "ground-breaking work ". I have restored and rewritten and accepted. It needs to have book reviews added. There are a few others that were declined as non notable but are essentially pure advertisements, and that should have been given as the reason. I'm not going to restore those. I will be working on the others. I also will check the other AfC declines of those declining incorrectly, DGG ( talk ) 18:35, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

the actual 3 insoluble problems -- and some real ways of coping with them

(based on experience with all our various practices for article screening and inclusion / deletion in the last 12 years)

I The first insoluble problem is that it is extremely appealing to any professional or organizations however unimportant to have a Wikipedia article,

and that consequently most of the article submissions are inherently inappropriate for an encyclopedia
If people find WP of value in the world, this cannot be prevented .
Most drafts do need to be declined, and this can cause a negative predisposition in the reviewers

II Second, anyone can write, and anyone can review or comment. We can affect this only at them margins, but we have no way of limiting work here to the competent.

This is the basic principle of open editing, and the basic reason for our existing.

III Third, WP in non authoritarian and has no mechanism for ensuring either quality or consistency.

Any structure we might try to remedy it would be incompatible of our interpretation of consensus decision making.

But there are things we can do, first with respect to article creation:

  1. People coordinating writing projects have a responsibility for first, knowing our practices, and for trying to see that work done in the projects meets the standards.


Below-borderline submissions can give the impression that others are likely to aso be non-notable.

  1. Editathons and other project do not want to screen participants, but a project can discourage people writing autobiographies of other hopeless entries,
  2. A project can look at work that gets submitted, and fix the drafts so they clearly shows notability and is not copyvio or promotional .

Many of the articles on artists or scientists which run into trouble do not make a clear statement of the key factors for notability in the very first sentence.

Reviewing can be improved also:

  1. Most errors are people working too quickly or outside of their fields. The present set-up of AfC and NPP encourages this:the default is to work on the pages in sequential order.
  2. Others are from people trying to do too much at a time. Nobody should work too much at any one phase of the project. I think I'm as accurate as anyone, but I know this is only for the first half-hour.
  3. Most experienced editors prefer to write; most reviewers are relatively inexperienced (though we finally established a minimum level, it is pretty minimal)


What is needed is for all experienced people, such as those commenting here, to take a a share of the responsibility for reviewing AfC and NPP. 100 people doing 10 a week each would make a real difference.

  1. Some of the most experienced people need to check the work of reviewing (and NPP) and follow up with correcting and instructing.
  2. New technical changes allow more effective reviewing patterns: It is now easily possible to use the WP:New Pages feed and select drafts, and look at drafts as they get submitted.


It is effective to do this and quickly pull out of the queue the ones that are clearly acceptable in fields one understands. (It also helps to pull out the very worst and send them if possible to G11 or use the new "reject" option.)

  1. Further technical changes are underway: It is also possible to review by subject, though this is still being widely used or completely developed. .

There is no point in eliminating AfC, because it just throws the work into NPP, which is even trickier to monitor.
The really good think about our structure is the ability to correct errors. We'll never have the embarrassment of print works that cannot be corrected until the next edition ten years later.
But there is also no point in aiming for perfection: the structure of WP was designed to produce a rough-and-ready quick reference work, and it may not be the case that open editing can produce really high quality. DGG ( talk ) 06:05, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

In order to help create domain-specific to-do lists for researchers in red (complementing the existing one), here is a Wikidata query that finds women without a Wikimedia sitelink who published at least two works (on any of a configurable set of topics), for both of which at least one of her co-authors has a Wikimedia sitelink. It then sorts them by the number of Wikidata statements they have, since those statements are indicative of the kinds of information that could be included in a Wikipedia article. For background, see this Twitter thread. -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 00:51, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Daniel Mietchen: That looks like an interesting approach. May I suggest that you add any useful names which come out of the query to Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Academics, preferably with secondary sources.--Ipigott (talk) 06:57, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
This is brilliant, Daniel Mietchen! Would you be willing to set it up in a format that looks like this or this (other examples available here on our Index)? I would defer to our Librarian in Residence, Megalibrarygirl regarding the page name/naming convention. Thank you. --Rosiestep (talk) 21:41, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by occupation/Researchers - Prototype. I've amended the query slightly such that a condition for listing is no EN-wiki article, rather than no article on any wiki; and included a count of site-links. Now the challenge, should someone want to pick it up, is to come up with sets of topics that can be used to configure a set of reports based on this prototype. (The prototype is configured to show authors of papers on topics of Zika virus, Malaria, microcephaly, Aedes aegypti, and Alzheimer's.) Here's a report on topics by P921 count. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:19, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
@Daniel Mietchen, Rosiestep, and Tagishsimon: this is really great! If you need me to add any pages or help format, let me know. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 23:39, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
Thank you, @Daniel Mietchen, Tagishsimon, and Megalibrarygirl! --Rosiestep (talk) 23:48, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
@Daniel Mietchen and Tagishsimon, I tried running the query but it timed out. I wonder if you can show authors of papers regarding "women writers"? --Rosiestep (talk) 23:54, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
I've reigned in the topics report so it should run without timeout now. I'm afraid I'm unaware of a topic of "women writers" in wikidata (i.e. no wikidata item has a P921 value pointing to an item with such a label) and so I can't give you that, Rosiestep. Equally Daniel is the master of adding new topics to wikidata items, so maybe later. Megalibrarygirl - if you'd like to develop from the prototype, it's mainly a question of amending the contents of the VALUES statement in the redlist SPARQL to list the QId values for a selected set of topics ... hopefully if the topics listing report now behaves, it'll be clearer since you'll have a view of the choices. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:06, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
Tagishsimon, Megalibrarygirl: Thanks for further developing the query. It looks as if it could have real potential. As there is nothing specific on Wikidata for women writers, would it not be possible to draw on the logic we use for our Wikidata red lists and simply specify both "female (Q6581072)" and "writer (Q36180)"? If so, queries could be developed along the same lines for other occupations, for example "scientist (Q901)". Ideally, the results of the queries could be displayed in lists like the ones for our Wikidata redlinks.--Ipigott (talk) 07:56, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
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