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Sports, sports, sports (Jun-Jul 2019)

Latest comment: 5 years ago82 comments20 people in discussion

Initiative to improve coverage of women footballers

I've just been reading Nick Levine's article A Ridiculous Gender Bias On Wikipedia Is Finally Being Corrected in Refinery29. It reports on an initiative supported by adidas in collaboration with a team of sports writers to create biographies of 200 women footballers who are not yet covered on Wikipedia.--Ipigott (talk) 07:55, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

I see from here that it is being coordinated by Lucy Crompton-Reid, CEO of Wikimedia UK.--Ipigott (talk) 08:02, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

And/or Rebecca Myers https://twitter.com/rebeccacmyers/status/1134409366021578752 --Tagishsimon (talk) 08:21, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. I can see that if you really want to find out what's going on on Wikipedia, you have to read Twitter. Is there anywhere a list of the 200 footballers they intend to cover and how many they have already created? It would be interesting to see how they compare with those on men. Apparently on average, those on women footballers are much shorter.--Ipigott (talk) 09:39, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Looks like Wikipedia:GLAM/Adidas & Women's World Cup; which would suggest Battleofalma & reinforce WMUK fingerprints. (Prettyplease WMUK, drop a note on this page when you do something like this, so we can cheer along.) Still some red there. Wikipedia-twitter and wikidata-twitter both are useful, but twitter can equally be a hideous timesink. --Tagishsimon (talk) 10:32, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, that looks like a good source. If they are more interested in the Brits, there's also List of England women's international footballers (alphabetical).--Ipigott (talk) 10:38, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Checked the blue links there and found three leading to wrong people: have created Pat Davies (footballer) mini-stub and Pat Davies (disambiguation) after disentangling four people; Janet Turner (footballer) and Sarah Reed (footballer) probably have lots of links going to their namesakes and need some attention. PamD 21:39, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
If we really want to expand coverage of women footballers, there are lots of redlinks in most of the lists under Category:Lists of women's association football players by national team. Perhaps we should include footballers as a priority for August?--Ipigott (talk) 10:46, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
@Ipigott: I'd be up for it. I have three Canadian footballers I would like to make :) --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 22:55, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Just dropping in to say that there is also a coverage gap in female referees and managers, especially at the World Cup level as recent as 2015. Perhaps this can be bundled with footballers into a single redlink campaign in the near future. SounderBruce 23:03, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

@SounderBruce: See below about the proposed yearly suggestion on sports. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 16:09, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

@Ipigott, Megalibrarygirl, Montanabw, Rosiestep, and SusunW: and others. Wiki Loves Sport international campaign organized by WikiDonne user group started and closed the same day the FIFA Women World Cup 2019 in France. Dedicated to this event (but not exclusively to soccer and not exclusively to women bios), 151 new women footballers biographies and 34 improved + 4 new Commons categories were created in Italian, Armenian, Hausa, French and Catalan. This campiagn will continue for a long time, as the next year will be the year of 2020 Summer Olympics in Japan and 2021 will be the year of UEFA Women's Euro 2021 and then the 2022 Asian Games. And so on, all great opportunities to do something in a global way. So keep the eyes on the campaign and you are all invited, doing this together and engaging more languages has always a better impact instead of doing the things separately. Feel free to spread the word and get more people involved. Thank you,  . --Camelia (talk) 10:21, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

This is great news, Camelia.boban. And I see you've been doing a great job on the IT wiki. It would be useful to hear of any new bios you create in Italian which are not already covered in English. You are of course very welcome to let us know about any global events you are arranging. I'm also interested to hear there have been additions to the Hausa wiki. It's the first time I've had a chance to check it out.--Ipigott (talk) 11:42, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

How to deal with sports

In discussing Data about BLPS, Andrew Gray tells us that 46% of the BLPs on women are about athletes (i.e. sports). Should we therefore be offering more encouragement and support to those keen to improve our coverage? On our ideas page, we have been wondering whether simply to list "Sports" in general as a priority for July (possibly extending it into August), or whether it would be more productive to target specific items such as footballers, cyclists, etc. (See also the discussion of footballers on this page.) Maybe we could include a "Sport of the month" over the next few months, just as we have a geofocus. Whatever we decide, we'll need to firm things up for July about a week from now. As I'm no expert on sportswomen, it would be useful to have suggestions from those who take an interest or are keen to write biographies on sportswomen themselves. Or maybe some of you think that as the sports sector is one of the most popular on Wikipedia anyway, we should be concentrating on other areas. What do you think? How should we go forward?--Ipigott (talk) 10:41, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

To quickly clarify - 46% of all BLPs are on athletes. However, those are very strongly skewed male, so they represent a smaller share of women - 32% of all female BLPs are of athletes.
One really interesting thing I found is that there is a pronounced spike in athlete-biography curation connected with the Olympics... and that this spike is much more gender-balanced than the usual levels of article creation. Don't know to what degree that's scalable/transferable as a focus, but it's quite intriguing. Andrew Gray (talk) 11:24, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
I've written a lot of biographies in sports, regardless of gender and whether or not they are currently living. Of the BLP sportswomen I've made, only three of them were Olympian competitors. As for other women athletes, I've focused on marathon, golf, and tennis to name a few. I tend to use Wikipedia:Notability (sports) to help guide me to who should have an article or not. Maybe that could help? --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 15:11, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
In the recent past, we had an almost-year-long focus on women in science. This year, we are doing a year-long focus on women's suffrage. Maybe in 2020, because of the Summer Olympics, we could have a year-long focus on women's sports. --Rosiestep (talk) 15:14, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
I'd support that @Rosiestep: as I tend to write a lot of sports bios! :) --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 15:16, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
Personally, like many in the community at large, I feel we already have enough or too many sports bios in general, partly because the notability criteria are a) pretty generous, and b) much less subjective than in other fields, so arguments are fewer. Readers seem to agree, as the long tail of sports bios get very low views after a particular event is over. Of course, if you are interested in boosting statistics on coverage, sports is a good way to go. For young athletes in track & field, after a few statistics there is usually nothing much to say, so they are rather easy to write.
Incidentally, one problem with non-star athlete BLPs is that nobody notices when they die many decades later - look at Scandinavian winter sports people from 70 years ago- so not all our "BLP"s actually may be that. We assume people are dead at 110 or something (there's a policy somewhere) unless known to be still living, which by that point will again get media coverage. See for example (this is the entire biog text):"Xaver Affentranger (born 1 December 1897, date of death unknown) was a Swiss cross-country skier, Nordic combined skier, and ski jumper who competed in the 1920s. At the 1924 Winter Olympics he finished 17th in the Nordic combined event, 22nd in the 18 km cross-country competition, and 24th in the ski jumping event. He won a bronze medal in the Nordic combined at the 1925 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Johannisbad." Johnbod (talk) 16:32, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
As someone whose main focus for most of their time on wikipedia has been related to hockey, I've seen a disproportionate amount of hockey bios about men that are sub-stubs because they played one game in the World Hockey Association while Women in the CWHL don't qualify. The criteria for hockey players explicitly exclude women's leagues (WP:NHOCKEY). I have created a few bios about historical women and sports (such as Fay Biles) but I am thinking of focusing on female winners of the Paralympic Order. That way I have a list to start from. HickoryOughtShirt?4 (talk) 16:42, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
I think a focus on women in sports can be a multi-pronged effort which might be of interest to various WiR enthusiasts. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:24, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Writing the biographies on Wikipedia
  • Creating or adding to existing Wikidata items
  • Taking photos and/or uploading from Flickr, and adding to WikiCommons
  • Community organizing at m:Wiki Loves Sport.
@HickoryOughtShirt?4: Thumbs up if you do go on to make female Paralympic Order recipients. I've made a few in the past i.e. Anne Ebbs and Joan Scruton. Last I check there was over ten redlinks for women recipients, so there's a decent amount of names to pick from :) --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 19:49, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
@MrLinkinPark333: I've written Sylvana Mestre so far but I'm hoping to complete the list. HickoryOughtShirt?4 (talk) 22:53, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
@HickoryOughtShirt?4: I'm glad you are taking the initative to turn all the redlinks blue! If you wish, I'll try to help reduce the redlinks where I can (some of the names were bit difficult to find sources last time i googled them). I also added the 2018 recipients. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 23:32, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
Interested, and wanted to add that focusing on sports doesn't mean all the bios would be about living athletes; there are coaches, journalists, medical specialists, sports historians, sports photographers, team owners, etc. Some athletes become notable in other areas. Plenty of Olympians go on to careers in other fields; I know I've started at least one article on a motor sports pioneer who also made contributions in aviation. I'm guessing there's enough range in this topic to make it interesting for longer than a month. Penny Richards (talk) 20:29, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
Agreed @Penny Richards: I've made coaches/referees/non-living women in sports as well. I didn't mention them cause this discussion started off with BLPs only. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 23:18, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
We may have started off with BLPs but any focus we have on sports will of course cater for biographies of all types, whether those they cover are living or dead or are about the players or the coaches, referees, etc. Thanks Andrew Gray for enlarging on the statistic I quoted. But if the average for BLPs is 46% and women account for only 32%, then it looks to me as if more attention should urgently be given to women. I very much like Rosie's suggestion that we should have a year-long focus on sports in 2020. Maybe for this July, we should simply keep "sports" in general as a focus. Depending on how that develops, we could then return to sports in, say, September or October, specifying sports which need special attention. In the meantime, we could put some effort into creating or expanding crowd-sourced redlists. We have many Wikidata lists on different sports but we should perhaps be compiling crowd-sourced lists on athletics, badminton, basketball, cyclists, golfers, ice hockey players, skaters, skiers, swimmers, tennis players and volleyball players. Quite an agenda!--Ipigott (talk) 07:47, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

I think it's worth nudging this discussion with regard to transgender sports competitors, for whom Wikipedia and Wikidata have very patchy coverage. This query may not be very good (not sure how to build a better one), but as a basic query it shows shockingly few Wikipedia articles in any language for transwomen sports people (at the time of writing just four women). I have read a few articles by Rachel McKinnon who is famous for writing about her experiences as a transwoman cyclist, and was astonished to find that her Wikidata entry was blank and so was missing from my own query. Transwomen in sports is a hot topic, with sports regulatory bodies being politically lobbied to change regulations and medically based definitions of how to define a "woman". Whatever a reader's interest, it would be good for the encyclopedia to have good coverage of the very few transwomen that have become notable in sports, especially considering the press and social media hostility they each receive for being trans and continuing to pursue their sports careers. --Fæ (talk) 11:27, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

Slight tweak to the reports, Fæ: ... wdt:P106/wdt:P279* gives you items that have that occupation or a subclass of that occuption. Now 36 hits for transgender female athletes on wikidata - https://w.wiki/4$4 ; and 26 with en.wikipedia articles - https://w.wiki/4$6 ... don't think any of that undermines your argument. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:22, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
Ah, thanks. It's been a while since I played with SPARQL. However the report needs more tuning as we are getting results like Kaba-chan who is trans but not a sportswoman or La Veneno who was an entertainer and porn actor. The mix is probably because 'dancer' is classed as 'athlete', but just filtering on that does not seem to tweak these out.
Here's an amended version which filters anyone with 'dancer' and subclasses, which of course might filter some people who have both a career as a dancer and a sportswoman Query. This returns 22 women, of which 7 have no article, so actually only 15 transwomen who are sportswomen on the English Wikipedia. Interestingly adding transmen returns 19 men and there are 7 intersex people shown. I'll tack this report on my user page for future reference. --Fæ (talk) 13:11, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
  • This is a good idea. What I just want to add is that we should not be driven by pageviews, rather the importance of the knowledge gap we aim to fill. Sometimes both usually point to the same thing though. HandsomeBoy (talk) 12:15, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
  • HandsomeBoy, I strongly agree. I've never cared about pageviews! In fact, for the longest time after I first started editing, I thought I was writing in a vacuum -that no one was reading the articles I was creating- and it didn't bother me in the least. I recognized the importance of filling the knowledge gap, one article at a time, and that was/is my motivator. --Rosiestep (talk) 15:05, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
Fæ: May I suggest you write more bios of trans sportspeople under this month's priority on LGBTQ Women and Wiki Loves Pride. I see you are already working on Jillian Bearden.--Ipigott (talk) 06:43, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Female vs. male in sports

Valereee: In answer to your earlier query on coverage of female vs. male people in sports, the Denelezh Gender Gap statistics show that on Wikidata (all language versions), only 14.34% of entries on "sports figures" are coded female compared to 85.65% for male. For "athletes", the figures are almost the same: 14.35% female vs. 85.43% male. Hope this helps.--Ipigott (talk) 07:30, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Ipigott, thanks, yes, it does. I was appalled by the proportion of BLP bios that are of athletes -- 46%! Almost half of the notable people alive today are notable due (or at least partially due to) their athletic accomplishment? That's astounding and very troubling. I was wondering how much of the difference in male vs. female biographies even historically could be explained by the fact we have so many athlete bios. Depending on the country, the disproprortion of men vs women professional athletes is still a major factor, and even in western countries it can only be likely catching up very recently. How much of the fact that we have only ~18% women bios can be explained by sports? Does wikipedia have a gender problem, or does wikipedia have a sports problem? --valereee (talk) 09:44, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
I don't understand how those statistics work at all - there is clearly lots of overlapping/double counting - but I don't think they show %s as high as 46% for the "proportion of BLP bios that are of athletes" - what's your calculation there? Isn't it (both genders, round '000s) 773/3497 = 22% for "sports figures"? One thing that does seem clear is that the linked stats show people born after 1800, not BLPs. Johnbod (talk) 16:38, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
What underpins this weirdness in stats, is the notability policies. For example everyone who ever took part in the Olympics is notable enough for a Wikipedia article, this includes people who never actually won anything, or set any records and for whom we know almost nothing else about them worth writing. In almost every other non-sports topic, people notable for one event might be suitable for a list, but not individual articles. This way of thinking about sports, especially that sports cups, awards, league wins, etc., all make the sportspeople notable, is not the same as the hard criteria we apply to others, including some rather well known cases of women scientist articles that have since been deleted. To my mind, a great improvement to Wikipedia would be to rethink whether sportspeople should be more often on notable list articles, especially when there is little to say about the person in individual articles. --Fæ (talk) 09:55, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, it certainly does seem far easier to justify notability for people in sports (and there are huge numbers of red-linked women who appear to qualify for articles without further ado). Interestingly, the most popular occupations for women overall are artist (6.03% of all bios), author (3.23%), sports (3.17%) and actor (2.96%) whereas for men they are sports (25.35%), artist (15.40%), author (12.82%) and politician (12.14%). This is of course for all languages and time periods but it does seem to show that men will continue to thrive on Wikipedia as a result of their sports coverage as it represents a quarter of all the biographies and is over four times higher than for women. Even in the case of artists (the most popular occupation for women), there are two and a half more biographies about men. But if we are really interested in improving the percentage of women's biographies, it is quite obvious that the easiest way forward is to improve our coverage of women in sports. Unfortunately, I have a feeling most of the WiR participants are more interested in covering other occupations. So perhaps we need to call for more active encouragement from other wikiprojects, especially Women's sport.--Ipigott (talk) 11:29, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
See my comments in the section above - many people feel we have too many sports bios. But we have to recognise that very many prolific editors only write one narrow type of article, on things they are interested in or know about, whether women scientists or football and footballers. And as we know, sport is a major obsession for many people, who are mostly men. In most sports the male events are far more popular than the female ones. The tv pictures of the ongoing Women's World Cup (for those who are even seeing them) show that despite a barrage of favourable media saying how it is becoming a major event etc, the stadia are perhaps 1/4 full. Judging by Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women's sport it seems a pretty dormant project. I doubt there is much that can be done about this, and frankly the solution is to stop worrying about the statistics, or worry more selectively. It doesn't really matter all that much that there is loads of stuff on WP that hardly anybody reads. At least the sports people tend to be as keen on maintaining their articles as creating them, unlike some groupings, so the rest of us can just let them get on with it. Johnbod (talk) 16:22, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm not sure the answer is more sportswomen. Doesn't that just make us sportipedia? But I do think it's worth editors knowing -- and, really, the reader knowing, and academics and journalists knowing -- that one of the reasons Wikipedia is so skewed toward men's bio is that it's skewed toward sports bio. We aren't excluding women. We're just including a lot of sports figures who aren't actually notable, and many of them happen to be men. It's not sexism, or not all of it. A significant amount of it may be sportsism. --valereee (talk) 10:07, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
Even among the athletes who pass our notability guidelines, though, women athletes aren't covered as well as men. Before this year's World Cup started, many of the women on qualifying teams didn't have articles, and outside of Europe most of the women on non-qualifying teams still don't. In contrast, nearly all of the men on pretty much any national football team, even ones from small nations with little to no international success, have articles. Even when you account for relative interest and availability of references there's still a gap. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 14:58, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
Is one problem that the "notability" criteria drawn up for some sports list specific leagues etc in which playing confers notability, and which don't include women's leagues? I'm no expert on football or hockey of various forms, etc, but can remember coming across the "But she played in X league" "X doesn't count, it's not on the list" discussions. Do we need to be campaignng to get some of those notability criteria updated to recognise the importance of women's sport? PamD 15:04, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
There may be some exceptions, but in general there would be very strong objections to that, which I would join. There are certainly structural constraints operating against women, mostly in the past. For example the rules for football notability are pretty straightforward: "Have played for a fully professional club at a national level.... Have played FIFA recognised senior international football or football at the Olympic games....Pre-professional (amateur era) footballers to have played at the national level of league football are considered notable (no other level of amateur football confers notability)." Widen that and the gates of hell open to a flood of 2-line articles (almost all on men). The %s some here care about so much would get worse. But eg the England women's national football team only existed from 1972, and I think Women's football in England only had "fully professional club" teams even later. Plus the number of such teams is still much smaller than mens. At least they are beginning to feel able to charge for tickets. Johnbod (talk) 16:36, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
  • From the above, it looks to me as if we need to decide whether we should spend time on sportswomen simply to improve our statistics or whether we should keep chugging along with an increase of about 0.01% per week by concentrating on all the other categories. If the latter, then we should not expect to reach 20% women's biographies on the EN wiki any time soon. But it might well be useful to look more closely into how the stats would turn out if we were to exclude both male and female sports biographies. Would it be worthwhile undertaking an analysis along those lines? It might be quite revealing.--Ipigott (talk) 16:52, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
Indeed - that would be interesting. There are also some other categories - what wd calls "Warriors" for example. Johnbod (talk) 22:39, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
Any offers? Perhaps Andrew Gray, Tagishsimon, Maximilianklein or even someone from Denelezh. (cc Sarah)--Ipigott (talk) 07:22, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
So, I have detailed BLP data to hand for politicians and athletes, but not other professional groups. Assuming that all 536k athlete-tagged biographies were to be excluded from the totals, even if they're people whose careers were more significant for non-sporting reasons - and there are plenty of those - we would go to something like:
  • 1100k total biographies, 20.1% female (up 2.2% from 17.9%)
  • 490k total BLPs, 28.7% female (up 6% from 22.7%)
For the 241k politicians, same caveats, the removal would give us
  • 1400k total biographies, 18.5% female (up 0.6%)
  • 810k total BLPs, 22.6% female (down 0.1%)
I can't give numbers for the effects of BLPs on any other groups without generating the data for them, which would take quite a while, but here's my best guesses.
  • Excluding artists (327k overall) would cause a substantial drop in % female overall (down 2.8%) and probably a similarly large drop in % female BLPs.
  • Excluding authors (243k overall) would cause a drop in % female overall (down 0.9%) and probably a similar drop in % female BLPs.
  • Excluding researchers (160k overall) would cause a small rise in % female overall (up 0.3%), but I can't predict the BLP effect.
  • Excluding military figures (75k overall, possibly undercounting?) would cause a small rise in % female overall (up 0.5%), and probably a similarly small rise in % female BLPs.
  • And on the sports theme: excluding only professional footballers (170k overall) would cause a substantial rise in % female overall (1.7%) and probably a similarly large rise in female BLPs.
As noted above, the big caveat here is that these groupings are very broad and don't always reflect someone's main notability. I haven't yet worked out a way to do "only purely sports people", for example. It's reasonable to assume that if we could draw such a distinction, the general trend would be the same but the effects less pronounced. Andrew Gray (talk) 11:55, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment - From everything that's been written on this page in the last 2-3 weeks regarding Sports, it's clear there is a lot of interest in the topic. The fact that focusing on Sports would also improve the % of women's biographies is a plus. So I'm recommending that we make Sports one of our topics in July as well as August! --Rosiestep (talk) 15:38, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Should we develop non-sports stats?

From all the above, it really does look as if Wikipedia has a much stronger focus on sports than on any other sector. Up to now, we've been discussing biographies but there are also countless articles about clubs, competitions, leagues, teams, national events, etc., etc. Whether we like it or not, it looks to me as if we are already dealing with a kind of "Sportipedia". On the basis of the figures suggested by Andrew Gray, if we were to eliminate sports biographies, we would already have exceeded 20% for women today. And it looks to me as if the percentage would continue to rise more quickly than at present as we have a significantly higher proportion of biographies of male sportspeople each and every week. I have therefore been seriously wondering if we should set up some kind of mechanism for monitoring progress on women's biographies without sports, publishing updated stats at least four times a year, perhaps even more frequently. That might make for a much more encouraging environment for our participants who do not regularly create articles on sports and sportspeople. It would not mean we should discontinue writing biographies on women in sports but I believe it would provide a more encylopedic perspective on how well we are progressing.--Ipigott (talk) 11:17, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

I don't think having separate stats outside of sports would be beneficial, as that would be excluding a part of all of the overall percentage of women biographies. Alternatively, yes I make a lot of sports biographies but I've made a lot that specifically pass the WP:SPORTS criteria. If i didn't, then Diede de Groot, Wendy Williams (diver), and Kristy Johnston, for example, would still be redlinks. As there are male biographies being written about Grand Slam, Olympic and World Marathon Majors winners, the women in these events should also be covered as well. However, sports are not my only topic I write about either :) --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 18:54, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
I think this is a very good idea - that already 29% of BLP bios are female if sports is excluded came as a shock to me & no doubt will to others. Keeping an eye on these figures seems important. Also refining and checking them - I remain very suspicious that the footballer BLP figures contain enough supposedly very old people, who in reality passed away years ago, to make a difference to the figures. At the same time (having looked around English women's football) it seems clear we don't have lots of bios for current players. Some current team squads are all blue, but for others only the international players are. I found our articles unhelpful as to whether a team counted as "fully professional". Johnbod (talk) 21:14, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Cue sports

Hi! I've recently been doing some bios (as well as tournaments, another articles) for pool articles (and other cue sports like Snooker), and there is a huge gulf in blue link women pool players. There are literally hundreds of notable players such as Kristina Tkach who I recently created. I see you have a list of redlinked people by profession, but there isn't a list for Cue sports (or pool in general). Could this be something I could look into? I'd like to start with some players that have the most redlinks before working down.

(The men's isn't THAT much better, but a bracket like at 2019 Austria Open is night and day for bios.)

Thanks for any help you can offer! Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 18:48, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Hi @Lee Vilenski: - for wikidata redlists, at least, it depends on there being a wikidata item for a person, with an appropriate Occupation= value, such as billiards player, snooker player, cue sport player. Thin pickings, but here's a start: Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by occupation/Cue sport players. It may be that if you can point to lists of female players, we can import them into wikidata and/or improve coding within wikidata to improve the redlist offering. --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:10, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Gotcha. So someone like this doesn't show up as no job is defined? Does having an azbilliards indentifier help with this? Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 20:45, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
azbilliards ID doesn't help much. I've added it to the select; we're now up to 29 items. There are only 285 instances of that ID on wikidata, presumably mostly for men and/or women with articles. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:57, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Worth a try. AZB is on articles I've created, but I don't know about wikidata. I'll see if there are any others I can find anything else that might help. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 21:01, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Is there a Wikidata list for Paralympians, e.g. "participant of" (P1344) + "1964 Summer Paralympics" (Q748663)? If not, would someone be inclined to create it before July 1, when we start our Sports event? Thanks. --Rosiestep (talk) 20:17, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

@Rosiestep: Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by occupation/Paralympians. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:57, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
♥ Tagishsimon --Rosiestep (talk) 21:03, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Per earlier conversations, it would also be good to have these Wikidata lists: coach (Q41583), referee (Q202648) (including subgroups of: official (Q1757103), boxing referee (Q2859667), referee (Q721051), mixed martial arts referee (Q52008305), referee (Q47530518)). Thanks. --Rosiestep (talk) 20:25, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
@Rosiestep: I made the list for coach (Q41583) which is available at Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by occupation/Coaches, it should be filled in by the bot soon. I can take a look at making the referee list tomorrow, I haven't made a list with a group of occupations before but that seems like a fun challenge for myself. --Redalert2fan (talk) 00:43, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Redalert2fan, wonderful; thank you! BTW, I added the list to our Sports editathon page, and to the Index of redlists. --Rosiestep (talk) 00:49, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
There appear to be some problems with Listeriabot and manual updating right now so unfortunately I can't make and check the list at the moment. Redalert2fan (talk) 15:48, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

@Rosiestep: I kind of forgot about the request, my apologies. You can find the list of referees now at Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by occupation/Referees. The list includes all of the mentioned Q's above. If there are more you can place them between the brackets when editing the page like the others, or I can help of course. --Redalert2fan (talk) 20:23, 27 July 2019 (UTC)


Would it be possible to create a Wikidata link for Rugby League please? The women's game is growing strongly and there are adminstrators and match officials that should have biographies too. Rtande (talk) 06:19, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

@Rtande: So what you want is a redlist like Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by occupation/Rugby Union but then for the Rugby League? I checked and there are only 3 women players with the occupation rugby league player (Q14373094) on wikidata, 0 with the occupation rugby league coach (Q59239421) and there is no wikidata item for rugby league administrators. It certainly is possible to create a list, but unless I am missing some occupations/looking at the wrong ones the list will be quite short at the moment. It could also be that some of the women you are thinking of do have an item on wikidata already, but don't have the aforementioned occupations set meaning they don't show up right now. Or they do not exist on wikidata. Please tell me what you want me to do. --Redalert2fan (talk) 00:13, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
@Redalert2fan and Redalert2fan: Thanks for offering to create the list. I do think there must be some categorization problem as there are wiki pages for more than 3 female Rugby League players and there have been a number of notable female referees (Belinda_Sharpe,Julia_Lee_(rugby_league) who also have pages and at least one administrator Raelene Castle. Once the list is setup I can help categorize pages better. Thanks again. Rtande (talk) 03:40, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
@Rtande: Then the problem lies at Wikidata, the women in question don't have an occupation set or don't have the correct occupation set, without these they will not show up on the list. It would be better to try to fix these first before making a list, would it be possible for you to search up a few of these women on wikidata and add the correct occupation? It does not matter if they have other occupations too, you can leave those, but if they have a wrong one you can change them. I probably need at least 2 people per list to check if the parameters of the query are correct and to check if Listeriabot will update the list correctly. Redalert2fan (talk) 10:35, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
@Redalert2fan and Redalert2fan: Thanks for the info, I'll work through some pages and let you know when I'm ready Rtande (talk) 23:42, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
@Redalert2fan: I've tagged few more entries in Wikidata and I know see 61 women players of Rugby League there and 3 referees, no coaches entered in Wikidata as yet Rtande (talk) 05:08, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
Not sure whey they're not showing up on Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by occupation/Rugby League ... seems most have articles. --Tagishsimon (talk) 06:22, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Football at Olympics

In terms of specific notability guidelines, I wanted to find out if football at Olympics is seen as inferior to other tournaments with respect to determining the notability of footballers. I know this is the case for men, but it shouldn't be so for women since there is no age restriction, am I right? HandsomeBoy (talk) 20:13, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to be the case for men. WP:NFOOTBALL: "Players who have played in ... the Olympic Games." WP:NOLYMPICS: "Athletes from any sport are presumed notable if they have competed at the modern Olympic Games". So, they're all notable and the competition is not seen as inferior. The only thing that seems to stink a little in this area is "or have won a medal at the Paralympic Games", because paralympians are still seen as some sort of second class athlete. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:23, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
WP:NFOOTBALL covers women as well as men, and it is unhelpful to imply otherwise. Johnbod (talk) 03:31, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
@Johnbod: I didn't imply otherwise and I cannot parse my reply to construe your rather odd & mistaken take on it. I was responding to the point "football at Olympics is seen as inferior to other tournaments ... I know this is the case for men". --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:13, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
"It doesn't seem to be the case for men. WP:NFOOTBALL: "Players who have played in ... the Olympic Games...." seems to have that clear implication to me, but I'm glad if this was not intended. Johnbod (talk) 03:35, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Well let me take you through it very slowly. HandsomeBoy made the assertion that they know it is the case for men that football at Olympics is seen as inferior to other tournaments, and wondered if that applied also to women. I replied that his assertion was not correct, and that two notability guidelines specified that all athletes who competed at Olympics were notable. I still entirely fail to see how you can construe that as an unhelpful comment about the notability of women footballers. ""It doesn't seem to be the case for men" says implies nothing about women. "Players who have played in ... the Olympic Games..." seems to imply that all players who have so played are notable, but even if you apply a hostile construction that for some reason I had applied that to men only, in so far as the thesis in the question was 'because men therefore women', in the context of the question establishing the notability of male olymiad footballers would establish the notability of females. I continue to take strong exception to the clarity of your impression of an implication which is wholly absent. --Tagishsimon (talk) 07:34, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply, it must have been another platform where I got the wrong impression. HandsomeBoy (talk) 20:54, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
WP:NOLY is pretty clear that any athlete that appears at an Olympics is defacto notable. Whether that's true in practice is up for debate (SNG vs GNG). I thought a national cap was enough for inclusion per WP:NFOOTY anyway? Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 21:20, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Edit-a-thons?

I've been wondering: has anyone considered reaching out to a local sports team to see if they'd be interested in participating in an edit-a-thon related to women's sports? Many sports teams already do family days and other things like that, so it seems like it would be a natural fit. Besides which, it might be an opportunity to work some with younger fans and give them a chance to try their hand at editing. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 01:41, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Lacrosse

Almost all the women’s related lacrosse pages are seriously lacking. Not sure if you’ve already talked about this, but it could be a good thing to do as well. Good places to start would be United Women's Lacrosse League, Women's Professional Lacrosse League and Women's lacrosse. Twooeight (talk) 03:37, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Wild & Crazy Kids

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Possible concern of interest at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard#wild & crazy kids. Can you find and fix this ? thanks-- Deepfriedokra 08:23, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

September 2019 at Women in Red

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
 
September 2019, Volume 5, Issue 9, Numbers 107, 108, 132, 133, 134, 135


Check out what's happening in September at Women in Red...

Online events:


Editor feedback:


Social media:   Facebook /   Instagram /   Pinterest /   Twitter

Stay in touch: Join WikiProject Women in Red / Opt-out of notifications

--Rosiestep (talk) 16:23, 27 August 2019 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Proposed deletion of Trial of Mary Fitzpatrick

Latest comment: 5 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion

The above article, written in response to the Women in Red project, has been proposed for deleterion at: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Trial of Mary Fitzpatrick. If you have any views on this matter, please would you kindly consider adding your comment, heading it with "keep" or "delete" as appropriate? Thank you. Storye book (talk) 16:45, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Update: The AfD has now been closed as keep, so the article is no longer tagged. If you read the above and commented on the AfD template, thank you for your contribution. Storye book (talk) 10:42, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I... probably should have done this sooner, but I had mentioned the Emily J. Harding Andrews image in another context, so I kind of wanted to wait on another image, while being a little intimidated by the sheer size of a lot of the images on my to-do list.

So I did one of the largest ones for today's FPC, for September's Defunct Countries drive, though I suppose it could have gone into this month's indigenous peoples' one, but I like to put things into the grouping that inspired me to do it. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 6.9% of all FPs 06:07, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

  •  
    Emily J. Harding Andrews' rather ableist pro-suffrage poster, "Convicts, Lunatics, and Women!" I've added commas under the assumption line breaks are substituting for them, because it looks fine on a poster and really stupid in writing.
  •  
    Queen Lili'uokalani of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

Not in the other language

Latest comment: 5 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I just learned about another Magnus tool called "Not in the other language" (https://tools.wmflabs.org/not-in-the-other-language/), which creates lists of missing articles. In the "root category" section of the form, you put in the category name in the other language, e.g. "Kleid" (the German category names for "dresses"), and it produced 5 missing articles. Enjoy! --Rosiestep (talk) 14:29, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Experiment: how many of these articles can we make Main Page-ready by September 15?

Latest comment: 5 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion

If anyone is interested, the above listed articles could possibly be included on the Main Page (if only they were fully sourced and cited). Anyone interested could improve the articles and I will ensure they are included as eligible to be bold linked from the "On this day" section on the relevant date.

All these women were born (or died) on September 15 (as far as we know) but currently do not qualify for Main Page inclusion because of sourcing issues in the articles about them. If editors enjoy working on these, I can post more lists for later dates. Just trying a single date for now. Pre-1900 women have the best chance of appearing since space is limited and we want variety in time periods included. Major anniversaries like the 90th year since Oriana Fallaci's birth or Nana Owada, who is turning 20 years old, are also given special consideration. But both their articles are a complete mess. --- Coffeeandcrumbs 09:36, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

I'll get working on Yente Serdatzky. She seems interesting (I love short story writers), nice image, and definitely room for improvement. Penny Richards (talk) 14:40, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
Okay, have a look; Yente Serdatzky's article now has a lot more references, and a new infobox, and other tidying. Penny Richards (talk) 23:39, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
That was it. Thank you. Yente Serdatzky will be featured this September 15. We still have two more spots open this year if anyone is interested. BTW, we could probably get a full blurb for Agatha Christie if anyone was so inclined. Not on her birth date but on the date of publication for one of her most famous books. --- Coffeeandcrumbs 23:49, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
As a Penny Club courtesy, I also worked on Penny Singleton. More references, much tidying, better second image, and a new section on her labor activism (which I'd like to work on more when time allows). Penny Richards (talk) 16:47, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Clean up: Ideas talk page

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Should content of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red/Ideas be moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Ideas, and the talk page redirected to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red. --MarioGom (talk) 13:06, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Add some Structured Data to Commons Files!

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hey all -- on a bit of an impulse, I created a Campaign on the new ISA tool for Wikimedia Commons for the media files supported by Women in Red. The campaign allows us to add "Depicts" statements and descriptive captions to the images in a fun way. See the campaign: https://tools.wmflabs.org/isa/campaigns/21 ! Hope you all give it a try! Sadads (talk) 18:49, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Talk:List of Fellows of the British Academy

Latest comment: 5 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

The list of missing articles here includes many women (many more men of course). There would be no question of notability for them. Unfortunately, only initials are given for some periods. These are essentially from the arts and social sciences - List of Fellows of the Royal Society covers STEM subjects (no red-linked women there for many years). Johnbod (talk) 12:43, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

I have added Wikidata items for FBAs from 2006 to now, with the exception of Laura Marcus, about whom I was unsure - see Wikidata Q64684420 is not Lindsey Marcus, despite link to Semantic Scholar author ID 73732672. Hopefully, I've done enough for them to be picked up in one of the Redlists. Oronsay (talk) 00:46, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Advice on notability for Evelyn Tainui

Latest comment: 5 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

I wanted to check on the notability of a subject before writing a whole article. Evelyn Tainui and her husband donated 1200 hectares of land to help the conservation of the taiko, a highly rare bird, after it was rediscovered on their property (it was thought extinct). There's several good sources to back up this happening. There is a less good source to indicate that they helped with finding the bird, and some information that they worked after the donation to help with taiko conservation. Is all that enough for an article? HenryCrun15 (talk) 02:22, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

HenryCrun15 From checking the page on the taiko (or Magenta petrel for whoever's curious), her name is spelled Evelyn Tuanui, which brings up more results than Evelyn Tainui. However, it doesn't look like there's many in depth pieces on her specifically; most mention her and her husband (or fail to mention her at all :/) donating the land as a pair, and that's it. I don't think it would pass at AfD considering WP:ONEEVENT, but it might be worth seeing what you can expand on the taiko's page. (Edit: it looks like there might be enough information and press on the Chatham Island Taiko Trust itself though? And that could be another avenue to include her/her family's story.) originalmesshow u doin that busta rhyme? 04:55, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
There's already a para on them and the trust at the bird's article, and adding to that a bit might be best. Johnbod (talk) 12:47, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks both. Apologies, I mistyped the name when I was writing in this talk page. I think I agree and will see if I can expand information on Evelyn Tuanui in the taiko page or the Tuku Reserve page. HenryCrun15 (talk) 04:40, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

A 20/20 vision: 20% for 2020?

Latest comment: 5 years ago29 comments13 people in discussion

Watching the proportion of women in English wikipedia slowly inch upwards towards 18%, progress seems painfully slow. An ambitious goal, given this pace, would be to get to 20% by some point in the year 2020. Is that a goal around which publicity efforts could be coordinated? Dsp13 (talk) 05:26, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

  • The more I read about the extraordinary proportion of WP biographies which are sport, and specifically footballers, the more unlikely this seems! PamD 10:06, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
Yes, the edit history of the project main page shows the last 12 months moving only from 17.75% to 17.98% (17.08% two years ago), so that would require a huge jump in growth - some 30,000 bios. In fact the rate of growth has slowed, which is perhaps not surprising after a highly successful period. Personally I'd like to see more emphasis on the better BLP figures, and the even better ones with sports people removed. Johnbod (talk) 11:37, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
Based on the progress, I think we'd be a year short (20% in 2021). It would be nice though if i did get accomplished tho. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 21:02, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
Let's not be too pessimistic. If we could revive interest in something along the lines of The World Contest and perhaps consolidate stronger support from Wiki Ed, I think we would have a fair chance of reaching 20% by the end of next year. As Rosiestep has suggested on more than one occasion, it might also be useful to have monthly priorities based on creating stubs, for example on writers and/or artists already covered in other languages (maybe with some automatic assistance from Wikidata). Given the Swedes' increasing interest and involvement in Wikipedia, maybe we could organize some kind of tie-up with them on focusing more strongly on covering women around the world. And let's not forget the BBC who give more and more attention to innovative women around the world. Victuallers has frequently come up with interesting ways of publicizing our activities or attracting new members. Perhaps he (or any other participants) also have some suggestions.--Ipigott (talk) 08:32, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
Indeed, I'd favor hosting a stub-a-thon in Oct-Nov-Dec where we create stubs from translations or otherwise. --Rosiestep (talk) 12:56, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
The Equal Edit: The se.wiki was founded in 2001 and WMSE was founded in 2007, so Sweden has been going strong in the Wikipedia movement for a long time. While the 2017-18 Swedish initiative, m:WikiGap, is now mostly over, a new one, m:The Equal Edit [1] has taken its place: making Swedish history on Swedish Wikipedia more gender equal. The Equal Edit initiative is not about new article creation. Rather it focuses on adding women into existing articles. A benefit of this initiative for new editors is that it offers a light-weight opportunity to start editing, e.g. add a link for Jane Doe's article into other articles. We've been talking about Linkage+Findability at Women in Red for quite a while but as it doesn't fall under "new article creation", we haven't moved it forward. Maybe someone would like to develop it under the WikiProject Women banner? --Rosiestep (talk) 12:56, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
(sv-wiki. Se-wiki is the Northern Saami one and we're much younger than 2001.) -Yupik (talk) 16:21, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
I've been chewing over a similar thought to this before. It would be difficult to achieve this, but it wouldn't be impossible...especially if we up our focus on stubs for the next few months or so. What would really help matters is if we could get a contest going again. I know there have been some concerns about arranging funding for one, but I wouldn't mind putting some money towards it, for one. It would really be good if the contest were to go for longer than a month; I'd be interested to see what would come of a two-month contest, say. Or even three-month, potentially. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 16:15, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
If we focus only on creating stubs to bump the overall percentage, then our wikiproject would be associated with quantity, and not quality. I've noticed a lot of stubs being made for the sports edithaton for July-August 2019, and I've been on the fence about that. Yes, these stubs have boosted the percentage even closer to 19% but they don't provide enough information to show why this person is notable to pass GNG. Creating solely stubs would not look good for any wikiproject, especially women in red. I think an article should be the most complete it can be when sources and information are available. If an article can only reach a meatier stub level like 1000 bytes of prose, I'd be okay with that only if that's the largest the article can reach. I don't think focusing on stubs is a good idea. Instead, I think making articles that are Start class or above is way more important. The more information the article has, the more likely it'd be kept if it passes criteria. I always aim for my articles to be at least start class. Maybe aiming for start or above would be a better idea. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 18:30, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
My concern with publicising a 20% goal is that it would likely sound, to an audience unfamiliar with Wikipedia, very unambitious. If I wasn't familiar with the specifics of Wikipedia's problems in this regard and I heard it was adopting a 20% target, I might assume that this was a sign of not taking the issue seriously (as in, why not aim for 50%?). On the other hand, perhaps such a public reaction could help shock people into action... Cordless Larry (talk) 16:56, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
When you put it that way, I agree. One would have to explain how bad the situation was in order to express how much an advance 20% actually represents, which is more awkward and indirect than an ambitious program should be. Maybe a better goal would be 2,020 examples of something, like 2,020 featured pictures (of which there are currently only 6,479 in total). XOR'easter (talk) 18:43, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
...Even presuming we're half-way to that goal, that'd mean three to four new nominations a day, all year. That's not practical. My best year ever didn't even crack 90 for the year. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 6.9% of all FPs 18:56, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
It didn't sound very practical to me when I typed it; that was just the first example I could think of for a "20/20 vision" that sounded more obviously dramatic than "20%". XOR'easter (talk) 19:02, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
playing on that theme, how about 2020 dyks or GAs? dyks might be easier - but then again I haven't dug into how many we're at already. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 19:03, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
Well, let's calculate this out. There's about 8 DYKs a day, and 366 days in 2020, so we'd need two-thirds of all DYK slots for 2020 for that to work. 2020 new articles is probably possible, but getting them all onto the main page in 2020 is less so. There are 622 GANs currently open, though I'd imagine we'd be leaning towards a subset of the possible GA categories. We'd need sufficient reviewers - who are able to do a tough, fair review, and who won't be challenged - but I think that's at least possible, though not easy. We should probably also make a point of clearing out the current GANs as much as possible in the leadup to our campaign starting, so that we're not screwing over everyone else. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 6.9% of all FPs 19:14, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
Just a friendly reminder that the scope of WiR is creating new articles, not article improvement (e.g. WikiProject Women focuses on GAs and GANs). --Rosiestep (talk) 19:24, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
Then DYKs would be more feasible especially for blue link creations ;) --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 19:29, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
What if we promoted a campaign in Q4 (Oct-Nov-Dec) for maxi-stubs at the 1000 bytes of prose level, such as MrLinkinPark333 mentioned? It's not something that everyone would be interested in, but some editors would be. Plus, as we allow "improvements" in the Outcomes section of each event page, some editors might be interested in bringing a mini-stub to a maxi-stub level; we certainly have a lot of mini-stubs that could benefit from that. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:18, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
@Rosiestep: Thanks for the ping. Permastubs should only be made if there's limited amount of information there and all of it has been used in the article. If an article can easily pass the stub threshold, then editors shouldn't limit themselves to making stubs. Articles should be upgraded to as much as they can. I know not every article will pass the stub level. But if it's close to reaching 1500 bytes (per the DYK level), then it'd be better than say 100 bytes of prose. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 19:26, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
@MrLinkinPark333: in general, I agree that if you can get an article to 1500 bytes vs. 1000 bytes, you should. Personally, it's difficult for me to write stubs. But there are other reasons to support a maxi-stub campaign besides (a) increasing the percentage of women's biographies. (b) I mentioned previously that some people might want to improve mini-stubs to maxi-stubs. (c) Another benefit of creating maxi-stubs is that newer editors -who we know have difficulty creating new articles- will be able to add content to the article if it already exists. March will be here before we know it, and Art+Feminism will be in full swing. Their in-person events focus solely on article improvement (no article creation) so every newly-created article within the scope of A+F is one more article that a newbie editor might expand in March. (d) Editors of Arabic Wikipedia tell me that there are very few sources in Arabic language regarding Arabic women so they concentrate on translating articles about Arabic women from en.wiki. I imagine this might be true for other languages. --Rosiestep (talk) 21:00, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
I'm not too keen on stubs either but I frequently come across a red-linked woman in an article and discover she has been covered by a short but informative stub in another language. Isn't it better to make that information available in English too rather than have nothing at all? Similarly, if you go through our Wikidata-based redlists, you'll see that many if not most of them point to stubs in other languages. Why not simply start by making them stubs in English? Last but not least, I must say I am constantly impressed to see how many stubs written by recent members of Women in Red are enhanced by others to reach Start or higher within a few days. This is often the case with participants in Wiki Ed where there seems to be a spirit of organized collaboration. I have a feeling we could work along the same lines at WiR. If we had a stub campaign in October to December as Rosie suggests, we could organize lists of short and longer stubs (up to or over 500B of running text) of newly created biographies, promoting them to lists of Start or more as they are enhanced. (You'd be surprised to see how quickly the ORES rating increases as you add a few more lines of text and a couple of good references.) We could set up teams of volunteers who are specifically interested in participating in bringing WiR stubs to the next level. This could all be organized as some kind of contest (with or without physical prizes). It would allow members like MrLinkinPark333 to continue to work towards fuller coverage of the women we bring into the EN wiki. And it would partly counter-balance all those stubs about men which continue to be created month by month. I too go for quality but even the world's most respected encyclopedias contain huge numbers of useful short biographies (often serving as a basis for our own work). Why don't we try to put something together along these lines and see how well it works out in practice?--Ipigott (talk) 08:23, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

A point about metrics and achieving 20%, also: while it may be fair to say that we're interested in quality over quantity if we focus on that, I feel like there are certain aspects of the publicity angle that we might be missing out on. Saying "with our work the percentage of articles about women on Wikipedia has gone from 15% to 20% over X years" is a lot different than saying "with our work the percentage of articles about women on Wikipedia has gone from 15% to 18% over X years, but we've made that 18% really in-depth". The former is a better look, publically, than the latter, and I think we have to be aware of that. Like it or not, it's the percentage of articles that is often the only statistic people really want to discuss about this project.

We haven't done a stubathon, per se, since Women in Red was created, and we haven't done anything similar since the World Contest in 2017. Creating stubs may not be ideal, but I think it's a useful way to broaden our base of articles. And it would give us a very attractive bit of publicity if we achieve our goal. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 14:38, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Incidentally, @Cordless Larry:, I take your point about it looking like an unambitious goal. But I think there are ways to tell the story that can mitigate that somewhat. (A focus on "how far we've come", for instance...along with a focus on the raw numbers it's taken to get there.) --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 14:40, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
I've proposed a Stubathon for Oct-Nov-Dec at the Ideas Cafe (our events planning subpage). --Rosiestep (talk) 16:10, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
Today is the 5 Year Anniversary of WP:WikiProject Women writers, so I was going through the list of newly-created articles about women writers, and saw so many less-than-1500-bytes-of-prose articles, which are nonetheless, nice articles and good examples of why a stubathon for maxi-stubs (>1000 bytes of prose) could produce positive results: Tunde Aladese, Zoya Basharina, Anne Emery, Helen Reilly, Ailbhe Darcy. --Rosiestep (talk) 17:32, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment I have not been editing on Wikipedia for long, and I am a new member of this group, so I don't want to comment on the value or otherwise of a stub-a-thon. I would like to say, however, that I had not understood that WiR was solely about creating new articles (for one thing, the outcomes of edit-a-thons say "New or upgraded articles"). I'm sure everyone in this discussion knows this, but there is a big difference between improving an article to GA status, and improving it so that it makes the subject's notability clear, has sufficient RS, and survives a deletion nomination. Other Wikipedias have different notability criteria and sourcing/citation requirements. If there is going to be a stub-a-thon, I would suggest that there would need to be very clear guidelines about what they need to contain to be valid articles on English Wikipedia, or the creation rate is likely to be countered by deletion nominations. I'm sure everyone here also knows that stubs are not eligible for DYK, and although they could become eligible by being expanded, that expansion would need to be to at least 5x the size of the prose content. Personally, I think that encouraging creation of articles longer than stubs is more useful (but I'm probably influenced by not being able to write a stub when more information can be found). RebeccaGreen (talk) 17:53, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
    • Same here. I try my best to get all of my articles above stub level, even if it just squeaks by the 1500 bytes level. Otherwise, some articles I've expanded that were created by others I couldn't find enough info to pass that level. So, I ended up going for more fleshed out articles as much as I can that cover everything I can find. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 18:01, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment: This is a great discussion, and I would love to see something like the World Contest happen again sometime soon. Regardless of prizes, I think the energy generated by everyone working towards a big collective goal can be powerful. Since article improvement has been mentioned, I just want to toss in a quick reminder about Women in Green, whose objective IS article improvement and GA nominations. Maybe WiG can work together with WiR on any major projects or contests for 2020? I don't think aiming for 2020 GANs would be practical (WiG's goals for 2019 involve nominating 40 articles for GA status, which is quite a challenge on its own), but we might still be able to collaborate in a useful way -- alongside article creation, perhaps editathon/stubathon/contest participants could work towards completing 1 GA article each, with advice/support from WiG along the way? Something to think about. Alanna the Brave (talk) 12:53, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Culturally sensitive review for Eagle Woman before DYK

Latest comment: 5 years ago9 comments6 people in discussion

I submitted Eagle Woman for DYK but would appreciate a review for language etc before it gets far enough to hit the main page. Most of the more detailed sources are decades old. Is there anyone here who would mind doing that? If not, where would be a good place to ask? Thanks, originalmesshow u doin that busta rhyme? 20:25, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

With my culturally sensitive hat on, you should work in "America" or "United States" in somewhere. At the moment the article just assumes the reader knows where it is about. Johnbod (talk) 00:29, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
Wow, I didn't even notice I didn't mention the US govt until halfway through the article. Thanks! originalmesshow u doin that busta rhyme? 00:32, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
One thing to note: she wasn't born in South Dakota, because it didn't exist at the time she was born in 1820 ("As the southern part of the former Dakota Territory, South Dakota became a state on November 2, 1889,"). The article continues to say she lived in South Dakota, etc. She was also not born in the Dakota Territory, as this was founded in 1861. -Yupik (talk) 16:32, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
Awesome, noted and will incorporate. Thanks! originalmesshow u doin that busta rhyme? 06:29, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
There are a couple of portraits out there that should be uploadable to Commons, given that they're photographs and she died in 1888 (so they're in the public domain). I've tried to pull one down, but I'm having some connectivity issues...if anyone else wants to try? Otherwise I can try and pull them this evening for upload. (They come up on a Google Image Search under the name "Matilda Gilpin".) --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 14:03, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
Ser Amantio di Nicolao  Done image uploaded to commons and added to article WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 15:16, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

My 1,500,000th edit

Latest comment: 5 years ago5 comments5 people in discussion

Mary Collins (psychologist) - needs more sources, if anyone can find them.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:11, 1 September 2019 (UTC).

Congratulations, and thank you for your huge contribution. Oronsay (talk) 18:28, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
Nice work - high five! --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 19:04, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
Wonderful, thank you for sharing this milestone. And what an interesting notable, an expert on colour vision! Penny Richards (talk) 19:25, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
 
Congratulations, Rich Farmbrough. Truly impressive! --Rosiestep (talk) 19:40, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Trial of Kate Dover

Latest comment: 5 years ago21 comments4 people in discussion

A few days ago I created the above article (initially named "Felicia Dorothea Kate Dover") as a biography of a female criminal in response to the Women in Red project, and entered it for DYK. However there's a problem with whether or not it should count as a biography. Please see the article's talk page for the DYK discussion. I would be interested to read your views, whether here or on the DYK template. Storye book (talk) 09:03, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

I imagine we should consult WP:Crime and consider whether Dover and/or Jones are WP:NOTE in and of themselves. Note that the victim already has a separate biography. I think we probably should consider making Dover or Jones as a separate article rather than a move as you propose, @Storye book:. Ideally, the trial page would need portions of text moved to the new biographies. Have you considered making a draft of the article(s) in your user space? Fred (talk) 01:02, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Thank you. Who is Jones, by the way? Yes I can split out the ancestry, education and employment of Dover to a new biography page. It will be extremely complex, though, as it's the crime and trial themselves which reveal what she is really like and the tragedy of fatal flaws and downfall etc. Yes I'll userfy a copy of the article and see what I can do, bearing in mind that DYK requirments may block some changes. Thank you, though, you've got me thinking. Storye book (talk) 11:14, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Jane Jones was the other domestic worker. Great, happy editing! Fred (talk) 21:17, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Ha! Yes, of course. Silly me. I was in a hurry with other duties and not thinking. I'll userfy the article today and have a go. Storye book (talk) 07:55, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
Update: I think I have now resolved the issue. There are now three articles instead of two: Kate Dover, Trial of Kate Dover and Thomas Skinner (etcher). I am not able to create a page for Jane Jones the other housekeeper: due to her not uncommon name, it has so far been impossible to trace her identity. Thank you for the kind advice given so far. Much appreciated. Storye book (talk) 16:02, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
Three epic articles for the price of one. Thank you, Storye book - they're excellent. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:13, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
Thank you! I stand on the shoulders of giants, though - the journalists in those days were really something special. Storye book (talk) 16:46, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Help! I am having a problem with the status of the Kate Dover article. There were originally two biography articles: Felicia Dorothea Kate Dover and Thomas Skinner (etcher). Then someone came along and changed the female one to Kate Dover. Then I was pressurised into changing the female article to Trial of Kate Dover. Then people didn't like that, and I was pressurised into splitting the female article into Trial of Kate Dover and Kate Dover. Now the Kate Dover article has been tagged and I'm being pressurised into merging Kate Dover and Trial of Kate Dover back together again, as Trial of Kate Dover. I believe that the problem is that because in the 19th century female lives were not generally considered notable, we have to read between the lines of their lives because they were never celebrated or explored at the time. We have to work harder at appreciating the biographies of women of that era, so we should treat femaie biographies less ruthlessly than those of contemporary men. I should have thought that a female arsenic poisoner whose trial reveals a complex and rather unusual personality ought to be of biographical interest. So before I consider merging the biography Kate Dover back into Trial of Kate Dover, if you are reading this, please could you kindly give an opinion. I am concerned that splitting and merging these articles is becoming repetitive and achieving nothing. The tag on the Kate Dover page has at least one link which appears to imply corruption on my part. So I would like to make clear that I have no ancestral or financial connection with the subject whatsoever. My motives are solely along the lines of contributing to local history studies, contributing to Wikipedia, and sharing some revealing social history with the public. I fund my own research, so there is financial outlay, not gain on my part. I hope that covers it. Storye book (talk) 07:11, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

The tag on the Kate Dover article has nothing to do with corruption or COI (I'm actually curious, where does the notability tag appear to suggest that?). It's an issue of WP:1E: Kate Dover appears to be notable solely for her role in one notable event which already has its own article. Per the notability guideline, "The general rule is to cover the event, not the person. However, if media coverage of both the event and the individual's role grow larger, separate articles may become justified." It appears to me that all coverage of the person (outside of census information, her death certificate, etc.) is in relation to the event. — MarkH21 (talk) 08:56, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
@MarkH21: Currently we have three well-written articles: a detailed and lengthy trial article, and biogs of the two main players. There is a 1E argument to be made that the biogs should be folded into the trial. There is also, as you note, a counter-argument to be made based on "if media coverage of both the event and the individual's role grow larger, separate articles may become justified". Noting the exemplary structure, format and content of the current articles, and the judicious and appropriate separation of content amongst them, would you take the opportunity to explain how we will be better off with a single article? If we will not be better off, would you consider removing the notability tag. thx --Tagishsimon (talk) 10:10, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
I have edited the header and added a new section in Kate Dover to show Dover's independent notability as a rather unusual type of female poisoner - having a complex personality consisting of what might be seen as quite striking sophistication and innocence in an ordinary nineteenth century working-class girl, while at the same time either making a terrible mistake or doing a terrible thing (however one might view her crime). This new section relies on points which were all raised separately during the court case, but when collected together these points belong in her biography. I would like to remove the tag now, on the grounds that her independent notability has now been made clear. Storye book (talk) 14:34, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
Regarding the clause "if media coverage of both the event and the individual's role grow larger, separate articles may become justified," all of the media coverage about the individual is about the event. The rest of the article is not media coverage about the rest her life and does nothing to differentiate her from any other "ordinary nineteenth century working-class girl" as mentioned by Storye book (talk · contribs). Regarding the new "complex personality" subsection, it is again entirely based on media coverage related to the trial and does not suggest at all that her personality was notable in itself.
In the end, it is not apparent whatsoever that the person was notable for anything other than the murder and trial and the parts of the article that would differentiate her from another person of the time are entirely in connection to the trial. The material here is well-written and well-sourced, but the interesting parts (e.g. without the extensive family background) would serve well within the actual trial article. — MarkH21 (talk) 18:28, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
@MarkH21: You have yet to articulate any benefit arising from the removal of the article. The purpose of rules - including IAR - is to improve wikipedia. How is wikipedia being improved by removing well-written &c articles? --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:31, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
The same reason that we have any notability guidelines (unless you believe that the inclusion of everything and everyone on WP improves WP). The minor biographical details of the article unrelated to the trial do not add value. The notable and interesting aspects can be moved to the actual article on the trial to create comprehensive and compact coverage of the trial. The guidelines are there for a reason and are agreed-upon by consensus. — MarkH21 (talk) 18:36, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
@MarkH21: I can as easily say "the same reason we have IAR". Which is, to remind you, a *policy* not a *guideline*. So, again. What benefit do you contemplate? --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:39, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

I'll repeat it: The minor biographical details of the article unrelated to the trial do not add value. The notable and interesting aspects can be moved to the actual article on the trial to create comprehensive and compact coverage of the trial.
If you believe that the article satisfies one of the clauses in 1E, then by all means demonstrate that. For instance, "If the event is highly significant, and the individual's role within it is a large one, a separate article is generally appropriate. The assassins of major political leaders, such as Gavrilo Princip, fit into this category." On the other hand, "Another issue arises when an individual plays a major role in a minor event. In this case, it is not generally appropriate to have an article on both the person and the event. Generally in this case, the name of the person should redirect to the article on the incident, especially if the individual is only notable for that incident and it is all that the person is associated with in the source coverage." It is not apparent to me that this event is "major" with such wide-scale coverage, but that's a possible argument to make. — MarkH21 (talk) 18:43, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

I'll also point out for reference here the policy WP:NOTNEWS, #3: "Who's who. Even when an event is notable, individuals involved in it may not be. Unless news coverage of an individual goes beyond the context of a single event, our coverage of that individual should be limited to the article about that event, in proportion to their importance to the overall topic." (bolding is mine) — MarkH21 (talk) 18:52, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
The ultimate value of the biography and the trial article, in their different ways, is to deepen our understanding of social history - in this case the relationship of a working class woman of individual character with the process of law, in the context of time and place. It requires both articles to see this in full. If we merge the articles we may (now or by future edits) lose much of Dover's biographical detail, and would thereby lose depth of understanding of her as an individual example of that kind of situation. If we put it all into one legal article, the rather striking individual woman becomes a cipher, when the WP Women in Red project is trying to undo that sort of sidelining. If we subsume the trial into the biography, we lose its great human story which gives so much insight into the community aspect of legal process in that time and place. Without looking at Kate Dover separately, it becomes much more difficult to read between the lines what was really going on there. This is quite a complex bit of social history, and we need all of it (and more if we can find it) if we are really to understand a world very different from our own. Storye book (talk) 09:11, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
The point is that this isn’t lost if the articles are combined. Anything unusual about the person is solely in connection with the trial and can be moved to that article. There’s little lost here. — MarkH21 (talk) 14:14, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
In my original comment, I meant to link to WP:CRIMINAL, not the project page. I think it would be fair to say that Kate Dover is both internationally known and has an unusual motivation, hence warranting an article. Fred (talk) 15:25, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

New Italian Ministers in Red

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The newly appointed Conte II Cabinet has 3 women in red: Nunzia Catalfo, Elena Bonetti, and Paola Pisano. Any one with skills in translating Italian is encourage to create these articles. --- Coffeeandcrumbs 06:54, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

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