Talk:Gayle Laakmann McDowell

Graduation speech

Regarding this revert, there are several problems here. Creating an entire section for "awards and honors" which includes only one entry, which is not unambigiously an award or an honor, is non-neutral. I'm guessing this subsection was named this because some other articles include sections with this name. This is a bad reason to create one here. Including a section just because some other bios have it is inappropriate, and so is misrepresenting content via section names.

Further, this was a relatively routine public speaking event, and the significance of such events needs to be demonstrated by reliable sources, which must also be independent of the subject. A public relations puff-piece from the school holding the event is not independent of that event. It is not sufficient to demonstrate that this even is encyclopedically significant. The PR piece used as a source specifically quotes a vp as saying “The range of speakers this year is extremely broad”. Of the eighteen listed events, the only one which is given any specific prominence is Lin-Manuel Miranda. He is given prominence because he is already noteworthy. His willingness to give a graduation speech has nothing to do with this notability.

While I have been told by the article's author that he has no COI, the recently uploaded image shows that Gayle Laakmann McDowell is involved in this article. Further, several drive-by edits from other accounts and IPs also show strong signs of conflict-of-interest editing. I would remind all involved editors to step back, and carefully read Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. It may also help to review Wikipedia:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide. Wikipedia is not a platform for promotion. Grayfell (talk) 22:45, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

When you look at the other graudation speakers (Larry O. Spencer and Deborah Loewenberg Ball), giving a graduation speech is a noteworthy fact worth including. Two independent sources have been added to verify the speech

• Gao, Laura (2017). "Gayle McDowell on Writing Code to Writing Books". thesign.al. Archived from the original on 2018-03-18.
• Berger, Michele W. (2017). "Unique, dynamic speakers take part in Penn's 2016 graduation ceremonies: Penn Today". upenn.edu. University of Pennsylvania. Archived from the original on 2020-01-12.

Duncan.Hull (talk) 21:21, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

@Duncan.Hull: Why did you start a new section for this, instead of responding to the one I started above? Regardless, thank you for finally addressing this, but you should discuss these contested edits before restoring them, since you clearly do not have consensus. I still do not think this material is appropriate. Not everything which can be sourced belongs, especially not when it is a promotional detail for a BLP. We use reliable, independent sources to establish due weight.

I have removed the poorly-sourced tidbit Deborah Loewenberg Ball. I do not see anything about a graduation speech at Larry O. Spencer's page, but even making this comparison suggests a deep misunderstanding of the problem. If Spencer or anyone else's speech has reliable, independent sources, we would evaluate those sources. We do not treat this kind of information as automatically important just because it's included in... some random article about a different person with a different history and a different career. Award-cruft litters Wikipedia biographies, especially for people in business fields. We absolutely should not use this problem as an excuse! Pointing to flaws in other articles is not a justification for sloppy sourcing in this one.

A gushing, PR-like news release from a school is not independent of the school. This is a run-of-the-mill event, and if other articles also have badly-sourced routine information, that should also be removed, or possibly discussed elsewhere.

The Signal does not appear to be a reliable source at all, much less an independent one. The only mention of this commencement speech was as the caption to a decorative photograph. This is an obscure source which doesn't demonstrate encyclopedic significance.

On a related note, please use "|url-status=live" for preemptive archives. Grayfell (talk) 21:52, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

@Grayfell: I messed up the sections and didn't realise about the url-status, sorry and thanks for correcting. However, I still think the graduation speech is worthy of inclusion in a biography, and the source is reliable enough to verify that it happened. It's broadly inline with Wikipedia:Citing self-published blogs. Even if it is viewed as a "gushing piece of PR puffery" - it still verifies that the event took place. You can even watch the YouTube video. I'm curious to know why editors believe that giving a graduation speech at an Ivy League university isn't noteworthy. While it might not deserve its own awards and honors section, I believe it's still worth a mention to establish notability of the subject, and not just "award cruft". Duncan.Hull (talk) 22:06, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Nobody is disputing that it happened, so a raw quantity of flimsy sources is not the fix. It is not an independent source, even if it were more neutrally written, just as event listings are not generally usable for these kinds of things. This person is a public speaker, so this was just one of many "performances" she did. We do not list every concert a band performs, or every sermon a televangelist gives, even if we can cite regional papers or TV guide. Does this make sense? Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion. Further, this is WP:UNDUE. I do not think this is helpful to readers at all, and none of these sources explain why this would be important.

You say you think it's worthy of inclusion, but it's not up to you, or to me, or any one individual editor. It would be decided by reliable, independent sources. If sources do not treat this as having some lasting significance to her, as an encyclopedia topic, then we cannot add it anyway just because you want to. I'm not even sure what you're getting at, to be honest. That you now decide to emphasize that it's ivy league suggest that yes, this is award cruft. The status of the school is not relevant to this item unless it is noted by reliable, independent sources. Grayfell (talk) 22:35, 21 January 2020 (UTC)