This started out as a thought for a blog post at Wikipediocracy, but it wasn't critical enough, or something. I'm writing it up here because events have continued to unfold and I think I should raise my hand and make some points anyhow.
The story
editOn March 8, 2016, as part of Wikipedia:Meetup/ArtAndFeminism, there was an editathon at the University of Regina, in Saskatchewan. It was also part of their Colder Than Mars event series that month, whose purpose was stated as: "[drawing] attention to human condition and situational experiences within the prairies through the exploration of locational datasets, the creation and impact of visualizing information in new ways and the contribution of information into the public domain". Here is the event sign-up and information page. (And here are some photos from the event.)
The list of subjects included Amber Dalton. At 21:38 UTC, a newly registered user made this edit, creating an article on a pro video gamer (a Texan who now lives in San Francisco). An IP editor who is a friend of Drmies tagged it for speedy deletion within half an hour (at 22:00). They had become aware of the editathon and were not impressed with the quality of the articles, so they had speedied several. At 03:14 on the 9th UTC, they started this thread on Drmies' talk page alerting him to the articles. Meanwhile, however ... at 22:55 another newly registered editor also on the list of attendees for the editathon had overwritten the article (and the speedy tag) with one about a different Amber Dalton, a printmaker who is a British Columbian with a degree from the U of Regina and still lives in Regina. A tussle ensued with the IP re-speedying it, being told a speedy tag cannot be reinstated, and finally PRODding it. No one, including Drmies, apparently noticed that the first edit summary makes it quite clear that the article was originally about a different Amber Dalton, until I did, and dropped an explanatory note on the first creator's talk page, pinging Drmies. He created a separate article at Amber Dalton (gamer), and having done what I could for the printmaker, I set about saving the video gamer. I don't know much about video games; I had no idea there were professional video gamers. I wound up also creating Category:American professional video gamers, which I now see was deleted on May 26 after a CfD I was not notified of. Apparently we call them esports players. Told you I didn't know much about video games.
The video gamer article was very rapidly nominated for speedy deletion. After another thread on Drmies' talk page arising from that, the printmaker's article (the one at Amber Dalton) was dePRODded but then promptly taken to AfD, with a rationale alluding to the nominator's perception that the articles arising from the editathon were poor.
When the chips are down, I'm an inclusionist. And I felt bad for both new editors. And both articles were about women, and Wikipedia is overbalanced toward biographies of men. But it was blindingly obvious to me that the video gamer was far more notable than the printmaker, even though the video gamer's article had been created without references, and the printmaker's, with references. For the video gamer, sources fell out of the trees with a slight shake. For the printmaker, there wasn't much and it was all about the 4-woman collective she was part of. (Note this edit summary as I started to work on the article.)
So at that point I made a tactical error. I forgot my experience with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Klosterbergen, where I rewrote the article and moved it during the AfD rather than just talking about what needed to happen. (It was an urgent situation—the title was an error and the content untrue.) This time what should have happened is that the article should have been moved to the notable collective and Amber Dalton (artist) become one of four redirects—because she or any of the others could become independently notable artists at any point, but aren't yet. Instead I deferred to the bit in the AfD notice about not moving the article during the discussion—and sought to save the feelings of the creator and the other participants in the editathon, which was on women's biographies—and since "merge" isn't strictly speaking an AfD vote, I was less than crisp in defining at the AfD what I believed should happen. So someone else instead created an article on the collective and the AfD was closed as "redirect to the new article". That effectively erases the new editor's contribution (and everyone else's who worked on the article), and I was personally disappointed when I looked at the new article: I didn't see information in it that I would have put in, it was too biographical in focus, and it used a referencing style more appropriate to lengthy articles that cite multiple pages in scholarly books, and that I find extremely hard to edit. So that was less than optimal, but at least it wasn't deleted. However, Amber Dalton is the redirect, while Amber Dalton (gamer) has a disambiguator; that's also not optimal.
There has been a coda of sorts. On Wikipediocracy and, again, on Drmies' talk page, an editor has raised the issue of what they see as generally low standards in esports articles. Drmies nominated one for speedy deletion and PRODded and then AfD'd another. Again, news sources pretty much jumped into my arms. I think I've saved both articles despite my profound ignorance of the topic. Both are biographies of male gamers. Drmies in fact responded to the editor's post with a remark about "testosterone-fueled content". I have just now checked, and Dalton's team, PMS Clan, has had an article since 2015, but it's very short on specifics, and I'd neglected to put in a "red" link. She has never been mentioned there.
Conclusions
edit- With these politically pointed editathons, the perfect is the enemy of the good: the focus on biographies of women artists caused the notable topic of a four-person collective to be passed over, and the organizers likely weren't aware of the video gamer, whose notability is far more obvious, but who doesn't fall within the range they were thinking in terms of. We almost lost out on two new articles on notable topics because they didn't fit the narrowly defined purpose. Defining a narrow purpose ignores the strength of crowdsourcing, which is that it draws on a wider sphere of knowledge than any individual has; with excellent intentions, the organizers instead tried to assign piece-work. The article on the gamer was almost lost a number of times, and the first was when it was overwritten by the second new editor, who was working on the "right" Amber Dalton and may not even have known they were erasing the work of someone else at the same event. This is also the main reason the more notable person is not at the plain title even today.
- Both topics, as it happens, do further the goal of offsetting the systemic bias against women in Wikipedia's coverage. The collective consists of four women. The video gamer is in a field where the easy assumption is "guy thing"—"testosterone-fueled". That Amber Dalton the gamer hadn't yet had an article written about her, and the dismissive way it was treated, frankly, demonstrate sexism. And that's the other reason the more notable person is still not at the plain title.
- This editathon did it right: new editors created content there. But the organizers failed to do one of two vital things to support the new users: either show them how to put in adequate referencing so the article would get past the new page patrol gauntlet, or edit the articles themselves after the fact to add adequate referencing. Since they had a list of topics pre-prepared, they could and should have had reference URLs ready to go and done one or the other. Usually that's the argument for holding these things at a library: access to sources, including newspaper microfiches as well as books and special collections, and access to helpful librarians to boot. But at a minimum, part of introducing new editors to Wikipedia by having them create articles is assisting them in having the articles be reasonably deletion-proof.
- There was a woeful failure to look at the history of the Amber Dalton article, and a shameful failure to interact with the new editors. Both Amber Dalton creators must have been puzzled and likely ticked-off. But beyond new editors, article hijacking and vandalism are both prevalent on Wikipedia; if articles are nominated for speedy deletion, or PRODded, without even a glance at the first version, who knows what we lose. And AfDing without notifying all major editors is either lazy, or deletionism for its own sake.
- Politics exacerbates negative reactions to poorly executed articles. It's quite likely that the esports articles are under-referenced, poorly referenced, and otherwise lacking. Dalton's team article is pretty sad. The two bios I believe I've saved were bad before I mucked about with them. But the field is covered extensively by the sports press. Unless we change our notability criteria, that means articles on pro gamers, their teams, and their tournaments are valid. Articles arising from editathons with heavy-handed political purposes, like this one, also need to be judged on the notability of the topic, not the sloppy execution. Drmies's IP friend is usually level-headed, but jumped to the conclusion that the articles coming out of this editathon were pretty much all dreck. Editor after editor jumped to the same conclusion regarding both Amber Dalton articles.