Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red/Archive 35

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Deletion of "Authority control"

There is a discussion here on the proposed deletion of the template Authority control. I hope many of you, like me, find the collection of data the template turns up on our biographies extremely useful and will argue for its survival. I think Rosiestep, SusunW and Megalibrarygirl will be among many who will contribute.--Ipigott (talk) 16:53, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Some of you may be interested in the following comment from here: "I had and have plenty of reasons to reject all Wikidata data anyway (up to and including the Authority Control probably)." In the light of this comment, the deletion proposal cannot be considered as a serious attempt to improve our resources.--Ipigott (talk) 19:01, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

What is unserious about a proposal to use only sources that meet our standards for reliability, especially on BLPs? Wikidata has different standards and has explicitly rejected proposals to bring their standards in line with WP:RS and WP:BLP ([1]). So it's a matter of drawing the line for what types of Wikidata can be accepted despite their loose sourcing policy and what must be rejected. This one sets the line fairly strictly, but it comes from a well-motivated position of only allowing Wikipedia content that is actually subject to Wikipedia policies (which Wikidata is not subject to). —David Eppstein (talk) 19:18, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

If I am understanding you correctly David Eppstein and I allow that I may not be, the standards of Wikidata have nothing to do with Authority Control being used on WP articles. In and of themselves, as Megalibrarygirl pointed out, the authorities are created by experts. Thus, they clearly meet WP standards and add weight to the notability of an article. Moving them to Wikidata, on the other hand, does a disservice to readers of WP, regardless of whether they are editors, by removing expert information in favor of information created by editors and diminishing the usefulness of the material to scholars. SusunW (talk) 19:30, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

(adding after edit conflict) David Eppstein: Thanks, David, for your comments but I am a bit confused. Are you saying that some of the items covered by Authority control are not suitable for justifying items listed on Wikidata? If so, it would be useful to know which particular items you have in mind and what shortcomings they exhibit. As you may know, most of the items covered by Authority control are the result of many decades of research on biographical and bibliographical listings by the world library community. Wikipedia and Wikidata can hardly pretend to have achieved more reliability than that!--Ipigott (talk) 19:37, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

I am saying that Wikidata has very loose standards for what it accepts as a fact and for how it sources its facts, as is its right as a separate project. But because of those loose standards, we should be very careful about wholesale import of facts from Wikidata into Wikipedia. In the case of authority control, this issue is mitigated because the facts in question are largely uncontroversial, but it is still part of a problematic bigger picture. A secondary but important issue is that Wikidata also has much less effort put into vandalism control than here. It would be very easy to vandalize an authority control link (e.g. by replacing the number by a different number that points to a sex offender) and very hard for anyone to notice and correct the vandalism. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:45, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

David Eppstein: Then I conclude that you are in fact in favour of maintaining Authority control on the EN wiki?--Ipigott (talk) 19:56, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Ipigott per his comment on the template thread, only if Authority Control has not been contaminated by Wikidata unverified information. SusunW (talk) 20:23, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Now I understand what he was talking about. I had not realized that data from Wikidata was to be included in Authority control. That would indeed be a disaster. As far as I can see, most of the information on Wikidata is no more reliable than that on Wikipedia. There seems to be little or no requirement for reliable sourcing on Wikidata although there is a vague recommendation that new entries should have at least one source. In any case, now that the discussion on Authority control has been concluded, we can all continue to use the template unimpeded.--Ipigott (talk) 10:17, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

What do you mean by the hypothetical statements "data from Wikidata was to be included in Authority control" and "only if Authority Control has not been contaminated by Wikidata unverified information"? Where do you think these numbers come from at the moment? All that is added in the WP article is the template code {{Authority control}} and the links to all the different external identifiers associated with the subject are imported from Wikidata. That's how the template works. Furthermore, to claims about Wikidata being unreliable - an external identifier to, say, VIAF is a "self-referencing" statement: you cannot provide a third-party footnote to the fact that a given person's VIAF number is 123456789 any better than a link to that exact VIAF record. Regardless of where you store that information - in wikipedia as a plain external link, in Wikipedia as a template, in Wikidata as a structured statement, it is the same level of reliability and performs the same function. The specific benefit of it being in Wikidata is that OTHER Wikipedias can take advantage of the same work without having to manually copy and paste VIAF numbers (etc.) into each separate language WP biography. This is the same reason we created Commons: so we didn't have to upload the same photo 50 times to use it in the same article across 50 languages (and update the metadata/caption/license 50 times if something changed). Wittylama 16:44, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Wittylama, you took the words out of my mouth... except your probably said it more clearly than my attempt. --Rosiestep (talk) 18:57, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Glad to see this issue solved. In spite of the systemic bias in most of the databases currently linked in that template, this project has benefitted from it in so many ways! Jane (talk) 11:32, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Speaking of issues with Wikidata, is anyone else having the problem that it will not accept information? I have attempted 5 times to input the data for Ann-Marie Williams and it keeps giving me an error "object not found" and saves nothing. I finally stopped trying to "complete" her entry adding only female and Belizean journalist and public policy advisor, but it still will not update or save the data. SusunW (talk) 18:37, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

SusunW, I tried creating the item for Ann-Marie Williams and also encountered an error message. Jane023, any idea if others are experiencing problems creating new items? --Rosiestep (talk) 19:06, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Rosiestep Thank you. I don't know how to fix the problem, but glad to have someone confirm that it isn't just me. SusunW (talk) 19:09, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

SusunW, According to a note posted on the FB Wikidata Group 2 hours ago, the database was locked, with an explanation: "the database master is running in read-only mode". But in the meantime, it appears to be functioning as, a few minutes ago, I could add info on new article Corinne Stubbs Brown. When you have a chance, can you see if you're able to add Ann-Marie Williams? --Rosiestep (talk) 21:08, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, Rosiestep finally able to add her. Thank you! SusunW (talk) 21:13, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

• I also have had a serious problem with Wikidata for the past 24 hours or so. In the end I begged Jane to sort it out on her talk page.

But to get back to the more serious problem of Authority control, let's not pretend, Rosiestep and Wittylama, that the items it covers are a result of work on Wikidata. I've been closely involved in the international library world for some 40 years and can confirm that much of the research and development which has gone into these biographical and bibliographical items is a result of collaboration across the worldwide library community, supported by the world's most respected national libraries and with the support and coordination of OCLC. While the occasional error can be found in the data, I would guess that well over 99% of the information presented is fully reliable and can indeed by used to authenticate information on names, dates of birth, lists of written works, etc. I think what some of us are afraid of is that unsourced or unsufficiently sourced Wikidata entries could be substituted for the items now included in Authority control. (It was for this reason that I brought the proposal under discussion to the attention of WiR participants.) That of course would be disastrous. Please correct me if I am wrong, Megalibrarygirl.--Ipigott (talk) 16:49, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

• I'm unclear why you think I would pretend to make a claim about something like "a result of work on Wikidata", or, frankly, anything, Ipigott. This is not a kind comment.
• The identifiers, e.g. VIAF, are stored on Wikidata; they are not stored on any language Wikipedia. Similarly, images are stored on Commons; they are not stored on any language Wikipedia.
• While an editor might add VIAF or another identifier to a Wikipedia article, a bot will remove the identifier from Wikipedia, and move it to Wikidata. Similarly, while an editor might add an image to a Wikipedia article, it will be removed at some point and moved to Commons (or deleted).
• The Templates for Deletion discussion was whether to retain the Authority Control template on Wikipedia pages to allow for easy access to the identifiers, or force people to click the Wikidata link to view the identifiers. A similar discussion could be made with images: allow images to stay in Wikipedia articles, or include a Commons category link for the topic in a Wikipedia article, forcing a reader to click the link to see any images associated with the article. --Rosiestep (talk) 17:20, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

The big difference between commons and wikidata is that commons' image licensing standards are generally more strict than the standards here (so importing their images is safe here) while wikidata's quality and sourcing standards are less strict than the standards here (so importing their data is not safe). —David Eppstein (talk) 17:30, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Rosiestep: My comments are never intended to be "unkind" to anyone, certainly not to you. I would have thought that after the many years we have been working closely together, you would know how much I appreciate your expertise and your contributions. But I do like to sort out misunderstandings. It may well be that the Authority control items are "stored" on Wikidata, but that is not the point. If you go carefully through this entire thread, you'll see that there was a proposal to delete the template Authority control from the English wiki on the basis that the information on Wikidata could replace what we were presently able to access through the template. (As a result of this discussion, David Eppstein commented on the Wikidata position vs the EN wiki.) I have a feeling Wittylama may not have followed the story from the start as his comments seem rather out of place given his own experience in the national library community. I certainly agree with everything you set out immediately above, Rosie, but that is not what I was commenting on. I just wanted to stress that the items covered by Authority control are in general far, far, more reliable than the data on individuals stored on Wikidata itself. In other words, it was not about the mechanics of access to Authority control but rather the huge information sources accessed by the various items included in the Authority control template. Please accept my sincere apologies for any misunderstanding, Rosie. I hope these explanations will help to sort things out.--Ipigott (talk) 17:45, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Ah I see. So basically you are just objecting to having the links under acronyms like "VIAF" disappear from the page itself? As I understand it, the feeling was that many WP readers are unaware of these acronyms and find them simply confusing. It may be that the template should be made into a user preference, so that librarians and others can turn it on, but we won't force it on not-logged-in readers. I can also imagine that one would like to trim every possible extraneous thing from the reader's screen on mobile (though as others have stated, the authority control template is pretty compact). Since we have so many biography pages using the template, then it is also possible that we should split it into a "biographies-only" version, and maybe we need our own "women-biographies-only-version" where we can stuff various women's databases in there on top of the huge "VIAF" ones. Jane (talk) 08:25, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Jane023: Yes, exactly. I'm glad to see you understand my concern. Maybe Authority control should indeed be subject to user preferences, especially for the mobile environment as you suggest, although I would strongly recommend that it be displayed whenever a registered Wikipedia editor is viewing pages on which it is active. Apart from anything else, the information it reveals can help to trigger interest in the works people have created. It also often provides authenticated information on a person's date and place of birth and/or death which can then be included in the article (and by extension in the Wikidata entry). The links to the national library files are particularly useful for the Europeans we so often write about. I often find that when I am creating a biography, I am helped along by looking at the information provided under the various links on Authority control. For those who are confused by Authority control and the items it includes, it might be useful to create a simpler, less technical introduction than this page which turns up when you click on Authority control at the foot of an article.--Ipigott (talk) 10:21, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Interesting! That Help page gets vandalized a lot! I also don't think it is as helpful as the article Authority control, so maybe the link should just be redirected there. The data identifiers per article are all on Wikidata, so it probably is better to tune the data per infobox (e.g. build the VIAF and a few others into the infobox for person, etc). Now we just have a template including every single external identifier for everything. As far as metadata on women goes, we still need to add lots of sources by hand that are not in the authority control template, so I guess I don't see losing this template as a huge loss to this project. Rather I am interested in talking about a "infobox Woman" that could be tailored to common RS for WiR articles. Jane (talk) 10:50, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

At Wikidatacon, several of us spoke again about Infoboxes (and by extension AC) becoming Preferences on Wikipedias, including that eventually, readers should be able to choose which Infoboxes (+ ACs) they'd like to see, e.g. "I want to see Opera Infoboxes on opera article pages, but I don't want to see Biography Infoboxes on biography articles. Again, by extension, Preferences could -eventually- be used for AC, e.g. "I want to see a link for VIAF if it exists, but I don't want to see the Worldcat link if it exists". I don't remember if you were part of those conversations, Jane023? This will take time but I think it's the way forward, though I'm doubtful that ENWP will be the first to embrace the idea. --Rosiestep (talk) 15:09, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Whatever happens with Infoboxes (which in many cases I find superfluous) I must really make the case for maintaining Authority control on the EN wiki, at least for the time being. As I've tried to explain above, it provides access to a wide range of well-researched information from the libraries community and can also be used to enhance Wikidata itself. I hope any action taken will be a result of deep discussion.--Ipigott (talk) 18:46, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

So, I have another Wikidata dilemma. I have two sisters Adela and Celsa Speratti whose lives really just paralleled, but I did not want to leave one of them out so combined them as they had done on Spanish WP. (I actually looked at Siegfried & Roy to figure out how to input the duplicate sets of info.) I think I have it in properly in the article and on Wikidata, BUT my issue is that they both have Authority Control data and I have no idea how to input that. I loaded Adela's info on my article page {{Authority control|VIAF=177321923|ISNI=0000 0003 5611 9177|LCCN=no2011137198}}, but it won't let me add Celsa's {{Authority Control|VIAF=187226503|ISNI=0000 0003 5784 0425|LCCN=no2011137201}}. What do I do?

SusunW, I think each woman will need her own item on Wikidata and the corresponding identifiers should be added to that item, e.g. Sonny Bono and Cher. But if Adela and Celsa Speratti are an instance of a couple, like Sonny & Cher and Siegfried & Roy, the couple will have unique identifiers and those are the ones which should be on the "Adela and Celsa Speratti" page. I'm trying to find an example of a couple where it doesn't have unique identifiers, but the two individuals do, which would be the best example to follow, but am not finding an example at the moment. --Rosiestep (talk) 00:22, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Rosiestep yes, you have totally nailed my problem. There isn't enough information on Celsa to create more than a tiny stub and since her data so much overlaps, Adelas, I felt it best to include her as Spanish WP did. But when I got to Wikidata, I was totally confused as to how to proceed. Hopefully someone with more technical expertise can figure out how to do it. I created separate redirects for WP, but how that would work with Wikidata, I have no idea. SusunW (talk) 00:28, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

SusunW, let's wait to hear from others (cc: @Wittylama, Jane023, and Megalibrarygirl) for additional opinions, but I think the answer involves: remove the identifiers from d:Adela and Celsa Speratti; create a Wikidata item for Adela and add her identifiers to her item; create a Wikidata item for Celsa and add the identifiers you've found for her. After creating items for Adela and for Chelsa, add properties ("instance of"→"sibling duo"; "has part"→Adela Speratti; "has part"→Celsa Speratti) to d:Q5657480 to link them (see: Brothers Grimm d:Q2793). In the end, the Wikipedia article for Adela and Celsa Speratti won't display any identifiers in Authority Control, unless some can be found for them as a "couple" (see: Sonny & Cher, Siegfried & Roy, Brothers Grimm). --Rosiestep (talk) 01:10, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes Rosie you are quite correct. On Wikidata an item can only be one person and never more than that. For established concepts involving more people you can also have an item for a duo, quartet, band, team etc. That is one of the main differences between Wikipedia and Wikidata: the simple fact that on Wikipedia you have this "merge culture" that stuffs concepts together in order to fit the story, while on Wikidata you ave this "precision culture" that can only ever offer a certain precision to a concept (so founder-organization, husband-wife or father-son pairs are always two separate items, etc). There is even a whole set of help pages to explain the "Bonnie and Clyde" problem as it is known, which is only something that Wikipedians complain about. Librarians, who have been cataloguing people and organizations for years, love to link to Wikidata for this reason, as it is much less ambiguous than Wikipedia projects are. Jane (talk) 08:12, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

This also means, btw, that had you chosen to make separate articles on the two Sperattis, there would be no way to use Wikidata to link to the Spanish article on both of them, and vice versa. Making links through Wikidata forces both sides to partition knowledge into the same pieces, and that's not always possible for differing languages. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:18, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

List of female UK honours recipients without articles

I have been working on a list of UK women who have achieved top-tier state honours (like damehoods) and I was thinking it might make a helpful redlist for Women in Red; there are dozens (maybe hundreds) of women who are clearly notable as a result of receiving these awards but who lack articles – a central list could be really helpful for editors especially in light of the current competition. Does this sound useful? If so, how can I best create such a sub-page for the project? Many thanks, –Noswall59 (talk) 15:30, 19 November 2017 (UTC).

Pinging our Librarian in Residence, Megalibrarygirl, who may have some thoughts on this. --Rosiestep (talk) 16:43, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Note that an MBE by itself is usually not considered enough for notability, but may be a hint that the subject is notable for something else. So we should include those too, but not as "these people are notable and missing", only as "take a look at whether they're notable". —David Eppstein (talk) 16:58, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Rosiestep, thanks ever so much! David Eppstein, yeah, as it stands my list (currently offline) has missing DBEs and I plan to add equivalent ranks from other honours too; they should all be notable and I imagine it's a lot easier for everyone if we identify them all and have the redlinks in one place. There have been so many MBEs etc (many of which are non-notable) that it would be easier to direct people towards the honours list articles. Thanks, —Noswall59 (talk) 17:13, 19 November 2017 (UTC).

Noswall59, Do you know if they've been bulk-uploaded to Wikidata (d:Q14420) and/or if any of their (suitably-licensed) images have been uploaded to WikiCommons (c:Category:Order of the British Empire)? --Rosiestep (talk) 17:51, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

@Rosiestep, Noswall59, and David Eppstein: I can go through the list at some point and see if there are any good sources for them. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 18:14, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Megalibrarygirl, Rosiestep I am not familiar with Wikidata, but they don't appear to have been bulk-uploaded (do check though). I have dumped my offline list here for now, so feel free to take a look. They all need linking, but the list is complete for DBEs and I've put in subheadings for other honours. I wondered whether something along these lines could form a project page. Thanks, —Noswall59 (talk) 18:54, 19 November 2017 (UTC).

Noswall59: Thanks for your list with all the red links. Perhaps we could promote it as one of the resources to be included for next March when once again we'll be participating in Women's History Month. Alternatively, we could provide geo-focus on the British Isles, perhaps in February. Maybe we should discuss this on our Ideas and future planning page.--Ipigott (talk) 11:37, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Mary Van Stevens

Mary Van Stevens was nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mary Van Stevens. She was "elected and served as Heppner's first female mayor in 1954 and assumed office on 3 January 1955". Can anyone find more sources about her? Cunard (talk) 03:57, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Heppner is a very small town, perhaps even a village. In this case I don't really think we can provide support despite numerous articles in the local newspaper.--Ipigott (talk) 17:00, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Brenda Jones-Matthews

Brenda Jones-Matthews was nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brenda Jones-Matthews. According to https://www.newspapers.com/image/127411288/, "Franklin's new major (Brenda Jones-Matthews) is the first woman ever to hold that office." Can anyone find more sources about her? Cunard (talk) 03:57, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Just as above, small town mayor with minimal local-only press coverage, unlikely to survive AFD. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:42, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I've added some sourcing, and there's more to be found on her actions as mayor, but unless we can find in-depth non-local press I think the article is doomed. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:51, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Draft discussion

I've started a discussion here about a draft. As the subject is female, it falls into your purview. Input is requested and appreciated. Primefac (talk) 18:50, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Primefac: I've looked at the article and have to agree that your Hispanic sergeant is really not notable enough for inclusion. Her main claim to fame seems simply to be that she was Hispanic. If she had been decorated or widely reported for bravery or whatever, then it would have been OK. After all your lists, it's good to see you are starting to create biographies about women. You should look through some of our red lists (accessible from our main WiR page) and pick someone who is already sufficiently sourced. If you need further help, don't hesitate to ask again.--Ipigott (talk) 11:25, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

WiR December highlights

Please forward this invitation to anyone you think might be interested.

		Welcome to Women in Red's December 2017 worldwide online editathons. New: "Seasonal celebrations" "First Ladies" "Go local!" Continuing: #1day1woman Global Initiative Remember the World Contest closes on Thursday, 30 November
		(To subscribe: Women in Red/English language mailing list and Women in Red/international list. Unsubscribe: Women in Red/Opt-out list)

--Ipigott (talk) 13:48, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Signpost report on the recruitment bot

The latest edition of Signpost includes a report on the recruitment system we have used with success in recent months on Women in Red.--Ipigott (talk) 15:15, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Mainspace article on Women in Red

An article on Women in Red has been created.--Ipigott (talk) 14:37, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Julie Johnson Kidd

Maybe the wrong venue, but I'm looking at the Smithson Medal awarded by the Smithsonian Institution, they themselves call it the "most prestigious and highest award" they give out, and to just nine people in 31 years. Why is this woman in red? The Rambling Man (talk) 22:05, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Not the wrong venue at all. But lots of clearly-notable women are in red, so I think "why" is the wrong question. Did Kidd do more than be the president of a foundation, or was that the main reason for her notability? (I ask not to question her notability, which seems clear, but to help clarify what topical expertise might be helpful for an editor to make this blue.) —David Eppstein (talk) 23:26, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Well, my original point was that she is one of only nine recipients of the Smithsonian Institution's most prestigious award. I'm not an expert but that sounds like it deserves further research, and certainly, alone, that she would pass GNG. Over to you. The Rambling Man (talk) 23:32, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

This honorary degree citation looks useful. PamD 23:37, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

And another. PamD 23:39, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I was hoping this was an easy win for the project to create an article on this individual and highly notable woman. Perhaps not in the top listings for attention? The Rambling Man (talk) 23:32, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

The Rambling Man: Thanks for taking the time and trouble to bring JJK to our attention. If you think she is so deserving of an article, you could always create a biography yourself. WiR is always happy to see women's biographies created by any editor, not just WiR members or participants in our editathons. I realize that you are mainly interested in sports and in DYK but I've also seem many other interesting biographies among the 600 articles you have created over the years. But if you don't want to start JJK yourself, I'm sure we'll get to it sooner or later. I certainly agree with you that she deserves to be covered. Please let us know of any other notable women you think we should write about, or simply add their names to one of our red lists (accessible from Worklists on the main WiR page) together with a source. Thanks once again for your interest in WiR.--Ipigott (talk) 10:34, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Tenille Campbell - review request

Hi all, I'm very new to Wikipedia, but I had a course assignment to create a Wikipedia-style article on an Indigenous woman photographer, and thought I should try to actually create the article. While I picked someone I think is notable, after reading through several "how to write a biography" pages, I'm not sure. I think this should be the link to the draft: [[2]]. RuthEaston (talk) 16:07, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

I had a quick look, did a Google News search (which is my litmus test to check there are enough sources so that anyone could improve it) and passed the draft so it is now "live" at Tenille Campbell. Thanks for writing the article. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:12, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

RuthEaston: That's a great start, Ruth. I hope you will continue writing biographies about interesting women. If so, you might feel like becoming a member of Wikipedia:Women in Red.--Ipigott (talk) 10:51, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Metrics and the World Contest, a comparison of Nov 2016 and Nov 2017

November will be the second month in 2017 where the number of articles produced in a particular month exceed the same period in 2016. See our metrics page here. IMO, this has to be attributed to the contest. I think the delta between November 2016 and November 2017 will be staggering, as the total for November 2016 was 2,257 articles, and, as of this moment on November 20th, our bot lists 2,271 articles. With 10.5 days still to go, these numbers are impressive. --Rosiestep (talk) 20:45, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Rosiestep It's certainly the contest. As you may have seen on the main page, we jumped from 17.18% last week to 17.22% this week. That's a record.--Ipigott (talk) 21:01, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Pinging Dr. Blofeld with an FYI, as I'm assuming you are tracking these records for your grant report. --Rosiestep (talk) 22:59, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Cool. Thanks for letting me know. I'm wondering why the extra 700 odd article produced outside the contest can't become a part of our list though, is there anyway a bot can alert all of the reasonably decent extra article creators and ask them to put their articles on our list? So we've gone from 17.15 to 17.22 in 20 days? Good but given the amount of articles so much effort needed to gain half a percent let alone one. We'll have to devise a new mechanism for the new year to max out production and really try to directly work with getting that percentage up.♦ Dr. Blofeld 08:33, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

A pity there's nothing to measure diversity and global distribution though as this month would be off the charts!♦ Dr. Blofeld 08:41, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Dr. Blofeld; (a) regarding "measure diversity and global distribution", you could do by country on a spreadsheet and then create graphs. (b) As for "a bot can alert all of the reasonably decent extra article creators and ask them to put their articles on our list", don't know that there's a bot that can do that function, so maybe on a wishlist for the next contest? You could also put the two lists on a spreadsheet, sort out the ones which aren't on the contest page, and ask the editor on their talkpage if they would donate their article to the contest. Hard to say how many editors created the 700 articles which don't appear on the contest page but are listed on the metrics page. Maybe Bobo.03 has some thoughts regarding an alternate use of his recruitment bot (for the contest vs. to become a member of WiR). --Rosiestep (talk) 12:00, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

@Rosiestep: Trying to follow the thread. I'd think that most contest related articles would show on the metrics page? Otherwise, it might be hard to identify those articles in the first place IMO. The step to alert editors would be relatively simple, as Rosiestep said, just leaving an invitation message to them on their talk page. Bobo.03 (talk) 15:13, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Cheers Rosie. If we can get WMF support for contests long term for WIR then perhaps then we can also have something to measure diversity and scope progress long term. It would be a legit thing to document as systematic bias is a serious thing still.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:26, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

I've been watching this quite carefully. One of the most productive creators of women's biographies this month has been David Eppstein who joined WiR at the end of October. He does not want to bother with statistics, preferring simply to concentrate on article creation, which seems perfectly reasonable to me. In an exchange on his talk page, he has however invited me to take care of the stats - so I'll simply add his new women's biographies to Article achievements.--Ipigott (talk) 08:27, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

I've now added 74 of his articles. That should make quite a difference.--Ipigott (talk) 11:14, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

A couple were duplicates - I took the liberty of removing them. (Hope that's not an issue.) Still an impressive number, though. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 14:08, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for double checking, Ser Amantio. The duplicates were a result of slipshod cutting and pasting. And thanks also for covering San Marino. I think we now have at least one article for each of the European countries.--Ipigott (talk) 15:15, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Indeed - thank you for covering Monaco. I think we do have coverage, now, for every European country. Furthermore, I think we have coverage for every country in the world at this point...I see we're working on some of the unrecognized/less-recognized territories. (No need to apologize, by the by - we've already made up the ground, numbers-wise. :-) ) --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 15:27, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

I was actually wondering why we have not covered the British crown dependencies of the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey, all of which are proud not to be part of the United Kingdom. With populations of 84,000, 100,000 and 66,000 respectively, they are all much more populous than San Marino. Perhaps I'll start looking for notable women from each of them and add them to the main contest list. They all have flags!--Ipigott (talk) 16:25, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey have already been covered ;) --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 17:11, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Can someone explain the "date format" errors that the bot checking the contest entries is making? I seem to be getting a lot of them, and I don't see any errors. Is it perhaps disliking the YYYY-MM-DD accessdate formats? That is one of the formats that is allowed by the MOS but maybe the bot doesn't know that? Also, is there anything to be done when it complains that a lead paragraph is unsourced? Usually this is deliberate because the lead is supposed to summarize later material in an article, not to make new sourced claims of its own. And finally, one of my entries (Diane Lambert) was marked as declined because I replaced a redirect (to an unrelated article) by a new article rather than making a new article at an unused title; is there anything to be done about that? —David Eppstein (talk) 23:26, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Apparently the answer is: Dr. Blofeld insists that that's the way the bot was written and it can't or won't be changed. Based on this overly-restrictive reading of the rules on dates, which go well beyond Wikipedia MOS and guidelines and artificially eliminate most or all of my (over 100) new articles for November, I have pulled them from the contest and will not continue participating unless/until this ridiculous date inflexibility changes. Good luck to the rest of the participants, and as a reminder: we can and should keep making more articles for this project regardless of what contests might or might not be running. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:12, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Simple English data from Wikidata

Do we have a list of articles from the Simple English Wikipedia that don't have corresponding articles in the English Wikipedia? I know that the Simple English Wikipedia doesn't appear to categorize by gender, basically, but it could be a source for some good quick-pickup articles to pull over here as quickly as possible; I've found a couple over the past couple of days while trolling some of their lists of deaths, and I'm sure there are at least a few articles lurking about that I'm missing. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 17:00, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

All time monthly record

Yesterday our "Metrics" listed 3,148 articles for November 2017, beating our previous monthly record of 3,074 in March 2016. Thanks everyone for contributing! It's proving to be a very exciting month.--Ipigott (talk) 14:24, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Stats for last week on WHGI are also good: 779 new articles registered as human/female on Wikidata, bringing the overall percentage of women's biographies on the EN wiki up to 17.26%. And as far as I can see, there's still quite a backlog for inclusion on Wikidata.--Ipigott (talk) 07:52, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

This graph is amazing! 3,777 articles at the moment, and the bot will add others within the next day or two. --Rosiestep (talk) 00:34, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Auxillia Mnangagwa

Grateful if someone would work on Auxillia Mnangagwa, the wife of the new President of Zimbabwe Emmerson Mnangagwa and current Zimbabwean Assembly Member for Chirumanzu-Zibagwe. Thanks Greenshed (talk) 01:13, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

• Greenshed: Thanks for this. By coincidence, we have a drive on "First Ladies" in December. I'm sure we'll cover her then, if not before. I see there's lots of info here and here. I note that she was born on 25 March 1963 in Mazowe District in Mashonaland Central.--Ipigott (talk) 10:41, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

I've put together a short article. Can anyone provide a photograph?--Ipigott (talk) 14:54, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Photo sourced and added. Greenshed (talk) 00:43, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Number of articles needed to grow by 1%

Can somebody work out roughly how many articles we'd need to grow by 1%. I'm told 14,705 without male articles being created. If we can work out the average number of articles for men created a month and come up with a good estimate I would appreciate that.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:54, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Dr. Blofeld: We would need about 41,000 new women's biographies to grow 1%. On average, there are 3.7 new male biographies for every new biography of a woman. It's taken us from June 2016 to November 2017 to grow 1%. As we now have 259,000 women's biographies, we would be aiming aim for around 300,000. At the current rate of progression, we could make it by about February 2019 -- or even sooner if we have exciting contests to help us along.--Ipigott (talk) 15:46, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, so about 18 months with usual editing. 41,000 is a heck of a lot for just one percent. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:50, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

I would say 14 or 15 months.--Ipigott (talk) 16:42, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

And don't forget, going from 16 to 17% is really a 6.25% increase, and 17 to 18%, a 5.9% increase! It all depends how you look at it. Edwardx (talk) 01:47, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

I think the next goal should be to aim to reduce the time it takes to up by 1% to no longer than one year. Next year I want to stage something which will try to do that, I'll formulate something in January.♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:36, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. There should be an easy way to ingest historical content about women. We haven't even scratched the surface of what is available on Wikisource, locked into old encyclopedias in German and Russian for example. I also think there must be an easy way to create stubs for volunteer expansion. Jane (talk) 14:53, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

There are some simple ways stubs can be created for expansion, but without a whole lot of information in them. Has there been any concerted attempt to establish how much people are encouraged by stubs to expand them, rather than to create new content? (I happen to think they're valuable, but others might disagree.)

One other thing I'd like to see...a standardized list of transliterations, if at all possible, coupled with links to the articles in question, especially for Wikipedias such as the Russian. I was trying to create a couple of articles from the Uzbek Wikipedia, and I found that orthography defeats me, because it's not necessarily intuitive. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:12, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Sorry can't help you there. I can read Russian cyrillic but am still dependant on Google translate to get the gist of any text. Often though the old encyclopedias include English language sources. Jane (talk) 17:54, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

I should probably donate money to Google, the amount of use I've gotten out of Translate this past month. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 19:19, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

We need your opinion: Invitation to take survey about Administrator Noticeboard/Incidents

Hello WikiProject Women in Red editors :-)

Congratulations to everyone on your achievement of a record high month!

The Wikimedia Foundation Support and Safety team, along with the Anti-Harassment Tools Team, is conducting a survey on the use of the English Wikipedia Administrator Noticeboard/Incidents to handle conflicts and harassment. It’s the first survey of it’s kind and is important information for deciding on improvements.

We are trying to get as many diverse opinions and voices as possible. In addition to the people that use it often, we need to hear from people who post on it rarely but read the board frequently. I want to make sure that you folks know about the survey. And I encourage you to participate if you have some experience with this noticeboard. 

The survey should take 10-20 minutes to answer, and your individual responses will not be made public. The survey is delivered through Google Forms. The privacy policy for the survey describes how and when Wikimedia collects, uses, and shares the information we receive from survey participants and can be found here:

• https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2017_AN/Incidents_Survey_Privacy_Statement

If you would like to take this survey, please sign up on this page, and a link for the survey will be mailed to you via Special:Emailuser.

• Sign up here to receive a link to a survey

Thank you on behalf of the Support & Safety and Anti-Harassment Tools Teams, SPoore (WMF), Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 22:36, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Congratulations!

Congratulations Women in Red! Your project is inspiring.

I would like to take this opportunity to seek assistance for the page Malvika Iyer which has been edited by you previously. ( #1day1woman initiative hosted by the Women in Red project) The article was recently tagged for promotional content and I have removed the tag after working on it. (I'm a beginner and I'm still learning) I was wondering if you could take a look at it and edit / make necessary changes if required.

Thank you again for writing about all the amazing women! "Here's to strong women. May we know them. May we be them. May we raise them." Kindness88 (talk) 07:35, 2 December 2017 (UTC) Kindness88

Connecting Wikipedians with resources available through university libraries

Hi all,

With so many people creating content through this WikiProject it's likely some participants are running into paywalls or other impediments to accessing high-quality sources. I wonder if it would make sense to add a link to the Visiting Scholars program from the project's resources section.

The basic idea of the program is that Wikipedians form a relationship with a university library. The Wikipedian gets a university login to remotely access library resources like databases and ebooks and agrees to use that access to improve articles in an area of mutual interest. That's it in a nutshell.

Sometimes universities approach us to put out a call for applications, and sometimes Wikipedians fill out an application and we reach out to our contacts in academia to find a match. Finding a match is easier to do with some subjects than others. But in part because of projects like WiR, academics and librarians are increasingly interested to support efforts to improve Wikipedia's coverage of notable women, which makes participants of WiR particularly well suited for this program. Being a Visiting Scholar does not require physically "visiting," you can remain pseudonymous in all public communications if you so choose, and the arrangement is pretty informal.

If you're an active contributor and want access to research resources, I'd encourage you to check out WP:VS and fill out the application. If you have questions, you can respond here or leave a message on my talk page.

Thanks for all of your great work, and congratulations on the success of the World Contest! --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:41, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

@Ryan (Wiki Ed): That sounds very interesting. Unfortunately, none of the positions apply to me (I'm in Canada). I'm surprised there aren't many Canadian universities participating. If the University of Toronto was interested, I would definitely apply. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 17:48, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

@MrLinkinPark333: The list of participating institutions is just those who have participated so far. When someone applies (unless they are applying for one of the "open positions" listed at WP:VS/A), we conduct outreach to a range of institutions in both the U.S. and Canada to look for a match. When we find one, we add them to the list of participating institutions. Your response suggests some tweaking of the language on that page may be in order, though. As an aside, while Wiki Education is only involved with colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada, there are no geographic limits on who can apply to be a Visiting Scholar (i.e. any active Wikipedian is welcome to apply). --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:53, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

As a current VS at Northeastern University in the Women Writers Project, I can say that it is a great experience. One of the best things about it is access to high-quality sources, but there's also a feeling of pride being connected to a particular focus area where, together with the university, you are making a difference addressing that knowledge gap. --Rosiestep (talk) 18:06, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

I love the idea of the visiting scholar program, but because I try to focus beyond the US and Canada, I am unsure if it would be beneficial to me or a university. If there is anything writing about women has taught me it is that sources for the Caribbean and Latin America exist but are rarely available on line. If you ever expand the program to say UWI, I'm in :) SusunW (talk) 18:16, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Ryan (Wiki Ed): I have the same problem as Susun. I am a Brit living in Luxembourg and write mainly about people from Scandinavia and from the countries of continental Europe. Most of the resources I need are in languages other than English. I frequently come across useful sources from Google books but more often than not cannot access the pertinent pages. Has any thought been given to supporting full access to Google's digitized books for Wikipedians wishing to carry out research?--Ipigott (talk) 10:56, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

@SusunW and Ipigott: Broadening our geographic scope is possible in the future, but for the time being we're limited in the institutions we work with to the U.S. and Canada. I don't want to go off on a tangent, so I'll say that if you're interested to talk more about the reasons for that, leave a message on my talk page.

Do you think that an American or Canadian university with a strong, say, Caribbean Studies department (or other relevant area studies/language department) might have some of the resources you'd want access to?

Google Books is somewhat outside of Wiki Education's mission (bridging academia and Wikipedia), but I'll speculate that since Google's display of snippets is based on a fair use claim (i.e. it doesn't license the materials from the publishers as a university does with its library resources), I don't think there would be any way to open it up. May want to ask the WP:TWL folks, though, since they have a lot of experience working with publishers. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:06, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Ryan (Wiki Ed): Thanks for these explanations. I would just like to point out that access to Google books goes far beyond snippets. Whole chapters, indeed in some cases next to full coverage of books is sometimes available. But availability appears to depend on where you are geographically located and how often you have accessed a given source. In addition to the Wikipedia Library, I think this might usefully be referred to the Wikimedia Foundation but I'm not sure of the procedures. At first sight, it looks to me as if suitable software could be developed to facilitate and improve access to Google books.--Ipigott (talk) 07:47, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

WP:AALERTS need some help on Community Wishlist Survey

Many of you use Article Alerts to get notified of discussions (PRODs and AfD in particular). However, due to our limit resources (one bot coder), not a whole lot of work can be done on Article Alerts to expand and maintain the bot. If the coder gets run over by a bus, then it's quite possible this tool would become unavailable in the future.

There's currently a proposal on the Community Wishlist Survey for the WMF to take over the project, and make it both more robust / less likely to crash / have better support for new features. But one of the main things is that with a full team behind Article Alerts, this could also be ported to other languages!

The benefits to Women-related projects on other Wikis would be both obvious and immense. So if you make use of Article Alerts and want to keep using it and see it ported to other languages, please go and support the proposal. And advertise it to the other WIR projects in other languages too to let them know this exists, otherwise they might miss out on this feature! Thanks in advance! Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:24, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

BTW, all you need to do to support is just click a button. If you want to leave a comment, that's fine too. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:02, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Women in Red Book Fund

I've allowed contest winners the option to donate some of their winnings into a Book Fund for the Women in Red project. Depending on the final amount raised I'll set up a page and out of the budget we can gradually distribute books and subscriptions to the most dedicated editors who need them upon demand. The focus will be on bio dictionaries and encyclopedias, ones which have a lot of potential missing articles, and buying valuable subscriptions, but depending on the price I think we can be flexible. I hope we can run more contests in the future and develop this Book Fund as I think offering editors support with books about women is important. If you won prize money in the contest, please consider donating some of it into this fund on the main contest page in the section beneath the prize winners.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:05, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

What would be useful is if we could make a list of women book bio dictionaries and encyclopedias, ones which are thick and full with potential missing content. The fund can then go towards buying books which max out content production.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:26, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

I love this idea. Thank you Doc! SusunW (talk) 19:34, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Thankyou Susun, at least somebody here does ;-).♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:05, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

@Dr. Blofeld and Rosiestep: please check your e-mail. I've had a response from Cambridge and have included you both in my reply. SusunW (talk) 17:43, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

What a great idea user:Dr. Blofeld! I cited Sarah Allaback's The First American Women Architects (University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-03321-6) a load of times! I'm so lucky to have access to it at my library! Fred (talk) 21:04, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Can I give you folks an article idea?

Abby Abinanti. The Nation, November 30, 2017. Los Angeles Times, March 5, 2014. Indian Country Today, March 24, 2014. Lost Coast Outpost, July 15, 2017, referring to a PBS documentary. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:13, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

this is very interesting, but not my area of expertise. And thanks for the recommendation of documentary! Is the lighter sentence because of the Tribal_Law_and_Order_Act_of_2010? Maybe there is some way to improve that article?Fred (talk) 23:32, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

A suggestion for sporting editors

One thing I've had on my list for a while is that our coverage of netball biographies is really, really bad - despite it being a women-dominated sport with professional or semi-professional leagues in multiple countries. At the moment, we don't even reliably have the players in the main national teams. And while I can have a crack at the occasional article, I am totally useless at the kind of bot-driven template stuff that seems to work really well across Wikipedia's sporting articles. Would someone be willing to maybe take this on? There's thousands of potential articles there. The Drover's Wife (talk) 21:10, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Is there a list of this somewhere? Like list of International netball players or something? Joseph2302 (talk) 23:21, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

I don't think so - even those kinds of supporting articles aren't there. But all the major national teams are linked from 2015 Netball World Cup, and between that and the major domestic competitions: Suncorp Super Netball, ANZ Premiership and Netball Superleague there's so many articles in need of creation. The Drover's Wife (talk) 09:49, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Speaking of sports, there are many redlinks at 2014 OFC Women's Nations Cup and 2014 Copa América Femenina while a few at 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup qualification – UEFA Group 6. If anyone's interested in making articles on women in association football, these are some possible lists.--MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 23:35, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Most active ENWP WikiProjects in the last year

This was emailed to me, and I thought some folks might be interested in the results. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:02, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Whoa! That is amazing, Rosiestep! Megalibrarygirl (talk) 21:02, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Fascinating, as it clearly shows the the deletionists are more active than the content creators. BUT, that being said, we totally rock! Top project for creating new content is pretty awesome. SusunW (talk) 21:07, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Not too long ago, Military history was by far the most active of the content WPs. Now I see we are three times more active than they are (or twice as active if you exclude the bots). And it looks as if we are becoming more active from month to month. Would it be possible to restore Wikipedia:Database reports/WikiProjects by changes? It hasn't been updated since July 2016.--Ipigott (talk) 15:30, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

It just occurred to me that Bobo.03 is probably interested in this too. It shows how WikiProjects have been evolving. Rosiestep: It would be really useful if we could receive updates of this kind about once every three months. It would be even better if the database reports page could be reactivated.--Ipigott (talk) 10:43, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

@Ipigott: Thank you for tagging me! I created a similar query page when I started our project, and contacted projects to publicize our study according to their active levels in the past year. WiR is really impressive! Congrats! Also, please send me the recruiting template for the new month so I can continue sending recommendations (It's Dec now.. How time flies!). Bobo.03 (talk) 19:50, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Bobo.03: I'm not sure what you mean by the recruiting template. For you information, there were 22 new WiR members in November, most of them attracted by the World Contest. You should be able to run you application after around 16:00 GMT today.--Ipigott (talk) 07:52, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

@Ipigott: My apology. Recruitment invitation probably is the correct name? Here is the one you sent to me before. Bobo.03 (talk) 14:51, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

I think I updated the November listing in the same way.--Ipigott (talk) 14:55, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

@Ipigott:, Sorry I don't quite get it.. So here are the three invitation templates I used for the past three months, Sept, Oct, and Nov. I wonder what would be like the updated priority to put in the template for December? Bobo.03 (talk) 18:35, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

• Bobo.03 Sorry about the misunderstanding. I now realize what you need. Here it is:

Subject: Invitation to join Women in Red

		Thank you for creating several articles on women and their works over the past few weeks. We have become aware of your contributions thanks to research undertaken by Bobo.03 at the University of Minnesota. You might be interested in becoming a member of our WikiProject Women in Red where we are actively trying to reduce Wikipedia's content gender gap. If you would like to receive news of our activities without becoming a member, you can simply add your name to our mailing list. In any case, thank you for actively contributing to the coverage of women (currently, 17.25% of English Wikipedia's biographies). Our priorities for December: Seasonal celebrations First ladies Go local #1day1woman Global Initiative
		(To subscribe: Women in Red/English language mailing list and Women in Red/international list. Unsubscribe: Women in Red/Opt-out list)

--Ipigott (talk) 09:28, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

@Ipigott: Got it! It's done. Here is the candidate list for November. Thank you! Bobo.03 (talk) 17:35, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Bobo.03: Thanks for the November results. This looks like a pretty difficult one for me as most of the significant contributors are fully aware of Women in Red as they participated in the WiR World Contest. Before I send out invitations, perhaps Rosiestep, Megalibrarygirl, SusunW and Victuallers would like to comment. One option might be to send out a modified invitation which specifically mentions their participation in the contest. I'll wait until tomorrow before I send anything out.--Ipigott (talk) 08:12, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

I've decided to adapt the invitation for World Contest participants and will send out whichever invitation is appropriate. See the alternative invitation below.

		Thank you for creating articles on women and their works over the past few weeks as a participant in our World Contest. We have become aware of your contributions thanks to research undertaken by Bobo.03 at the University of Minnesota. If you would like to receive news of future WiR events and participate in our discussions, you might now be interested in becoming a member of Women in Red where we are actively trying to reduce Wikipedia's content gender gap. In any case, thank you for actively contributing to the coverage of women (currently 17.25% of English Wikipedia's biographies). Our priorities for December: Seasonal celebrations First ladies Go local #1day1woman Global Initiative
		(To subscribe: Women in Red/English language mailing list and Women in Red/international list. Unsubscribe: Women in Red/Opt-out list)

--Ipigott (talk) 11:23, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

• I sent out 20 to obvious World Contest participants; the remaining 45 or so received the standard invitation. Thanks to Ser Amantio di Nicolao, quite a number of these came in towards the end of the month as a result of his invitation. It'll be interesting to see how many decide to join WiR.--Ipigott (talk) 12:50, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm curious to see if any of those 20 join, Bobo.03 :) The invitation looks good, Ipigott! :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:57, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

@Ipigott: I didn't think about that.. Sorry for the extra work on you.. But the updated template looks good to me! @Megalibrarygirl: Our signpost has been published. Thank you for your help! Bobo.03 (talk) 19:48, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Bobo.03: We're now up to 13 new members and two on the mailing list.--Ipigott (talk) 11:16, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

DYK nominations

DYK has received a slew of nominations of women's biographies from the Women in Red World Contest. Almost none of them have accompanying images. Meanwhile, we are very lacking in people images, which would feature the hook in the top slot. If it's possible to add a photo to any of these nominations it would be appreciated. (These are only the approved nominations; many unapproved ones can be found at WP:DYKN.)

• Template:Did you know nominations/Magdalena Wolińska-Riedi
• Template:Did you know nominations/Ruth O'Reilly
• Template:Did you know nominations/Abadi Bano Begum
• Template:Did you know nominations/Arlinda Locklear
• Template:Did you know nominations/Sirra Wally Ndow-Njie
• Template:Did you know nominations/Chanju Samantha Mwale
• Template:Did you know nominations/Suah Koko
• Template:Did you know nominations/Ellie Miles
• Template:Did you know nominations/Samba Yonga
• Template:Did you know nominations/Ana Lucía Armijos
• Template:Did you know nominations/Eunice Silva
• Template:Did you know nominations/Antoinette Montaigne
• Template:Did you know nominations/Duvvuri Subbamma
• Template:Did you know nominations/Marijke Nel
• Template:Did you know nominations/Mollie McGeown
• Template:Did you know nominations/Josephine Cafrine
• Template:Did you know nominations/Sung Hyang-sim
• Template:Did you know nominations/Victoria Yar Arol
• Template:Did you know nominations/Nicki McNelly
• Template:Did you know nominations/Yunchi
• Template:Did you know nominations/Mildred Creak
• Template:Did you know nominations/Camille Robinson-Regis
• Template:Did you know nominations/He Luli
• Template:Did you know nominations/Remy Siemsen
• Template:Did you know nominations/Martha Farnsworth Riche
• Template:Did you know nominations/Marjorie Hahn
• Template:Did you know nominations/Carys Bannister
• Template:Did you know nominations/Janai Haupapa
• Template:Did you know nominations/Clare Wheatley
• Template:Did you know nominations/Hilary Swarts
• Yoninah (talk) 20:01, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Afd for Annie Wan

Editing help is needed on Annie Wan, and I might bring your attention to the AfD there. The article is in good and factual shape at the moment, but it was unfortunately created and then brought to AfD in a state where the article was a hybrid of biographical details from two Annie Wan's: one a non-notable locative media artist/professor for whom few sources are found, and another (Annie Wan Lai-Kuen) who is a highly notable ceramicist in multiple museum collections, for whom multiple sources are found. I have tried to save it, and the article seems factually OK now, but have exhausted my abilities in that area.104.163.154.101 (talk) 03:47, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Doubts over Samoan weightlifter with two confusing names Iuniarra Simanu and Iuniarra Sipaia

I have a big doubt regarding the fact that are there 2 different Samoan female weightlifters who were born on the same date (25 June 1993) Iuniarra Sipaia and Iuniarra Simanu? I created the article Iuniarra Sipaia because as she was linked with 2016 Oceania Weightlifting Championships, 2014 Commonwealth Games, 2017 Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games and 2013 Pacific Mini Games. But when I looked at the list of Samoan female weightlifters I identified Iuniarra Simanu who was born on the same date as of Iuniarra Sipaia on 25th of June, 1993. Iuniarra Simanu has represented Samoa in the 2010 Youth Olympics, 2010 Commonwealth Games. [http://www.iwf.net/results/athletes/?athlete=simanu-iuniarra-1993-06-25&id=8523 When I looked at this website Iuniarra Simanu has not competed at the international competitions since 2012. But Iuniarra Sipaia has been participating at the International competitions, recently she participated at the 2017 Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games. Can somebody clarify my doubts? Abishe (talk) 11:02, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

It's quite likely a name change due to marriage, Simanu being her maiden surname and Sipaia after marriage. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:16, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Check the official national weightlifting organisation's records, they should know if it's the same person. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 06:09, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Women with Michelin stars

Hi everyone,

Following the WiR World Contest, I've continued to work on my niche field as I want to create a specific list of all women who have ever held a Michelin star. While this might sound a little challenging, the number of women who have ever held stars is proportionately really quite low. I've been working on the list at my sandbox - User:Miyagawa/sandbox, so if anyone is looking for some red links to work on, then there's plenty there already and I've barely scratched the surface.

If you do work on this area, then be warned - I've found the press coverage to be extremely inaccurate for so called "firsts". One of the articles I expanded during the contest was Titti Qvarnström, whose reliable sources claimed she was the first female Nordic chef to win a star. She's not - you could argue that either Emma Bengtsson (Swedish chef, but working in NYC) or Anita Klemensen (Danish chef, working in Denmark and so in the Nordic edition) was the first. Likewise, Anne-Sophie Pic is often claimed to be the fourth woman to win three stars, there having been a 50 year+ gap between the third and fourth winners. From what I can tell, she's at least the eighth. She's not even the fourth in France, as she's at least the fifth there too. But this isn't really all that surprising, as I tend to find that the achievements of female chefs are often completely forgotten about by the media and certain sources. Take Marguerite Bise for example, her son had an article before she did, and in that article it claimed that he won three stars and popularised the restaurant. He did win three stars, but she won them first and made the restaurant's name. His daughter Sophie Bise also won three stars, and yes, she's a redlink at that.

So well, this is going to take a while and I have a feeling that the only way to be certain that I haven't missed anyone is to literally look through every edition of the Michelin guide from 1920 onwards when they first introduced Michelin stars. What I'll probably do is expand it a little more so that everything is sourced and then move it into the main space as I can then use the talk page to keep a list of which editions have been checked. I already know that there's a group of at least nine or ten German chefs to be added as I found a source online which said that there were ten female chefs in a recent edition of the guide, but annoyingly didn't name them. Miyagawa (talk) 00:18, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Miyagawa: Thanks for all the useful work you've already done on this and for the evolving list, already with 24 red links. We had an editathon on Food and Drink in November 2016. Perhaps we should revive the topic early next year.--Ipigott (talk) 08:33, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Magda Fedor

I bring your attention to the article for Magda Fedor. She died recently, aged 103, and was an incredible 123-time national champion in sports shooting. If anyone has any interest in this area, either sports shooting or Hungarian people, please help to expand this article. Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 09:07, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Kate Sheppard

Hello, I'm working on a project with User:Gadfium to bring the Kate Sheppard article up to Featured Article status in time for the anniversary of suffrage in New Zealand in september 2018. I was hoping some people might lend their editing expertise to the project. While he has done significant expansions and I am about to finish going through with my own copyedits I am still quite new at this so was looking to see if anyone familiar with the requirements of Featured Article might want to get involved. I have just finished my classes for the year so have quite a bit of time to dedicate to this in the following weeks. Let me know if you have any questions! Gadfium has done a pretty good summary of things that need work on the Kate Sheppard talk page Susan Tol (talk) 05:14, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Susan Tol, Gadfium: It's already a very informative article. You'll see I've carried out a bit of copy editing. The main problem is the lead which needs to be significantly expanded, summarizing Sheppard's life and highlighting her achievements. The article would also benefit from more illustrations, for example photographs of Sheppard addressing meetings and portraits of some of the other figures mentioned. I expect Sheppard will also play a central role in the suffrage anniversary celebrations in September 2018. These could be summarized in the article. Let me know if you need further assistance.--Ipigott (talk) 10:43, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

I have just come across this Kate Sheppard biography from NZEDGE which contains some useful illustrations as well as a number of details and quotations which could usefully be included.--Ipigott (talk) 11:33, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, this helps a lot! Another newbie question, I'm a little confused with what the copyright restrictions are on those images from NZ edge. It seems each image that requires extra permission has it clearly stated beneath the picture, but there is a little copyright statement at the very bottom of the webpage. Can I assume the images with no instructions on reuse are able to be put on wikicommons? Susan Tol (talk) 02:35, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Susan Tol: As a general rule, copyright expires 70 years after the death of the author of a work. Most of the illustrations in NZ edge would appear to come into this category. The fact that they happen to be held by a museum is irrelevant in such cases. May I also suggest that you first concentrate on taking the article to GA. That would also encourage more editors to contribute to the article and would lead to a review with suggestions for further improvement. You could probably go for GA fairly soon, once you are happy with the general quality of the article and its coverage. One of the items which might require more attention is coverage of Sheppard's writings. These are referred to in the article but there is little detail. Sheppard appears to have published Woman suffrage in New Zealand in 1907. See this WorldCat item.--Ipigott (talk) 08:15, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Signpost article on the World Contest

The latest edition of Signpost contains an interesting article on the World Contest.--Ipigott (talk) 08:07, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

AfD Julie Rice

The article on Julie Rice was created at the recent Women's Economic empowerment edit-a-thon in Washington DC. It's since been nominated for deletion here. She founded one of the largest woman-owned fitness companies in the world. If you have time, please take a look. Thanks. --Rosiestep (talk) 22:17, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Rosiestep: I had intended going back to this after reviewing the articles created at the Swedish Embassy editathon but then completely forgot. But now it seems to be a firm keep anyway. I am working on a number of other articles from their list of red links. Most of them are on Swedish business women active in the United States, but of course they'll all be BLPs!--Ipigott (talk) 12:09, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Women in Baike Baidu

Created in 2008, the online Chinese encyclopaedia Baike Baidu has just grown to over 15 million articles, as can be seen from its main page. By comparison, the English Wikipedia looks quite small. I've been wondering whether Baike Baidu's biographies of women would be a useful source for us. Do we have any participants who are sufficiently fluent in Chinese to look into the situation? If would be useful to find out, for example, how many women's biographies it contains, whether these are organized along lines similar to those in Wikipedia, and whether they are based on reliable sources. We could then perhaps have a look at the more frequently accessed women's biographies to look for red links. Any offers? Perhaps Zanhe?--Ipigott (talk) 11:18, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

@Ipigott: yes Baidu Baike is huge and grows really fast, partly because they reward people for writing articles and partly because of China's relaxed attitude toward copyright. Lots of its articles are copy-and-pasted from online sources, and most people there don't really mind. However, it's really hard to find any aggregate information from Baidu, as it doesn't have a categorization system like Wikipedia's. AFAIK, there's no way to find all the women's biographies from Baidu Baike. -Zanhe (talk) 01:02, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

And how about Everipedia?

I've just seen that the English-language Everipedia now has six million articles, exceeding the English Wikipedia. One of the reasons is that all articles are considered to be acceptable if they are based on sources. Recently Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia, became Everipedia's Chief Information Officer. He will be responsible for moving the entire process to the blockchain technology on which Bitcoin is based. One of the goals is to absorb the entire contents of Wikipedia (the EN version of Wikipedia forms the basis of Everipedia) and of other on-line encyclopeadias. Given the success achieved so far and the evolving ambitions, I find it most surprising that the Wikipedia deletionists have refused allow Wikipedia to include an article on Everipedia. Nevertheless, these developments should be followed carefully.--Ipigott (talk) 15:15, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Sanger's on about his third (at least?) Wikipedia clone, and they've been...disastrous, to put it lightly. The last one never took off because he acted as dictator-from-high and invited a bunch of oddball kooks as "experts", among many other screwups. There are many, many takes on "Wikipedia mirror + stuff Wikipedia doesn't want" and they're about as successful as any other random Wikipedia mirror (with the poor ability to meet ordinary notability standards to match). The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:31, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

The Drover's Wife: The user access stats look disastrous. It'll be interesting to see if Sanger's involvement makes any difference.--Ipigott (talk) 17:21, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

And this article on its extremely low bar on what it publishes. Alafarge (talk) 15:54, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for this, certainly i hadn't heard of it yet! Just looking at some articles i follow on wikipedia, it looks sort of clone-ish but it does differ. This is very interesting tho. Sanger says "You’ll contribute to it using whatever system you’re most comfortable with."Quartz link so maybe we don't need to worry.Fred (talk) 23:34, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Meetups subcategory?

Would Category:WikiProject Women in Red meetups be a helpful subcategory for Category:WikiProject Women in Red? I'm happy to move some pages, if so. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 05:16, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Ditto Category:WikiProject Women in Red metrics? ---Another Believer _(Talk) 19:09, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

How to add a potential article to Wikidata for Worklist inclusion?

Hi, y'alls. How do redlinked potential articles get added to the Wikidata routine for inclusion in this project's Worklists? What about articles that need expansion vs articles that need to be created? Are they pulled from article categories? Or, does a Wikidata statement have to be created? Is this automated? What qualifies them to be shortlisted? Alphasort pecking order? Ping me back. Having fun! Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 00:00, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

• Checkingfax: The Wikidata redlink lists consist generally of articles on women's biographies in other language versions of Wikipedia which do not yet have an article in the English wiki. They are created automatically and updated by the listeria bot. Once a name has an article in English, it disappears with the next daily update. The lists sometimes also include names which have been included in Wikidata from important biographical dictionaries. The Women in Red lists do not contain articles requiring expansion. Some WikiProjects highlight these but as Women in Red is about article creation, we do not use such lists. You can find month-by-month listings of articles requiring expansion under Category:Articles_to_be_expanded. You can also find lists of biographical stubs at Category:People stubs by nationality. I hope this answers your queries. Thanks for all your interesting articles including the one on Women in Red.--Ipigott (talk) 16:32, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

@Ipigott:, I hope you can help me with a related issue. I was playing around with Wikidata for my own edification. I created a Wikidata item for Dorothy McAuliffe (Q45120525). She is does not have a Wikipedia article and is on this List of current U.S. First Souses. For some reason, she is not showing up on this list: Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by occupation/First Ladies. Any idea what I am doing wrong? Thanks in advance. Knope7 (talk) 04:51, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

Checkingfax: You are not doing anything wrong. What you've added seems fine. For the person's name to show up on the WiR Wikidata list, there must be at least one article in another language, the idea being that the information in the articles in other languages can help with the English version.--Ipigott (talk) 15:02, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

New Year's resolution: Write more articles for Women in Red!

		Welcome to Women in Red's January 2018 worldwide online editathons. New: "Prisoners" New: "Fashion designers" New: "Geofocus: Great Britain and Ireland" Continuing: #1day1woman Global Initiative
		(To subscribe: Women in Red/English language mailing list and Women in Red/international list. Unsubscribe: Women in Red/Opt-out list)

--Megalibrarygirl (talk) 18:13, 27 December 2017 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Indiscriminate tag spree of notable women scientists

Bueller 007 has been indiscriminately tagging large numbers of Canadian women academics with notability tags. Bueller's talk contributions and edit summaries demonstrate no understanding of our academic notability criteria and Bueller has been insistant on restoring notability tags even when challenged. Many of the articles are on scientists who clearly pass WP:PROF#C1 due to their highly cited works; Bueller refuses to recognize that criterion without some other indication of notability within the article. On the other hand, some of the tagged articles may be genuinely of dubious notability; the indiscriminate nature of the tagging spree makes it hard to tell. See Toniann Pitassi, Elizabeth Stern, Deborah Martin-Downs, Doris Löve, Suzanne Lacasse, Kathy Martin (scientist), Raye Kass, Sara Harris, Sylvia Edlund, Doris Daou, Yolande Dalpé, Rita Winkler, Alexandra Morton, Mary MacArthur, Martine Dorais, Leonie Sandercock, Patricia O'Brien (academic), Fiona Moore, Onowa McIvor, Erin Manning (theorist), Christina Kramer, Bertha Harmer, Ann Dooley, Anna-Louise Crago, Suzannah Clark, Joyce Boye, Stephanie Ben-Ishai, Peggy J. Kleinplatz, Lisa Travis, Thecla Schiphorst, Marie-Lucie Tarpent (AfD), Hanna Tervanotko, and Barbara Taylor for some articles with those tags still present, or Special:Contributions/Bueller 007 for more. Additional eyes would be welcome as one-on-one reversion is going nowhere. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:50, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

Is there is a case for a topic ban? Xxanthippe (talk) 21:46, 27 December 2017 (UTC).

Take it to WP:ANI. The Drover's Wife (talk) 21:58, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

I will leave that to others as I am reluctant to visit that forum for fear of biting and boomeranging. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:30, 28 December 2017 (UTC).

In the pink

I went through all the articles listed above and made some updates to help. But it's difficult to do much with so many. One useful way of prioritising work on such long lists of women is to use Anomie's link classifier. This changes the colour of a wikilink to indicate its status. So, for example, a redirect is shown in green while a disambiguation page is shown in yellow. What's especially useful is that a page tagged for deletion is shown in shocking pink. So, to me, one of the articles stands out as needing immediate attention: Marie-Lucie Tarpent. Andrew D. (talk) 11:52, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

The WikiCup

This is just a quick note to let you all know that the 2018 WikiCup will begin on January 1st. The WikiCup is an annual competition to encourage high-quality contributions to Wikipedia by adding a little friendly competition to editing. Participants can score through achieving DYKs, GAs, GA reviews, FAs and by other means. At the time of writing, only twenty-five users have signed up to take part in the competition. Interested parties, no matter their level of experience or their editing interests, are warmly invited to sign up. Questions are welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Thanks! Cwmhiraeth (talk) 11:45, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Liechtenstein women's national football team

Liechtenstein women's national football team has been nominated for deletion. If people could look at the article and offer their opinion, that would be useful. Thanks. --LauraHale (talk) 15:04, 1 January 2018 (UTC)