In August 2020, Rosiestep came across the biography of Israeli historian Dvora Hacohen. Rosiestep added a template to it indicating that it was, well, completely unsourced. So far, so good. But in the very next edit, Rosiestep added a source and removed that template.
The relevant paragraph went from this:
to this:From 1975 to 1992, she was the Scientific Advisor of Educational Television for History and Jewish Studies. From 1986 to 1989, she served as a research fellow at the Ben-Gurion Institute for the Study of Zionism and the State of Israel in Sde Boker, and lecturer in the Department of Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She also worked as a researcher at Oxford University, Harvard University, and at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and taught as a visiting professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, United States.
The reference Rosiestep added confirms that Dvora Hacohen was indeed listed as a visting scholar at Rutgers. So we went from a completely unsourced biography to one where a single fact is sourced. Hacohen's date of birth, place of borth, parents, education, spouse, child, etc are all still completely unsourced. Rosiestep went on to add a list of works (with a reference) and some categories. Some of those categories, of course, were based on the unsourced information already there.Biography:
From 1975 to 1992, she was the Scientific Advisor of Educational Television for History and Jewish Studies. From 1986 to 1989, she served as a research fellow at the Ben-Gurion Institute for the Study of Zionism and the State of Israel in Sde Boker, and lecturer in the Department of Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She also worked as a researcher at Oxford University, Harvard University, and at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and taught as a visiting professor at Rutgers University (2012) in New Jersey, United States.[1]
Now, Rosiestep isn't the only person to have edited this article. I'm singling her out because of her position in the Community and because I know she saw that the biography was completely unreferenced. WP:BLP states:
The word "contentious" here is a problem. It can be argued that there is nothing "contentious" about birth dates or places of birth or parents or really any biographical detail. And this is probably true if you're a Wikipedia editor and not the person whose age, birthplace, or parentage are wrong. But there's a footnote on that sentence, which includes none other than Jimmy Wales saying such things as "zero information is preferred to misleading or false information" and "It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons."Contentious material about living persons (or, in some cases, recently deceased) that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—must be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion.
Now, over three years on, there are still only those two sources, but a lot more (unsourced) material has been added. And there seems to be a very slow edit war over whether Hacohen was born in 1936 or 1937. Apparently editors (including admins) are happy to revert an IP's change to the birth date even though the birth date in the article has no source. How can they possibly know which date is right? By the way, the Jewish Women's Archive says she was born in 1946. She keeps getting younger. At least that's a date with a source.
What I think Rosiestep should have done (if she wasn't willing to find sources for everything in the article) was mark it for deletion as a wholly unsourced biography. As Jimbo says, zero information is preferred to misleading or false information". Adding a reference for one simple fact while leaving the rest unsourced was worse than doing nothing at all. It may have mislead other editors into thinking that the information was referenced.