The Guardian view on Wikipedia’s female volunteers: a hive heroism that changes history

[rnu]

Guardian: The Guardian view on Wikipedia’s female volunteers: a hive heroism that changes history

The dictionary definition of heroism does not usually extend to people who work away anonymously, and for no money, for the reputational benefit of others. But this is what growing numbers of largely female researchers have been doing, in an attempt to rebalance the historical record on Wikipedia in favour of women.

I strenuously deny any and all accusations that I post this to give Crowken a coronary.

[Randy from Boise]

I strenuously deny any and all accusations that I post this to give Crowken a coronary.

Tell it to the judge, I know Assault with a Deadly Weapon when I see it.

t

[Vigilant]

I strenuously deny any and all accusations that I post this to give Crowken a coronary.

Tell it to the judge, I know Assault with a Deadly Weapon when I see it.

t

The slow blade penetrates the shield.

[AndyTheGrump]

I strenuously deny any and all accusations that I post this to give Crowken a coronary.

Tell it to the judge, I know Assault with a Deadly Weapon when I see it.

t

The slow blade penetrates the shield.

The small print strains the eyes.

[Zoloft]

I strenuously deny any and all accusations that I post this to give Crowken a coronary.

Tell it to the judge, I know Assault with a Deadly Weapon when I see it.

t

The slow blade penetrates the shield.

The small print strains the eyes.

Damn your eyes!

[rnu]

I strenuously deny any and all accusations that I post this to give Crowken a coronary.

Tell it to the judge, I know Assault with a Deadly Weapon when I see it.

t

The slow blade penetrates the shield.

The small print strains the eyes.

Damn your eyes!

Try reading this!

[Midsize Jake]

The Guardian view...

The text of this piece obviously comes straight from the WMF, and it's even in the byline, so why are they calling it "the Guardian view"?

[ArmasRebane]

This is a weird dig in there:

Hence the preponderance of great men of American and European history. The biography most overloaded with scholarly references remains that of Joseph Stalin.

Joseph Stalin (T-H-L) is definitely hefty (200,000 words, nearly 1000 citations) but given they're talking about shining a light on less-known historical figures it seems weird to call out "this major figure from the 20th century has a long article!" Shouldn't people be upset there aren't more women biographies with the same length and breadth?

(As a side note, I was mildly interested if I could find the longest female biography, but Special:Long pages just shows that there's a ton of crud way way worse than Stalin. I guess List of Hindi songs recorded by Asha Bhosle (T-H-L) marginally counts (three times the prose size of Stalin, just for a song listing) although if you skip tangential articles like that or Reactions to Liz II's death, the first woman I found was at 121, Mary Hanford Ford (T-H-L), beaten only in the long bio hall of shame by Vladimir Putin (T-H-L), Novak Djokovic (T-H-L), and Rafael Nadal (T-H-L) (now that's a more interesting point of comparison for Wikipedia's biases.)

[Kraken]

We're all thinking it.

Who is the female Stalin, and what are her stats?

Article length of course, you pigs.

[Randy from Boise]

The Guardian view...

The text of this piece obviously comes straight from the WMF, and it's even in the byline, so why are they calling it "the Guardian view"?

Maybe so it can be quoted as a reference in a Wikipedia article?

t

[Randy from Boise]

I'll give ya a Hot Take, WMF...

There will ALWAYS be more articles in Wikipedia on men than women because historically businesses and governments and the scientific realm have been dominated by men while women have been subjugated to the domestic realm, within which individuals are poorly documented and the stuff of specialist social history.

A biographical article ratio of 80:20 might be — read closely MIGHT BE, not saying that it is — perfectly reasonable.

And this: moving forward, even though a majority of college bachelor's degrees and advanced degrees are awarded to women in the USA (and probably many other places), a hard male:female gender skew might continue to be "regular" for new articles into the future due to professional athletics and the massive number of new articles related to that.

And this: I've said it before and I will say it again — just because the corps of very active volunteers is overwhelmingly male doesn't mean that it is necessarily biased against women or unwelcoming.

There are enormous fields, many hobbies, that are overwhelmingly male dominated. I have mentioned before how I tracked gender stats when I was doing my collector-oriented record label really hard in the 1990s and it was 85:15 for the entire duration.* My latest hobby is collecting antique wristwatches and the skew is even greater than 85:15 in that hobby, if anything. Not to mention my foray into football history, which is again well beyond 85:15.

Wikipedia-writing and Wikipedia-maintenance very well could be — shows every sign of being — yet another 85:15 hobby. WMF has probably poured millions of dollars into changing that fact, including hiring a steady stream of female top functionaries, with very minimal results.

The Women in Red project has done more by a factor of 10 to rectify WP's gender-related deficiencies than anything San Francisco has accomplished with its lectures, scholarships, fellowships, and conventions.

t

* - For my 2021–2023 comeback it was (let me check............) 277 men and 10 women — 97:3.

[Kraken]

The Guardian view...

The text of this piece obviously comes straight from the WMF, and it's even in the byline, so why are they calling it "the Guardian view"?

Maybe so it can be quoted as a reference in a Wikipedia article?

It would hardly be a surprise to anyone in the UK that Wikipedia and The Guardian are of one mind, so why not engage in a little circular referencing. I wonder if it isn't already the most cited UK newspaper on the site.

It's literally the only left wing newspaper in Britain that Wikipedia considers reliable. Jimmy was on the board. It's reader funded, with constant begging banners extolling it's virtues. It self regulates, because who would dare question their integrity.

There has been a recent departure from the Wikipedia model. The Guardian
now requires registration to view articles via its app, while they remain free on a browser. Perhaps they are signposting the future for Wikipedia. It already has a two tier system of sorts....

[Elinruby]

I'll give ya a Hot Take, WMF...

There will ALWAYS be more articles in Wikipedia on men than women because historically businesses and governments and the scientific realm have been dominated by men while women have been subjugated to the domestic realm, within which individuals are poorly documented and the stuff of specialist social history.

A biographical article ratio of 80:20 might be — read closely MIGHT BE, not saying that it is — perfectly reasonable.

And this: moving forward, even though a majority of college bachelor's degrees and advanced degrees are awarded to women in the USA (and probably many other places), a hard male:female gender skew might continue to be "regular" for new articles into the future due to professional athletics and the massive number of new articles related to that.

And this: I've said it before and I will say it again — just because the corps of very active volunteers is overwhelmingly male doesn't mean that it is necessarily biased against women or unwelcoming.

There are enormous fields, many hobbies, that are overwhelmingly male dominated. I have mentioned before how I tracked gender stats when I was doing my collector-oriented record label really hard in the 1990s and it was 85:15 for the entire duration.* My latest hobby is collecting antique wristwatches and the skew is even greater than 85:15 in that hobby, if anything. Not to mention my foray into football history, which is again well beyond 85:15.

Wikipedia-writing and Wikipedia-maintenance very well could be — shows every sign of being — yet another 85:15 hobby. WMF has probably poured millions of dollars into changing that fact, including hiring a steady stream of female top functionaries, with very minimal results.

The Women in Red project has done more by a factor of 10 to rectify WP's gender-related deficiencies than anything San Francisco has accomplished with its lectures, scholarships, fellowships, and conventions.

t

* - For my 2021–2023 comeback it was (let me check............) 277 men and 10 women — 97:3.

Snort. This would have.nothing to do with the pistols-at-dawn approach to dispute resolution currently prevalent on Wikipedia of course.

[rnu]

The Guardian view...

The text of this piece obviously comes straight from the WMF, and it's even in the byline, so why are they calling it "the Guardian view"?

The byline is "Editorial". If you're referring to the left column where it says "Opinion Wikipedia" those are the categories under which it is filed. Compare this current editorial where the left column says "Opinion Transport policy".