Wikipedia’s Sexism Toward Female Novelists

[Moonage Daydream]

I suspect if someone came up with a technical solution that would do away with all or most of the make-work on Wikipedia, the foundation and the high level players would kill it since it would trash what's left of their active editor statistics.

Someone argued the other day that Wikipedia is fixing typos too quickly these days, and that this lowers the numbers of incoming editors. And it is true that many editors began editing by fixing typos.

So the logical conclusion is: fill Wikipedia with easily fixable typos, and participation will be up.

Also the reason why anon IPs will always be able to edit. Without the vandalism to fix WP would be a lot less interesting to scores of "vandal fighters" who have nothing else to add to an encyclopedia.

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned WikiData. It is very relevant to this discussion even if people haven't clued in to that yet.

[lilburne]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned WikiData. It is very relevant to this discussion even if people haven't clued in to that yet.

But they'll fuck that up too as they haven't a clue.

I'm not saying I'm an expert on this but I sure as hell know that you can build a hierarchical category system by odd bods coming along and shuffling stuff about willy nilly. The danger with wikidata is that they'll have people bundle all sort of crap into various fields, the database will be ad hoc, incomplete and come with a with a bunch of fuckwits arguing over various parts of it. What you'll end up with articles with an incoherent mass of tags. IOW the same as now only different.

[Sweet Revenge]

I find it ironic that directly below the latest instantiation of this whole debate at CfD, which is CfD American men novelists we have this completely uncontroversial discussion of Category: Lingerie Football League. Tempts me to make a category for American women novelist lingerie football league players...

[CWC]

Let me highlight one sentence from Hex's brilliant comment upthread:

[Wikipedia's] category tree is a joke, because you can't force all of existence into a tree structure.

Exactly. (Trying to fit everything into a few giant taxonomies is a classic mistake of youth. Could a lack of intellectually mature contributors be a problem here as well?)

Maybe one day we will have a good online free(as-in-beer) encyclopedia which supports semantic searching properly, but that would take considerable effort.

In the meantime, it would be wise for Wikipedia to move towards a category system that

• uses multiple, shallow trees instead of trying to fit everything into a few deep trees
• allows and encourages all articles to be put in leaf categories (ie., those with no subcategories)
• includes parent/grandparent/etc categories when formatting articles in HTML.

[Anroth]

Animal, Mineral, Plant, Other stuff.

There, that should cover 99% of everything.

[HRIP7]

Another take on this:

Policy Mic: Wikipedia Creates "American Women Novelist" Category, Crowdsources Sexism

Many highly qualified people have worked on these categories over the years. Some people don't like to use the library catalog, and some people don't want to browse in the bookstore or online using these categories, but it still doesn't change the fact that books have traditionally been published and categorized based upon their contents, not the gender or ethnicity of the author. The fact that any "encyclopedia" acting as a general resource would want to reinvent some type of classification scheme for spurious reasons ("category too long") should call the whole thing into question. This is just one more reason why college and high school instructors need to educate their students about Wikipedia: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Wikipedia's flaw glares in this instance, where an expert with common sense, Geoff Landis, comments with the same weight as idiots coming up with whatever they think at that minute based on no knowledge, experience or forethought whatsoever.

[Peter Damian]

Exactly. (Trying to fit everything into a few giant taxonomies is a classic mistake of youth. Could a lack of intellectually mature contributors be a problem here as well?)

Cough http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categories_(Aristotle) . Didn't stop the greatest philosopher of antiquity from trying. I note that article is substantially the same as when I wrote it in 2005 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... d=28203518.

[Anroth]

Exactly. (Trying to fit everything into a few giant taxonomies is a classic mistake of youth. Could a lack of intellectually mature contributors be a problem here as well?)

Cough http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categories_(Aristotle) . Didn't stop the greatest philosopher of antiquity from trying. I note that article is substantially the same as when I wrote it in 2005 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... d=28203518.

Pfft, I got it down to 4.

[Peter Damian]

Exactly. (Trying to fit everything into a few giant taxonomies is a classic mistake of youth. Could a lack of intellectually mature contributors be a problem here as well?)

Cough http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categories_(Aristotle) . Didn't stop the greatest philosopher of antiquity from trying. I note that article is substantially the same as when I wrote it in 2005 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... d=28203518.

Pfft, I got it down to 4.

Ockham got it down to 2, or was it 3?

[Ming]

Another take on this:

Many highly qualified people have worked on these categories over the years. Some people don't like to use the library catalog, and some people don't want to browse in the bookstore or online using these categories, but it still doesn't change the fact that books have traditionally been published and categorized based upon their contents, not the gender or ethnicity of the author.

... which is actually kind of a clueless response. Academia in fact makes a very big issue out of the sex of authors, but it does so embodying a contradiction which is precisely reflected in the current categorization dispute: it is supposed to matter a great deal, and it is not supposed to matter at all. What's going to happen in the end is that there will be something akin to the solution done for the LGBT project's pet articles: women will be categorized as such and will also be included in all the corresponding genderless categories. This will likely be accomplished by double-listing the women a level or two higher up the tree as women. It will never be entirely satisfactory, but the people who need to feel indignant will still have something to fume about, the people who need to have their causes catered to will likewise be sufficiently assuaged, and the people in Wikipedia will obtain desired feeling either of outrage or superiority or accomplishment.

[HRIP7]

I am having a "meeting of minds" with Wikipedia categorisation experts John Pack Lambert and Obi-Wan Kenobi, Drmies and Newyorkbrad on my Wikipedia talk page ...

[EricBarbour]

It might also be worthwhile to have a look at how other Wikipedias approach this. In the German Wikipedia for example, Walt Whitman and Maya Angelou have the following cats:

Walt Whitman: Author · Literature (19th century) · Literatur (English) · Literature (US) · Homosexuality in literature · Poetry · Diary · Essay · US-American · Born 1819 · Died 1892 · Man
Maya Angelou: Civil rights activist · Author· Literatur (20th century) · Literature (English) · Literatur (US) · Autobiography · Children's literature · Poetry · University teacher (Winston-Salem) · Acting · Dance · Singing · Script writer · Song writer · Women's rights activists · Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients · Grammy Award winners · US American · Born 1928 · Woman

The German Wikipedia's categorisation system is neither sexist nor racist. Andreas JN466 21:48, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

That is exactly how en-WP should do categories. And they will never do it. Because it would involve "reform".

There's my crystal-ball prediction for today. Feel free to check this in 6 months, see if anything changed.

[tarantino]

I am having a "meeting of minds" with Wikipedia categorisation experts John Pack Lambert and Obi-Wan Kenobi, Drmies and Newyorkbrad on my Wikipedia talk page ...

Obi-Wan Kenobi is Karl Brown, Rockefeller Foundation employee and new chairman of the mHealth Alliance partnership board.

See his editing history for confirmation.

[EricBarbour]

Video interview with Mr. Brown.....

[lilburne]

I am having a "meeting of minds" with Wikipedia categorisation experts John Pack Lambert and Obi-Wan Kenobi, Drmies and Newyorkbrad on my Wikipedia talk page ...

The category system is poorly devised, it was broke from the get go. It is not fit for the purpose of encyclopaedic categorization, it is no more than a mishmash of random tags.

We should just laugh from the sidelines.

[HRIP7]

Video interview with Mr. Brown.....

Goodness, I thought he was 14 ... zero apparent emotional intelligence. How can an adult say something like this:

There are zillions of examples of this so-called ghettoization: Category:American film directors by ethnic or national origin is another one, which has Category:African-American_film_directors and as another parent, Category:African-American directors, which is a child of the (presumably) paler Category:American directors. Why people are up in arms about this one particular case quite boggles me.

To be fair, he also came up with the correct solution:

Part of me thinks that the cat system is hopelessly broken especially with respect to people - most articles have a few cats, but bios have dozens. If we could implement category intersection - even in a stupid, simple way - that would be a massive help - then we could just assign each bio as {m/f/etc} {writer/actor/politician} {gay/straight/bi/etc} {armenian/greek/russian/etc} {catholic/jewish/muslim/etc} - it would be much easier to maintain, there would be no more tedious debates about whether we should create cats for Category:Catholic authors from San Francisco of Chinese descent, and everyone could easily find the intersections they wanted. Wikipedia, can you do Wikipedia:Category_intersection for us please?? So many of these arguments and endless debates would just go away in a puff of smoke if we had good cat intersects.

But the first statement is the sort of unhinged thing that many Wikipedians who live their lives by what it says on a policy page think is normal, and most every sane person in the real world would greet with

[EricBarbour]

Don't tell us, tell the media. The story of Karl Brown might make a good blog post.

(I wonder if Mr. Brown is notable enough to have a BLP.)

[HRIP7]

It might also be worthwhile to have a look at how other Wikipedias approach this. In the German Wikipedia for example, Walt Whitman and Maya Angelou have the following cats:

Walt Whitman: Author · Literature (19th century) · Literatur (English) · Literature (US) · Homosexuality in literature · Poetry · Diary · Essay · US-American · Born 1819 · Died 1892 · Man
Maya Angelou: Civil rights activist · Author· Literatur (20th century) · Literature (English) · Literatur (US) · Autobiography · Children's literature · Poetry · University teacher (Winston-Salem) · Acting · Dance · Singing · Script writer · Song writer · Women's rights activists · Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients · Grammy Award winners · US American · Born 1928 · Woman

The German Wikipedia's categorisation system is neither sexist nor racist. Andreas JN466 21:48, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

That is exactly how en-WP should do categories. And they will never do it. Because it would involve "reform".

There's my crystal-ball prediction for today. Feel free to check this in 6 months, see if anything changed.

I agree with Eric here: unless the press keep at it, everything will revert to business as usual in a few weeks, and nothing will be done.

Certainly the Foundation will do nothing, just like you still get an image of a woman using a toothbrush as a masturbation aid as a top result for a Wikipedia image search for an "electric toothbrush".

They've known about all those Not-Safe-For-Work search results for years, have never done anything about the problems with that search engine, and never will. So there is no reason to hope they will do anything to enable category intersection search.

If challenged, the Wikimedia Foundation will probably claim lack of funds, even though they are now taking 10 or 20 times as much as they took six or seven years ago, and have enough money to spend tens of thousands of dollars on grants for camera equipment and travel expenses so Wikipedians can take pictures at pop concerts, at donors' expense.

[Moonage Daydream]

Obi-Wan Kenobi is Karl Brown, Rockefeller Foundation employee and new chairman of the mHealth Alliance partnership board.

That can't be right. If User:Obiwankenobi was Rockefeller Foundation employee Karl Brown it would be completely unethical for them to have tried to remove cited evidence of the foundation's involvement in eugenics. You must be mistaken.

[HRIP7]

Qworty (T-C-L) is now allegedly editing the Wikipedia articles on Filipacchi's novels, to make them sound more unfavourable. Haven't looked at the edits.

Filipacchi has written a second Op-Ed:

As soon as the Op-Ed article appeared, unhappy Wikipedia editors pounced on my Wikipedia page and started making alterations to it, erasing as much as they possibly could without (I assume) technically breaking the rules. They removed the links to outside sources, like interviews of me and reviews of my novels. Not surprisingly, they also removed the link to the Op-Ed article. At the same time, they put up a banner at the top of my page saying the page needed “additional citations for verifications.” Too bad they’d just taken out the useful sources.

In 24 hours, there were 22 changes to my page. Before that, there had been 22 changes in four years. Thursday night, a kind soul went in there and put back the deleted sources. The Wiki editors instantly took them out again.

I knew my page might take a beating. But at least I’m back in the “American Novelists” category, along with many other women.

For the moment anyway.

Besides Qworty, editors editing her biography include Johnpacklambert (T-C-L) and Obiwankenobi (T-C-L) ...

[DanMurphy]

Obi-Wan Kenobi is Karl Brown, Rockefeller Foundation employee and new chairman of the mHealth Alliance partnership board.

That can't be right. If User:Obiwankenobi was Rockefeller Foundation employee Karl Brown it would be completely unethical for them to have tried to remove cited evidence of the foundation's involvement in eugenics. You must be mistaken.

Mr. Brown's editing history is filled with conflict of interest edits, which should probably be considered paid editing since the sorts of promotional edits he was making are the sorts of things his job description calls for him to do. That whole article on "mhealth" is quite something (I've never heard the term before, though I know lots of people working with mobil technologies to try to improve healthcare in poor places).

[HRIP7]

It turns out that there is a wonderful intersection search tool on the tool server, called CatScan, written by Magnus Manske and linked on every German category page.

So it is very easy to search the German Wikipedia for articles matching the intersection American + female + poetry, and get a list of matching articles.

The tool works for the English Wikipedia as well ...

Thanks Magnus. Problem solved. Now just throw all those stupid, stupid categories away.

(They should just sack everyone at WMF and give whatever they have to do to Magnus to rustle up over a weekend. It will be done, and it will work.)

[TungstenCarbide]

(They should just sack everyone at WMF and give whatever they have to do to Magnus to rustle up over a weekend. It will be done, and it will work.)

Intersecting categories is something people have been asking for for as long as I can remember - ten years. Too bad Wikipedia didn't integrate something like a relational database, which is specifically designed for these things.

[EricBarbour]

Mr. Brown's editing history is filled with conflict of interest edits, which should probably be considered paid editing since the sorts of promotional edits he was making are the sorts of things his job description calls for him to do. That whole article on "mhealth" is quite something (I've never heard the term before, though I know lots of people working with mobil technologies to try to improve healthcare in poor places).

I've done an article on him for the book wiki, for whatever it's worth. Commonplace for corporations and organizations to do it,
and they are usually this stupid--but rarely are caught.

If that idiot Qworty wants to deal with "COI issues", he can start with Johnpacklambert and Karl Brown. But of course, he won't.

[HRIP7]

(They should just sack everyone at WMF and give whatever they have to do to Magnus to rustle up over a weekend. It will be done, and it will work.)

Intersecting categories is something people have been asking for for as long as I can remember - ten years. Too bad Wikipedia didn't integrate something like a relational database, which is specifically designed for these things.

There is Wikipedia:Category intersection (T-H-L):

The following is a feature request for Wikipedia, the details of which may still be in development or under discussion. As a whole, this request should be discussed with the developers, who will decide whether or not to act on it.

Category intersection is the ability to find all articles that are members of more than one category. It requires a change to the MediaWiki software as well as a major change to the policies related to how categories are populated. It is hoped that these changes will solve some long-standing categorization problems and end some common conflicts between Wikipedia editors. Category intersection also offers the possibility of adding several new features that will benefit users by adding valuable research and indexing tools as well as making the category system easier to manage.

Many existing categories are logically the intersection of attributes for which "primary" categories exist, for example Category:American actors is logically the intersection of Category:Actors and Category:American people. Although these "primary" categories are today generally subdivided into subcategories, if they were directly (fully) populated the "intersection categories" could be automatically generated. Categories in the German Wikipedia are already organized into fully populated primary categories.

This proposal tries to envision the changes necessary to make category intersection a reality. It is designed to augment the current categorization system, not replace it.

That page was started in 2006 ... so that's 7 years of nothing being done. There is also a page on the Wikipedia:CatScan (T-H-L).

[HRIP7]

Of course, African-American novelists are in exactly the same position.

It would be worth doing a survey how many of the novelists listed in Category:African-American novelists are listed in Category:American novelists as well, and how many are stuck in their ghetto. (And note that some of those that are listed will only have been added a couple of days ago, in response to the bad press.)

James Baldwin (T-H-L) for example isn't listed in Category:American novelists. It's a scandal.

A long-standing Wikipedia admin I had never come across before (must be someone actually working in article space ...), Lquilter (T-C-L), has very patiently tried to explain to people like Johnpacklambert (T-C-L) that ethnic and gender categories are not meant to "diffuse" people out of the top-level categories, the way nationality categories for example are.

Johnpacklambert, gender/ethnicity/sexuality/religion identity subcategories are not a "bottom rung". Think of them as additional categories rather than diffusable subcategories. They are additional because they are topics of interest to readers and defining identities to the subjects of the category. You are absolutely correct that we have to not ghettoize. The way we avoid that is by not diffusing into those subcategories, but simply applying them as additional categories. --Lquilter (talk) 14:19, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

However, I am not sure that Johnpacklambert and Obiwankenobi get it (or want to get it).

[Sweet Revenge]

Things are getting ugly at Salon and they're naming names:

Welcome to the age of “revenge editing.” The edits didn’t stop at Filipacchi’s page. Edits were also made to pages about her novels, stripping content from them on the grounds that they were overly self-promotional (a big Wikipedia no-no.) One editor, as recently as Monday morning, even started editing the pages devoted to Filpacchi’s parents, and slashed huge swaths from a page about the media conglomerate Hachette-Filipacchi, whose chairman emeritus happens to be Filipacchi’s father, Daniel Filipacchi.

As is usually the case with Wikipedia, high-profile “revenge editing” clearly motivated by animus tends to draw a lot of attention. A frequent result: ludicrous “edit wars” in which successive revisions are undone in rapid succession. Eventually, someone higher up in the chain of hierarchy steps in and freezes a page in which an edit war is occurring, or some measure of consensus is reached after a lot of shouting. Indeed, hardcore Wikipedia advocates argue that no matter how dumb or ugly the original bad edit or mistake might have been, the process, carried out in the open for all to see, generally results, in the long run, in something more closely resembling truth than what we might see in more mainstream approaches to knowledge assembly.

There's tons more. It's harsh. They tear Qworty (T-C-L) a new one:

Wow! We’ve got Judith “weapons of mass destruction” Miller, penis comparisons, dog feces and accusations that Filipacchi “sent thugs” after Wikipedia editors, all popping up in the context of an apoplectic defense by one Wikipedia editor of actions that other Wikipedia editors labeled “revenge editing.” There’s a lot of anger here (not to mention an unhealthy fixation with excrement!). Call me persnickety, but reading Qworty’s comments did not give me the greatest faith in Wikipedia’s internal process for building an encyclopedia of human knowledge.

[Vigilant]

Alas, poor Qworty, I knew him poorly.

I'm always amused when a wikipediot is shocked (SHOCKED!) that someone outside of the wiki fishbowl might not play by their rules.

I sit here bemused at Qworty's indignant promise to valiantly continue editing if the bad men should maim him.

So much martyrdom, so little worth.


He does seem to be an excitable little shit.

I doubt it though. The New York Times has a vested interest in trying to undermine Wikipedia. For one thing, the Times has only 600,000 digital subscribers, which makes it a piece-of-shit website in terms of numbers. On Sundays, its biggest day, the Times adds another 1.4 million readers in its paper edition, for a total of 2 million. Meanwhile, HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE are reading you and me on Wikipedia EVERY DAY. You can see why the Times feels it has a very very short and stubby and ugly little penis compared with us. This is the real reason why they want to run baseless articles slamming us. Because we are the future and they are already the distant past. Qworty (talk) 05:55, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

[DanMurphy]

A real winner this one. At least they seem to be enjoying their own hysteria and martyrs pose.

Due to my policy edits in removing promotional materials from articles relating to Amanda Filipacchi, I have been harassed, stalked and threatened both on- and off-wiki. I have received death threats. My edits, which are all in accordance with Wikipedia policies, have elicited bon mots such as this one: "If you continue to remove her materials, we are going to snap your neck." I've got just one thing to say to you people: You don't intimidate me, and if you are going to do anything to me, you'd better kill me dead, and not just cripple my ass. Because if I'm left a cripple in a wheelchair, I will continue to type out, with a stick clenched between my teeth, the truth about this cynically fraudulent claim that the "Women Novelists" category edits were done by anything more than one editor--the work of that one editor does NOT indicate systemic gender bias on Wikipedia. The facts are the facts, and bullies aren't going to keep me and others from speaking the truth. My husband and I and our family take your threats very seriously. Now, I am not going to commit WP:LEGAL, since Wikipedia policies must be followed at all times, just as they have with all of my edits. But I and other Wikipedia editors are not going to be successfully harassed by outsiders who dislike our edits and are only trying to promote themselves through WP:COI, WP:PROMO, WP:UNDUE, WP:DICK, etc. This is a community. It always has been. And it will not be destroyed by outsiders who are publishing lies or issuing death threats. Qworty (talk) 01:34, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

[eppur si muove]

Things are getting ugly at Salon and they're naming names...

As far as I can see they're pseudo-naming pseudonyms. It would be amusing if they and other journals actually named Qworty and we got all these sources joining Wikipediocracy as sites that shall not be linked.

[Ming]

And never mind that the old version of Filipacchi's articles sounded like it was written by one of her literary worshippers.

[Vigilant]

The entire section on Qworty's talk page reads like someone had a psychotic break after forgetting their meds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk: ... Filipacchi

Qworty probably needs a 2-3 week block just to go outside and forget about the bad woman and her meat/socks.
It's pretty deranged behavior over a set of article that have been present on wikipedia for years and years.

His hangup with the NYT is pretty funny as well.

[lilburne]

Would poking Qworty with sticks be bad?
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/F/Formosas-Law.html

[Vigilant]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:SlimVirgin#Done
When SlimVirgin is the voice of reason in the room, you KNOW you are insane.

[Zoloft]

Would poking Qworty with sticks be bad?
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/F/Formosas-Law.html

Probably.

[Vigilant]

Would poking Qworty with sticks be bad?
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/F/Formosas-Law.html

Probably.

Funny?

[Zoloft]

Would poking Qworty with sticks be bad?
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/F/Formosas-Law.html

Probably.

Funny?

I dunno. Do you put a stick in their spokes if a guy in a wheelchair is being a dick?

[Vigilant]

Would poking Qworty with sticks be bad?
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/F/Formosas-Law.html

Probably.

Funny?

I dunno. Do you put a stick in their spokes if a guy in a wheelchair is being a dick?

I'm pretty much an equal opportunity dick puncher.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =552654591

Are you making a [[WP:LEGAL]] threat, Mr. Vega? Oh, please do so. Please do bring it on. We are just waiting for your next grave error. [[User:Qworty|Qworty]] ([[User talk:Qworty|talk]]) 01:49, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

But you knew that.

[Sweet Revenge]

Now the NYRB weighs in: Wikipedia’s Women Problem.

“We should not let the media impose their view of political correctness on Wikipedia,” wrote Petri Krohn, who identifies himself as a Finnish “writer and Internet commentator.” He added—I think with a straight face—“We might also add some generic warning on American people category pages that they mainly contain white males and one should look into the subcategories.”⁠

To ask Jimbo’s question: how did this happen? It turns out that a single editor brought on the crisis: a thirty-two-year-old student of history named John Pack Lambert, enrolled at Wayne State University and living in the Detroit suburbs. He’s a seven-year veteran of Wikipedia and something of an obsessive when it comes to categories. He creates a lot of them. Last year he briefly created Category:American people of African-American descent. Then he raised hackles by recreating the defunct category American “actresses,” a word that others felt belongs in the same dustbin as “poetess.”

and on, and on, and on...

The debate that broke out when Filipacchi’s opinion piece appeared is still running, and the issue appears to be more general and pervasive than most had originally thought. Throughout Wikipedia, in all kinds of categories, women and people of nonwhite ethnicities are assigned only to their subcategories. Maya Angelou is in African-American writers, African-American women poets, and American women poets, but not American poets or American writers. Many editors are saying that people need to be “bubbled up” to their parent categories.

Lambert vehemently disputes suggestions that he is motivated by sexism (or racism, as the case may be). He cites principles of Wikipedia categorization: arguing, for example, that huge categories should be broken up and “diffused” because they become useless for navigation. “This whole hullabaloo is really missing the point,” he told me. “The people who are making a big deal about this are not being up-front about what happens if we do not diffuse categories.” Others argued that laypeople are simply misunderstanding the purpose of a big category like American novelists. “It is really a holding ground for people who have yet to be categorized into a more specific sub-cat,” said a user called Obi-Wan Kenobi. “It’s not some sort of club that you have to be a part of.”

[Sweet Revenge]

And NPR: What's In A Category? 'Women Novelists' Spark Wiki-Controversy
They quote Kaldari (T-C-L):

"The debate ... it's actually still ongoing," says Ryan Kaldari, an editor at Wikipedia. "So far it looks like there's been about 33,000 words of discussion on it, which is quite a lot. It's actually more than the novel Animal Farm."

Kaldari says the editor who moved the names of women writers off the page violated Wikipedia's guidelines about gender-specific pages and the problem is in the process of being addressed. But he also says this is not the first time Wikipedia has been accused of sexism.

"Wikipedia does have problems with sexism because, as a lot of people know, only about 10 percent or less of the editors at Wikipedia are women," Kaldari says. "And so a lot of times there's this subconscious, white, male, privileged sexism that exists on Wikipedia that isn't really acknowledged."

[The Devil's Advocate]

And never mind that the old version of Filipacchi's articles sounded like it was written by one of her literary worshippers.

That's really why Qworty is getting the heat. Seems he or she was just doing business as usual with removing some of that information when Filipacchi cried foul. It is certainly interesting that a bunch of newly-created accounts appeared out of nowhere and from the middle of November 2007 to the first week of December 2007 were adding a bunch of unsourced promotional content about Filipacchi and her family only to vanish afterwards.

[lilburne]

And never mind that the old version of Filipacchi's articles sounded like it was written by one of her literary worshippers.

That's really why Qworty is getting the heat. Seems he or she was just doing business as usual with removing some of that information when Filipacchi cried foul. It is certainly interesting that a bunch of newly-created accounts appeared out of nowhere and from the middle of November 2007 to the first week of December 2007 were adding a bunch of unsourced promotional content about Filipacchi and her family only to vanish afterwards.

Listening to all the little wikipedian bastards squeal as their feet are dragged to the flames of publicity, is music to the ear. I think I'll go play "Electric Storm".

[Vigilant]

And never mind that the old version of Filipacchi's articles sounded like it was written by one of her literary worshippers.

That's really why Qworty is getting the heat. Seems he or she was just doing business as usual with removing some of that information when Filipacchi cried foul. It is certainly interesting that a bunch of newly-created accounts appeared out of nowhere and from the middle of November 2007 to the first week of December 2007 were adding a bunch of unsourced promotional content about Filipacchi and her family only to vanish afterwards.

I'm sure the Filipacchis did some undercover work on their articles.
I'm pretty sure they're not alone in doing that.

Qworty just plain lost her shit.
She's out of control and in insane fruit bat mode right now.
SlimVirgin, of all people, is trying to talk her down off the ledge.

This is not normal behavior for well adjusted adults.

Here. We. Go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =552792791

Then Nick goes off half cocked and blocks the guy for using sockpuppets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk: ... e_accounts

The only fly in their ointment is that the account, Once_more_into_the_breach, is mine and I am definitely not NaymanNoland.
Since verification is needed, I have posted on the talk page for that account.

Well done wikipediots.

[HRIP7]

James Gleick, writing for The New York Review of Books: Wikipedia’s Women Problem

The debate that broke out when Filipacchi’s opinion piece appeared is still running, and the issue appears to be more general and pervasive than most had originally thought. Throughout Wikipedia, in all kinds of categories, women and people of nonwhite ethnicities are assigned only to their subcategories. Maya Angelou is in African-American writers, African-American women poets, and American women poets, but not American poets or American writers. Many editors are saying that people need to be “bubbled up” to their parent categories.

[Vigilant]

Whoopsie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... ymanNoland

That's not going to work out well, Nick.

Time to relinquish the bit there, boyo.

And Qworty keeps digging whilest already near the bottom of the pit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =552797437

Thanks! I'll have to get back to you on this later, Mr. Selznick. Right now my inbox is flooded with other movie deals. And frankly, my dear . . . oh, never mind! [[User:Qworty|Qworty]] ([[User talk:Qworty#top|talk]]) 22:29, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Nothing like a strident wikipediot to make a Monday less mundane.

A sniff of whoopsie
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =552797461

There are more accounts now involved with the sockpuppetry case - I have asked that additional technical checks are performed to confirm what's going on with all of these additional accounts. If it turns out none of these accounts are connected to you, then you will be unblocked immediately. [[User:Nick|Nick]] ([[User talk:Nick|talk]]) 22:30, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

At least you can admit there might be a tiny chance of error on your part. You're not wholly wikipediot, yet.

However, little green rosetta is a complete cowpat of a person
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =552799246

Well, if you [[User:NaymanNoland|NaymanNoland]] are saying that you have not created multiple accounts in spite of behavioral and techincical evidence, then I think we are done here until your block expires. However if this behavior continues in the future, you will most certainly be blocked indefinitely.  [[User:Little_green_rosetta]]

Loving it.

And sweet resolution, making lgr and qworty look like the damned fools they are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =552800113

I've unblocked you, further technical analysis confirms that there are a number of multiple accounts out to cause mischief, but that you're unrelated. I'm sorry you've been caught-up in all the trouble caused by one or two people. [[User:Nick|Nick]] ([[User talk:Nick|talk]]) 22:49, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Mischief managed.

[Vigilant]

Ok,

I've had my fun for the day.

By the way Devil's Advocate, strangely enough, none of the gods on that page are me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:S ... f_Vigilant

It's been wrong forever, a dumping ground for people who think small thoughts.

And these two certainly aren't me
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:W ... f_Vigilant

User:Herb516
User:Hweinblatt

[Zoloft]

The patience of the 'community' is wearing thin:

Admin Toddst1 (T-C-L) lays a subtle hint on Qworty (T-C-L).

Qworty is helping make Wikipedia look ludicrous.

[Vigilant]

The patience of the 'community' is wearing thin:

Admin Toddst1 (T-C-L) lays a subtle hint on Qworty (T-C-L).

Qworty is helping make Wikipedia look ludicrous.

While NaymanNoland gets a 24 hour block.
You can always tell who the senior editor is in a dispute.
They're the absolutely last ones blocked, regardless of the merits.

Qworty is fucking nuts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =552837176

That sourcing happened a long time ago, in Internet time--you really should pay more attention to the article, and less to the talk page comments. As for your, mmm, ''global'' concerns, I'm sure that Wikipedia will continue to survive and grow and thrive with or without microscopes being applied to either of our healthy egos or souls or various appendages. I think you are a wonderful and beautiful person, and I really like you a lot, and I would never hurt you, but in the real world, if you want to stop me, you really need to come to my house with a gun and empty a few rounds into my head. That is the only way to detach me from the keyboard. Anything short of that is going to fail. I know that our relationship has been fraught with tumultuous drama from the very start, and I'm really grateful for becoming world famous and all because of it, but I think we share deeper values than any of ''that.'' So I'm really hoping we'll get to go on that speaking tour someday. I really don't care if the world media covers it. The world media be damned--the eternal verities are much more important than the fickle and temporary spotlight. [[User:Qworty|Qworty]] ([[User talk:Qworty|talk]]) 04:44, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Someone needs to indef this crazy, crazy woman.

[Zoloft]

The patience of the 'community' is wearing thin:

Admin Toddst1 (T-C-L) lays a subtle hint on Qworty (T-C-L).

Qworty is helping make Wikipedia look ludicrous.

While NaymanNoland gets a 24 hour block.
You can always tell who the senior editor is in a dispute.
They're the absolutely last ones blocked, regardless of the merits.

Still, the brickbat should smack Qworty in the head tomorrow, as I see them waking up, having a big cup o' crazy and then logging on to "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit!"

Anyone at all...

[Vigilant]

The patience of the 'community' is wearing thin:

Admin Toddst1 (T-C-L) lays a subtle hint on Qworty (T-C-L).

Qworty is helping make Wikipedia look ludicrous.

While NaymanNoland gets a 24 hour block.
You can always tell who the senior editor is in a dispute.
They're the absolutely last ones blocked, regardless of the merits.

Still, the brickbat should smack Qworty in the head tomorrow, as I see them waking up, having a big cup o' crazy and then logging on to "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit!"

Anyone at all...

I'll bet you one internet dollar that there is no fallout for Qworty at this point.