Missing Articles — Low-hanging Fruit?

[Drowninginlimbo]

It doesn't help that the report function on Twitter is so unintuitive either, that and the fact that they rarely respond to harassment reports.

Twitter's inner circle is no different from Wikipedia's inner circle, full of admins who care about themselves and don't bother resolving harassment issues. Yes, that is a major failing of Twitter. Unintuitive reporting plus admins who don't care plus distrust of authority figures = culture of cyberbullying

This could be promising: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the ... e-network/

That is just public relations. It would not fix its problems (and fixing them may create new problems, such as privacy concerns). It is a little too late.

I suppose so, it's difficult to expect any of these copies to do something that could possibly hinder a users "free speech" (that is, the usage of the term that means opportunities to berate people without consequences, not its literal meaning). I read an intersting article with some good ways they could implement better anti-harassment tools here: http://danilocampos.com/2014/07/the-lea ... -could-do/

[EricBarbour]

Wiktionary has an entry for Salto mortale. But Salto mortale (T-H-L) on en-WP is a shit disambiguation page, for two movies that have no articles and a movie and a TV show that have useless stubs copied from IMDB.

We don't often discuss the sheer quantity of info that people have copied from IMDB to Wikipedia over the years without even a thank-you or a by-your-leave. To get some small idea of how large this subset could be, I counted up the outside links today, which took quite a while: 366,494 links.

[AL1]

Wiktionary has an entry for Salto mortale. But Salto mortale (T-H-L) on en-WP is a shit disambiguation page, for two movies that have no articles and a movie and a TV show that have useless stubs copied from IMDB.

We don't often discuss the sheer quantity of info that people have copied from IMDB to Wikipedia over the years without even a thank-you or a by-your-leave. To get some small idea of how large this subset could be, I counted up the outside links today, which took quite a while: 366,494 links.

The irony is that, IIRC, WP doesn't regard IMDB as a "reliable source". I guess that's 'not a reliable source' nearly 370,000 times over.

[Cla68]

The Muslim clans of South Asia are inadequately documented in Wikipedia. There are a few articles, but at least one of those articles is a single, unreferenced sentence. The clans of The Philippines don't appear to be represented hardly at all in WP.

[EricBarbour]

The irony is that, IIRC, WP doesn't regard IMDB as a "reliable source". I guess that's 'not a reliable source' nearly 370,000 times over.

Quite true. WP:RC (T-H-L) says bluntly

Anyone can create a personal web page or publish their own book, and also claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason self-published media—whether books, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, blogs, personal pages on social networking sites, Internet forum postings, or tweets—are largely not acceptable. This includes any website whose content is largely user-generated, including the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), CBDB.com, content farms, collaboratively created websites such as wikis, and so forth, with the exception of material on such sites that is labeled as originating from credentialed members of the sites' editorial staff, rather than users.

And yet, there is no "project" or "effort" to deal with it. Frankly, since IMDB is run by Amazon, one of the film/TV industry's largest customers, and doesn't tolerate defamation or outright hoaxes, I would trust it before Wikipedia content, despite being user-written.
Yet External links says:

As an external link: Yes Generally yes, if the subject of the entire page is exactly the same as the subject of the IMDb page that you're linking.
As a reliable source: Generally no.
Common issues: The IMDb website generally contains more information than the Wikipedia article, including information that cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to amount of detail. However, content is user-submitted and therefore not generally reliable. (This includes biographies, which cannot be directly edited.)

And what if the "article" was cut-pasted directly from IMDB?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... _source.3F
So why aren't you deleting all the hundreds of thousands of inline links? Easier to snipe at people on noticeboards?

[thekohser]

...since IMDB is run by Amazon...

And since Amazon is a major investor in Wikia, it stands to reason that Wikipedia would reward IMDB with a few hundred thousand back-links.

[Hex]

Spanish article: es:Trajes regionales de Madrid (T-H-L)

Unreferenced, but the "arts and culture" section of Madrid (T-H-L) doesn't mention that there are traditional costumes within Madrid at all. Chulapo and chulapa are briefly mentioned at Majo (T-H-L), but that's it.

[lilburne]

This one is for Randy. Eduard Goldstucker there is an article in German and a few sentences in Slovak and Russian, English nix. Heck there is even a song about him.
Anyway for further morning amusement I went and had a scan of the WP Kafka article.

Legacy
"Kafkaesque"
For the season three Breaking Bad episode, see Kafkaesque (Breaking Bad).

[Mancunium]

Remembering the pioneers who helped shape our world
Yorkshire Post, 19 October 2014 linkhttp://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/fea ... -1-6902052[/link]

THESE days we’ve grown accustomed to heading straight to Wikipedia whenever we want to find out information about the life of someone well known. However, given the fact this online encyclopedia isn’t always as accurate as it should be, we should perhaps take what it says with a pinch of salt, or at least seek out additional sources to back up its claims. Like, for instance, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. This growing archive is the national record of men and women from all kinds of backgrounds who have shaped British life, stretching from the 21st century right back to Roman times. The Oxford DNB was first published, both in print and online, a decade ago and now tells the life stories of 59,221 people, from monarchs and politicians to scientists and artists. Apart from being a respected figure in their chosen field the other criteria for any would-be subject is they have to be dead. But as well as highlighting famous figures from both the history books and our recent past, the Oxford DNB also attempts to revive the names of those who may have, for one reason or another, slipped off the radar.

The latest version includes Geoffrey_Ambler (T-H-L), a Bradford industrialist and senior RAF officer who reached the rank of Air Vice Marshal in Fighter Command during the Second World War, and his scientific collaborator Margaret_Hannah (T-H-L)– a mathematician who became a lecturer at Leeds University. Another new addition is Sir_James_Roberts (T-H-L), the former owner of Saltaire textile mill who later saved the Brontë Parsonage at Haworth. Ambler and Hannah were linked by the textile trade. He invented the Ambler Superdraft, a machine that transformed the worsted spinning industry in Yorkshire, while she produced a science paper explaining how it actually worked and the mathematics behind it. [...] The textile industry was crucial to Yorkshire’s economy for decades and Dr Emily Winterburn, a visiting fellow at the University of Leeds, was approached by the Oxford DNB to research and write the entries for both Ambler and Hannah. [...] As well as being a kind of Who’s Who of prominent figures from Britain’s past, Dr Winterburn says the Oxford DNB is also a way of raising awareness about lesser known, but no less significant, figures. “It’s a way of highlighting people who should get more credit but have been forgotten by history, particularly women. If you ask people to name a great female scientist they might say Marie Curie but that’s perhaps it, and this is way of making people more aware about some of these other figures and their achievements.” The Oxford DNB online is freely available in public libraries across the UK. For more information visit http://www.oxforddnb.com.

Mathematician Dorothy Margaret Hannah is not notable enough for Wikipedia; she should have been a porn star.

[Poetlister]

Mathematician Dorothy Margaret Hannah is not notable enough for Wikipedia; she should have been a porn star.

Actually, she has no article in the Oxford DNB either. She has a couple of paragraphs in the article about Geoffrey Hill Ambler. Incidentally, the referencing is not up to Wikipedia standards; among the references are

* private information (2014) [Robert Athol, archivist, Clare College, Cambridge]
* private information (2014) [Anne Thomson, archivist, Newnham College]

Clearly, these fail WP:V. Also, the author of the article, one Emily Winterburn, has made no other contributions to the DNB; we are of course suspicious of SPAs. Probably she is this person, an expert in the history of science and obviously contemptuous of important things like WP:V and WP:RS.

[EricBarbour]

Mathematician Dorothy Margaret Hannah is not notable enough for Wikipedia; she should have been a porn star.

Actually, she has no article in the Oxford DNB either. She has a couple of paragraphs in the article about Geoffrey Hill Ambler. Incidentally, the referencing is not up to Wikipedia standards; among the references are

* private information (2014) [Robert Athol, archivist, Clare College, Cambridge]
* private information (2014) [Anne Thomson, archivist, Newnham College]

Clearly, these fail WP:V. Also, the author of the article, one Emily Winterburn, has made no other contributions to the DNB; we are of course suspicious of SPAs. Probably she is this person, an expert in the history of science and obviously contemptuous of important things like WP:V and WP:RS.

Once again, I must remind you: the world of academic research does not, and does not have to, follow Wikipedia's asinine and half-formed rules for "notability". Sometimes "primary references", personal correspondence and the like are all you have. Please stop parroting SlimVirgin.

[Poetlister]

Mathematician Dorothy Margaret Hannah is not notable enough for Wikipedia; she should have been a porn star.

Actually, she has no article in the Oxford DNB either. She has a couple of paragraphs in the article about Geoffrey Hill Ambler. Incidentally, the referencing is not up to Wikipedia standards; among the references are

* private information (2014) [Robert Athol, archivist, Clare College, Cambridge]
* private information (2014) [Anne Thomson, archivist, Newnham College]

Clearly, these fail WP:V. Also, the author of the article, one Emily Winterburn, has made no other contributions to the DNB; we are of course suspicious of SPAs. Probably she is this person, an expert in the history of science and obviously contemptuous of important things like WP:V and WP:RS.

Once again, I must remind you: the world of academic research does not, and does not have to, follow Wikipedia's asinine and half-formed rules for "notability". Sometimes "primary references", personal correspondence and the like are all you have. Please stop parroting SlimVirgin.

Oh, for heaven's sake. Do I have to use the image all the time? Is there anyone on this site less likely than I am to agree with SlimVirgin about anything?

[EricBarbour]

Do I have to use the image all the time?

If Jake had said that, I'd assume it was sarcasm. With you, it's more difficult to tell. I could coach you on snarky forum posting if you wish.

[Cla68]

Women's volleyball final at the 1964 Summer Olympics.

While this event may seem obscure, it's very important in Japanese history, mainly because it was one of the highest profile gold medals that Japan won at the Tokyo games, it was a huge upset of the favored Soviet team, and it was the second-most-watched TV program in Japanese history (the first was this incident).

The current, related article doesn't have any details at all. The team's coach, Hirobumi Daimatsu, is still famous in Japan for his incredibly strenuous team training program. He later served 10 years in the Japanese Diet. He does not have an article. The team's captain, Masae Kasai, one of the most well-known athletes within Japan, does have an article, but it kind of sucks.

[EricBarbour]

Cyril Elwell, founder of Federal Telegraph Company (T-H-L) and therefore one of the grandfathers of "Silicon Valley", does not have a Wikipedia article.

Valdemar Poulsen (T-H-L), who invented the arc transmitter that Elwell later marketed successfully as well as the world's first magnetic tape recorder, rates only a miserable stub-like bio on Wikipedia.

Federal Telegraph employed four people who later had a massive impact on radio and electronics:
*Most notably, Lee de Forest (T-H-L).
*Plus Peter L. Jensen (T-H-L), Edwin Pridham (no WP article) and Carl Albertus (not mentioned on Wikipedia at all), who later founded Magnavox (T-H-L).

There is now a book about Elwell, I have a copy and it contains copious references.
Said book is listed in the Federal Telegraph article as the only reference.

All of the related articles are crap. Even the de Forest article could be better. Wikipedia still does a poor job of documenting the history of the electronics / computer industry, which made Wikipedia possible in the first place. Dis-gusting.

The Public address system (T-H-L) article calls the Magnavox founders "Edwin Jensen and Peter Pridham".

Optimus Prime (T-H-L) is 144k bytes long (last year it reached 252k bytes!), while Lee de Forest (T-H-L) is only 35k bytes.

Wikipedia is insane. Crowdsourcing is a joke.

[Johnny Au]

The general article about Sand (T-H-L) has a very short section about the environmental concerns about sand extraction.

There is no in-depth Wikipedia article on the environmental effects of sand extraction, such as how sand is a finite resource, that it takes millions of years to form, how certain types of sand is suitable for construction (which is why the United Arab Emirates and Qatar import so much sand (since their own sand is not suitable for construction)), how sand extraction is detrimental to coastlines, how sand is needed for fracking, how sand is needed to manufacture electronic devices (especially given that glass is made out of silica, the main component of sand, as well as sand being rich in quartz needed to make accurate watches), how Cape Verde's economy depends on the sale of sand, how Germany mines the seabed of the North Sea for sand, and how Singapore's area expanded by 22% thanks to the purchase of sand from other countries (as well as from illegally extracting sand from countries that ban the export of sand).

We all know about the dangers of freshwater extraction, but not much about the dangers of sand extraction.

[Poetlister]

David Draper: There are two very distinguished professors of that name. One is the Vernon K. Krieble Professor of Chemistry at Johns Hopkins; the other was President of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis. There is no article titled "David Draper", but there is one for Dave Draper (T-H-L), a retired bodybuilder.

Incidentally, when I Googled David Draper I was asked if I meant David Draiman (T-H-L).

[thekohser]

No article about "The Great Sebastians", a dramatic comedy that ran for 174 shows on Broadway and received a Best Costume Design nomination at the 1956 Tony awards.

[Cla68]

Having just read the infamous Battle of the Casbah book (infamous because its author unapologetically describes using torture and summary executions to defeat the insurgency in Algiers), I note that most of the notable personalities involved in the conflict have English WP articles. However, a prominent few do not:

Jo Attia- Prominent French mobster involved in the North African insurgency conflict
Jacques Morlanne- Key French military commander in Algeria
Max Lejeune- French Undersecretary of War during the Algerian conflict under Guy Mollet; believed to have authorized torture and summary executions

[Poetlister]

Two extremely eminent female academics with similar names, both at the University of Reading:

Christine Williams

Elizabeth Williamson

Both would pass WP:PROF. The latter should also pass WP:GNG due to a series of attacks made on her by proponents of herbal medicines. That might make her BLP subject to an edit war.

[Lukeno94]

Two extremely eminent female academics with similar names, both at the University of Reading:

Christine Williams

Elizabeth Williamson

Both would pass WP:PROF. The latter should also pass WP:GNG due to a series of attacks made on her by proponents of herbal medicines. That might make her BLP subject to an edit war.

Hmm, may have to look into this one, if I remember to do so.

[thekohser]

...extremely eminent female academics...

Really? They're "extremely eminent"? So, like a 9 or a 10 on a ten-point eminence scale?

[Poetlister]

...extremely eminent female academics...

Really? They're "extremely eminent"? So, like a 9 or a 10 on a ten-point eminence scale?

Among British female academics, not many get to be professors (in the British sense of professor) and even fewer go further. Thus certainly the first one, a pro vice chancellor, is a 9, the second an 8. We have to close the gender gap.

[TungstenCarbide]

'Red Gum', WP missing OED's two first meanings;

1 ... A bright red, maculopapular rash seen in infants and young children, often during teething...
2 ... Any of various reddish gums or resins exuded from trees and shrubs....
...
For definition 2, WP lists Kino (gum) (T-H-L), but that's not the alcohol soluble Red Gum most commonly refered to in carpentry, papermaking, elastomers and fireworks, see http://www.google.com/#q=Red+Gum+Accroides&tbm=bks

[Cla68]

As this explains, the laws and culture related to property ownership can be extremely significant. In Japan's case, it has affected major construction and reconstruction projects.

The related category shows that WP is severely lacking in articles related to this topic. There are currently only 10 countries whose property laws are covered by an article in Wikipedia. Japan is not one of them.

[eagle]

Adele Rogers - pioneer female lawyer and wife of William P. Rogers (T-H-L)

Dale R. Marshall - their daughter, a college president

[thekohser]

Wikipedia doesn't have an article about award-winning ABC News reporter (and last night's anchor of the ABC World News program), Cecilia Vega.

However, they do have an article about award-winning French pornographic actress, Cecilia Vega (T-H-L).

Way to go, Wikipedia.

[Poetlister]

Of the 17 directors of the National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom) (T-H-L), seven are red-linked. Dr John Rae isn't linked at all; I wonder what's wrong with him!

[thekohser]

Kind of surprised that Aereo CEO, Chaitanya Kanojia, doesn't have a Wikipedia biography.

[EricBarbour]

Of the 17 directors of the National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom) (T-H-L), seven are red-linked. Dr John Rae isn't linked at all; I wonder what's wrong with him!

Ask the NPL article's principal author, NPL employee James Miall aka JMiall (T-C-L).

[Poetlister]

Of the 17 directors of the National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom) (T-H-L), seven are red-linked. Dr John Rae isn't linked at all; I wonder what's wrong with him!

Ask the NPL article's principal author, NPL employee James Miall aka JMiall (T-C-L).

I can't see that article mentioned on his user page. Think he's trying to avoid a COI rap?

[EricBarbour]

Of the 17 directors of the National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom) (T-H-L), seven are red-linked. Dr John Rae isn't linked at all; I wonder what's wrong with him!

Ask the NPL article's principal author, NPL employee James Miall aka JMiall (T-C-L).

I can't see that article mentioned on his user page. Think he's trying to avoid a COI rap?

Count on it.

[Johnny Au]

Kirby Delauter (T-H-L)

He is a politician from Maryland who threatened to sue the local newspaper, the Frederick News Post, over the unauthorized use of his name. Read here (and note the headline): http://www.fredericknewspost.com/news/p ... d1c0a.html

He would also get ticked off when people kept associating him with a certain round pink Nintendo video game character.

[Zoloft]

Kirby Delauter (T-H-L)

He is a politician from Maryland who threatened to sue the local newspaper, the Frederick News Post, over the unauthorized use of his name. Read here (and note the headline): http://www.fredericknewspost.com/news/p ... d1c0a.html

He would also get ticked off when people kept associating him with a certain round pink Nintendo video game character.

I think you have a bit of a COI here.

[Ming]

Abrams Doctrine (T-H-L): the defining principle of post-Vietnam US force structure, which was supposed to prevent adventures like the Iraq war. There are three instances of the phrase in Wikipedia, all of them in the title of a book. Creighton Abrams (T-H-L) doesn't mention it.

[EricBarbour]

If Wikipedia is so fond of salacious BLPs, and also suffers some misogynists in the ranks, why is there no article about Ben Moynihan?

http://www.salon.com/2015/01/23/i_think ... l_culture/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... tacks.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-30803039

http://www.irishexaminer.com/text/world/mhaugbidkfmh/

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/1172139 ... urt_hears/

(And if you say "BLP1E", I will stab you.)

[Lukeno94]

Well, that probably IS why there is no enwiki article on him... Not sure I'd consider him a misogynist in the conventional sense, rather an utter lunatic who needs serious psychiatric help.

[Carcharoth]

Reading through this thread, one of the disadvantages of a forum as opposed to a wiki is apparent. I was trying to work out whether any of the articles mentioned have since been created. If the list was posted on a wiki page, you could see that at a glance.

I agree fully with the initial premise from the OP that there are many missing articles, but I've yet to see a systematic approach to demonstrating that. The usual approach tends to be to work from big lists in userspace or projectspace based on the contents of other encyclopedias or similar content.

It would easily be possible to come up with big lists all day long. But the other side of the coin is the number of articles that *do* exist. If you have been using Wikipedia for years (as many here have), then you will have noticed that red links *do* get filled in, but it is very difficult to get a feel for the rate at which they are being filled in and created (let alone whether the creations are mostly stubs or proper articles).

Can anyone here think of a way to systematically do that? You need to take a standard list and generate data such as year of creation [many surveys don't bother with this vital piece of information, for some reason] and what state the article was in at the time of the survey. One example I came across today is here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... ll_of_Fame

"This table is a comparison of Wikipedia articles on scientists against Science's January 2011 Science Hall of Fame (SHOF) list."

I came across that because science biographies is one of the areas I read about and edit on in Wikipedia. Deciding where to draw the line is not so easy though. In the past week, I was attempting to find information on a range of early 20th century geneticists and biologists and other scientists. What was interesting was that the list (maybe not completely random, but a fair sample) had about 34 people with articles already.

Actually, for the rest of the post to make much sense, I'll need to list those 34, plus the date when the articles were created. It will make what is already a long post much longer, so skip if you don't want to scroll through the whole list (there is really only one name that everyone should recognise). I've added the month and year of creation after the article name, and the current talk-page assessment status (plus a re-assessment if I disagree with that). Survey done in April 2015 (this seems to have morphed into a 'is Wikipedia improving' post):

One article from 2001:
Alfred Russel Wallace (T-H-L) - Sep 2001 - FA class

Four articles from 2002:
Thomas Hunt Morgan (T-H-L) - Jan 2002 - B-class (Nobel laureate)
Stanislaw Ulam (T-H-L) - Feb 2002 - GA class
Wilhelm Johannsen (T-H-L) - Mar 2002 - start
Barbara McClintock (T-H-L) - Jun 2002 - FA class (Nobel laureate)

Two articles from 2003:
Sewall Wright (T-H-L) - Apr 2003 - start (more like B-class)
James McKeen Cattell (T-H-L) - Jul 2003 - start (more like B-class)

Six articles from 2004:
Titian Peale (T-H-L) - Apr 2004 - start
Walter Bradford Cannon (T-H-L) - Apr 2004 - start (more like B-class)
William Bateson (T-H-L) - May 2004 - start - tagged since August 2009
Ernest Everett Just (T-H-L) - Jul 2004 - start (more like B-class)
Edwin Conklin (T-H-L) - Jul 2004 - stub (more like start)
Alfred Hershey (T-H-L) - Sep 2004 - start - tagged since July 2013 (Nobel laureate)

Eleven articles from 2005:
Carl Correns (T-H-L) - Feb 2005 - start - tagged since April 2009
Richard Goldschmidt (T-H-L) - Mar 2005 - start
George Harrison Shull (T-H-L) - Mar 2005 - stub (more like start)
Rollins A. Emerson (T-H-L) - Mar 2005 - unassessed (start)
Edmund Beecher Wilson (T-H-L) - Mar 2005 - start
Theodor Boveri (T-H-L) - May 2005 - start - tagged since February 2013
Thomas Milton Rivers (T-H-L) - May 2005 - start
Milislav Demerec (T-H-L) - Apr 2005 - start - tagged since February 2013
Curt Stern (T-H-L) - Oct 2005 - start - tagged since March 2012
Albert Francis Blakeslee (T-H-L) - Dec 2005 - start
William Keith Brooks (T-H-L) - Dec 2005 - stub

Three articles from 2006:
Ross Granville Harrison (T-H-L) - Jun 2006 - start
Kristine Bonnevie (T-H-L) - Jan 2006 (trans from Norwegian WP) - start - tagged since December 2011
Edwin Joseph Cohn (T-H-L) - Apr 2006 - start - tagged since February 2013

No articles from 2007

Three articles from 2008:
James V. Neel (T-H-L) - Jan 2008 - start - tagged since March 2011
Jesse Francis McClendon (T-H-L) - May 2008 - stub (more like start)
Edward Murray East (T-H-L) - Jun 2008 - stub

One article from 2009:
Alexander Hollaender (T-H-L) - Nov 2009 - start

No articles from 2010.

One article from 2011:
Norman Giles (T-H-L) - Aug 2011 - stub - tagged since February 2013

One article from 2012:
Edwin Linton (T-H-L) - Feb 2012 - unassessed (stub)

No articles from 2013.

One article from 2014:
Selig Hecht (T-H-L) - May 2014 - unassessed (start)

No articles from 2015 (yet).

Four (4) stubs; twenty-two (22) starts; five (5) B-class; one (1) GA class; and two (2) FA class.

Ten (10) articles were tagged.

Conclusions from that are nothing new - lots of articles created early on in the history of Wikipedia, with the article creation slowing down but continuing ever since. Article assessments and tagging are often outdated, so are an unreliable guide unless combined with manual checking. Some articles have improved, most have not. Is Wikipedia improving? Probably, but could be better and could be improving faster. Simple tasks are being left undone. More effort and more focus needed.

There were 10 with no Wikipedia articles.

John Whittemore Gowan (1893-1967)
Alvin Nason (1919-1978)
Warren P. Spencer (1898-1969)
Benjamin Paul Sonnenblick (1909-1998)
Edward Laurens Mark (1847-1946)
Jack Schultz (1904-1971)
Andre Dreyfus (1897-1952)
Winthrop Osterhout (1871-1964)
Hans Gustav Emil Bauer (1904-1988)
Maurice Whittinghill (1909-1998)

The question is how many of these should have Wikipedia articles? [Why create these articles instead of improving the existing ones?] Some may be too obscure to have anything sensible written about them. My rule of thumb is to see whether the birth and death years are available, and if an obituary was written.

Some are a real struggle to unearth the information (for all the above, I only had the names and nothing else, sometimes just the surname and initials). For Whittinghill, you find a death notice buried deep in an online copy of the November/December 1998 copy of the Carolina Alumni Review. In the case of Nason, it was a real struggle, eventually finding this on some website called 'LibraryThing', which as best I can make out would be someone who owns a book by Nason (who published a number of standard biology textbooks) putting up some biographical details. From that, you get birth and death years, and a possible middle name of Abraham. That then led me to this index (Gale's Literary Index), which has an entry for Nason (and where an obituary was published). Warren Spencer, I eventually found by following a breadcrumb trail from Wooster College to his birth year (1898) to his obituary published 6 years after his death.

Of the above, two have an article in another language Wikipedia:

André Dreyfus (Portuguese WP)
Hans Bauer (German WP)

The only ones I am sure are clearly dead-cert notable are Winthrop Osterhout (biographical memoir published by the National Academy of Sciences) and Edward Laurens Mark (Hershey Professor of Anatomy and Director of the Zoological Laboratory at Harvard University). The others I am not sure about yet.

[Off-topic: The lack of an article about Edward Laurens Mark is quite ironic in the Wikipedia context, when you realise this guy is said to have invented what became known as the Harvard referencing system. See also parenthetical referencing (T-H-L).]

Anyway, if someone approached this systematically, you might be able to find out whether certain topics are (slowly) being filled in, and at what rate, and you might be able to identify areas that are neglected, but is this sort of analysis something that would point up a glaring deficiency in the current approach (or lack of approach)?

One view is that in some cases it is not that the information has not been published, but that it is not yet widely available or online. It might seem that lots is available online, and much more is available than was 10 years or so ago, but there are still huge amounts of published information that the current crowd-sourced approach is not capable of picking up unless libraries and archives and journal/book publishers do more to put information online (but in some cases there is little incentive to do so, and in some cases much incentive not to).

[EricBarbour]

Some are a real struggle to unearth the information (for all the above, I only had the names and nothing else, sometimes just the surname and initials). For Whittinghill, you find a death notice buried deep in an online copy of the November/December 1998 copy of the Carolina Alumni Review. In the case of Nason, it was a real struggle, eventually finding this on some website called 'LibraryThing', which as best I can make out would be someone who owns a book by Nason (who published a number of standard biology textbooks) putting up some biographical details. From that, you get birth and death years, and a possible middle name of Abraham. That then led me to this index (Gale's Literary Index), which has an entry for Nason (and where an obituary was published). Warren Spencer, I eventually found by following a breadcrumb trail from Wooster College to his birth year (1898) to his obituary published 6 years after his death.

News flash, Chris: you can't lazily Google everything. This is a major flaw of Wikipedia. Sometimes you have to find references in printed material. But very very few people bother. They should have six pillars instead of five, the sixth one saying "all human knowledge is not on the Web already".

[Carcharoth]

News flash, Chris: you can't lazily Google everything. This is a major flaw of Wikipedia. Sometimes you have to find references in printed material. But very very few people bother. They should have six pillars instead of five, the sixth one saying "all human knowledge is not on the Web already".

Uh, you do realise that there is a difference between some random website put up by some random person, and digitised online copies of published materials? Obviously some printed sources have no trace online at all, but Wikipedia is not really anything more than a starting point and source aggregation machine. If you are doing basic research in any area, you would use the internet to help you find sources, and combine that with offline research, such as visiting libraries and so on. Wikipedia is only a small part of that. It has to be used correctly, and if used correctly can be very useful.

[EricBarbour]

Uh, you do realise that there is a difference between some random website put up by some random person, and digitised online copies of published materials? Obviously some printed sources have no trace online at all, but Wikipedia is not really anything more than a starting point and source aggregation machine. If you are doing basic research in any area, you would use the internet to help you find sources, and combine that with offline research, such as visiting libraries and so on. Wikipedia is only a small part of that. It has to be used correctly, and if used correctly can be very useful.

Don't tell me, tell the millions of secondary-school and university students who lazily Google their class subjects, read the WP article (because that's usually the top Google return), and use it to write notes or essays. The vast majority of them don't seem to even bother with checking a few references.

Ever seen or used Turnitin? They offer a service to check for plagiarism in school papers. In 2011 they took a survey to find out what the most popular sources for student plagiarism were. Guess what was at the top of the list. If anything, I suspect this has only gotten worse in four years. There are indications that even the instructors are getting lazy and using Wikipedia.

If anyone should be talking to Turnitin about their methodology, it should be you, a former Wikipedia arbitrator. I will bet if you identified yourself and asked them for more information, they would open their doors for you. Even better would be to talk the currently-sitting arbitrators, or Wikiproject leaders, into contacting Turnitin.

[Carcharoth]

If anyone should be talking to Turnitin about their methodology, it should be you, a former Wikipedia arbitrator. I will bet if you identified yourself and asked them for more information, they would open their doors for you. Even better would be to talk the currently-sitting arbitrators, or Wikiproject leaders, into contacting Turnitin.

I think you over-estimate the influence arbitrators and WikiProject 'leaders' have. Turnitin are based in Oakland, California? That is reasonably close to the WMF offices, isn't it? Same bay or something.

Turnitin (T-H-L)

Ack. Shouldn't have looked at that article. My eyes are bleeding now... (controversy and litigation sections).

Seriously, though, I could ask on the wikimedia-l mailing list about this. Would that be a start? A more up-to-date report than 2011 would help.

Getting a bit far from the topic of missing articles, though.

[EricBarbour]

I think you over-estimate the influence arbitrators and WikiProject 'leaders' have.

Don't agree. Because no one from Wikipedia ever talks to "outsiders" about issues like plagiarism.

Turnitin (T-H-L)
Ack. Shouldn't have looked at that article. My eyes are bleeding now... (controversy and litigation sections).

Because a few of your fellow Wikipedians view Turnitin as a "critic", and are trying to defame it as much as they can. Plus, it's a target for idiotic vandalism by students who got into trouble thanks to Turnitin. Look at the talkpage. Some of it gives the impression that students have some kind of vague "right" to copy-paste material.

Seriously, though, I could ask on the wikimedia-l mailing list about this. Would that be a start? A more up-to-date report than 2011 would help.

Give it a try, although I expect a few of the worst people will try to shout you down. At least attempt to sow a few seeds of doubt. It doesn't happen often enough, especially on noticeboards and mailing lists.

[Johnny Au]

If anyone should be talking to Turnitin about their methodology, it should be you, a former Wikipedia arbitrator. I will bet if you identified yourself and asked them for more information, they would open their doors for you. Even better would be to talk the currently-sitting arbitrators, or Wikiproject leaders, into contacting Turnitin.

I think you over-estimate the influence arbitrators and WikiProject 'leaders' have. Turnitin are based in Oakland, California? That is reasonably close to the WMF offices, isn't it? Same bay or something.

Turnitin (T-H-L)

Ack. Shouldn't have looked at that article. My eyes are bleeding now... (controversy and litigation sections).

Seriously, though, I could ask on the wikimedia-l mailing list about this. Would that be a start? A more up-to-date report than 2011 would help.

Getting a bit far from the topic of missing articles, though.

Some of the criticisms are made from Canadian students fearing the American government snooping on their assignments even.

[Cla68]

Gatchman is apparently one of, if not the most, followed professional gamer in Japan. The article doesn't give his views on GamerGate, which, presumably, would have a significant impact on the tone of his WP BLP if he had one.

[Johnny Au]

Gatchman is apparently one of, if not the most, followed professional gamer in Japan. The article doesn't give his views on GamerGate, which, presumably, would have a significant impact on the tone of his WP BLP if he had one.

Apparently, most Japanese people don't care about GamerGate for the same reason most Westerners don't care about the legality of gambling in pachinko parlours (note that there are no articles about this topic, which is quite contentious in Japan).

[thekohser]

Another sign of systemic bias in English Wikipedia... there is no article about Tropicana All Stars (T-H-L), a lovely Miami-based Cuban big band that has been nominated twice for a Grammy Award. Lead singer, Israel Kantor (rest his soul, taken by cancer at the young age of 56), has a biography, but only on the German-language Wikipedia.

[Peryglus]

Another sign of systemic bias in English Wikipedia... there is no article about Tropicana All Stars (T-H-L), a lovely Miami-based Cuban big band that has been nominated twice for a Grammy Award. Lead singer, Israel Kantor (rest his soul, taken by cancer at the young age of 56), has a biography, but only on the German-language Wikipedia.

Am I too mainstream/old here? "Tropicana" just makes me think of Wham!.
But yes, that Cuban band does need an article.

[The Joy]

Nothing about Rover Red Charlie (T-H-L) by Garth Ennis (T-H-L). Saddest graphic novel ever. You never think of the dogs and puppies trying to survive a zombie apocalypse.

http://www.forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/2 ... d-charlie/

[Poetlister]

Emily Grossman is a well-known British TV science populariser. No article on her, although there is one on Duck Quacks Don't Echo (T-H-L), one of her programmes.