Everything you never needed to know about bras

[Hersch]

Discuss.

[Zoloft]

The post explores how horrible the article Brassiere (T-H-L) is:

As I read it, my eyes just became larger, and larger… at the end they felt like the size of an LL-cup. The article is filled with statements about bras which makes them sound like modern day torture instruments, which women only wear because of social pressure or vanity.

From the lede of the Wikipedia article:

Women usually wear bras to support their breasts, which may be related to their desire to conform to social norms such as a dress code. Many women mistakenly believe bras prevent breasts from sagging. In fact, breasts naturally sag as a woman ages, depending on her breast size and other factors. Some researchers have found evidence that wearing a bra may actually contribute to sagging because they weaken the supporting ligaments.

Who twisted the article into an anti-bra POV?

I'm hoping there is a Part Two soon, exposing the culprits.

[lilburne]

I showed this to the wife this morning and her eyes became larger and larger, comments included "Are they mad!", "Don't they have girlfriends, sisters, mothers?", "Idiots!".

[Poetlister]

"Don't they have girlfriends".

What a silly question. Of course not!

[enwikibadscience]

I'm going to vomit instead of discussing.

[Michaeldsuarez]

I'm hoping there is a Part Two soon, exposing the culprits. :evilgrin:

The article went through a massive rewrite and expansion in November 2006. At one point of that month, the article was 83,885 bytes long. On October 30, 2006, the article was only 30,891 bytes long.

[enwikibadscience]

Oh good grief, most of this article is a hoax and the rest a how-to. How to fix problems with cup size? Anyone going to say what it is, cup size? Or just discuss different systems of this undefined measurement?

Misogynism triumphs once more, 91% little boys throw up online. What a ridiculous article.

[cyofee]

This is one of the best blog posts I've read here. Great work.

[DanMurphy]

This is one of the best blog posts I've read here. Great work.

I agree. Well done. Also nice to see the Wikipediocracy effect in action (the Wikipedia article, unchanged for years, has a 25% "reduction" itself today and is for the moment somewhat saner, though still lousy).

[The Devil's Advocate]

The primary contributor to the article is Btphelps (T-C-L) and he appears to be the one who added most of the material to the article (example). He states on his user page that he is a Mormon and in a "tongue-in-cheek" section of userboxes he has one advocating "National Cleavage Day", another supporting the right of women to go braless, one supporting the "right" of women to walk around in public topless, and lastly one supporting a woman's right to breastfeed in public. Suffice to say, it is not hard to figure out what this guy is all about. Interestingly, he claims to have a wife and I can only imagine how she feels or would feel about his obsession with the female bosom.

[Michaeldsuarez]

The article went through a massive rewrite and expansion in November 2006. At one point of that month, the article was 83,885 bytes long. On October 30, 2006, the article was only 30,891 bytes long.

November 2006 was an interesting time for the article. Look at the archived discussions from that time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brassiere/Archive_2#Bias_or_Slant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brassiere/Archive_2#NPOV

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brassiere/Archive_2#Edit_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brassiere/Archive_2#Failed_GA

[Hex]

This is one of the best blog posts I've read here. Great work.

I agree. Well done. Also nice to see the Wikipediocracy effect in action (the Wikipedia article, unchanged for years, has a 25% "reduction" itself today and is for the moment somewhat saner, though still lousy).

Thanks to Alexbrn (T-C-L) for that, who spent a couple of hours today removing a vast amount of crap.

[enwikibadscience]

The primary contributor to the article is Btphelps (T-C-L) and he appears to be the one who added most of the material to the article (example). He states on his user page that he is a Mormon and in a "tongue-in-cheek" section of userboxes he has one advocating "National Cleavage Day", another supporting the right of women to go braless, one supporting the "right" of women to walk around in public topless, and lastly one supporting a woman's right to breastfeed in public. Suffice to say, it is not hard to figure out what this guy is all about. Interestingly, he claims to have a wife and I can only imagine how she feels or would feel about his obsession with the female bosom.

Can I use this as an example of NPOV? Or not....

[The Devil's Advocate]

The article went through a massive rewrite and expansion in November 2006. At one point of that month, the article was 83,885 bytes long. On October 30, 2006, the article was only 30,891 bytes long.

November 2006 was an interesting time for the article. Look at the archived discussions from that time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brassiere/Archive_2#Bias_or_Slant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brassiere/Archive_2#NPOV

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brassiere/Archive_2#Edit_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brassiere/Archive_2#Failed_GA

That was mostly due to the work of Mgoodyear (T-C-L), who seems to have been motivated by feminist ideology. Although occasionally using polemical phrasing against bras, most of the edits about alleged harms and benefits seemed even-handed. Edits like this are typical of Btphelphs and are clearly motivated by more prurient interests.

[enwikibadscience]

The article went through a massive rewrite and expansion in November 2006. At one point of that month, the article was 83,885 bytes long. On October 30, 2006, the article was only 30,891 bytes long.

November 2006 was an interesting time for the article. Look at the archived discussions from that time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brassiere/Archive_2#Bias_or_Slant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brassiere/Archive_2#NPOV

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brassiere/Archive_2#Edit_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brassiere/Archive_2#Failed_GA

That was mostly due to the work of Mgoodyear (T-C-L), who seems to have been motivated by feminist ideology. Although occasionally using polemical phrasing against bras, most of the edits about alleged harms and benefits seemed even-handed. Edits like this are typical of Btphelphs and are clearly motivated by more prurient interests.

Creepy, man. No NPOV, RS, or NOR for Btphelphs. I am creeped out enough to move away from this thread.

[The Devil's Advocate]

Unsurprisingly, his interest in the female physique extends well beyond that article. His efforts at the bikini article appear to have been getting persistently blocked by the watchdog of the article, Aditya Kabir (T-C-L), but the guy is also a major contributor to various other articles concerning the female breasts. This includes the article on breast cleavage where, among other crass edits, is this gem.

[Alison]

I'm hoping they like this improvement

[Bielle]

I'm hoping they like this improvement

(If the banana-smilie gif were not so aggressively male, I'd have posted it.)

[TungstenCarbide]

I'm hoping they like this improvement

(If the banana-smilie gif were not so aggressively male, I'd have posted it.)

Hey, I'm all for emoticon equality!

K, going to hide now.

[Alison]

Hey, I'm all for emoticon equality!

K, going to hide now.

MODS!!!!!11!!

[The Adversary]

Less that 24 hours since this blog was posted, and about 40 K of rubbish (nearly 1/3 of the article) has been removed.

Not bad!..but the article is still in a sorry state, even if obvious rubbish have been removed.

[Michaeldsuarez]

The article went through a massive rewrite and expansion in November 2006. At one point of that month, the article was 83,885 bytes long. On October 30, 2006, the article was only 30,891 bytes long.

November 2006 was an interesting time for the article. Look at the archived discussions from that time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brassiere/Archive_2#Bias_or_Slant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brassiere/Archive_2#NPOV

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brassiere/Archive_2#Edit_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brassiere/Archive_2#Failed_GA

That was mostly due to the work of Mgoodyear (T-C-L), who seems to have been motivated by feminist ideology. Although occasionally using polemical phrasing against bras, most of the edits about alleged harms and benefits seemed even-handed. Edits like this are typical of Btphelphs and are clearly motivated by more prurient interests.

I'm wasn't saying that Mgoodyear did anything wrong (Mgoodyear provided his justification); I was merely identifying the point (November 2006) where the article started to become become what it was a couple of days ago. It was a turning point for the article.

[The Adversary]

The article went through a massive rewrite and expansion in November 2006. At one point of that month, the article was 83,885 bytes long. On October 30, 2006, the article was only 30,891 bytes long.

November 2006 was an interesting time for the article. Look at the archived discussions from that time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brassiere/Archive_2#Bias_or_Slant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brassiere/Archive_2#NPOV

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brassiere/Archive_2#Edit_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brassiere/Archive_2#Failed_GA

That was mostly due to the work of Mgoodyear (T-C-L), who seems to have been motivated by feminist ideology. Although occasionally using polemical phrasing against bras, most of the edits about alleged harms and benefits seemed even-handed. Edits like this are typical of Btphelphs and are clearly motivated by more prurient interests.

I'm wasn't saying that Mgoodyear did anything wrong (Mgoodyear provided his justification); I was merely identifying the point (November 2006) where the article started to become become what it was a couple of days ago. It was a turning point for the article.

The problem is that Mgoodyear writes (in the above "justification") that "The health professions are fairly united in stating that there is no necessity for bras, they can cause a lot of problems .." etc., while at the same time he is mysteriously unable to provide any good references to that "united health profession"....

This is how the brassiere article looked before Mgoodyear began editing it in November of 2006. And this is the article less than a month later, after hundreds of edits by Mgoodyear: the history has been spun off into a separate article. The "culture" and "health problems" sections now make up the bulk of the article. (Including a large section on the bogus claim of bras causing cancer.)

Alas, there are many "guilty" here: Altstikman (T-C-L) is the editor who "promoted" a dr Ryan to "of the [[University of Melbourne]] and colleagues".

[DanMurphy]

Mr. Phelps thinks this is all contrary to the Wikipedia way:

Wow, you just eviscerated a substantial portion of the article without any discussion or participation by other editors. Having never edited this article, with no background in it, you summarily removed 21% of the content. In your edit summary supporting removing some content, you refer to "content obsessing about pain". I believe one of the findings is that a lot of women do experience pain from wearing a bra. While you note that some of the content fails WP:MEDRS, some of the info you removed contained references to journals, which you noted as "unreliably-sourced". There isn't a lot of research on this topic, so requiring all sources to be less than 5 years old is inappropriate for this article.
Your behavior is inconsiderate of the considerable effort others including myself have put into creating an article that passed muster as a Good Article. You do understand that WP is having a hard time attracting individuals willing to spend time creating content, right? You can refer to WP guidelines -- and they are guidelines, not RULES -- if you want. But when you fail to include others in such a substantive edit, your WikiDragon behavior alienates and discourages others from making ongoing contributions. Over the next few days I am going to revert some of your edits. If you don't agree, please follow up with a discussion here so that others can contribute. — btphelps (T-C-L) (talk to me) (what I've done) 19:00, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

And is this loving and thoughtful or what?

I was not aware of the scathing criticism of the article. The critic suggests this article should include references to articles about how happy women are wearing their bras. Give me a break. They don't like the images? Finding appropriate images is difficult. Maybe the critic would like to model? In any case, it is a reasonable courtesy to discuss proposed massive edits beforehand. — btphelps (talk to me) (what I've done) 19:39, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

[penwise]

Interesting blog post. Got my attention!

Maybe it's a little heavy handed to mention it in the lead, but women absolutely do wear bras to conform to social convention. A girl's first bra is practically a contemporary rite of passage. Similar to the of popularity corsets or girdles in the past, the brassiere modifies the body in line with current standards of beauty and propriety.

I happen to be in the bra-free camp except when wearing sheer clothing or exercising. And, I can tell you this: I get dubious looks and subtle signals of disapproval from even close friends and family. Screw 'em. My physical comfort is more important to me than what society at large thinks about my tits.

I get it. This is a poorly-sourced, POV-pushing article. But some discussion of the brassiere as a functional undergarment, as well as a mode of historical fashion, is probably appropriate for the topic.

Edited:
Oops. Just noticed the other thread. Could one of the mods kindly merge this post into the relevant place?

[Alison]

Maybe it's a little heavy handed to mention it in the lead, but women absolutely do wear bras to conform to social convention. A girl's first bra is practically a contemporary rite of passage. Similar to the of popularity corsets or girdles in the past, the brassiere modifies the body in line with current standards of beauty and propriety.

I happen to be in the bra-free camp except when wearing sheer clothing or exercising. And, I can tell you this: I get dubious looks and subtle signals of disapproval from even close friends and family. Screw 'em. My physical comfort is more important to me than what society at large thinks about my tits.

Indeed, and I agree with you. Women should be free to go braless if that's what works best for them, and it *is* largely a social requirement. The article should be balanced to include both, perfectly valid viewpoints - but it wasn't. While I applaud your being in the bra-free camp, I can't do this myself in practice. I'm just too large, boobwise, and chafing against my top would be awful after a few hours. TMI, I know. There's good and bad to bra wearing, and there's two sides to the story.

[Triptych]

Women should be free to go braless if that's what works best for them, and it *is* largely a social requirement. The article should be balanced to include both, perfectly valid viewpoints - but it wasn't. While I applaud your being in the bra-free camp, I can't do this myself in practice. I'm just too large, boobwise, and chafing against my top would be awful after a few hours. TMI, I know. There's good and bad to bra wearing, and there's two sides to the story.

Actually, that wasn't TMI. Feel free to expound on it any time, Alison.

I read this frontpage Wikipediocracy article, and I agree that it is top quality and funny. I say this site is gathering momentum and maybe the owners should consider ads to cover expenses, if anybody knows how to do that.

[The Devil's Advocate]

And is this loving and thoughtful or what?

I was not aware of the scathing criticism of the article. The critic suggests this article should include references to articles about how happy women are wearing their bras. Give me a break. They don't like the images? Finding appropriate images is difficult. Maybe the critic would like to model? In any case, it is a reasonable courtesy to discuss proposed massive edits beforehand. — btphelps (talk to me) (what I've done) 19:39, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

He certainly knows a thing or two about appropriate imagery.

[Cla68]

One interesting thing about focusing on an article like this is how it usually draws one or two of WP's kooks or activists out of the woodwork and exposes them to the light of day. I bet there are hundreds, if not thousands, of articles or topic areas like this that are currently owned by one or two nutters or activists.

[Ismail]

One interesting thing about focusing on an article like this is how it usually draws one or two of WP's kooks or activists out of the woodwork and exposes them to the light of day. I bet there are hundreds, if not thousands, of articles or topic areas like this that are currently owned by one or two nutters or activists.

I wonder if the following has ever happened: an article is debated by various partisans, it is decided to split the article up into various other articles, partisans eventually entrench themselves into new articles with the result that these articles give very different perspectives on the same events or subjects which tie together the different articles.

I could see this occurring quite easily. Imagine an article about a war that presents the results of a battle within it one way, whereas the article on the battle itself is quite different, and then the articles on the generals where A is extolled for his total victory over B's ill-organized and demoralized army, whereas B's article extols him for his strategic genius against the stupidity of A, who was merely lucky that certain external factors intervened, with the battle ending in B's tactical retreat, thus ensuring him a victory in the long term against A's forces, etc.

I guess the problem is that partisans want to dominate the narrative of a subject on Wikipedia, so it's unlikely they'd allow that narrative to be pierced on an article linked to the one they have influence over.

[drg55]

When I clicked on the link to the article Wikipedia asked me to donate money.

[Poetlister]

I wonder if the following has ever happened: an article is debated by various partisans, it is decided to split the article up into various other articles, partisans eventually entrench themselves into new articles with the result that these articles give very different perspectives on the same events or subjects which tie together the different articles.

I'm sure it happens not infrequently. Maybe we should have a whole thread on it. You also get very different perspectives if you compare sites in different languages. I've never looked much at Simple Wikipedia, but I'd bet that its perspective often diverges from the main English one too.

[enwikibadscience]

I wonder if the following has ever happened: an article is debated by various partisans, it is decided to split the article up into various other articles, partisans eventually entrench themselves into new articles with the result that these articles give very different perspectives on the same events or subjects which tie together the different articles.

I'm sure it happens not infrequently. Maybe we should have a whole thread on it. You also get very different perspectives if you compare sites in different languages. I've never looked much at Simple Wikipedia, but I'd bet that its perspective often diverges from the main English one too.

Simple Wikipedia contains more info on bra sizing than en.wiki:

" The letter is a measure of how much larger the breasts are than the ribcage."

Then explains how it is calcuted.

With the Mormon boob freak on en.wiki, it is a trash article without info.

I am hypnotized by how bad this article is.

[Koala Claw Cuts]

I wonder if the following has ever happened: an article is debated by various partisans, it is decided to split the article up into various other articles, partisans eventually entrench themselves into new articles with the result that these articles give very different perspectives on the same events or subjects which tie together the different articles.

I could see this occurring quite easily. Imagine an article about a war that presents the results of a battle within it one way, whereas the article on the battle itself is quite different, and then the articles on the generals where A is extolled for his total victory over B's ill-organized and demoralized army, whereas B's article extols him for his strategic genius against the stupidity of A, who was merely lucky that certain external factors intervened, with the battle ending in B's tactical retreat, thus ensuring him a victory in the long term against A's forces, etc.

I guess the problem is that partisans want to dominate the narrative of a subject on Wikipedia, so it's unlikely they'd allow that narrative to be pierced on an article linked to the one they have influence over.

Wikipedia:Content forking (T-H-L) I can't see that happening if the winners/OWNers of the main article were aware. They wouldn't agree to a split in the first place, and they would press their advantage to have the offshoot pruned with prejudice. I expect that the war and major battles would favor A's side, perhaps with coverage of B in "NPOV" alternating point/counterpoint, and B's side would be confined to minor skirmishes and his own article.