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BBC 100 Women

New campaign - BBC 100 Women

New campaign - BBC 100 Women

Hello all,

Maria Cruz (Communications and Outreach Coordinator, L&E Team, WMF) and I are coordinating an international campaign with Lucy Crompton-Reid (CE WMUK) and Ahmen Khawaja (BBC), during the period of 21 Nov 16 through 8 Dec 16 for BBC 100 Women. Components to this campaign include:

  • editathons:
  • In-person editathons in multiple cities around the world. The BBC will give press coverage on December 8th to the in-person editathons in many cities, e.g. where they have bureaux, but there will also be in-person editathons occurring in cities where there are no bureaux.
  • Virtual editathons in multiple languages around the world, e.g. Women in Red!
  • This campaign has similarities with others, such as Art+Feminism (March 2014, 2015, 2016) and UN HerStory (August 2016)
  • Social media campaign will be big! No hashtag yet for the wiki part of the event, but the BBC programming part is using #100women.
  • The period of time -21 Nov through 8 Dec- coincides with the BBC season dates.
  • The scope is women's biographies.
  • The focus can be on whatever the particular in-person/online community is interested in covering... e.g. everyone, anyone who meets WP:N.
  • The campaign includes creating new contact, improving existing content, images, etc.
  • While women are encouraged to participate, everyone's participation is welcome.

Where does WiR fit in?

  • I'll start a meetup page for this event after WMUK gets their page up (Lucy said that will occur later in the week).
  • We can include all the articles we create during the 18 day period.
  • We can also include improved articles, e.g. articles within the focus of Women in Green, such as these, Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/The Africa Destubathon#Women article achievements (cc Dr. Blofeld) which were improved during the 18 day period.
  • We can also include new and improved images (cc: Adam Cuerden).
  • WiR social media:

Thoughts? Suggestions? Comments? Ideas? Where do we go from here? --Rosiestep (talk) 19:54, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Am I right? there is only nine days notice - the BBC are usually a bit more organised than this. I think we should get the active UK editors involved. Good that Lucy is involved but we should not overlook those who are doing the work. Do we know why the BBC left it so late? We have quite a lot of committed plans and committed editors. As it is we maybe have time for one Skype phone call. Victuallers (talk) 20:24, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
That's very exciting, but also wow, what short notice. I will be gone for the first week of the campaign as we are traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday. I suspect others with ties to the US will have time constraints as well. I'll do my best to participate at least a few articles. SusunW (talk) 21:04, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
Whatever you want pinterest-wise, just holler. My #100wikidays ends on 16 November, so I'll be a little freer to take up other projects then.Penny Richards (talk) 21:51, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
The emphasis is on the in-person editathons being held Dec 8th in different cities around the world that have a BBC bureau. The BBC will photograph/videotape them.
The virtual WiR editathon is an add-on to what's already been in the planning since October by BBC/WMF/WMUK. As I see it, we can treat it like August's UN event:
  • Document all the articles and images within the scope of Women in Red and Women in Green that we work on during the 18 days on a meetup page (which I just created).
  • Social media campaign to promote us and our work.
  • Talk about WiR at an in-person event if you are able to attend one. --Rosiestep (talk) 23:22, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
  • In a way, it's good to see there is ever wider interest in covering women on Wikipedia but I agree with Victuallers and SusunW that news of this event has reached us very late for the online editathon. There is quite a bit more we can do to firm things up. The Wikipedia article needs to be updated to at least announce this year's event. An abstract needs to be added to WiR/29. From 21 November, we need to see that articles created by our participants are also added to the WiR/29 list. It would be helpful if the BBC could also announce our online editathon. I see from here that there is a special interest in Gaza, Uganda, Nepal and Kazakhstan and that an event is being held in Mexico City on 24 November. The "marathon editing session" in London is no doubt a Wikipedia editathon. Perhaps Fiona Crack could be persuaded to mention Wikipedia explicitly and also refer to the virtual editathon starting on 21 November. In the meantime, I've done a bit of work on the WiR/29 page but I'm not too sure how the abstract should be worded. Perhaps Rosiestep could put something together. And one last thing: without wanting to cause any offense and in the hope that my comments will not be misinterpreted, I was wondering to what extent other participants in WiR should be consulted before announcements of new editathons are made public. This one seems to have come as quite a surprise to us all.--Ipigott (talk) 11:55, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
  • Ipigott - I'll create the abstract for the WiR page after the WMUK posts its meetup page. Regarding "to what extent other participants in WiR should be consulted before announcements of new editathons are made public", can you please clarify? --Rosiestep (talk) 16:49, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
@Rosiestep: I certainly don't want to put you under any pressure after all you've had to cope with over the last few weeks but I wondered whether the WiR members still had any say in which editathons we should include among our published events. In the early days we discussed these in some detail before adding them to the active programme but I've noticed that recently you have simply assumed we would all agree to additional editathons on United Nations Women, Wikipedia Asian Month, and now BBC 100 Women. I think we may be getting to the stage where the editathons we have planned over the months are being swamped by new priorities. In addition, we have all the drives and challenges from Dr. Blofeld which also attract our attention. Perhaps there is a danger that the focus we have tried to ensure is no longer seen as really important, given that the last minute additions appear to cover any women biographies people choose to write. I'm not sure whether our metrics are the primary goal or whether we really want to produce good new articles on the fields we have chosen for the focus of the month. I am rather concerned that with up to six different activities at the same time, we can hardly be expected to make much progress on the established priorities. But I certainly don't want to cause any upsets by bringing this up.--Ipigott (talk) 17:15, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

I have something in mind Ipigott, and quite the opposite of losing sight of the WIR goal, it would strongly reinforce it. Long term I agree though on perhaps a bot being needed to list articles on both the regional challenges and WIR to avoid it getting complicated. I will do my best to get the challenges working in WIR's favour, not a distraction from it.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:45, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

But you haven't answered any of my queries.--Ipigott (talk) 18:43, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
I've been talking to WMUK this week to see how we could be better involved. This looks like a great opportunity and I want this to not be like our recent collaboration where we ended up with two project pages and volunteers confused about where anything was. We have a lot of expertise here but the information and consultation that is required isn't happening as smooth as it might. And if you think this is aimed at anyone then please remember this is a volunteer project and we share our successes/issues equally (I reckon) I intend to speak to Ian direct to see if I can assist. Victuallers (talk) 15:10, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
Some housekeeping: --Rosiestep (talk) 23:50, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
  • I asked the BBC producer if she could provide the 2015 laureates list as I can't access it on the BBC website.
  • I created a cat on en-wiki, Category:BBC 100 Women, and added it to all the bluelinks at 100 Women (BBC).
  • I created a cat at Commons, c:Category:BBC 100 Women, but didn't get very far adding applicable images. Hope someone else can work on that.
  • Regarding Wikidata, I see this and wonder if a bot can add it to all the applicable entries?
  • I added an abstract to our meetup page.
  • I added the WiR event to the GLAM meetup page.
  • Penny Richards created a Pinterest board; thanks!

I'll see what I can do, but without image releases by the BBC it can be very hard to find images that fit the Wikipedia requirements of free reuse, as none will have automatically passed to public domain from age. I can still do historic women, and, indeed, have some on the go, interrupted by a bad coldAdam Cuerden (talk) 05:15, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

I tried Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, but I cannot see the list of 2015 laureates from this link. But if someone else can access the list (maybe outside the US?), could you please add 2015's 100 names here: 100 Women (BBC)#2015? Thanks, --Rosiestep (talk) 22:07, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
I've started it Rosiestep. We'll see how far I get before my dinner guests arrive. SusunW (talk) 22:39, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
My guests have arrived. Only 2 rows to go, so if someone else doesn't finish it, I'll get back to it later. SusunW (talk) 23:56, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
Rosiestep I finished them. Did not link a 17 year old student with only a first name, a reindeer nomad, or a Syrian refugee whose real name was not used. Included them in the chart, but unlikely there will be sufficient links to establish notability. SusunW (talk) 04:00, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

BBC missing bios

BBC missing bios

@Rosiestep:, @Ipigott: etc, feel free to sort out the missing bios in 100 Women (BBC) by continent and add a section on the challenge pages advertising the BBC collaboration and encourage editors to create them. Feel free to also add some missing articles on women in the military for next month too to the pages, or links to the current wikidata lists etc. You'd be surprised that a few more articles would get contributed as some of the continent challenges have over 50 people signed up who might not normally work on women bios. I've started off a list on the Asian challenge page here, emboldening them might attract more editors to help the cause.♦ Dr. Blofeld 23:07, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

@Dr. Blofeld: The women you have listed for Asia come from last year's list. You should go back to the 100 Women (BBC) page and go through the ones for this year. For the next few days, I'll be tied up with the December events but I'll see if I have time to help out later.--Ipigott (talk) 08:34, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
Oh OK, but I would have thought it would be good to blue link all eventually!♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:59, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
@Dr. Blofeld: I agree in principle but I've looked at quite a number of the red links from past years and can find very little more than primary sources and a snippet from the BBC. I have a feeling many of them would be AfD'd. In any case, it may be useful simply to sort them initially by continent. They could then also be used for WiR and other lists. I'll see what I can do.--Ipigott (talk) 09:37, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
I went through the blue links for this year and I found a lot of free images on YouTube which I have added. Some of the bios are people noted for single events like an iconic photo of them. They may not be notable but the photo might be. I am in contact with the BBC in the UK and I'm optimistic that they will give us some extra help. I'm going to visit them next week to try and improve our synergy. Victuallers (talk) 00:12, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
BBC 100 Women redlink list

@Rosiestep, Megalibrarygirl, and Victuallers: I have compiled a list of redlinks for the four years covered by BBC 100 Women, arranged by continent and country. I think this will help people to work on the geographical area they wish to cover. I've included a link to the list on the Meetup/29 page but I don't know how to include it under our redlink lists as it does not fit into any of the existing slots. The list should also be useful for those working on the various challenges. For the record, the list now contains 211 names. It will be interesting to see how many are left on 9 December.--Ipigott (talk) 15:55, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, the problem is that a lot of the women have no info available for them and are only mentioned on the list.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:57, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Maybe a link where you got the names from could help finding more Information about the women(?).Sander.v.Ginkel (Talk) 16:37, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
The names all come from the BBC listings. Dr. Blofeld is right in saying that for quite a few of them there are no good secondary sources but for at least two thirds there are plenty of usable references, not to mention their coverage in other languages. I would guess the BBC's own background information together with one other good source should be sufficient for avoiding deletion. For those listed for 2016, additional information can be expected from the BBC between now and 8 December.--Ipigott (talk) 17:42, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
Thats my understanding Ian - they have asked for some guidance. I have been changing some of the people to black where I think there is no notability to save others time. I did find this link which might be useful for those who are interested in China. The list is getting more bluish and I have added quite a few pix Victuallers (talk) 18:45, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
Yes, blanking out the ones without sources would be most useful and save editors a lot of time.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:55, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
Want me to run through and check for sources, Rosiestep? Megalibrarygirl (talk) 20:18, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
Sure, Megalibrarygirl, if you have the time. :) Thank you! --Rosiestep (talk) 01:44, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
@Ipigott, Victuallers, Rosiestep, and Dr. Blofeld: I'm going through the redlist and adding links to references and images if I find any. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:12, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
All good. I've created a few more today. As you'd expect these women are very interesting. I'd quite like to convert this years 100 to a table as I think it would look good to see a picture where we have one. We can also extend the descriptions a bit which will mean that the nn s will at least get a sentence of description Victuallers (talk) 20:02, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
@Victuallers: That's really a great list you've been putting together in the mainspace with all those photos. @Megalibrarygirl: You've made our work much easier by providing sources we can use. The redlink list is beginning to look like the many others you've been developing. Great work. I hope the BBC will appreciate everything we are doing to help them along with their editathons!--Ipigott (talk) 07:49, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
@Victuallers and Ipigott:, I'll keep adding references. It's a bit tedious, so I took a break from it yesterday, but I'll keep plugging away at it. Also, I'm keeping my eye out for pictures we can use as I'm searching. It's a shame that some of the women don't have good secondary references: they are very interesting too! Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:26, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
Refs are useful. Wikimedia UK are keep to train people on the 8th and references will be a good resource and example. Victuallers (talk) 17:40, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
I note the editathon has arrived on Meta ... I post this here lest we're all a little less well joined up than we should be - I see that the meta announcement doesn't point at our red-list. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:57, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
Oh, and also what looks like Wikiproject Redneck. So that's nice. Still. Any publicity. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:07, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Slow down? request (en:BBC only)

Slow down? request (en:BBC only)

I've been having conversations with WMUK who are the prime partners with the BBC for their editathons on December 8th. WMUK are concerned that WiR's enthusiasm will mean that there are few remaining "easy" biographies in English. Creating Wikidata entries, adding pictures to commons, and creating references is great work. They are requesting that we slow creation of new articles on en:wiki. I can see that is a difficult (and very late) message as its not clear what happens on December 9th. Women in Red have done a lot of amazing pre-work and its important that we get good value out of that work. I'm off to meet WMUK and the BBC today to understand their rationale. I hope to get, and bring you, a better understanding today. Victuallers (talk) 07:34, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

How sad! I know that I don't need to explain to you how important the quality of English articles are to the success of a multi-lingual edit-a-thon. Great to have well fleshed out items for the work done on the day, but having good basic articles in English will encourage low-threshold improvements. Besides, who are we to slow anyone down? For Pete's sakes, someone has to go back and give them the "Wikipedia GLAM talk" and tell them not to worry. No snafus here. Jane (talk) 08:41, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
@Jane023, Ipigott, and Megalibrarygirl: Thanks Jane (for your understanding), as I say its a difficult call. On the positive side there will be editathons around the world including five in the UK. They have also created support documents and information but this does parallel the work that WiR (particularly MLGirl and Ian).I have made this point with WMUK and they have agreed to create a common doc. I was with both BBC and WMUK today and they have agreed to give WiR and the work that has been done strong billing. Wiki should see a good number of images on the 8th of invitees and we are training and educating BBC producers about what the Wiki is etc, and how they can add to the commonwealth. I'm going to keep in contact. I want to encourage you guys to get involved .... and we need to extend the end of the editathon as on December 9th we will have been praised, but much work will remain. @Jane023: don't stop translations! pls. We have lots of article in e:wiki and moving them to other languages is fine. Victuallers (talk) 22:41, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
@Victuallers: Thanks for all your efforts on trying to arrive at a common approach. I must say, like Jane I am very surprised at the reactions from WMUK, all the more so as a couple of weeks ago I left a message on their talk page, suggesting lines of cooperation but there were no reactions from any of them. Indeed, I have seen no mention of WiR in any of their pages apart from Rosie's mention of us on Wikipedia:GLAM/BBC's 100 Women/Events and Workshops. Despite their fears, there is of course absolutely no chance of WiR covering all the redlinked women by 8 December, even if we all really concentrate on the lists. In any case, according to Rosiestep, their "editathon" was not so much intended to be an exercise in creating articles as a presentation on Wikipedia and the gender gap problem. So Roger's reaction unfortunately once again just leads to further confusion. Perhaps we should discourage any further work by WiR on BBC 100 Women until WMUK have produced their "common doc" and the BBC have given WiR's work "strong billing". In order to do justice to the women on the lists, we could perhaps extend our WiR editathon for at least a week after the physical meetings on 8 December, i.e. until 15 December. That would also allow us to review any work from the 8th and begin mentoring if anyone is interested.--Ipigott (talk) 08:06, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
Thx @Ipigott:, sorry if I'm creating "further confusion" - its not my intention. My time yesterday was trying to address the issues you highlight. I am told that you will see WMUK's page featuring a WiR logo - and I saw WMUK being interviewed by BBC and mentioning the WiR project. Lucy, who is their CEO, tells me we are in the press release as BBC/WMUK/WiR. I'm going to be bold and suggest you move close date to the 15th as we could not that we would finish on the 8th at midnight. This common doc I'm told will be prepared but they are unlikely to release it till the 8th. Your other points make perfect sense. Victuallers (talk) 10:20, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
@Victuallers: If Rosie (who originally set the dates) agrees I'll extend it until 15 December. It would certainly help if Lucy and her team could include some mention of WiR on their BBC page. I hope it goes a bit further than just our logo. I would have thought our list of redlinks with sources would be a help to all involved, not to mention our offer of assistance and mentoring. Was the BBC interview of WMUK intended to be broadcast? If so, do you know when?--Ipigott (talk) 11:09, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
OK (I think the dates are BBC ones and the finish date is not useful to us) and interesting to see what WMUK do - I have encouraged them. I think the mentoring sounds useful, I didn't discuss that. The BBC interview was recorded but it wasnt clear whether this was for internal use or not - I'll see if I can find out - it was a radio interview. The redlinks were useful and I used them during training yesterday. Victuallers (talk) 11:48, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, @Victuallers, Ipigott, Megalibrarygirl, and Jane023 and everyone else for all the work you've been doing on this BBC event. I am sorry for the hiccups, and supportive of the work-arounds.
Victuallers - ping. --Rosiestep (talk) 17:17, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
No worries! :D Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:57, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
  • I've only just started paying attention to this and am still not quite sure what the plan is. Anyway, in my experience, very little gets done on the day at editathons because most of the time gets eaten up by talks, training, tea and the like. For example, I attended an editathon at the Wiener Library over a week ago and am only now starting to get new articles like Bertha Bracey out. I spotted her as a likely topic weeks ago in preparation but got side-tracked on the day and am only now catching up. So, my view is that we should continue to strike while the iron is hot. If people at the editathons might find that all the low-hanging fruit has gone then the organisers need to plan for this because it may happen regardless. Perhaps they can arrange for good offline sources for the more obscure cases to be brought to the sites of the face-to-face events? Perhaps the BBC researchers have a file on each person already. They must have done some advance work when selecting the people, right?
And, by the way, I was searching the BBC site to understand what's happening and found that they have a page about Women in Blue! :) Andrew D. (talk) 18:48, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
I've extended our dates to 15 December. I see WMUK have moved their page to Meta (but not the talk page with my offers of collaboration).--Ipigott (talk) 13:44, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
@Andrew Davidson: Thanks for bringing my attention to the Graph:PageViews template on BB's talk page. I hadn't seen it before. Seems to work very well.--Ipigott (talk) 14:17, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

More BBC 100 Women confusion

More BBC 100 Women confusion

@Rosiestep and Victuallers: It now looks from this as if the Broadcasting House editathon is restricted to BBC staff. The page also refers to a non existant resources page for virtual participants but no mention of WiR. Is there any possibility of providing info on editathons/meetups in the UK which are open to outside participants?--Ipigott (talk) 17:37, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

As I understood, it was only the London editathon that was restricted by numbers. I will find out more. I understand your concern Victuallers (talk) 18:10, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
Yes, it's a space issue. Broadcast House in London needs to accommodate the BBC staff plus, WMUK, WMF, perhaps some of the laureates, etc. Other UK-based BBC venues -Reading, Glasgow, Cardiff- can perhaps accommodate more Wikimedians. Meetup pages should be up by the 8th, but venues aren't required to create one as these aren't traditional "edit-a-thons". For example, city1 might Skype/google hangout in with city2 and combine their "training" and "outcomes". --Rosiestep (talk) 00:59, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
Can't imagine why all those WMUK people need to attend. One at each event should be sufficient. Looks as if Glasgow and Cardiff are restricted too. No mention of Reading. Pity there is no sign up or contact info. I have had email requests for more info as we advertise the events on WiR. Hope it will be clarified soon.--Ipigott (talk) 08:18, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
Ian, WMUK got back to me very promptly (but I missed the reply sorry). They are endeavouring to create more volunteer access. I have also raised the point about WiR being credited for the pre-work that has been done. (I notice that 100 Women (BBC) has had anonymous gifts). I don't know why Reading isn't mentioned. I know that one of the UKs leading volunteers will be there. If you want to attend then just tell which one and I will do my damnedest. I'm going to try and organise coord meeting to try and mitigate this in future. A non accusative "lessons learnt" page might be useful. Victuallers (talk) 09:18, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi all, firstly I'm so sorry for any confusion over the BBC 100 Women partnership and the events this week. The many different partners involved - BBC, Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia UK, other Wikimedia chapters, user groups and communities around the world and of course, Women in Red - mean that the potential for duplication, lack of clarity etc has been high, for which I can only apologise. I hugely appreciate all the work that has been done by editors to find sources for 'missing' women, add and improve articles about the BBC's 100 Women from this and previous years and generally support the planning and preparation for the multi-location editathon this Thursday 8th December. In particular I wanted to thank Rosie and Roger who have been invaluable in different ways. Rosie has been completely central to bringing on board Wikimedia editors and communities around the world to hold their own events, while Roger has really helped our thinking in the UK and is going to be at the Broadcasting House event as one of the trainers.

As Roger mentions, Wikimedia UK is liaising with the BBC over access for volunteers at the Broadcasting House editathon and the other events in the UK. Whilst these are primarily for BBC staff, presenters and other special guests, we are collating a small guest list of our own for the London event, so if you would like to attend, please email Nicola.Furness@wikimedia.org.uk and let her know which of the following times would be best for you: 2 – 4pm, 3 – 5pm, 4 – 6pm or 5 – 7pm. Nicola is liaising with the BBC over capacity and will confirm your space ASAP. Similarly, if you would like to attend the Cardiff, Reading (Caversham) or Glasgow events, email Nicola and we'll pass this onto the BBC teams in those locations.

Thanks again and I'm looking forward to meeting some of you on 8th!

LucyCrompton-Reid (WMUK) (talk) 14:40, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia item on the BBC

Wikipedia item on the BBC

In connection with BBC 100 Women, the BBC programme "Click" has included an item on Wikipedia and the related editathons. It is billed as: "100 Women Wikipedia Edit-a-thon project The BBC 100 Women 2016 project includes the question: is the internet sexist? On 8th December, 100 Women is joining up with Wikipedia to hold a 12 hour edit-a-thon, to intervene in that story of the place of women online. Click talks to the BBC’s Fiona Crack." The programme can be accessed here. The item on Wikipedia starts at 07.30.--Ipigott (talk) 08:35, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

BBC invitation to join their virtual editathon

BBC invitation to join their virtual editathon

Just up. BBC 100 Women 2016: Who are our forgotten women? Join our edit-a-thon.--Ipigott (talk) 08:43, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

  • The above also states "To attend in person, RSVP to bbc100.women@bbc.co.uk letting us know the time you are planning to come. The event is running in New Broadcasting House and around the world from 0800-2000 GMT." (Of interest no doubt to @Victuallers, RexxS, and Rosiestep:.) I don't want to be too pessimistic but their two-minute video on how to edit Wikipedia is likely to cause problems and disappointments. We should all be looking out for new articles and trying to save some of them.--Ipigott (talk) 08:52, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
    • I'm sure you're right Ian. If we can catch these articles then that would lower disappointment - and at least make those attempting to realise that there are people and not just a robot talking to them. Maybe a "be (extra) gentle to newbies day" might have happened. I've been trying to get some of the 100 to load pictures to Flickr with a free license - but no success yet! I will be there from about 10. I am having to work today. I was intending top make sure that the WIR prep stuff was easily findable from the WMUK pages.... However. Lets not forget that we are less than two years old and the biggest in person editathon I can remember is being advertised on the BBC using the WiR message as their theme. That warms me as does 16.75%. Victuallers (talk) 10:50, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
      • Let's be be extra vigilant in the next 24-48 hours re new articles about the BBC 100 Women laureates as they'll be ripe for "tags" if created by newer editors. --Rosiestep (talk) 13:16, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Here are three Petscan queries which might help us quickly spot new women biographies:

  • 20th century people - looks at the C20 births & deaths categories, and the C21 deaths cat, again for new biog articles - men & women - which have not been added to wikidata
  • Pre-20th century people - looks for new men & women biog articles in pre-20th century birth & death categores, again where no wikidata item exists.

I've been using variants of these for the last month or so in my wikidata endeavours ... they can take 2 or 3 minutes to return results. I'll make sure they're as empty as possible tonight so that we can see what's added tomorrow ... clearly they have a dependency on some minimal categorisation of the articles, and they'll not be of any use if contributors do add wikidata items, but I'm thinking that those users that do probably have enough of a clue not to need help, whereas newbies are most unlikely to even so much as know that wikidata exists, much less how to add an article to it. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:33, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Special:RecentChangesLinked/100 Women (BBC) is probably worth watching — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:31, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

I saw one poor newly registered user Ssentanda had created seven new articles in Zulu on the EN Wikipedia. S/he has since been blocked. Any suggestions?--Ipigott (talk) 16:22, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
Researching the BBC 100 Women redlinks, I focused on the laureates who were writers and that brought me to Corinne Maier, whose birthday I found out is today, Dec 7th! So I wrote the article (thank you Southwest Airlines for the wifi) with the rationale that (a) it's a birthday present to a notable woman writer, and (b) it is Dec 8th in some parts of the world. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:09, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
Enjoy your day in D.C. Rosie and let us know how it goes.--Ipigott (talk) 08:17, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

BBC article problems

BBC 100 Women article problems

I've been notified that the Istanbul edit-a-thon has encountered a problem. A user from Turkish wiki has requested for the BBC 100 Women entries in that language to be deleted using the template translated as: “The content of this page is not appropriate.” Example: https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meral_Akkent . I don't have any further information. Any assistance would be appreciated by the Istanbul editors. No worries if not possible. --Rosiestep (talk) 10:57, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

My good friend CeeGee might be able to help with this.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:51, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

@Dr. Blofeld: Thank you for mentioning me. I would do my best, however, I really did not understand where the problem is (Article title). The said link points out to the Turkish Wikipedia, at which I'm not active at all. In case, I understood the matter correctly that the problem is at the tr:WP I call @Nedim Ardoğa: for help. Cheers. CeeGee 14:40, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

@Rosiestep: What needs to be done exactly, the article restored?♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:46, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Hello, @CeeGee, Nedim Ardoğa, and Dr. Blofeld. On the day of the event, the BBC notified me with this information: A user from Turkish Wikipedia requested for the entries created at the Istanbul event to be deleted. So when people landed on the entries written by the team in Istanbul, they saw a Turkish phrase meaning “The content of this page is not appropriate". This is the example which was provided. Thanks! --Rosiestep (talk) 18:18, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
Not exactly. The claim is actually "copyright violation". ( source 1) Nedim Ardoğa (talk) 17:33, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

AfD BBC 100 Women

Laura Coryton has been nominated for deletion. Yesterday the BBC named her as one of the Five women who aren't on Wikipedia but should be! Any help in improving the article would be appreciated. Eartha78 (talk) 23:47, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Rabia Salihu Sa'id has also been nominated for deletion. Joe Roe (talk) 17:46, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

BBC broadcast on Wikipedia

BBC broadcast on Wikipedia

In connection with the BBC 100 Women editathon on 8 December, there is an extensive discussion of Wikipedia and the problems of the gender gap in the latest episode of Science in Action.--Ipigott (talk) 07:54, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Summing up BBC 100 Women

The first event at Broadcasting House
The later session in a 7th floor studio. The table on the right was a live broadcast on the BBC World Service.

This one does it quite well. But I'm not convinced they did better than A+F.--Ipigott (talk) 17:56, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

It's a very positive thing, but I do think it implied that it is only women writing articles about women on the site. It's very impressive to see this sort of publicity and people interested though. I hope the BBC continue to show an interest.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:59, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

I've been trying to go through all the new articles and have already edited about half, trying to save a few from deletion but also including missing essnetials (categories, defaultsort, basic copy editing. I have identified about 100 which were added on 8 December. There were an impressive number from Nepal but also quite a few from India and Nigeria. Many of the articles require additional work. Maybe we should also be thinking of sending messages of encouragement to all the new editors involved? I'm afraid that up to now with all the problems on Wikidata, I have only been able to place a few standard "Welcome" templates on people's user pages.--Ipigott (talk) 15:25, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
I think we will have a bunch to go through in the coming days. I'm working on a piece, but I think maybe time will be better spent to edit and add RS to some of the already created articles to prevent a further onslaught of AfDs. SusunW (talk) 16:03, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Follow-up to BBC 100 Women editathon

A couple of notes from some of the less obvious things I noted while following the editing activity related to the BBC 100 Women editathon. This won't be comprehensive, but I think I picked up a fair amount:

I also went through this BBC Live Reporting page and the BBC 100 Women Instagram page and noted the following nominations that didn't result in any articles (the nominations that did not result in article creations arguably should be noted along with the article creations for any metrics relating to this event):

That is what I've come up with so far. There may be more speedy deletions and declined or userspace drafts out there. Carcharoth (talk) 16:35, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I've added the nominations to appropriate redlists, so they'll persist for longer than this talk page. Good report, Carcharoth, thanks. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:55, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
No problem. I am a bit mystified by the reports that a group of journalism students at Brunel did some editing. See here and here. I can't actually find what they did. Can anyone identify any articles or drafts anywhere? Carcharoth (talk) 16:56, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
The thread you pointed to - https://twitter.com/bruneljourno - has a bunch of photos of them holding signs which talk about the articles they wrote. So this guy to the left https://twitter.com/bruneljourno/status/806838690156834816 - did Loubna Mrie, for instance. --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:04, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, but I can't get to a photo where I can read what they wrote (and terrible handwriting as well!). Carcharoth (talk) 17:09, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
I also see Julie Dicaro & Caroline Hirons ... oh dear :( --17:13, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
I see, in total:
--Tagishsimon (talk) 17:33, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
Thanks! I added the drafts and the newly-created articles to the list. No idea why there are so many redlinks, unless the articles didn't actually get written. Carcharoth (talk) 18:19, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Not en-Wikipedia, but I think it is worth highlighting this. It would be good to find out more about what happened there (Turkish Wikipedia, but that distinction is lost on many people). Can anyone locate the "discussion on the Wikipedia Turkish page"? Carcharoth (talk) 17:02, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

One more: Kayla Iacovino, mentioned here as 'joining the pages of Wikipedia', but as far as I can tell all that happened is that an artist drew here and Tweeted the picture. Hang on, there is a draft. Draft:Kayla Iacovino. Might want to check the draft namespace for some of the other redlinks as I may have been searching wrong. Carcharoth (talk) 17:07, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

The BBC Live Reporting page doesn't always get the spelling of the names right. They said 'Sarah Weir', but the draft is at Draft:Sara Weir. There also appears to have been a number of creations and edits done from a group from Harris Academy Bermondsey, with similar usernames: User:BBC100, BBC100WomenAccount, BBC100Womenuser, BBC100womenSCie (last year) User:BBC200, User:BBC300, User:BBC500, User:BBC700, User:BBC800, User:BBC900, User:BBC1000, User:BBC3000, etc. Someone may want to follow that up (first name and school may be too much personally identifying information?). Carcharoth (talk) 17:22, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Confusingly, the BBC page reported BBC Hindi has just added Aditi Gupta who founded a website on menstrual health called menstrupedia.com, but both the Hindi page and the en-Wikipedia page (Additi Gupta) fail to mention this at all (unless the activist is different to the actress, not sure if the photos are of the same person?). And the Hindi page (hi:अदिति गुप्ता) doesn't appear to have been created on 8 December. A mystery. Carcharoth (talk) 17:38, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Doh! Aditi Gupta (author) (the BBC journalist linked to the wrong page!). Carcharoth (talk) 17:44, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Draft:Malka Puterkovsky and Draft:Tess Asplund. I'll create a section on the main page for the drafts. Carcharoth (talk) 17:43, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

  • Some great detective work here. I wonder to what extent we should be monitoring all the other languages here? It seems to be that for the time being we have more than enough to do on the EN articles. Maybe it's something for Meta?--Ipigott (talk) 17:51, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Also found: Category:BBC 100 Women Edit-a-thon Nepal. (I assume people have noticed the debate raging at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2016_December_6#Category:BBC_100_Women?). Carcharoth (talk) 17:59, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

BBC 100 Women editathon article creation statistics

Some preliminary statistics relating to article creation on 8 December 2016, relating to the BBC 100 Women editathon, involving groups from all over the world in various locations. The current list here (as of 10 December 2016, may be incomplete) indicates that there were 158 articles created on en-Wikipedia (some created direct in mainspace, others submitted as drafts or articles for creation or moved from userspace or other drafts), of which 6 were speedily deleted, and the rest are presumably currently being reviewed by various processes. There are also 3 userspace drafts that haven't had any further action taken (i.e. not submitted to articles for creation), 1 userspace draft submitted and declined via AfC. There are also 10 drafts in the draft namespace. There were also 6 articles created on 7 December and 9 December that were arguably part of the whole article creation drive. That makes a total of 178 articles, with around 150 or so sitting in mainspace in various states, most needing more work done on them. There may be much more out there. The BBC report (not totally reliable, IMO, given the many obvious errors they make about Wikipedia) states that were "more than 400 new or updated profiles". I have no idea where they get that figure from, but they will be conflating updates to existing articles with article creations (a very unhelpful conflation) and also including article updates and article creations on other language Wikipedias. So unless someone want to go through the entire article creation list for 8 December, the figure above may be closest to 'the truth'. Carcharoth (talk) 20:57, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

An extra 8 found, so the total is now 166 (for the mainspace). And the total created by humans on 8 December was 1122 articles (see here). Nearly 15% of article creations. Carcharoth (talk) 23:01, 10 December 2016 (UTC) And a bit later, now looking like around 200 articles and drafts, maybe around 17% of article creations that day. Carcharoth (talk) 03:11, 11 December 2016 (UTC)


BBC 100 Women cleanup - many articles, several endangered

All of the articles created in the editathon period are listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Meetup/29#Mainspace articles and environs. Many have Nota bene* issues of varying levels of fatality. If you can lend a hand towards squashing the issues and getting the Mainspace articles page to show only checkY, please do. thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:30, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

I just added eight new ones (found here), plus Ethel Baxter earlier, for a total of nine new ones. Because they are alphabetised, it can be easy to miss ones that have not had an initial assessment. Also, the alphabtising got messed up. I suspect there are others out there that have not been found yet. Carcharoth (talk) 22:58, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
I'll sort through them. Keep dumping newbies at the foot of the list. I'll file them. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:00, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
One idea is to ask, or look at the contribs, of established users who were helping out, as they may be aware of more. Is there a way to generate a list of the users who created the articles? @Joe Roe: as he may know. Carcharoth (talk) 23:06, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
Here's all the users who created articles or drafts using the #100Womenwiki hashtag (so as you know not a complete list):
List of #100Womenwiki article creators
And a list of all the editors who used the hashtag at all (same caveat):
List of all #100Womenwiki editors
Not nearly as many as I expected, to be honest... Joe Roe (talk) 23:49, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
Thank you. That should help others (not me, I have other things to do) to follow up. Carcharoth (talk) 01:04, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
I've checked through the contributions of those on the List of #100Womenwiki article creators and found 5 or so new drafts & articles, two at AfD, one Prodded. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:53, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
And through all of the contributions of all in the List of all #100Womenwiki editors. several more articles added to the /29 mapge. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:27, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
Have you checked the articles were created on 8 December? Some of the established editors on that list created articles in November and before and after 8 December. I've put those articles up in the 'New or upgraded articles' section. Just moved one there now. Carcharoth (talk) 02:55, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
For the most part, yes to the 8th. --Tagishsimon (talk) 03:20, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
  • There would have been other new editors who didn't tick those particular boxes. For example, user:Abeshababe who created the article Furra . I know about her because she asked for some help after she had written a draft in her sandbox. There will have been other editors who didn't get to that point. I offered to help one who seemed to be struggling but she seemed to be too embarrassed or shy about showing her first faltering efforts. People give the impression that Wikipedia is or should be easy but it's really quite hard to get going. I have similar feelings about Facebook or Twitter, say, where I'm not too sure what I'm doing and so am quite tentative about posting, for fear of making a public mistake like Ed Balls. Andrew D. (talk) 08:58, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

One more note for today. Some articles, such as María Tubau (which I think was added from the sweep of the AlexBot new article lists), may well have been created entirely independently of the BBC 100 Women editathon and associated publicity (typically, the BBC focus on living people and journalistic coverage, rather than historical coverage). Some articles will have been created by people inspired by the BBC 100 Women coverage to write about historic women, but am not sure if this is one of them. I suspect it is a coincidence. Pinging the article creator @Nick Number: to check. Carcharoth (talk) 03:17, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi. I got to María Tubau from a red link in another article I translated in October, Adela Carboné. I got to her from the Wikipedia:WikiProject Women writers/Missing articles list. So I'm afraid I can't credit your editathon here...but I could take a look at something if you'd like. Nick Number (talk) 03:56, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for explaining. I'll move it to a different part of the list. Maybe take a look at Louise-Joséphine Sarazin de Belmont? Carcharoth (talk) 10:44, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
That one was "ours". Unrelated to the BBC thing we had a day-long event in Groningen with a total of 10 participants, using the #100wikiwomen hashtag. We decided not to look at the BBC list though we mentioned it, because we were concentrating on women who had already "jumped the notability hoops" by having well-fleshed out Wikidata items and having been added to at least two other language Wikipedias, but who were missing from either the Dutch or the English Wikipedia. By creating this Louise-Joséphine Sarazin de Belmont in both nl and en we could show how two language Wikipedias are different in terms of infoboxes and citations and categories. This day was in conjunction with our Gendergap workgroup, exploring ways to onboard people quickly who would like to make a larger contribution. Jane (talk) 16:02, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Tough one on Louise-Joséphine Sarazin de Belmont, I found that she was also a lithographer but couldn't find any more info, plenty of book hits but largely all the same brief summaries. Perhaps Aymatth2 can use his skills and get it to start class, he's good on entries like that.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:46, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

  • I would like to thank everyone for helping to compile these lists and drawing attention to many of the problems. While I really appreciate the contributions of Carcharoth, I think it might have been useful if s/he had followed our normal practice of listing the articles by the time of creation. By creating an alphabetized list from the start, it is not easy to see how things have evolved and I find myself going back again and again to articles that I have already worked on. As I explained earlier, alphabetized lists are available on a day-to-day basis from WiR Metrics. I realize our bots are not yet performing optimally but we are trying to avoid as much human gnoming as possible. Another problem is Wikidata. I have been looking at many of the articles from the 8th and also from the 9th and see that they have not been added to Wikidata with the result that they have not been counted in our Gender by Language stats. In fact I see that for the last week, only 460 new articles on women were included for the EN wiki, far fewer than expected. Despite all the BBC stuff, we only moved up fractionally, from 16.75% to 16.77% (for EN bios on women). I'll stop here now but might return later. Thanks again all for your efforts but there's still a lot to do.--Ipigott (talk) 19:08, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
    • I suggested the alphabetising, but I didn't implement it. Most of the assessing and ordering of the list was actually done by Tagishsimon, with help from Joe Roe in finding more of the articles - did they actually all appear in the WiR metrics? If they didn't, then the metrics are not picking up everything. Does it make sense to list articles created on a single day by the order in which they were created? I am sure someone can do that for you if you want that done. Carcharoth (talk) 19:17, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
Insofar as the list was compiled from multiple disparate sources, the idea of trying to maintain it in article creation date order is hopeful, at best. And it was a pain to add things when it was not alpha-ordered, as one had to scan through the 100 & some row-length list looking for the new find. I noted below the issue with stats; that seems to be resolved now, and another 75 articles are currently making their way onto wikidata. As to the overall count: that's mostly a lack of SvG effect, something we may have to become used to. --Tagishsimon (talk) 04:42, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Simple question (I hope): what is needed to be included in articles for them to be picked up on the WiR metrics page? I tried reading about it, but am not sure. Does it need the WiR WikiProject tag on the talk page (that is the most surefire method of making sure an article gets included)? Does it need a Wikidata entry to be created? Does it need an authority control template included? There may be something basic missing from these articles (created by new editors remember) that means they are not showing up. Also, if they are borderline notable, they won't have authority control data anyway. Carcharoth (talk) 19:25, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Carcharoth Very busy at the moment but briefly: the metrics are based solely on Wikidata.--Ipigott (talk) 19:56, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
Indeed. The metrics are looking for wikidata items which have the properties instance=humun & gender=female. What needs to be included in an article for it to be added as a wikidata item is a category in the Women by .... tree (e.g. occupation, nationality) or the nnnn births or nnnn deaths trees. All members of these category trees are checked and those that lack corresponding wikidata items have those items created with the two properties in place. There's been a hiatus in the last 24 hours, caused I think by a temporary database sychronisation failure, now corrected. --Tagishsimon (talk) 04:42, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

A report on BBC 100 Women

I have started a discussion on this here. Comments welcome from all.--Ipigott (talk) 12:26, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

I wonder if the if the conversation would get more attention if it were held here instead of on the meetup page? I know, too, that the WMF is interested in lessons learned from this event, so there's some practicality with keeping WiR's "BBC 100 Women" conversations on one talkpage. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:07, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
A bit more (/any) notice for projects involved in reviewing new articles (i.e. WP:NPP and WP:AFCP) would probably be appreciated. Gestrid very diligently notified both projects but I don't think that was an "official" communication from the editathon organisers (correct me if I'm wrong) and it was less than two hours before the event started. Joe Roe (talk) 21:18, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
@Rosiestep: This page is already pretty full of discussions on the event. I thought that on the basis of this snippet, people would go to the meetup page rather than swamp further important discussions on other matters here. I'm glad to see we already have two extensive pieces of feedback. As editor of Signpost, how do you feel about preparing something on the BBC event as one of the main articles in the near future? As you have been involved in WiR's involvement from the start, perhaps you could act as coordinating editor?--Ipigott (talk) 13:26, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
@Joe Roe: I think all of us were confused about the status of the BBC editathons but at least on WiR the first notice of the event was posted on this page on 7 November. I also see that with our invitation on 23 November we advised you that the BBC event was receiving our support. But it was only on 7 December that I noticed that the editathons for internal BBC staff were finally being opened up to all. I think it must have been a result of much wider interest than was originally expected. Until then we had been informed that their "editathons" would be mainly devoted to informing BBC staff about Wikipedia's response to the gender gap rather than bringing new users on board. All this will contribute to the learning curve for arranging future events with the BBC or other broadcasters and the way in which we organize our own responses. I was glad you were able to lend a hand to subsequent posting, sorting and reviewing. Your interest together with that of Tagishsimon and Carcharoth was a great help to all concerned.--Ipigott (talk) 16:49, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
Thank you, Ipigott. Sorry I should clarify, I did know about it (or should have, can't say if I really remembered!) through WiR, my concern was more WP:NPP and WP:AFCP in general. These are usually the editors that come into contact with new articles so I think it's a good idea to give them a heads up about potential influxes of new articles, if only to make sure they're looked at promptly by responsible patrollers/reviewers (unfortunately there are problems with the quality of both, as I'm sure you've encountered). However, the late notice makes perfect sense if you didn't find out about it yourselves until the last minute. Joe Roe (talk) 17:00, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

2017 contests

See here and here for discussions re 2017 contests to improve the content gender gap. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:02, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

I've made some comments on the talk page of The woman you never meet.--Ipigott (talk) 14:20, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Gender gap evidence

Spotted a redlink for Penny Vincenzi in our article for Cheyne Walk, a London street. Creating a short stub, spotted her name in a list of the top 100 bestselling authors in the UK in the 2000-09 decade (all selling over 2 million books), and wondered who else might be missing an article. Three. All women. Penny Vincenzi and Lesley Pearse write what appears to be historical/romantic fiction, and Fiona Watt (author) has written over 100 children's books. Edwardx (talk) 11:40, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Good catch, Edwardx. It's amazing the people you stumble on while doing research on another topic. And it's sad to see so many women overlooked. Thanks for bringing these to our attention. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 18:44, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
Talking of which, are there similar lists for other decades? What about top New York Times bestsellers? We have a list of the writers and works at the top of the list, but what about top-tens per decade, for instance? (Maybe they exist, but I've not done any special digging on the subject.) There might be some fodder for discussion there. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 20:54, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Nomination of Marion Foster Welch for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Marion Foster Welch is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marion Foster Welch until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Guy (Help!) 10:50, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Article by Rosiestep on BBC News

Thanks to Signpost, I just came across Viewpoint: How I tackle Wiki gender gap one article at a time which was published on the BBC News website on 7 December.--Ipigott (talk) 12:13, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Ipigott. And here's Lucy's really nice blogpost regarding the campaign. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:00, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, Lucy's blog article is very positive. I've also bee reading the report on the Welsh-language results. They now have even more biographies about women than about men. It might be useful to investigate their secret of success.--Ipigott (talk) 11:01, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

List of female Egyptologists up for deletion

This is a difficult case which deserves special consideration. It is one of several created from Wikidata by Emijrp. I have already commented at length under the AfD discussion. I think it would be useful to have comments from Rosiestep, Megalibrarygirl, SusunW and Victuallers as well as from those more closely associated with Wikidata such as Harej and Jane023. But don't let it spoil your Christmas.--Ipigott (talk) 12:09, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Possibly as a result of my mentioning it in connection with the above, List of women linguists is also at AfD.--Ipigott (talk) 11:46, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
In this connection, see also Joe Roe's talk page.--Ipigott (talk) 15:51, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Huge increase in biographies of women on the Welsh Wikipedia

Last week an amazing 3,231 women's biographies were created on the Welsh Wikipedia, only 12 being created on men. (This compares with only 262 new women's biographies on the EN Wikipedia.) Work on women's biographies in Welsh has now brought the overall total to 9,316, or 53.37% of the total of 17,456. Intrigued at these developments, I looked at many of the articles listed under Category 20th-century women only to discover that since 2 December nearly all the new articles have been created by bots making use of Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser drawing on the EN articles, Wikidata info and assisted by other bots such as BOT-Twm Crys. In the case of women artists (and perhaps others), Wikidata lists of blue links have been added to each article. I don't want to pass judgment on the success/quality of these developments but the approach might be interesting to investigate for those wishing to increase the number of women's biographies on the EN Wikipedia using Wikidata and articles written in other languages.--Ipigott (talk) 11:34, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Per the imminent mass-deletion of SvG articles [2], the bar for automated creation of articles on en.wiki is high. I doubt the Welsh approach (example) would fly here, but rather would be shot-down as a referenceless BLP violation. --Tagishsimon (talk) 04:00, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
I had the same thought Tagishsimon, it would most likely not work. Anytime there is an event that creates large amounts of women's biographies on English WP, they are targeted for scrutiny. That might be a good thing if the purpose of that evaluation was to focus efforts on improving them, but the reality is that it is usually merely a push to remove them. SusunW (talk) 04:16, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
You are right Tagishsimon that the deletion of all the BLPs SvG has contributed on women over the past year or so will have a catastrophic effect on our metrics. He has been our most active contributor by far in terms of the number of new articles added, particularly in recent months when he has concentrated on adding women's biographies. If BLP mini-stubs on women in sport added by other editors using similar tools are also deleted, we'll probably be back to where we started in early 2015. As it is, our stats from now on are likely to show disappointing results unless we can create additional interest by means of the challenges and contests proposed by Dr. Blofeld. I also agree with SusunW that in general the established male community tends to be less tolerant of articles about women than of those about men (see also in this connection the Bloomberg article Is Wikipedia Woke?), but in the case of SvG a woman was actually the one who initiated the dispute. But to go back to the Welsh biographies, I think we might well be able to build on their approach, not necessarily by creating articles in the mainspace but on creating drafts for editors to check, refine and enhance. The example of Wendy Linn Applequist which was added to Wikidata as a result of an article in Spanish is just the kind of draft stub which could facilitate the creation of more biographies about women on the EN wiki. We will certainly need to re-examine our strategy if we are to make further headway on improving coverage of women in Wikipedia.--Ipigott (talk) 10:30, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
I am proud to announce that I brought my personal %Female percentage in biographies to %17.1 this year from a %6.2 starting point 4 years ago. If we encourage active editors to attempt this in their own field of interest as a challenge for 2017 we may be able to make a more diverse and significant difference. Theoretically it would be worth making a contest for those who increase their percentage the most (in any Wikipedia) since we can harvest all edits to make the calculation based on Wikidata properties (deleted articles won't count because we can't count them). Personally I was surprised to find how difficult it was to do. I didn't expect there to be so few sources for women in the arts. Jane (talk) 11:01, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
Hi Jane You are certainly one of those to be congratulated on improving coverage of women. And also on your work on art. In that connection, as a result of the lists at AfD (see above), your Wikidata painting lists have been mentioned here. A number of us have been suggesting more discussion on the use of Wikidata in connection with Wikipedia articles. I think you have some excellent background to contribute.--Ipigott (talk) 12:08, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
Hi back, and thanks for all your patient work here! I get quickly tired of reading all the discussion and would rather make "main namespace edits" on whatever project possible. Yes I agree on the deletionists for the Egyptologists, I am afraid to say. I think I was quite proud of my List of paintings by Jacob van Ruisdael and thought it would be the beginning of a tidal wave. Boy was I wrong! The German Wikipedia nearly excommunicated me from the movement. Since then I have managed to create a few converts. The thing is, the most emphatic anti-Wikidata Wikipedians start to get hooked in spite of themselves if you can hook them in based on their own personal interests (a challenging but fun thing to attempt, in my opinion). I have had successes and failures but refuse to give up, and slowly but surely I am getting better at modelling data for artists and their work. What is needed is a "Wikidata for Dummies" in each and every corner that is modelling something (e.g. Egyptology). On the subject of those Welsh stubs, I took a look out of curiosity just as you did and was horrified by what I found. In my personal gendergap work, I try to delete sentences in Wikipedia articles along the lines of "She was one of the three known female xxxx's of her time", and I certainly delete the "see also" sections where related articles are "other women of her time" as if any woman is interesting to read about because there were other women active in the same time period!! This Welsh project seems to have done just that - on steroids. Sigh. Meanwhile, while all the Art&Feminism writers here stick to adding women artists (a worthwhile cause), I keep on trying to add their artworks to Commons and Wikidata with proper templating and references so that I can build a list along the lines of List of works by Artemisia Gentileschi. That one is short enough to do by hand and we need one for all other women artists of her time (without linking them together!). Jane (talk) 12:44, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Well, if we were relying heavily on somebody like Sander for upping the percentages markedly, then there is a problem with that. Let's try to remain positive, even if they're all deleted. I don't know how Welsh wikipedia got that many articles, I know how hard it was to get Welsh editors working on the Dragon contest, Llywelyn2000 I'm certain was partly responsible for the turnout, wish you could have doen the same for Awaken the Dragon Robin :-). The way forward for WIR should be in pursuit of higher quality stubs and new entries, truly global output across language wikis in terms of country coverage and editor participation, and improvement of existing material, the latter of which has been neglected really. I know WIR is aimed purely at new articles and upping the percentage but I'm seeing an enormous bias in terms of quality coverage for certain occupations too. So many important women bios which get a lot of traffic are poorly written and developed. I think if we're to become a more accomplished project we need to find numbers who develop women content in all areas. Perhaps the March US contest will start to move towards this with a focus on Destubbing. If we're to truly get numbers though, we need big contests and outreach to institutions worldwide, which is very time consuming and costly for volunteers.

At present I don't think starting a 100,000 Challenge for Women would be viable. However, if we started running some big contests on big funding, we could start to make it happen I think and realistically get us over 20%. And for that you could build prizes into the contest for editors who help newbies and their articles at events which are organized. We'll need better overall organizaiton though and to plan things out with the various women groups. Part of the problem is multiple things running each month now, and it often not being reported well in advance. I think we need a more central approach, and way to rope in dozens of new editors to permanently write articles about women than we normally get.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:13, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

I totally agree that contests with real prizes are liable to achieve a great deal. I remember how this worked for French articles on some of the African countries not too long ago. As you suggest, the contests could be clearly focused, by occupation, by geographical region or by both. I also like the idea of expanding the approach to the wikis in the other languages. Is it too late to make a formal proposal along these lines?--Ipigott (talk) 16:15, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
I'd always be on board with a 100,000 Challenge for Women, for what it's worth - it might take us a long time but I think it'd be a great target to have. The Drover's Wife (talk) 22:28, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
When looking at the Welsh wiki, I noticed that Llywelyn2000 who helped you with the challenges had also been a key player on automating the creation of women biographies. It would be interesting to have some feedback from him on the problems involved, how they were overcome and how future quality control is to be ensured (if at all).--Ipigott (talk) 16:15, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Bots can be very productive if used in the right way. A guy like Sander for instance, if he asked for some assistance you could quite easily quickly recreate the deleted articles and more using several sources to create accurate new entries. General consensus is against mass creation, even by a bot though. I wouldn't recommend it either for general women bios at least on English wikipedia, but I think for some of the generic sports ones which are largely data-based, using a bot would be more ideal to max out the content produced upon creation. A lot of the Welsh women bios created contian big wiki-data lists like this, they'd get deleted on English wikipedia as I know Robin has had trouble with this!♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:11, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

There are almost 17,000 of them as you can see from here. They must be burning out our servers with Listeria updates on each one every single day! That's hardly necessary. No wonder Wikimedia is calling for more funding. I wonder if anyone ever monitors this sort of thing.--Ipigott (talk) 17:41, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
Dr. Blofeld I support your thinking re Sander's bios. We need to find a way to incorporate RS in the articles and recreate them instead of losing part of the "sum of all human knowledge". In turn, other languages wikis can translate the articles such as Robin on Welsh. --Rosiestep (talk) 18:41, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
It should not be too difficult to retrieve the information from Wikidata. With some human attention, it should be possible to retrieve most of the information so hastily dismissed - including that on this month's Caribbean footballers.--Ipigott (talk) 19:35, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
I'm generally a huge proponent of using automated and semi-automated tools to create articles, and I frankly think it's absurd that there's not more support for doing so in these precincts. Having said which...I'm generally far more cautious when considering it as a method for creating biographical articles. There is something to be said for automated creation of data-heavy biographical stubs, but by and large I think it's far more important to have human input...biographies can so easily go wrong, and it's vital to have some kind of immediate control to counter that.
That being said, if some form of semi-automated tool could be developed to tweak and correct those of SvG's articles which are in trouble, then there may be some possibility to salvage them. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 02:47, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
The problem is the sheer volume of his work over the past 18 months. No one can possibly be expected to look through it in just one week. It looks to me as if around 17,000 articles can be considered BLP stubs, about half of which are on women. SvG is one of many editors who use semi-automatic processing for adding entries on people in sport. Most of the articles correctly give details such as full name, date of birth, nationality, specific sport, sport category, team, competition, together with a reference. It seems to me this is useful information to have in an encyclopaedia, especially when individuals represent their country in international events or world championships. Unfortunately, as far as I can see, as a result of the bots used for ensuring women are included in Wikidata, in most cases the only information entered there is name, human and female. It's a pity there seems to be no way of automatically scanning the information from the box in each article and adding it to Wikipedia. At least that would have served as a basis for further work on English and in the other languages. From tomorrow, those who are not administrators will not be able to monitor or improve any of this important work and it will no longer be accessible to those working on improvements to the Wikidata entries. The only trace will be red links on the list of articles created by Sander. I hope that as many as possible can be saved as a result of additional categories and similar minor modifications introduced by editors such as BrownHairedGirl. I'm not sure whether such additions will be taken into consideration.
The great danger is of course that those editors who have called for the deletion of Sander's mini BLPs will now begin to monitor all the other editors who create mini-stubs on people in sports. Interestingly, I have noted that some of the most active ones have discontinued their work since Sander came into the limelight.--Ipigott (talk) 12:31, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
Correction. I see that many of those entered on Wikidata before mid-November have since been updated. The more recent ones, including the Caribbean footballers, still need to be enhanced. I'm trying to add basic info.--Ipigott (talk) 13:12, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
Caribbean footballers now on Wikidata.--Ipigott (talk) 15:32, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

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