Can someone who is more proficient than me in Wikidata check on the set-up of this redlist of women sailors? It seems improbable to me that there is only 1 article. As "women of the sea" is one of our May events, we could benefit from more redlinks. Thanks. --Rosiestep (talk) 17:37, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
It excluded wikidata items with no sitelinks at all. That corrected, the list size has increased by 200%. I'm afraid it's a fair reflection of wikidata. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:48, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
Are there any Wikidata items with occupation=sailor, but with no gender specified? I tried to do a query but I’m too much of a beginner. NotARabbit (talk) 01:59, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
You could start by telling us their names? Are you sure they're on wikidata? (The report depends on the record having an 'occupation' value, and one which is a sub-class of 'ship crew'. So yes, it's entirely possible there are more entries to be had, but we require a means of extracting them. I suspect there may be a bunch who have been assigned a military rank but not an occupation. I'll have a dig. Have dug ... military rank hierachy is a mess, and there are no female Admirals in sight.) --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:31, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
I am totally unable to assist in building this list, just want to say how awesome that y'all have the skills to do it! Very much appreciate your work and am totally loving this topic. SusunW (talk) 15:58, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
Dedichen & Natvig now added, Ser Amantio di Nicolao. I'm glad you cannot see the sausage making, SusunW; admixture of incompetence & effort. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:59, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
Question about Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license
Can we use this image, which is licensed as Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic, on the upcoming Women of the Sea event page and in the May invite? We're trying to sort out which kind of licenses can be used in our Invites and Event Pages, and which ones we need to avoid. Any clarification from Commons gurus would be appreciated. --Rosiestep (talk) 18:25, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
And one more [1]. These are two hotels built and operated by Mabel Marks Bacon both no longer exist. Both are discussed in detail in her article, but I am unsure if I can use them as fair use. SusunW (talk) 21:53, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
Ive loaded Rachel's picture. I think the hotel pix are debatable - and commons does not usually give benefit of doubt. May be allowed under "for hire" and "70 years" but not sure of us law detail here. Sorry. Victuallers (talk) 07:29, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
I'm not sure of the US law either. I also know that I can load things as fair use if they are discussed in the article, but can I load 2? I have no idea. Thanks for your help Victuallers. SusunW (talk) 15:44, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
I want to be sensitive to that, SusunW, and at the same time say that you are truly an inspiration to others. Thank you for being you. --Rosiestep (talk) 21:33, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
In my youth - decades after Eleanor Roosevelt had blown a hole right through public expectations of women keeping their places behind men - it was a bragging point to be able to say, "my husband won't allow me to work." (not outside of the home anyway) And, yet, women were out there accomplishing real feats in the world. They just weren't in the books we saw, and weren't acknowledged in the media. In spite of the ginormous strides women have made in the last few decades, we still deal with the media not talking about it (unless it's a scandal that's good for ratings). We are decades past Roe v. Wade, and local-level legislatures have found ways to wiggle around federal laws and set women back to the turn of the 20th century. There is no real way to measure this, but Wikipedia is probably the uncensored light of the world in that respect. So ... here's to you, Susan W, Wikipedia, and all those innumerable editors who are making sure the world knows about the accomplishments of women around the world. So keep lighting those candles. — Maile (talk) 21:44, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
Thank you all. I truly do think humanity is much more of a jagged mosaic than a monochrome line drawing. SusunW (talk) 16:40, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
SusunW: Unlike most of us, you have written a wonderful contribution here without any attempt at mentioning all your own outstanding successes on Wikipedia. Not many of our editors have achieved so much in such a short period of time. Those who are interested could investigate your extensive, well researched coverage of biographies, your unusual ability to provide details about women from non English-speaking countries by making effective use of machine translation, and the considerable number of GAs and DYKs you have managed to tot up since you started. From my own standpoint, I must say you are one of the most interesting editors to work with. We have developed many articles together and I hope we will be able to continue to do so. Last but not least, of all those who have created articles in connection with Women in Red, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that you have been the most effective of us all. And your enthusiasm shows no sign of waning...--Ipigott (talk) 17:16, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
The plus is she isn't an academic per WP's definition, she was a primary and secondary school teacher and does not have to meet prof! Looks like it is snowing over there. SusunW (talk) 22:26, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
Days of Yore
Boggles the mind.
"Women Lawyers But Not Jurors". Honolulu Star-Bulletin at Newspapers.com. April 13, 1931. p. 22, col. 2. Retrieved May 6, 2018.
And follow up below, "In Hawaii, the Esq is deleted from licenses to practice law received by women ... "
2018 new Fellows of the Royal Society show success of the project
The List of Fellows of the Royal Society elected in 2018 was announced today. There are 50 new Fellows, 12 female and 38 male. Looking at the numbers who already had WP biographies before the announcement, it is striking that exactly 50% (19/38) of the men were redlinks, but only 17% (2/12) of the women (on past form the women will get them almost immediately). This certainly shows the success of the project, with women in this group nearly three times more likely to have a biography than men. The picture was similar for the 10 "Foreign Members of the Royal Society (ForMemRS)" elected: both the 2 women had articles, but only 63% (5/8) of the men (one a Nobel winner, another Angela Merkel's husband). Johnbod (talk) 13:26, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
Johnbod: This is indeed a useful sign that our efforts are producing results. But now we have a number of new red links which need our attention.--Ipigott (talk) 07:20, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
SusunW, I read you want to write LGBT women in June... I suggest you to check: Amelia Peabody (1890-1984), Marion Blanchard Farnsworth (1889-1978) and Marion's partner, Helen Stanley Johnson (1883-1972), Joanna Stewart Davidge (1872–1931), Caroline Sidney Sinkler (1860-1949). Elisa.rolle (talk) 09:36, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
This would be a good list for Septembers academics editathon. I'll add the link to the ideas cafe under that topic. SusunW (talk) 14:15, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
David Eppstein based on our continued discussion on expanding the perception of awards to cover teaching awards given on an international or national level, I created Caroline M. Solomon, (fits women of the sea) and as she received the Ramón Margalef Award for Excellence in Education I created that too. Reviewing the academics who have been honored with this award, some might qualify from their research, but all have been innovative teachers. SusunW (talk) 21:56, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
But we could use your help in coming up with one more event for June, which already has:
Wiki Loves Pride
Women singers/songs
Geo-focus: Russia/Soviet Union
Also, we could use one more event for July, which already has:
Women of film and stage
20th-century women
Geofocus: Sub-Saharan Africa
Most of the conversations for planning our events occur at our "Ideas Cafe", but, no reason why we can't have conversations right here. Appreciate your ideas for June or July or any other future month. Also, what are your thoughts about the themes we've covered so far? --Rosiestep (talk) 17:14, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
Might be nice to throw the severely underrepresented countries from a couple of days in there for June or July too. I dug up a few potential articles for the Pacific countries on there, but it was hard work and it might be nice to try to take this on as a team effort. The Drover's Wife (talk) 18:59, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
its wonderful to see an emphasis this month on women in sports as quite a few regularly get put up to afd as most of the sport sngs emphasise players in professional competitions, and a lot of women leagues/competitions are not, it would be great if participants keep a close eye on this. Coolabahapple (talk) 12:19, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
Rosiestep I will go with whatever the majority thinks. My personal focus will be on LBT women and if I find an artist, it'll hit on two fields. I don't like to limit myself to one occupation, as I much prefer learning about women in a wide spectrum of society. SusunW (talk) 17:45, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
@Ipigott and Rosiestep: I thought we were doing three topics each month (with execeptions). I don't mind adding another topic though. Maybe Veterans for July since we have Independence Day here in the US? The United States has a Summer Read Club program that most libraries use. The theme this year is "Reading Rocks!" Maybe we can do an editathon of women in Rock or one based on Children's literature (which is very undercovered on Wikipedia, too). Megalibrarygirl (talk) 00:26, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
I think it was Ipigott who suggested elsewhere that it might be a good idea to solicit more ideas for future events, ergo this section, but, like SusunW, I'm fine with whatever the consensus wants to do. I hadn't hear about "women in Rock", Megalibrarygirl; what would that be about? Also, I like the Children's literature theme! --Rosiestep (talk) 00:34, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
@Rosiestep: for Women in Rock, we could focus on women musicians, journalists, music critics and even Rock groupies. :) Summer reading starts in June, so that's why it sort of connected in my head. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 01:05, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
OMG, that is so scary, Megalibrarygirl, I was just thinking today we had done women of the air and women of the sea and should do women of rock, but like NotARabbit I was thinking of geologists and climbers. ;) SusunW (talk) 03:13, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
Megalibrarygirl I don't think we put limits on it. Rock singers, geologists, climbers, and those camo-girls (which I will need your help with because it's all about the photos) ... SusunW (talk) 16:38, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
LOL Tagishsimon I have no clue if other countries used women to develop and test military camouflage, but the US had a unit of women whose job was exactly that...be the rock... ;)
Nice ideas. Particularly like the Women in Rock (all meanings) idea. Do we have an artist who could create a geologist, planting a Women in Red flag tied to a guitar, on a mountain summit (named 18%?). Its a memish idea with or without a pic. Victuallers (talk) 08:51, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
How about a completely new format?
I don't know whether this is the right place to suggest it but it might be an idea to change the format of our monthly priorities. How about introducing something along the lines of "10, 20 or 30 new articles per person per month" or "cover 5, 10 or 15 different countries"?. These could be presented as "challenges" with variants on WiR barn stars/laurels as awards for those who make the mark. Participants might like to list up-front the people or works they intend to cover during the month. We might even find trendy names for the challenges such as Shoot for 10, 20 or 30 and Raise 5, 10 or 15 flags (and we could actually add appropriate flags to the lists of new articles as in the World Contest). I also think editors might like to list their names next to the articles they create. This would not only provide additional incentive but would be a basis for checking out the results. We could try to revamp our editathon pages, invitations, etc., along the same lines. It just seems to me that a new approach might encourage more participants to write more new articles. June might be too soon to undertake any such radical changes but it would be interesting to hear what you all think about it, including any other ideas you may have on how to attract more enthusiasm for Women in Red.--Ipigott (talk) 06:40, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
Ipigott, I am always keen on new ideas and this one seems particularly doable. Maybe starting in July, we switch from #1day1woman to this new challenge. Like #1day1woman, it would (at least initially) augment our regular offerings. Maybe in subsequent months, it would supplant them. Perhaps start with a low bar, e.g. Shoot for 10 (10 new articles on any topic). In August or September, refine the process based on learnings and perhaps surveying our editors through MassMessage. I also like the idea of adding a signature next to each ShootFor10 article, but others might disagree. As for giving out more barnstars, indeed, I'm 100% in favor of that. --Rosiestep (talk) 15:20, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
Ipigott -- I like the idea of 'shoot for 10' or 'five for five', etc. Aside from personal goals for individuals, however, I think specific group goals (e.g. 300 new articles this month) are a really good motivator to keep editors engaged and enthusiastic; people enjoy feeling like they're part of a big team (like in the World Contest last year), while contributing at their own pace/capacity. Barnstars also make it fun! :-) Alanna the Brave (talk) 14:59, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
?sitelink schema:about ?item . #this requires the item to have a sitelink. this line (on its own and not within a filter clause) just should not be in the query, fullstop.
FILTER NOT EXISTS { ?wfr schema:about ?item . ?wfr schema:inLanguage "en" .} #this excludes items having a sitelink with an english label; a commons sitelink seems to satisfy that condition, and so I presume items with non-language wikimedia links (commons, source, quote, etc) are all wrongly excluded
This construction is right
FILTER NOT EXISTS { ?wfr schema:about ?item . ?wfr schema:isPartOf <https://en.wikipedia.org/>.} #this excludes items having a sitelink which is part of en.wiki ... which is what we want the filter to do.
Thanks! I saw the differences in that part of the queries but didn't understand the schema well enough to guess which one was right. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:28, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
Occupation starting A has been done ... lists increase in length by 20-40%. But we have ~260 lists to check / amend. Perhaps track progress here? --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:22, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
Occupation:A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z SPORTS
Nationality:A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Educational institution:Argentina / Armenia / Austria / Bulgaria / Chile / Czech Republic / France / Japan / Mexico / Poland / Russia / Spain / Taiwan / UK
Works by women:Architecture / Books / Films / Paintings / Plays / Poems
Others:Fictional women / Laureates / Polyglots / Transgender female people / Transgender male people / Genderqueer (or non-binary) people / Intersex people
@NotARabbit: Yes, its a Wikidata Query Service (WDS) Service which fetches labels for items. However it does not seem to be needed in Listeria queries ... evidently Listeria does its own thing to get labels. So leave it in or take it out, as you choose. Out is probably better, since it (may) speed up the Listeria refresh (which is not so important, unless we're bumping into the report timeout limit) and put slightly less load on the report server (which is a bit important).
Ideally, fwiw, we would make the order of statements in the queries P106, P21, P31 since there will be fewer people with a given P106 occupation, than there are P21 females than there are P31 humans. As far as I know the query is handled sequentially, so the report server finds all the P106 occupation values (e.g. Journalists) first, then checks that set of records for P21 female, and checks the emerging subset for P31 human.
And, as you might have observed, very long lists are a right pest. But so are limits which exclude many records. Ideally we'd do some more slicing & dicing of reports to provide more but smaller. (Example: there are 39k actresses with no en.wiki article. We offer a single 5k page. Other occupations have smaller size problems. File under 'one day'.) --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:28, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
Tagishsimon: Thanks for the time and effort you have been spending on this. I'm no expert myself on Listeria. In adding new lists, I have simply used the type of queries used by more expert users. If you think there are problems to be solved here, it might be useful to draw up a set of guidelines to prevent future problems and to help us tidy up what we already have.--Ipigott (talk) 07:14, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
@Tagishsimon and NotARabbit - Thank you for cleaning this up. Agree that splitting up the larger lists into smaller ones would be good. Any ideas on how to break up the actresses one, e.g. year of birth? Which other ones might be appropriate for splitting? Also, I like the idea of documenting the process on a Women in Red subpage once you've sorted out things. Appreciate what you do! --Rosiestep (talk) 13:57, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
Thank you, Rosiestep. NotARabbit has been haring ahead and shouldering most of the effort in the last day; their best success was fixing the broken Feminists list, which is now increased from 3 to 377. (I confess to chortling somewhat that that page, of all our pages, was kaput.) I'll do some experimenting with actresses - Ipigott, on my talk page, cautions against ... I'll bring my results here and you can decide; ditto other long lists. And yes, some documentation & exemplars will follow. --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:27, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
Tagishsimon et al., today I worked on the nationality lists, going backwards through the alphabet. I was going to finish the “M” group, but came up against “error 503” when I reached Mali. I did correct the code for the Mali list, but couldn’t run the bot. I’m going to bed now. I’ll be back for at least a little while at some point tomorrow. NotARabbit (talk) 06:19, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
@Tagishsimon and NotARabbit: Thank you both for your work on this. I repeat what I have said many times, I am in awe of your technical skills. How you do it, I have no clue, but that you can is total magic! SusunW (talk) 14:19, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
@NotARabbit: Good work, NotARabbit; I'm really grateful that you intervened; thank you. I'm afraid I've been slacking / sulking about Listeria refusing to run my chess player redlist. Here, fwiw, is a report providing counts of missing women biogs by occupation, lest you want to exercise your mad new SPARQL skillz in creating entirely new redlists. (The process of which I'm meant to be documenting, ahem.) Once again, heartfelt thanks to you. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:21, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
Women Tech Storm
Group picture
Hi I just wanted to tell you all about the "Women Tech Storm" pilot project this past weekend. It went really well, and the Dutch Royal library was super-nice to us. They even offered their location for the "real" version which is scheduled for November. Of course we still need funding yada yada but hope to host 150 women & non-binary people at the "real" one. Best quote of the weekend btw was "non-binary: I thought that meant non-nerdy". Followup over the summer months will also be key and of course we have our fingers crossed for retention stats, but I have to say the vibe all three days was really positive. We didn't record anything (as far as I know), but what became clear to me was that the women are not put off by the wiki-weirdness (someone in the python-bot workshop was reverted and even temporarily blocked). The women don't see wikitext as "technically challenging". It seems the women appreciated the one-on-one mentoring approach the best (but that was just my impression). Two women who were "readers" and had never contributed before were determined to become Wikipedians, but we also had people impressed by Wikidata and willing to help clean up items there in their interest areas. If we can use such events to recruit content editors in any project that is fine with me! One was already helping the sum-of-all-paintings project with image recognition technology to help link images on Commons to Wikidata items. I found many women in their professional lives were into some very cool stuff and in general I found it inspiring to meet such technically skilled women. I will keep you all posted about the followup and the next round. Jane (talk) 15:34, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
This is very inspiring, glad it went well. I love the term "wiki-weirdness" and wonder if you've just coined a catchall phrase for a whole lot of experiences here. Thanks for letting us know. — Maile (talk) 16:50, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
Yes I must admit to being inspired myself, even though I had pretty low expectations beforehand. Apparently (because of the whole fake news stuff) Wikipedia is pretty hot these days and we attracted some pretty impressive people. It still astonishes me though every time I speak to people with academic degrees (no matter what country they are from), to find that they think Wikipedia is just one project and have no idea of all the other stuff behind the scenes, including the software it runs on. Jane (talk) 17:45, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
Jane023 I'm glad to hear this was such a successful event. The photo demonstrates great enthusiam. The Royal Library is indeed an ideal venue and the staff are very supportive. Did you manage to include any of them in the activities? Great programme over the weekend with both social get togethers and technical sessions. I'm interested to see that the November event is also open to men. While I very much support the recruitment of women editors, experience seems to show that men can also help to increase Wikipedia's drive for better coverage of women. As you are thinking of hosting up to 150 participants in the next round, perhaps it would be useful to invite one or two key people from the English Wikipedia too. After all, so many Dutch speakers are fluent in English too that they could no doubt be encouraged to help with the English version of Wikipedia.--Ipigott (talk) 10:05, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
Well this was a pilot experiment based on a brainstorm session we had a while ago after being awarded some funding specifically for the gendergap. The Netherlands has hosted Wikimedia hackathons in the past, and this week the Barcelona Hackathon is happening, so it seemed like a good idea to make this one before that one - many of the participants will be there too (though not me). Yes I agree that we need the men too - in fact we need all hands on deck! The ideas we were kicking around had to do with the simple fact that we are all longterm Wiki(p/m)edians and as such don't know what might appeal to women to draw them in to our projects. This was a shot in the dark basically, but definitely seems to have had a positive effect. However, the proof is in the pudding, and we shall see if we can keep everyone with us through the summer and have them come back for the followup. Our host was c:User:OlafJanssen who has been our most prolific uploader through the years with the File:GLAMwiki toolset project Wikimania 2012.pdf. We did have a few people from the UK and ex-pats from various spots in Europe, so I think enwiki was pretty well represented. For your information I was able to have Reedy take a look and improve the lua and logic behind the Template:Authority control which I want to have working for artworks as well as people. That sparked a lot of positive buzz about what constitutes authority control and who is the gatekeeper of the links per article/domain. Jane (talk) 10:27, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
Jane023: Correct me if I am wrong but the items under authority control are essentially developed by the national libraries and related agencies. Access to these was initially developed via Wikipedia but now seems increasingly to be coordinated by Wikidata with a view to wider availability. Use of authority control for artworks should indeed be possible just as it is for literature, music compositions, etc. Perhaps additional authorities on art works such as national museums and galleries could be included. The Netherlands could take a lead here. I see some articles on paintings already have an ac tag but it seems to have no effect. It will be interesting to see how all this develops.--Ipigott (talk) 16:38, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
The term Authority control is a general term. I am talking about the English Wikipedia template, which gets values from Wikidata for the item of the Wikipedia page. The problem was that the template had grown organically from humble beginnings and copied a lot of the same code per database. On Wikidata there is a type of property called an "external ID" and my theory is that the authority control template should retrieve all external ids, no matter what type of Wikipedia page it is, since theoretically only whitelisted urls have their own property. The use of this template for all Wikipedia articles would have a decreased liklihood of deadlinks in my opinion. We currently have no way of structuring the clean up of deadlinks, but just from my work trying to clean up after a few large websites changed their websites, it seems to me that this is the way forward for us. We will always need quality references however - those big authority control databases are just huge aggregators, most of the time. Jane (talk) 20:15, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
My name is E. Whittaker, I am a second year PhD student at the University of Michigan's School of Information. I am currently an intern for the ORES team at Wikimedia, working for Aaron Halfaker, and I am working on a project trying to more thoroughly understand incivility as it occurs on Wikipedia (and hopefully to use this understanding to help prevent it or come up with effective strategies for dealing with it). I am very interested in making sure I have a comprehensive, holistic, nuanced view of incivility, and in order to do this, I am beginning this work by conducting interviews with editors, so that I can understand how people actually encounter and deal with incivility. In order to conduct these interviews, I would like to recruit from this community. I will need about 10-15 participants, and interviews should take around an hour. I am planning to conduct these interviews over BlueJeans and have the system record them so that they can be transcribed. I am planning on reaching out to people in this community directly, but before doing so, wanted to let you all know what's going on and see if anyone has any concerns. My project page is here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Civil_Behavior_Interviews . Please let me know if you have any comments or concerns! Thanks, Ewitch51 (talk) 19:08, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
Incivility is an issue, but low level bullying is more worrying and the only sign of this going on is a "bit of incivility/disrespect" but the overall effect is to ruin one person's online life and to damage the playground for others. Victuallers (talk) 17:55, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
Event Coordinator user group
Hello. I just saw this Wikipedia user group privilege mentioned on Facebook that could be useful to WIR. It's Wikipedia:Event coordinator and some of the rights include "the (noratelimit) right so they can create accounts without being subject to the 6 accounts per IP address limit, and allows editors to temporarily add confirmed status to event attendees with newly created accounts, bypassing the standard four day wait". --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 17:04, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
This is an ability that admins already have .... but admins have the ability to bestow this on any trusted editor. This is useful when created an EduWiki project as that will allow new users to sign in, get an account and join the new project. I think we should consider using this for our online editathons as well but change is required. Victuallers (talk) 17:42, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
Nice! I know at least one person in Los Angeles who has this user right as they do a lot of in-person events! --Rosiestep (talk) 18:00, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
Aliza Shvarts / "Yale student abortion art controversy"
Given that it's been ten years since Aliza Shvarts's senior thesis project created an international controversy, and she's been an active artist and writer for the past decade (currently having her first career survey at Artspace), it may be of interest to editors of this project to direct their attention to the Yale student abortion art controversy page, as well as the discussion to move the page to be about the artist, her practice, and scholarly reception of her work, rather than the (hysterical and reactionary) media controversy that unjustly surrounded the project.
As we know, women who emerge onto the public sphere as "scandalous" (especially in relation to issues around sexual harassment, gender-based abuse, or reproductive issues) are oftentimes unable to recoup their professional reputations, online presences, and careers, and are forever defined by the scandals surrounding them. At present, this Wikipedia page is the second Google search result for an artist whose work and practice merit closer and more rigorous consideration.
David Eppstein - Glad to see the result was Keep and it took less than 24 hours. It would, of course, have saved a lot of people's efforts if she hadn't been AfDd in the first place.--Oronsay (talk) 21:26, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
Women's occupations....again!
So many of you know I have set up some tracking lists for articles about women, and one set of these has to do with occupations. each "group" of women articles has its own challenges, but one that has caught my eye as a particularly large group, is a group of 19th-century women articles about various European nobility. These women were more than just daughters, wives and mothers. They often had actual full-time occupations. See e.g. this edit which enables me to augment her wikidata item with occupations of "philanthropist" and "founder". Ideas how to suggest such edits for enwiki in a worklist are welcome! Jane (talk) 12:56, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
I'd be wary of treating "founder" as an occupation, especially one reserved for women. It doesn't work well in English. In reality "society lady" could be a hard-working occupation, but I'm not sure how people would feel about that. Johnbod (talk) 13:10, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
I don't think "society lady" would work for a whole lot of founders and philanthropists in the Americas. For example, many black women in the US and Caribbean in the same period founded schools, organizations, etc. but certainly were not nobility, nor society women. Many were a generation away from slavery and just trying to find a way to help others. In other places, for example in Quebec, many farm wives, though they weren't allowed to have ownership in their husbands farms worked on farms and still founded organizations to help others or be politically active. In the US and Mexico, there were groups of middle class women who worked in settlement houses or with immigrants, the poor, orphans, etc., as community workers, but clearly not trained social workers, often they were unpaid and often they founded the organizations for which they worked. Clearly not society ladies. I don't think founder or philanthropist is something that applies only to women, it is non-gendered. Maybe @Rosiestep and Megalibrarygirl: have thoughts on this? SusunW (talk) 13:55, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
As I thought! Of course the Americas were and are not entirely innocent of society ladies either, nor Europe lacking middle and working classes. Johnbod (talk) 14:06, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
Of course they weren't immune (or still aren't ;) in some cases), as all of those classes exist(ed) worldwide at some point. The problem is to find ways to classify what they did regardless of their social class. SusunW (talk) 14:29, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
Well the main thing is to assign occupations where appropriate. These "society ladies" most certainly were kept busy by all sorts of obligations regarding their position in society that were not "drawing, reading, and drinking tea", to quote the words of a young woman's reply to my question of "What do you think they did all day?". Jane (talk) 16:28, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
For patron I use philanthropist and/or socialite, depending on the type of patronage. Founder is used when they actually founded and managed an institution. Often they were also writers (even if their works were published posthumously). If they were religious leaders I call them theologians. Jane (talk) 23:49, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
Eeek Jane, you really shouldn't call people theologians unless they actually are. This is the sort of thing that gives Wikidata a bad name. Normally they should at least have a doctorate in theology and have written books on theological topics (not just devotional works). Johnbod (talk) 02:09, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
OK ....BUSTED! But I refuse to tone down my female theologians until someone steps up and offers to help cleanup our problem with theologians - because this is one the biggest messes we have in terms of occupations (all genders and several non-humans). Jane (talk) 12:34, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
I've come across these women, too. Many of them held "salons", though I don't think "salonist" works as an occupation. However, in its day, I think it served an important purpose for bringing women (and men) together for discussions. These women also founded things, e.g. schools, publications, etc., though "founder" isn't a useful term as an occupation. What's difficult is to use today's terms to try and describe historical ways that women did significant things within their societies, which could be vastly different in a given era in different parts of the world. --Rosiestep (talk) 23:53, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
I’ve been trying to correct people’s occupations in Wikidata, and I’ve run into this problem, too. Letizia Ramallo, Napoleon’s mother, is one that baffled me. “Occupation” was stated to be “French nobility” (why not Italian?), which Wikidata does not recognize as an occupation but as a social class. I tried to find SOMETHING in her article to fill out “occupation”, but could find nothing, so ended up deleting “occupation” altogether. Maybe “mother” should be an occupation as well as a relationship...? Well. No. Wikidata is tangled enough.
Yes agreed. I have also felt we need something like "revered mother", since most notable women are notable because their "famous" sons revered them. Same for "revered husband" in the cases where the woman wrote a book about their husband. Jane (talk) 12:37, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
We might create some new occupations on wikidata - Materfamilias, for instance, might be apt for a female head of household. --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:03, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
I decided to archive this ancient message, since it was so old. It would have been done by the bot, but the person forgot to sign, so it never happened.
But I figured it had good information, so I turned this into an FAQ, which can be edited at the above link, and which is found in the top banners on this page. Feedback welcome, as is refinement to the FAQ. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}15:06, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
I've also redesigned the 'banner space' to be less overwhelming / more visually pleasing: old vs new. Again, I'm open to changes/feedback here. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}19:38, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, Headbomb, it's all very well presented. I think it could well be linked from "Learn more about our work" on the main WiR page as the current Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/About us looks rather confusing and, for some reason, contains sections on Press and Research. But I think Rosiestep and Victuallers might like to chip in before we go any further. It might also be useful if the FAQ page presented information on our coverage of red links and our efforts to focus on many different spheres of interest through our monthly meetup priorities. Perhaps a word about our Ideas café would be useful too. Other members, including Megalibrarygirl and SusunW, may also have suggestions.--Ipigott (talk) 09:08, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
It's not very clear to me why the new FAQ you created gets prime billing in the talk page header. Two points: the FAQ might normally expect to be found from the main page not the talk page, since it is about the project and not about the talk page. If there should be a link to the FAQ from the talk page, we might think it is enough to provide a single link - FAQ - rather than an expandable list of all of the FAQ questions. --Tagishsimon (talk) 09:40, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
WP:BOLD is there if you'd rather switch the order of things. As for where to put it main page vs talk page, I'm not picky there. My reasoning was the the scope section was at the top of the talk page for a long while, so rather than have it as a section that gets overlooked, put it in the banners where it can actually be seen. The FAQ can also easily be collapsed into one line if it's deemed to take too much space here, but for now I think it's good that more people see the contents of it. That way it can get expanded, refined, tweaked, etc... as needed. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}11:27, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
Headbomb It looks great. Can we modify two things? under "related to other WikiProjects" it only mentioned women writers. Can we instead have something like the Affiliates links on Wikipedia:WikiProject Women? Also on the "How can I help" section, can we add a link to the primer? Maybe just something like "To get started, read our primer." SusunW (talk) 14:23, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
I don't see why not, but I'm really no expert on WIR activities/structures/ressources, so I'll say just be bold here and add those questions/answers yourself. The format is easy to edit
Headbomb, panic sets in, breathe deeply. Oh, wait, it isn't technical, it is just regular editing stuff. Makes minor changes. Thank you for making it simple and not technical ;) SusunW (talk) 15:51, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
Clarifications on the speedy deletion of the article Sussanne Khan
As a WIR member, I wanted to question that the women biographies have been targeted to be deleted so often especially in English Wikipedia unlike the biographies about men. Today I created the controversial article on the fashion designer, Sussanne Khan who is also popularly known as the ex-wife of Hrithik Roshan. But I also mentioned her career on fashion interior designing briefly with sources. Please can somebody help me out with this embarrassing situation on the female biographies. But I don't blame anyone here and I take 100 percent responsibility for my mistakes. Thanks Abishe (talk) 14:38, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
Abishe on English Wikipedia people must be notable in their own right. Doesn't mean they have to have a career but they have to have been noted by the media, texts, journals, etc for something they have done. Being known only as the spouse-of, daughter-of, sister-of, etc. is inherited notability, meaning the person is only noted in relationship to someone else. To justify an independent article you have to be able to answer "What has she done independently from her relatives that has been noted in the media with substantial coverage?" The article as it is written doesn't give a sense of why she is deserving of a Wikipedia article, rather than simply being mentioned in the biographies of her noted relatives, see WP:NWOMEN. If she is noted as a fashion designer, that should be the focus not her relationships to others. Looking for sources, it does appear she is notable in her own right, but the article needs to be rewritten to focus on her.SusunW (talk) 15:12, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
@SusunW: I respect your advice to me on my poor execution on the content of the article, Sussanne Khan. Yes it is a controversial article and I struggled initially on how to manage the content of the article. I apologise for my great mistakes and thanks for your kind advice. Thanks. Abishe (talk) 15:16, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
Abishe No need to apologize, there is a huge learning curve to WP. I have disputed the speedy deletion nomination and provided a plethora of source about her. Start with these two sources and focus on her and her accomplishments.[3], [4]. Remove references in the lede to her family connections. Megalibrarygirl may also have some advice if you have more questions. Don't get discouraged, we are here to help. SusunW (talk) 15:26, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
This is an important topic for discussion. I think of biographies that I have worked on like Adrienne McNeil Herndon. They might be better known because of their husbands, but their husbands might be better known because of them too! Or women like Fanny Mendelssohn who composed under their brother's name. Fred (talk) 16:08, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
I agree Frederika Eilers, that it can go both ways, but throughout history more often than not notable women have been obscured by their partners, brothers, husbands, fathers. In this case, as in many others, the woman is notable in her own right, was trained as a designer, has made a successful career, but the focus is on other people in her life. She should be the central figure without all the fandom focus. (and by the way, those two articles are lovely!) SusunW (talk) 17:33, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
Basic question
I want to add Rita Arditti to the redlist. There's no doubt she's notable. But I can't easily see guidance: how do I decide in which index to list her? Is it advisable or discouraged to list in multiple places? Argentina, USA, Jewish, activist, etc. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 11:24, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
@Carbon Caryatid: Her name can be added to any crowd-sourced redlist that she fits - so by country, by occupation, &c. No problem with multiple listings - they all turn blue at the same time & can then be removed. To get her on the wikidata redlists, she needs a wikidata record (which I've created) ... she'll turn up on various lists in the next 24 hours; by all means add more claims to the wikidata record). --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:33, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
Tagishsimon: This is interesting. I think initially we specified there should be an article in another language for the items in our Wikidata red-link lists by occupation but maybe you now intend to change the code. I see that for now, although your Wikidata info on Rita Arditti includes "activist" and "writer", she does not appear on the corresponding lists. She does nevertheless appear on the lists of feminists and scientists. Maybe it's better to keep to the old approach as it is indeed useful to be able to access an article in another language on which we base new EN articles. What do you feel about this? Thanks by the way for all the other work you've been doing on Wikidata. You seem to be very active there.--Ipigott (talk) 09:09, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
Ipigott I'm afraid the one link requirement has gone west as a result of the work we did following the 'Inconsistency between redlists' issue raised last week. You'll have to file that under unilateral decisions made in ignorance of WiR history. I think the ideal, now, might be for us to move to having a column showing the number of sitelinks per name, per the Activists list, so that users can still elect to select women for whom there is a sitelink (and we should recall that quote, source & commons count as sitelinks; there's no guarantee that sitelink=article). We exclude, for no good purpose I can see, many notable candidates if we force ourselves to wait until another language wikipedia writes about them: the impetus for, e.g. FR.wiki or DE.wiki to write about a UKian or USian is, presumably, that much less than for EN.wiki to write about them. (I've added a count of sitelinks to all the occupation=A lists.)
Rita is now showing on the Activists list, which had not got around to being refreshed. But there are 22k qualifying writers and a limit of 5k displayed in our list; which is to say that right now, most women writers needing biogs are excluded from our list: a powerful argument for sorting out the over-length lists. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:56, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
I will second what Ipigott wrote, thanks for all the work you, tagishsimon, do! I am interested in wikidata and blockchain code (specifically from everpedia) in terms of epistemology and its hegemonic structures. Personally, I update the redlists because I prefer to include a source or two on the individual I believe needs an article in order to help myself later or another editor. I'm not sure how i feel about using autotranslation of biographies, the ones I have looked at are, at times, inconsistent with my own research. Fred (talk) 17:05, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
It's worth noting, for those unfamiliar with the depths of wikidata, that the addition of names to wikidata is driven primarily by mix'n'match, an application into which has been imported ~1,000 catalogues of various sorts, for the purposes of item creation and the furnishment in item records of external ID links to catalogue entries. The inclusion of a name in such catalogues is an indicator of notability. --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:44, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
Is it? One problem I'd noticed with the Australian lists was that a bunch of emphatically non-notable defeated minor-party state political candidates from a few years ago have been dumped in there. The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:23, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
Tagishsimon: On the basis of your explanations, I agree that there should be no obligation to have a link to an article in another language although personally I find this very useful. If there are reliable references to sources in the new batches of additions to Wikidata, that should normally be sufficient to check notability. As for the long lists of writers, I think most of us normally look for more specific info such as novelists, poets, historians, or we simply start with country-based lists and look for writers.--Ipigott (talk) 09:01, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
Tagishsimon, I am quite interested in talking about the various approaches to solving the problem of 22K women writers, and only 5K of them showing up on our redlist. Aside from what we're currently doing -creating sub-redlists of novelists, poets, journalists, translators, and so on- do you have any thoughts of other ways to split up the list? For example, you mention the many catalogues whose data has been imported into Wikidata. Might there be an advantage to have redlists by catalogue? --Rosiestep (talk) 09:52, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Ipigott; I hope you'll find the count of sitelinks useful. Rosiestep, my first inclination is to divide the writers by country of citizenship, and then divide those having no country data, by date of birth, as I've just done with actresses. I don't discount the membership of a catalogue idea ... I'll play with that and come back to you - it's doable, but I need a while to play before I can say more. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:27, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
All: In the Redlist index I've split the wikidata actresses redlist into a series of countries (where there are more than 200 women per country) with four additional files - rest of world; no country born pre 1973, no country born post 1972, and no country no dob. This allows us, at the cost of some extra space in the redlist list, to offer all red women, and keeps the maximum list length down to ~3000 (Japan, aside). Please let me know what you think of it. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:27, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
As normal, there's some tweaking to be done, mainly by way of folding older country names - e.g. Kingdom of Britain - into the e.g. UK page ... currently it lurks in the rest of the world. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:30, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
I've done the same thing for Writers. Again, some legacy countryname tweaking yet to be done. (Ipigott, I take your point about country lists being a means of accessing the same info, albeit wikidata items with no country get excluded; and if I want writers or actresses, I want to see the wood for the trees). Anyway; it's an experiment, and you can decide whether & how to list these new redlists in the various redlist lists :) --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:48, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
I think splitting the large categories of writers and actors by country makes sense. @Tagishsimon: your additions to the occupations list looks good. Way to make the data work for us!
I’ve just created a new redlist of earth scientists, in anticipation of a “women rock” theme (or is that “rock women...?”). Of course it needs more work, but there are more than 500 to start with! I think splitting out scientists by field might help that large group become more manageable, but there is a good bit of overlap. Maybe by country would work there, too? For now, I’m putting earth scientists as a sub-group to scientists. NotARabbit (talk) 23:45, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
Yup, there's more we could be doing for scientists; pulling out groups of related fields, as you have with earth scientists, is a good direction to go in. Scientists seems to be down to 3.7k right now, and I suspect there's overlap with other lists - eg, from memory, mathematicians, for instance. Perhaps some occupation values in the list can be given the chop. Equally, there'll be other occupation values which are not on any of our lists. There's still a way to go before all of the lists are knocked into shape. I think I'll do one more tweak tonight to the UI of the Redlist index ... move by occupation & country lists into their own subsection, with links from the by occupation section. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:24, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
I saw some news about Amnesty International's 19–20 May Brave:Edit that will be covered in the upcoming issue of The Signpost (plug, plug). Anyway, thought I'd ask here first, was this coordinated with anybody here, as some of the articles suggest? I saw nothing about it. It was advertised as creating "biographies of women human rights defenders". ☆ Bri (talk) 18:02, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
I have simplified the documentation syntax for the Which template should I use? section. Rather than being done using table syntax, it's now template-based. I've also added placeholders from Meetups #80-100, so when the meetups are created, the documentation will mention them, with a prompt to update the documentation.
Let's say we go back to earlier this year, when meetup #75 was just created, but not documented yet, you'd have something like this in the documentation:
(Outdated code removed.)
You could then easily update {{WIR-doc |number = 75 |date = |edit-a-thon = }} to {{WIR-doc |number = 75 |date = May 2018 |edit-a-thon = Women of the Sea}}, and if you forgot to do it, then someone else could get to it. And if that didn't happen, well people would at least know Meetup #75 existed. It'll also ask for templates and templates documentation to be created, if they weren't.Headbomb {t · c · p · b}15:47, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
Abishe, it is incredibly flattering to receive credit for such a successful undertaking that actually has been overseen by Rosiestep and hundreds of other volunteers. I've been a minor player in this effort and have only been able to create a dozen or so women's biographies myself. I will repost your comment to the Women in Red project page. Thank you for leaving your message here. Best Regards, Barbara✐ ✉ 10:13, 25 May 2018 (UTC)"
Abishe Thank you for your support and work creating articles. I love that you are adding articles on global women, as it adds so much to our understanding of the world. As I said previously, if you ever need help, just drop a note here or on my talk page and I will try to assist. If I cannot, there will be others to help. SusunW (talk) 13:55, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
@SusunW: Thanks for your thoughts on by recognising my contributions to WIR projects and I will deliberately create more women biographies in the future as well. Once again, thanks for your inspiring words and for your willingness to help me whenever possible. Have a great day! Abishe (talk) 14:24, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
Yes, indeed. Several articles about her have appeared in the Portuguese press. The award is apparently highly significant in Portugal.--Ipigott (talk) 06:54, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
Thanks! There's no deadline. 2 more have been listed on my talkpage. These three are just three of the ones found by WMNL, but were all written because of the same "Amnesty" edit-a-thon mentioned above. So sad that no one knew about it beforehand (on Wikipedia I mean). Draft articles are just not my thing, and neither are BLP's. Jane (talk) 11:51, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
Oh and if your Spanish is good and you are interested in modern art, then I also have a request pending to translate this one to English: es:Beatriz González. But like I said, no deadline! Jane (talk) 11:56, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
Done — Okay, everything in those lists has been updated. NotARabbit (talk) 00:42, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
