Talk:Ada Lovelace/2014/February

Unnecessary Information Posed About Her Past

Looking at the biography of Ada Lovelace, how and what information is posed can be crucial in how readers interpret her historical or scientific significance. It seems to me that there is more information than is necessary about affair and scandal related to Lovelace. We see the message that she was prone to affair or adultery in multiple sections, including: Childhood, Adult Years, and Death. Is the point of the article to make note of all her indiscretions, or to provide information about her contributions to mathematics and computing?

Looking at other male scientists and pioneers of engineering, we do not see nearly any discussion of such topics. Why? They are not relevant to their contributions and impact as scientists. Lovelace should be treated no differently. Trying to lay claims to scandals that happened 150 years ago seems useless, and really serves no purpose other than to discredit Lovelace and minimize her importance. As is common with women, their sexuality must be made known to everyone, and emphasized despite it having no relevance to what they do - this is something that can be corrected. The average reader will not gain any more useful knowledge by thinking she was promiscuous or scandalous.

Based on this argument, I propose these sections be deleted to keep information useful and relevant.

"In early 1833, Ada had an affair with a tutor and, after being caught, tried to elope with him. The tutor's relatives recognized her and contacted her mother. Annabella and her friends covered the incident up to prevent a public scandal."

In the 1840s, Ada flirted with scandals: firstly from a relaxed relationship with men who were not her husband, which led to rumours of affairs[33]—and secondly, her love of gambling. The gambling led to her forming a syndicate with male friends, and an ambitious attempt in 1851 to create a mathematical model for successful large bets. This went disastrously wrong, leaving her thousands of pounds in debt and being blackmailed by one of the syndicate, forcing her to admit the mess to her husband.[34] Ada also had a shadowy, possibly illicit relationship with Andrew Crosse's son John from 1844 onwards. Few hard facts are known about this because Crosse destroyed most of their correspondence after her death as part of a legal agreement. However, the relationship was strong enough that she bequeathed him the only heirlooms her father had personally left to her.[35] During her final illness, Ada would panic at the idea of John Crosse being kept from visiting her.'

"What she told him is unknown, but may have been a confession of adultery."

The section on "Controversy over extent of contributions" appears at first to be slightly problematic. While my critiques may seem an attempt to erase history and make her page more biased that she was indeed a great mathematician and contributor to computing, those are not my intentions. The section could easily just be reduced, because it appears to be focused on crediting Babbage with all of her contributions, with little evidence to back it up. That sounds like a pretty clear case of male bias. The responses from Kim and Toole are useful, but if the writers could find so many people to discredit Lovelace, why could they not find the same mount of sources to maintain her record? If her work was so hotly contested, why has anyone credited her with accomplishing anything? There is no mention of the fact that Babbage would be biased in saying he did or could have done all of the work when putting his letter in context. Swade, Collier, and Bromley's remarks could be shortened or summarized and make the same point.

If we want to be fair to Ada Lovelace, we should consider making these changes to pose information in a non-biased way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.95.140.55 (talk) 17:56, 4 February 2014 (UTC) — 71.95.140.55 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

To 1 edit IP spa: Wikipedia does not censor on the grounds of political correctness. It tells the whole truth as it finds it. It seems that Ada was a chip off the old block (her raffish father) and inherited a touch of his genius too. That should be celebrated, not censored.Xxanthippe (talk) 21:55, 4 February 2014 (UTC).