Talk:Lisa Gelobter

Unverifiable claims

I removed a lot of content becaus e it was sourced from blogspam and didn't pass WP:V, including the weird claim that the subject was involved with the invention of the GIF image format, which is not supported by any reasonable source that I've seen. There was some information relating to her involvement in various companies which I believe is true but needs better sourcing, I erred on the side of caution and removed most of it. 2601:83:8080:A40:893C:D11A:D26F:1932 (talk) 23:10, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Please stop adding this claim back to this article. It is completely false and not backed up by any good sources. Gelobter was still in school when the GIF was invented by Steve Wilhite. The statement "She is known for developing the animation used in GIF images." *doesn't even make sense*. 2601:83:8080:A40:ADB7:42A0:9403:543B (talk) 16:43, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

She is just about old enough to have had a hand in it, is the thing (16 when the original format launched, and 18 when the more capable and commonly-used GIF89a came along). So may have had some involvement via Wilhite, or as an early online service user ... perhaps if Compuserve were open to contributions from their userbase and shared the dev process, or even she was doing some remote work on the side? And then the credit was given wholly to the project leader? (I coulda sworn it used to be credited to at least two people, though I thought they were both older men). But it'd be extremely fringe, and how do you even verify these things without eyewitness interviews (perhaps of Gelobter and Wilhite themselves... the former wouldn't be a bad idea if she's not sick of the question, and it can be done over publicly-accessible twitter or the like and so become a usable citation) and maybe seeing old documents retrieved from the ashes of Compuserve's heyday?

My initial hot take was that perhaps Steve became Lisa (it's not unknown in the IT field, there seems to be a much higher than baseline incidence, maybe related to elevated rates of neurodiversity in general; I had a suspicion from the blogspam photo, not least trans flag hair colouring, and ended up here trying to satisfy my own curiosity), but the dates just don't match, even if we take his stroke as being a cover for disappearing from the world and hunt for similarities in the very limited and poor quality photographs available. Like, I doubt a preteen would be working on professional DECsystem software programming... (his birth year isn't given on the WP article but I would assume some time in the 50s) 46.208.118.252 (talk) 10:35, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Follow-up:

I think I figured out what happened here... it seems she was involved in the development of Shockwave (aka Flash) as an *alternative* animation format to GIF, and later in online video streaming (specifically the early days of Hulu). Those are pretty big things in themselves and worthy of inclusion in the article, and appear in her actual bio on the tEQuitable website (and GIF does not). They're also cited, pretty much verbatim vs the bio, on a page talking about black inventors in general ( https://thinkgrowth.org/14-black-inventors-you-probably-didnt-know-about-3c0702cc63d2 ) ... and then another site, for some random US radio station, lifted THAT text (with a link back to the original), and inexplicably bolted on the part about GIF. Whether that was from some other uncited source or just added by whoever made their own page by a writer pulling things out of their ass to pad out the copy, who knows. But it's that version that's then been copied elsewhere, including into somewhat flashier blog posts focussing purely on black female inventors (which is where I came in).

I'm not sure how firm the sources are talking about Flash etc, but they shouldn't be too hard to follow up I would expect. Worth including that in the main article, and maybe a nod to GIF in terms of "it has been claimed" (or "erroneously claimed", "unverifiably"?) but not presenting it as actual truth? That may keep from it then being edited to include the blog claim as fact. 46.208.118.252 (talk) 10:49, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I see no credible evidence anywhere for the claim in the second sentence of the aritcle, viz.:

Lisa is also the computer scientist who developed the animation used to create GIFs, forever changing the way we text and tweet.[1]

Certainly, there's none in the first two references - one from Brown U's publicity machine, another from a magazine, just the absurd claim that the GIF compression technique is founded on an "animation". Please do not reinstate this claim without providing appropriate information to back it up. I'm about to comment that sentence out for the time being, pending any editor's efforts to give references. Unless such are available within a reasonable time, I'd suggest completely removing the claim from the article. yoyo (talk) 14:26, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Vague claims

That "She ... invented products" is vague; which ones? I've tagged the statement:

"She has spent 25 years in the software industry and invented products that have been used by millions of people."

with the {{vague}} template. Because I can't identify any such product from the article, I also considered adding a {{cn}} tag, but since the statement appears in the lead para, it only needs support from citations in the body of the article. Hoping that some editor may supply relevant citations while resolving the vagueness. yoyo (talk) 03:40, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Bad sources

Please stop reverting my good faith improvements to this article. These are NOT good sources, they are blogspam, and the content is badly written. Take an actual look at them before you revert please. 2600:4040:A23F:B500:3057:19ED:D8E0:9B2D (talk) 14:46, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

seems to be blogspam and such so review both versions please. Wesoree (Talk) 15:05, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

it's up to you to fix it, so be bold and fix it. Wesoree (Talk) 15:18, 7 October 2022 (UTC)