Re: gender asymmetry, lowering the bar for notability for some subjects but not others comes with the same kind of politics that "affirmative action" does (i.e., it's not pretty), and the implementation of different shades of notability could present technical hazards as well. Of course, I accept there's a problem. However, it's not entirely the fault of the Wikipedia -- much has to do with the fact that we can only rely on reliable sources that exist. Historically, such sources have given tremendous deference to men (stating the obvious, I think). It can likely be argued that even the current corporate media is warped in men's favor, not to mention big business's favor (but that's another topic). In essence, this may be largely unsolvable without addressing how we source information here. Perhaps it is possible to expand the circle of things that we call reliable sources? I'll leave that as an open question. Stevie is the man!Talk • Work18:54, 28 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The shift in focus on biographies has to do with their long-lasting influence. Politician's influences are remembered thousands of years, artists hundreds of years, and athletes mere decades. Older sports people are simply forgotten. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:30, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Re: The authors divide the biographies into public (politicians, businessmen, religion) and private (artists and sportspeople) and note that it was only in the last few decades that the second group started to significantly outnumber the first... though the paper is unfortunately completely missing the discussion of some important topics, such as the possible bias introduced by Wikipedia's notability policies. - So our politicians have officially bored us into non-editing. I must ring the claxons of alarm-bells to amass our WikiArmies of WikiLawyers and WikiPoliticians to correct this horrible WikiSituation wherein our real life governmental representatives are not discussed, in great and dry depths, on Wikipedia with lots of non-libelous sourcing and wording - oh wait, now I know exactly why we don't have as many "public" BLP articles. Cheers, Doctor Crazy in Room 102 of The Mental Asylum06:25, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
← Back to Recent research