Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-03-01/Community view

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Clarice Phelps is another prominent example. The repeated deletion of this black woman has generated adverse media coverage such as this. The good news is that the public are now allowed to read about this person again, following a recent appeal at Deletion review. But there are still attempts to make her invisible again.

Her image (right) is displayed as public domain by both Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Department of Energy, but we now have vexatious attempts to argue otherwise – novel arguments not previously presented for our many other good faith images from that laboratory.

Likewise the nomination for Did You Know is mired in noisy and unpleasant discussion, quite unlike the usual process. The extent to which such subjects attract hostile attention is quite remarkable so thanks to Megalibrarygirl for her timely article about this.

Andrew🐉(talk) 15:42, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No editwarring over joke photos. It could very easily be taken that you are making fun of non-binary people. We don't do that. Thanks for your understanding. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 12:06, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed the photo once again. It has been re-inserted 3 times now, so I'd take another re-insertion as editwarring.

In the first issue after I became editor-in-chief, I wrote "The Signpost must be more sensitive to potential offense or insult among our diverse readership..

"We pledge that we will never attack or mock any group whose members include those who do not have a choice about their membership in the group. Groups covered by this pledge include, but are not limited to, those based on race, nationality, sex, gender, age, disability, social or economic status, veteran status, body type, or religion."

I intend to keep that pledge as best as I know how.

@EEng: has written in his edit comment "No, but non-binary vs. analog is a joke, and there are no special groups immune to good-natured humor." So we disagree. I'll just ask a couple of admins here to take a look if the photo is re-inserted again and decide on the best way to keep it out. @TonyBallioni and MER-C:. If no admin wishes to enforce WP:3RR or the wishes of The Signpost EiC, then I'll suggest just leaving it in and make sure that readers here are aware that The Signpost is not responsible for including it. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:14, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

re-inserted 3 times – Apparently you're not even paying attention to what got posted each time. The very first post to this thread inserted a photo of Clarice Phelps carrying the caption, Nominated for deletion yet again, misleadingly implying that Phelps herself was nominated for deletion (if that were possible), or that her article is up for deletion (which it's not – it's a garden-variety dispute over the image's licensing). So I posted the following image parodying misleading captions:

As a counterpoint to the ENIAC photo, these three women operating a differential analyser are an early example of non-binary people in computing.
-E **Eng**

Note: The Signpost is not responsible for the inclusion of the above. Obviously. A simple good-natured pun (apparent only after you check what's behind behind both links) on an accident of the English language mocks nobody. But some can't see that and removed it. OK, so instead I posted a comment on that removal:

This image has been subject to repeated vexatious, noisy, and unpleasant attempts to delete it [1][2][3].

Now that last caption, I will openly admit, does mock a certain group, to wit people intolerant of criticism of themselves. So you removed that too? Really? Because ... why? Because woke-scolds are a group whose members include those who do not have a choice about their membership in the group? Are you truly so lacking in self-perception? E Eng 22:26, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Followup: Stimulated by useful discussion here [4], particularly comments by Levivich, I think the following makes my original point much better:

There may be some non-binary people among those operating this differential analyser, but from the historical record there's probably no way to know it.
-E **Eng**

I am personally a bit surprised to see the extent to which anyone connected with this Phelps article seems very eager to assume bad faith. I would recommend that before you accuse others of vexatious attempts to make women disappear, you should maybe check to see if hypothetically, their last two GAs were biographies of women, and their next one is about to be too. GMG ^talk 17:50, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS philosophy driving subaltern studies explicitly states bad faith must have been involved. While I myself wrote articles about women and persons of color, I have warned against these sorts of initiatives asserting that history hasn't represented enough of the right groups. Chris Troutman (talk) 18:12, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Andrew Davidson, I like you, but this is just bullshit. I don't know about last year's PRODs or speedies or whatever, but at this point no one's trying to "delete" Clarice Phelps, or even her article, or questioning her notability. There's a question about the licensing of the image, and that is all. To see a conspiracy in this is asinine. Cool your jets. E Eng 16:02, 3 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Numerous images of the subject have been deleted or nominated for deletion and the discussion for the image to the right is still open. The article too has been nominated and deleted so many times that it has been difficult to make an exact count. The issue here is of making such women (in)visible and it's a live one. Andrew🐉(talk) 16:40, 3 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, it's an ongoing conspiracy. E Eng 04:57, 4 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The nature of what's happening in such cases was discussed in a special report in last month's Signpost. Consider the image of Clarice Phelps shown here (above right). If it weren't for my caption, the ordinary reader would not even know that it has been tagged for deletion because there's no sign for them. If they click on the image, they are still not told. You have to click again and again through a maze of links to arrive at the deletion discussion which has few comments because it is so hard to find. It's the bureaucratic obfuscation satirised in HHGTTG:

"But the plans were on display…"

"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."

"That’s the display department."

"With a flashlight."

"Ah, well, the lights had probably gone."

"So had the stairs."

"But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?"

"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."

Andrew🐉(talk) 10:20, 4 March 2020 (UTC) '[reply]

In other words, you uploaded an image locally to try to avoid a deletion discussion on the copyright status of the work, and you're annoyed that your attempt to circumvent that discussion didn't completely work. You wan't to complain that no one knows about the deletion nomination, when we actually have a bot for that which would have notified the talk page of the original nomination that you tried to circumvent by uploading locally, except you already did so. And you've already been advised that attempts to comply with copyright are not harassment, but you'd rather spend more time here having an opinion in entirely more edits than you've actually contributed to the article itself (exactly one), while disparaging people who are working to bring missing articles on women to GA status.

You are free to publicly express personal outrage to your heart's content, but please don't act like it's actually accomplishing anything. GMG ^talk 22:29, 4 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Can't you see that the rules magically work to hide deletion discussions involving nonwhite nonmale nons? E Eng 23:00, 4 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Coffeeandcrumbs, Flyer22 Frozen, and TJMSmith:, myself, and others are working towards improving Katherine Johnson and other Hidden Figures. GorillaWarfare did a commendable job getting Mary Jackson to Good Article status. Dorothy Vaughan's article could use some work, and I could particularly use assistance at the book and film pages, since I typically edit biographies and not film/book articles.
I also want to generally note that the Resource Request has fast response times and can be used to find "invisible" information.

Lastly there is an ongoing destubathon this month, and one of the Amazon voucher prizes (£50 (c.$66), kindly donated by Ser Amantio di Nicolao) is for Most articles destubbed and improved on British and Irish women. Vouchers can be used to purchase more books to add "invisible" information to Wikipedia. Kees08 (Talk) 19:06, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
As I often have stated, one of the problems with many topics where our coverage is inadequate comes back to lack of reliable sources. And then there is getting access to those that exist, & finding those that exist. Surmounting these issues is often much more difficult than those who don't write articles think. (FWIW, if anyone is interested in creating more articles on women of the Early Roman Empire, the definitive work is Marie-Therese Raepsaet-Charlier, Prosopographie des femmes de Prosopographie des femmes de l'ordre sénatorial (Ier - IIe siècles) (Louvain: Peeters, 1987). Not only am I unable to find a copy anywhere close to me, it is in French, a language I cannot read.) -- llywrch (talk) 01:12, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That, of course, is the problem in a nutshell. Verifiability and 'only reflecting what reliable sources are saying' are vital principles here, but when reliable sources largely ignore someone, that gives us a problem. Neiltonks (talk) 10:56, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Neiltonks: It does not give us a problem because WP:V is a policy. Rather, our insistence on things like verifiability present a limit to the imaginations of a certain chattering class that thinks any outlet is only acceptable if it observes their preferred orthodoxies. I posit that we should recognize these RIGHTGREATWRONGS editors for what they are and encourage them to write for periodicals and publishing houses where their screeds could become source material instead of allowing them to circumvent policy altogether out of fear of their reprisals and persecutions. Chris Troutman (talk) 19:04, 9 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]