Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2021-03-28/News from the WMF

Discuss this story

#WMFWomen Firestar464 (talk) 01:06, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If you are a writer, journalist, or media personality: Cover women’s stories. Profile them in your newsletter, blog, magazine, newspaper, YouTube channel, TikTok, etc. Magazine and newspaper articles yes please, but is the WMF seriously suggesting people make blogposts and TikToks about subjects as if that will provide us with reliable, citeable sources on which to build articles? Because some well-intentioned person might do just that, and another well-intentioned newbie editor will try and use those only to run afoul of our sourcing policy. Other than that I'm very pleased the WMF took the time in this piece to give an overview of our notability policy and discussed the need for references. This is something new and/or potential Wikipedia recruits need to be familiar with sooner rather than later. -Indy beetle (talk) 19:31, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

When the WMF says to create blogposts and tiktoks about women, they might be suggesting to do so in order for reliable sources to pick them up and discuss. But I do agree with you that what the WMF said could be taken the wrong way and result in people creating articles about non-notable individuals. X-Editor (talk) 19:27, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Indy beetle. We absolutely should encourage people to write about women and all underrepresented topics in actual reliable sources with established editorial control and reputations for accuracy. But blogging, newsletter and TikTok content is worthless for improving the encyclopedia. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 00:55, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Having been in AfD discussions were a supporting editor may argue, "She has 300,000 Instagram followers!" I have to agree with X-Editor and Cullen328. While it may be of noble intention to use these platforms to amplify a woman's significance, it also gives the impression of these social media outlets as credible sources. We would be sending a mixed message to new editors on what is a WP:RS. Blue Riband► 15:17, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We also need to distinguish this from the practice of spamjournalism, where media reprints or paraphrases a press release from a professional or company or non-commercial organization or conducts a mock interview with leading questions but no analysis, giving the sponsor of the interview the chance to say whatever they like about themselves. (We no longer accept these as reliable sources for notability for organizations, and usually in practice we do not for people). It can be quite difficult to tell the difference, especially in some sorts of media.They're not useless entirely in WP for routine uncontested facts, but not anything else. I estimate we have a half million articles using them, at least a hundred thousand wouldn't have anything to pretend to use fo notability without them, and some are still being carelessly accepted). DGG ( talk ) 06:13, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]