Talk:Donna Strickland

Intern

She spoke today that she was an intern during suaid studies.Lihaas (talk) 11:19, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

AFC draft

Why wasn't the declined AFC draft moved to create this article? --2600:1700:FB00:9C00:D4FE:243:70E7:A0ED (talk) 14:40, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

It can be history-merged to give credit to the original author. --Hegvald (talk) 16:05, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

History merge is for cases where content of another page was copied. It appears Donna Strickland was written from scratch or using a little of Gérard Mourou but not Draft:Donna Strickland. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:15, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

User talk:TonyBallioni had redirected the rejected draft at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Donna_Strickland&diff=862221162&oldid=862211426 and that loses the history on the incident which should be preserved, so I think a merge is warranted. Emceeaich (talk) 00:44, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

No, no, and once more no. As PrimeHunter has said, HISTMERGE is only for pages where the attribution got messed up. This is just a case of two pages being created in different spaces. There was no copy/paste page moving, and thus there should be no histmerge. Primefac (talk) 00:46, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Hist merging would be a nightmare here and completely screw up the page history. This is a parallel versions issue. If there is any usable content from that draft, it can be merged by hand with Edit summary attribution. Also, for the record: the history has not been lost. Anyone can view it through the Permalink in the history if they want to write about it off-wiki. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:02, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

I think Emceeaich is right. The page history might be a little messy as a result, but the history of this page is messy (even gathering a little bit of press attention), and that should be preserved in the history of the page. Moreover, there may be some prose that may get lost by leaving it over in the Draft namespace. Hist merging isn't that tough; I can do it if no one else is up to the job. -- RobLa (talk) 01:15, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Not only are there paralell histories, there is ZERO content shared between them from a "copy/paste page move" perspective. Please please please do not attempt to do a histmerge, because if it's confusing now, it will only get more confusing. For example, how the hell would you figure out the sequence of edit 1, 2, and 3 when viewed through a "diff" view? Those three edits would be sequential if a histmerge were to be performed. Just don't do it. Please. Primefac (talk) 01:22, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

That doesn't sound like a compelling problem. What does seem like a compelling problem is that the draft could get garbage-collected away after a few months, and the robots.txt for Wikipedia means that the linked version might not be preserved by archive.org (though I made a point of requesting an archive manually, which seems to have worked). Still, I'm still inclined to do the merge; that will capture the history of this page in a truer sense, even if the history around Special:PermaLink/862211036, Special:PermaLink/862211426 and Special:PermaLink/862212846 is a little messy. In fact, it probably just makes sense to leave all Draft:Donna_Strickland revisions after the first edit in the current Donna_Strickland article out of the merge (e.g. -426), which would mean the diff between -036 and -846 would continue to make sense. -- RobLa (talk) 02:17, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with being difficult: I could do it very easily if it would be beneficial. It has to do with mangling page histories which would be the last thing you want for a high profile article that is getting media attention. Additionally, keeping it in the current form in draft space is the easiest way to make sure the history stays together and can be seen by the public or anyone who wants to write about it: we don’t delete redirect drafts and the actual history of this event is much more clearly laid out there than it could ever be here after a hist merge. Finally; you can merge the content by hand and then do edit summary attribution if you’re afraid of the text being lost, which is how we handle this in ever other situation and one of the main reasons we don’t delete draft redirects. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:32, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Hmmm....are you sure redirect drafts don't get deleted out of public view? I agree that the status quo (if preserved) would be slightly less confusing for someone trying to piece things together. But I have a hard time believing that there is as much diligence applied to preserving draft revisions as there is to preserving main namespace revisions. As I propose in my response to Primefac, making the merged history make sense doesn't seem too difficult. -- RobLa (talk) 02:17, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

RobLa: Yes. We do not delete redirects in draft space. They are not eligible for G13. Part of the reason we don’t delete them is to preserve the history because many have been merged into main space and we keep them to comply with our license attribution requirements. Also, your reply to Primefac would make a huge mess of this and would confuse the article histories for absolutely no reason: it would also be extraordinarily difficult to unmerge if you did this, which isn’t ideal since you have two other admins here who are telling you that this is not a reason under policy to use the tools. I’m pinging JJMC89 here to also comment since he’s somewhat of an expert on histmerges (even if he can’t do it himself.) TonyBallioni (talk) 02:42, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

TonyBallioni, thanks for the clarification. I'm still a little bit skeptical that the draft history will be safe without moving into the main namespace, but I'm not inclined to mess around with the article in the near term. I'll drop a note on this page and/or the Draft page if I change my mind. -- RobLa (talk) 03:12, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

(Repeating what others have already said.) The point of history merges is to maintain license-required attribution. This is a clear instance of parallel and unrelated (no shared copyrightable content) histories. Given that, the histories should remain separate. The history of the draft isn't needed for anything currently and could be deleted (not that it should). If someone wants to copy something from the draft, Campbpt0 must be attributed. (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) — JJMC89 (T·C) 03:37, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Why is there a version from 2014 that was undeleted and then entirely revdel'd? What's the purpose of this? Natureium (talk) 20:12, 3 October 2018 (UTC) For reference, direct permalink to the draft content. --Nemo 08:00, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Coverage of Wikipedia's anti-woman bias

A lot of the coverage around her Nobel prize has centered around Wikipedia's anti-woman bias. May be worth a mention in the article itself.

For example:

"Wikipedia rejected an entry on today’s Nobel Prize winner in May because she wasn’t famous enough" https://qz.com/1410909/wikipedia-had-rejected-nobel-prize-winner-donna-strickland-because-she-wasnt-famous-enough/

“It took a Nobel prize for Donna Strickland to be noticed enough to have a (short) Wikipedia page written about her. Another example of how womens’ contributions to science go unnoticed and uncelebrated" https://www.theguardian.com/science/live/2018/oct/02/nobel-prize-in-physics-2018-live — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.13.30.42 (talk) 20:17, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

This part: "Only 17% of the current biographical entries on Wikipedia as of October 2, 2018 are about women, and the site is particularly thin on women in science" is not anyhow related to her research or her notability. I think it should be removed. Teemu (talk) 20:41, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps this warrants a separate section in the article? Axeman89 (talk) 20:50, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps an article about the phenomenon itself, rather than a section on Strickland's article would be more appropriate? Ilikeeatingwaffles (talk) 21:26, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, that belongs in an article such as Criticism of Wikipedia, not here (where it's self-referential trivia). Robofish (talk) 21:47, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Whether it's "trivia" or a telling symptom of a larger problem is debatable. But ultimately it's not about the subject of the article, and shows signs of being just a single-news-cycle phenomenon. A brief mention at Criticism of Wikipedia or Gender bias on Wikipedia is certainly appropriate. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 03:48, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Agreed, with a link from this article. The deletion of the original article was the sort of action that will damage the entire reputation of Wikipedia. It’s a good opportunity for soul searching, and while I don’t want to call out the deleter (who has made huge positive contributions) is would be great to see him (and I’m guessing the gender here) help out with suggestions of ways to move forward. Bennetto (talk) 02:24, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

The deletion was entirely proper and within wikipedia policy. Please review policies before casting aspersions. Natureium (talk) 15:19, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Whether or not it was proper within the policies of Wikipedia is orthogonal to whether it will damage Wikipedia's reputation. Those policies could be argued as accumulating existing media bias, for example. It will damage Wikipedia's reputation and fund raising. Chaleur (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:13, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

For the record, one of the male 2018 chemistry prize winners George P. Smith (chemist) didn't have an article either. It was created two hours ago. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:59, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

OK, but was an article about him previously proposed and then rejected by the community? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A601:41E5:EC00:5560:9C2D:9DD5:358B (talk) 15:07, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Continuing for the record, since Wikipedia's Jan. 2001 launch:

• of 212 Nobel laureates, 69 (33%) had no Wikipedia bio when prize was announced;
• of 48 laureates in physics, 17 (35%) had no WP page when award was announced—all except Donna Strickland being male, including one each in 2014 & 2015. KalHolmann (talk) 15:17, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Not knowing the editor who chose to reject this article, it's hard to see this as one of the archetypical cases of Wikipedia bias re: notability. I don't read enough science bios, so just from reading what was originally submitted for Strickland, I wouldn't know how she compared against other non-notable entries (I've certainly seen more egregiously non-notable bios). But it didn't look like there was a debate. The editor stated his case and no one appears to have made an objection, and there's not much reason to think that her bio, with a few changes, would've been approved. Wikipedia's ignorance here of Strickland is more a symptom of Wikipedia's reliance on real-world metrics for fame and achievement than intended anti-woman bias. Maybe the argument could be made that Wikipedia could be more proactive than the real world in recognizing success. But Wikipedia's overlooking of Strickland seems nearly irrelevant compared to how so many of Strickland's peers and colleagues seemed fine with seeing her as just an associate professor. 24.130.146.8 (talk) 12:07, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

The draft [1] wasn't declined because she was claimed to be non-notable but because the submitted page had no independent sources. The decline box clearly stated the reason and made a resubmit button. The three sources were a paper by the subject, a biography at a society she had been president of, and a profile at the university she works for. If the author or somebody else had added independent sources and resubmitted, it would probably have been accepted. The decline also linked to relevant Wikipedia guidelines. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:20, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

This is an opportunity to get people to understand how to create good biographical drafts that meet notability and sourcing criteria by engaging in deliberate conversation (and possibly getting media coverage of the discussion). I knew about the Women Scientists project and as a historian came across someone who seemed to merit inclusion but it was only after 5-10 hours of hard research that I was able to assemble an article that really got across her noteworthiness. She passed in the 1980s and the sourcing is primarily field-specific (and relied in large part on obituaries) but that was a function of the time period and the relative paucity of coverage back then in general (although a condition that will exist for many scientists that are excellent but don't embrace the media machine -- wonder about the relationship between those two traits!). People are creating fairly useless stubs because they don't understand the importance of (1) really hitting the audience with why the person should have an article and (2) doing the drudge work to dig up source material to start the article. ... Of course, realistically, that is not the conversation we are going to have about this (and I've witnessed sexism play out so it is not a negligible factor in many editorial decisions and does not deserve to be ignored either). JBVaughan (talk) 13:25, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

To add to this, when the draft was rejected it had a total of three sources, none of which were reliable sources independent of the subject. If anything, this goes to show that Wikipedia does not accept biographies of living people without proper sourcing. The draft had claims of notability, which is why it was kept for further improvement and not speedily deleted, but it could not be accepted as an article without better sourcing. Media claims about gender bias or failure to recognize academic achievements miss the point.

To anyone reading this and wondering what went wrong: Articles require significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. Bradv 13:44, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Just as a note: it had a source independent of the subject confirming she met PROF 3 at the time of the decline. The biography on the society where she was a fellow. It is a publisher with editorial control over posting: it is enough to confirm she meets the notability requirements of PROF which Trump the GNG according to both PROF and WP:N. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:49, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

She's on the board. That's not independent. Bradv 17:54, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

PROF does not require as strict independence like the GNG does, neither do V or BLP. It was independent in that the society itself had to decide whether or not to publish it: it wasn’t just her making stuff up and posting it on her personal website. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:58, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

• If anything, coverage should probably go on Gender bias on Wikipedia, and not here. And the rejection of the draft was perfectly warranted given how poor the sourcing was at the time. The sourcing has been improve, and so now there is an article. That's how the systems is supposed to work. The only problem here is that the media don't understand the difference between accepting a draft and deleting an article. GMG^talk 15:33, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

  I think, considering the Guardian is definitely a RS, a mention easily meets WP:DUE however putting that mention on Gender bias on Wikipedia would probably be reasonable positioning in order to keep her article, as it is currently, about her noteworthy accomplishments. Simonm223 (talk) 19:16, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

This is NOT proof of "anti-woman bias". Quit over-hyping an imaginary claim. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 19:07, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

• Comment: Without question wiki's rejection of her article is notable and meets WP:DUE (it's been covered in many RSs). But it's not obvious where it should go. On the one hand it makes sense to have it here, since arguably it's become an important-enough incident in her life, and also because, well, it just makes sense - it's an important fact about this article and about wikipedia in general, and WP:IAR. On the other hand I see Simonm223's point. So... I'm torn, but I lean towards including it here. Waleswatcher (talk) 20:05, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
• Comment: Indeed, Wikipedia's rejection is notable, as multiple RS are incorrectly reporting on what actually happened. I read the proposed article and honestly, I'd have rejected it as it stood as well. There were precisely zero citations and a simple list of five or so papers she authored/coauthored (even that tidbit was missing). If it's citationless and without any reason that the subject is notable within the article, the article should be declined until what is being suggested has a good start. How many stub class and start class articles are we going to have to accept?! As for anti-woman bias, many fields of endeavor are perceived that way, just because women tended to avoid such fields - far too frequently, due to the behavior of the men in said fields driving them away. What is actually needed is for the Foundation get a representative in contact with the RS's that are reporting on this fiction and correct incorrect perceptions with factual information.Wzrd1 (talk) 01:59, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

This is trivia about Wikipedia which doesn't belong in her BLP, the most that should be said is that a draft Wikipedia entry produced in March 2018 by a new editor using WikiProject Articles for creation was declined in May on grounds of inadequate sources, the editor did not return to the topic.[Draft:Donna Strickland] After she won the Nobel Prize, this decision was represented by news media as showing gender bias. . . dave souza, talk 03:26, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Did the original rejection state why to the author? That is, was the article said to be rejected because the subject wss "not notable enough" or because the author "had not shown the subject was notable enough" (by not having enough references)? Merry (talk) 06:49, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

The article wasn't rejected, as Draft:Donna Strickland shows, a draft was declined as it didn't yet have enough independent sourcing, and at the same time the author was invited on their talk page to make improvements so that the draft could go into main space as an article. . . dave souza, talk 07:20, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Indeed. I looked at the draft and it was pretty poor; using primary/self-published/COI bio sources, and with the text failing to make a good case for notability. Now, if this was at AFD, and I was participating, I'd have done a Google Scholar search for publications, and possibly voted weak keep given her citation track record ([2]). Plus other sources might have been found and presented. But yes, in May, this was a crappy stub with borderline notability, and anyone saying it was rejected because of anti-female bias is full of four letters. It was rejected because Wikipedia is assaulted by spam, the few volunteers reviewing bios/etc. are overworked, and borderline poor drafts like this are, well, borderline, and get borderline 'toss a coin' verdicts. Anyone who has an issue with this is welcome to join Wikipedia as a volunteer, to review, create and expand articles about notable academics (male of female, whatever). In fact we have plenty of initiatives to do so (WikiProject Women in Red, etc.). This is a non-issue, outside of a few journalists who clearly haven't bothered to research Wikipedia figuring that they have found their daily 'let's bash something and get some views/hits' quota. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:21, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Offer of help

Hi, I work for the Optical Society and noticed that there is some editing work happening to round out this profile. I noticed it was missing images and some content. I'm currently assisting with updating the bio on our website as Dr. Strickland has been actively involved with the society including as our 2013 President and we've seen a lot of interest for obvious reasons today. I don't want to make any edits myself due to COI but I wanted to extend the offer of assistance in acquiring media or information/references if desired. - Tinynull (talk) 22:53, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer. You may wish to upload a profile photograph to WikiMedia Commons. No COI issues would arise doing that but you would need to agree to licence the image under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 license. — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 23:21, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

I just want to second what Blue-Haired Lawyer said. It would be great to get an image for this article and I don't think there are usually COI concerns regarding the upload of images. Orser67 (talk) 00:29, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

I've uploaded the following for use: File:Donna_Strickland,_OSA_Holiday_Party_2012.jpg and File:Donna_Strickland_speaking_at_OSA%27s_Leadership_meeting_in_2013.jpg. We've released both of these images as CC BY SA 4.0 on our website to validate they are now free to use. Copyright for both of these images was fully held by The Optical Society, they were taken by a contract photographer and I did verify our contract assigns ownership of the work to us. - Tinynull (talk) 16:05, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

I've fixed the links in the immediately preceding msg. -- Roger Hui (talk) 16:15, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Now neatly packed in c:Category:Donna Strickland. GMG^talk 16:16, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, we've also received a request on youtube to make our interview with Dr. Strickland CC BY, which has spurred some discussion internally. I haven't personally seen video used on wikipedia, especially for people, so I wasn't sure how valid this request might be. Internally there is some concern about the videos being made available for potential commercial use and that likely doesn't work with the wording of our video release and using it for further the mission of the society (disseminating science) or educational and historical purposes. Just curious if anyone has any insight into this, I have done some reading but its not apparent if videos of interviews with people are desired or if its possible to provide videos with a more limited CC license such as non-commercial use. - Tinynull (talk) 16:44, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Hey Tinynull. Quality freely licensed videos are certainly educationally useful for Wikipedia and it's sister projects. Of course you're under no obligation to apply a license that include commercial reuse, but unfortunately, licenses that do not are not compatible with the type of license Wikipedia is published under, and we would not be able to use it here. Having said that, those who reuse this type of content, even commercially, are still required by the license to provide attribution, and failure to do so would invalidate the use, and potentially leave them vulnerable to legal action by your organization. GMG^talk 17:26, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Notability

In this edit, Sandstein says that the draft was rejected for lack of notability. In this edit to the lede, VanEman makes a similar claim. I'd like to point out that neither of the two cited articles use the word "notability", and that, in fact, the draft was declined for lack of reliable sources. While both the Quartz and Vox sources use this to describe a perceived gender bias on Wikipedia, their understanding of the article creation process is lacking. These edits to the article further that misunderstanding. Bradv 17:09, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

The template links to WP:N when explaining why it was rejected. While there is diversity of opinion on whether the decline was good or not (she passed PROF, which is independent of the GNG, so I would have accepted, but that’s neither here nor there), the decline was a notability decline. (talk) 17:12, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

TonyBallioni, not really the point. The sources don't mention notability, so this is WP:OR. And as the one who declined the draft, I should know why I declined it. (Hint: it had no reliable sources.) Bradv 17:18, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

she wasn’t famous enough is in the Quartz headline and the Vox article mentions the exact phrase that links to WP:N. They were clearly referencing WP:N, even if they didn’t know the term. It was a bad decline, and I get why you might not want it in the article, but let’s not white wash this by wikilawyering over the OR policy when RS are pretty clear on their understanding here. Also, verification of employment status by institutional websites is used as an RS for academics all the time and there is no way this would have been deleted if sent to AfD, which I think is part of the anger in the media over this: she was held to a higher standard than virtually any other academic article we have. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:27, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

The decline [3] used {{AFC submission|d|bio}} which starts: "This submission's references do not show that the subject qualifies for a Wikipedia article". It was clearly declined because the submitted version did not include references showing notability. The decline made no judgment of whether she was notable, and it said: "Before any resubmission, additional references meeting these criteria should be added". That clearly leaves open the possibility that the subject is notable and a better article might be accepted. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:32, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Except the references clearly showed notability by meeting PROF3 and that was referenced in the article by the institution where she received the fellow status. I know AfC hates that PROF exists, but the community relatively recently had a chance to discuss this very issue, and sided quite definitively against the GNG trumps PROF argument. The decline was bad according to our own policies and guidelines, and RS are picking up on it. The wagon circling should stop and we should report this accurately. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:40, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

TonyBallioni, I have no problem with PROF, and I would have accepted the draft if it had even one reference to a reliable source. WP:BLP and WP:V are both policy too, and it's never okay to accept a draft about a living person without proper sourcing. If you want to argue that PROF should trump BLP or V, you can make that proposal at an appropriate venue. Bradv 17:48, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

It did. That is more than enough to meet PROF, V, and BLP on the most basic level. We go with better sourcing if possible, but if this had been created in main space there would have been zero chances of deletion. Declining was inappropriate, which is fine, we all make mistakes. We shouldn’t be trying to hide it when RS comment on them by waving them off as not understanding our processes (which is also OR, btw), when, by our own processes, this should have been accepted. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:54, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

TonyBallioni, she's on the board. OSA is not an independent RS. Bradv 17:57, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Bradv, I replied above, but will reply here going forward: V and BLP do not require independence, they require reliability, which a professional bio published on the site of a professional organization is. It is independent enough to verify that she wasn’t making up the claims, which is the purpose of independence in these cases (i.e. they’re not going to publish her biography claiming she was a fellow if she wasn’t. It wasn’t a personal website.) PROF does not require as strict independence as other guidelines in that it is a merit based standard for people where intellectually independent coverage is difficult. This met the basic requirements for promotion to mainspace. It wasn’t the best article, but that’s not the purpose of AfC: the purpose of AfC is to determine if an article has a more likely than not chance of surviving AfD, which this clearly did as there was proof of notability under PROF in the references. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:02, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

TonyBallioni, WP:PROF does require independence, though:

Subjects of biographical articles on Wikipedia are required to be notable; that is significant, interesting, or unusual enough to be worthy of notice, as evidenced by being the subject of significant coverage in independent reliable secondary sources.

It is not on AfC reviewers to find sources themselves, or to do a BEFORE search - we can only judge what has been written. In this case, the submitted draft did not meet the requirements, so it was declined with suggestions for improvement, and the appropriate message left on the author's talk page. If you want to change the application of various guidelines at AfC, there are more appropriate places for that conversation. But by every standard and guideline we currently have, including the AfC flowchart, this decline was correct. Bradv 18:24, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Note I said as strict. We’ve interpreted news stories from universities and societies announcing appointments to be independent enough to meet PROF before in that someone else had to decide to publish them independently of the subject. Obviously the more independent is better, but this qualified at the time of the decline. You messed up. Reliable sources are covering the decline. We should cover it as they understand it. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:31, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

The claim of gender bias would be moot if they did a modicum of investigation before writing the news article, but that's neither here nor there. Natureium (talk) 17:16, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

TonyBallioni, Bradv Being an elected fellow of OSA should warrant notability according to PROF 3. Being on various boards of the OSA would, in itself, also warrant notability, so I think the discussion on whether the source in independent/reliable or not is a little bit moot. Now what is also true is that the sentence mentioning her being a fellow had no reference in the original article. The link to the OSA website is provided in the previous sentence, but not repeated here. So I personally think that it wasn't a bad judgement, and it would have been so easy for the original contributor to fix this had they followed up. Honestly, initially I thought that maybe the red box that shows up for declined articles could have put them off, but the text there is actually unusually helpful. So, yes, maybe the rejection was a tiny, little bit hasty. But, TonyBallioni, I think you're making it a bigger issue than it oughts to be. Ah, and while I am quite convinced that there is rampant sexism in Wikipedia, I couldn't convince myself that this is such a case. Egaudrain (talk) 22:08, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

• • I agree it’s not that big of a deal going forward, but I don’t think we should be trying to obscure the fact that we made a mistake here. I have nothing against Bradv, I just think we should report on this accurately if we do report on it, and not try to obscure it. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:42, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

    I didn't reject the draft because she was not notable. I rejected it because it was a poorly sourced BLP. That's not a mistake, that's an application of policy that you happen to disagree with. I hope that we can find common ground on this point, and move on. Bradv 02:48, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

• The draft was not rejected because the individual was not notable. In order to determine that, a reviewer would be required to do their own BEFORE, which they are under no obligation to do. Rather, the draft was rejected because the submission's references [did] not show that she was notable. The burden of proof at AfC is on the creator, not on the reviewer. The reviewer is required to review what is submitted by the creator. GMG^talk 17:31, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

I think I've made my point re the accept at WT:AFC; anyhow, this doesn't belong in the article per WP:SUBJECT(Criticism_of_Wikipedia maybe). Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:33, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

In my view, these issues can be refined down to lack of references (author creating new wikipedia article) and ignorance of Wikipedia guidelines (claims in articles about wikipedia). • Sbmeirow • Talk • 19:18, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Just so. The original editor User:Campbpt0 only ever made two edits: one starting the draft of this article, and a second edit refining it, both in March. Bradv took on the thankless task of reviewing such drafts, and made the reasonable call that the draft article needed more sources if it was to be accepted. Campbpt0 was requested on his or her talk page to do more work to make the draft viable, but failed to reply to the request on Campbpt0's talk page, and failed to do anything to improve the article. It's questionable if the OSA biography was independent enough, but its state at the time didn't give much to go on. Wikipedia isn't in a position to write biographies of people who've not had public attention but might some day, or to write articles for every editor who shows a passing interest. . . dave souza, talk 22:17, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

• The claim of gender bias is that her colleague Gérard Mourou has had an article since 2005, but Strickland only got a rejected draft. I don't know if there are reasons that Mourou is more notable. There are plenty of significant researchers that lack Wikipedia articles, and it seems to me that the Wikipedia rules don't encourage creating articles for them. It's easier for sportspeople and politicians, where the right kind of sources are more likely to exist. ghouston (talk) 21:59, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

There are probably plenty of researchers whose only third party biographical sources are a brief bio in societies where they hold a position, but don't have Wikipedia articles and are unlikely to if that's all the published attention they've received. If User:Campbpt0 had been more experienced or more persistent they could probably have put together a viable article, but they didn't persist and no-one else produced the biography until this month. . . . dave souza, talk 22:17, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

The notability of a researcher comes from their peer-reviewed publications. It would be difficult to summarize their work: even if you can understand it, it would probably be taken as "original research". It can only be included once it has been summarized by a third party, which may not happen until someone writes their obituary or they win a Nobel prize. The things that are easier to cover Wikipedia, like biographical details, and awards won, make for dull articles. ghouston (talk) 22:39, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Whatever the reasons, the earlier rejection of the article is clearly a mistake in hindsight. If 'policies were followed', this is why 'technically correct' is not always 'the best kind of correct'. The Guardian article etc shows how this is a black-eye to Wikimedia. We should be thinking how to do better going forward. -- Infrogmation (talk) 22:28, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Clearly in going forward we should be thinking of requiring all volunteers to use hindsight in advance of any information on which to base that hindsight, or in advance of future publicity which inspires such hindsight. WP:BLP rightly sets high standards for sources of articles, a new editor made an attempt at a draft but didn't do any work to improve that draft when the submission was declined as the references did not show significant coverage of the biography's subject, despite an invitation to do that work. With hindsight, we could change the rules to require volunteers to rewrite such drafts, but that would mean a lot more volunteers or a lot more time before drafts were even looked at. . . dave souza, talk 22:54, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

The Guardian article is grossly misrepresenting what happened and doesn't even try to pretend to be knowledgable on Wikipedia procedures... so, TBH, it feels more like they are sabotaging their own reputation than anything else... Egaudrain (talk) 00:18, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

I would like to know how many articles the Guardian wrote on Donna Strickland before her Nobel.T8612 11:03, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Well put! This whole fiasco just illustrates how bogged down Wikiland is in its own moronic and artificial fabrication. The world does not work like a lot of delusional (self assigned) wiki editors imagine. 187.143.81.165 (talk) 22:43, 3 October 2018 (UTC) baden k.

It is too random how notability is considered in wikipedia. Some pages that have been there for more than 10 years have suddenly been deleted by a small handful off wikipedia editors due to sudden claim of lack of notability. This means either there is loads of pages on wikipedia that should have been deleted years ago, but that still is there, or it means the Notability policy is so much up to a few wikipedia editors to interpret that the whole process often is more or less random. This latest not acceptance of a Nobel prize winner in physics due to wikipedia editors claims of lack of Notability is just likely the tip of the iceberg, and such a big case it will get lots of press. It is sad to see how many wikipedia editors operate with little respect and I suspect often totally lack of insight in the scientific field they edit. EntropyFormula (talk) 11:18, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

The draft was not rejected because of a lack of notability, read the first post of the section. T8612 11:29, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

yes likely that was a big part of the reason. Come on, if editors even had understood how important the work of Strickland is considered, they would have improved on the page instead of rejecting/deleting it. But yes I am sure we will hear a series of good cover up stories of why the rejection made initial sense? It is sad to see how a few editors are allowed to reject, delete and edit in wild ways to reduce the quality of a great platform of knowledge. If lack of references, then the wikipedia editors could have used something known as Google, and looked up a few references and improved the article. EntropyFormula (talk) 11:41, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Splendid! Dear 187.143.81.165, you're clearly the very person to volunteer to put in the work of reviewing and improving drafts submitted by new editors. Of course, you'll need an account to do that. . . . dave souza, talk 22:54, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

I read the original article and concurred with the decision. There were no citations at all in the original article and a list of five papers she authored/coauthored, again with no citations being present. It was even below stub or start class and should not have proceeded forward if no one was going to begin to add citations and flesh out the article. Off topic, but currently notable, there is a great deal of incomprehension on editorial policies of Wikipedia, where in the blogosphere, one commenter to a blog posting complained how he was not allowed to edit an article about a project he lead, another complained about an article about themself. I explained that no individual is permitted to edit such articles, due to it being a conflict of interest, but suggested edits would be welcome on the talk page for other editors to review. For that would be as bad as peer reviewing one's own work!Wzrd1 (talk) 01:38, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Overall, I don't think it helps that as I type this, this page is listed as being in category "Unknown-importance Women scientists articles". Women scientists who win Nobels are surely automatically important aren't they? When I look at the project page for that, I see one of the tasks you can do to help is rate articles, but I don't see a link to guidelines for such. I'm a long time, but infrequent, wikipedia editor. I cannot keep up with all of the changes in policy. New editors will be much worse off. --Elijah (talk) 02:39, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

"Unknown-importance" = "the importance has not yet been assessed by a human". Do you want to do that assessment? DS (talk) 05:14, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Take a look at the Childhood Chronic Pain talk page, you'll get an idea on where to go to have a page evaluated.Wzrd1 (talk) 03:08, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

As another long time but now infrequent editor, I'd not heard of WikiProject Articles for creation which gives a route for newbies to draft articles and wait for someone to evaluate their draft and indicate what improvements are needed: the template on the draft [currently] says "Review waiting, please be patient. This may take more than two months, since drafts are reviewed in no specific order. There are 4034 pending submissions waiting for review." The newbie on this article drafted it in March and didn't return: the draft was declined in May. Clearly, with hindsight, this whole fuss could have been avoided by not having this project, and as previously requiring newbies to build up a few edits before getting to start a new article. . . dave souza, talk 03:49, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

@Dave souza: what do you mean "as previously"? AfC has been around since 2007, long before edit count restrictions on new article creation were introduced. – Joe (talk) 06:16, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Apologies, my error – I've struck "as previously", didn't have these procedures when I started editing and evidently I'd forgotten the sequence. . . dave souza, talk 07:49, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

• FWIW: article in Le Monde about the whole did-not-have-a-page thing, explicitly referencing notability: [l'article] ne satisfaisait pas aux règles de notoriété de l’encyclopédie en ligne, qui prévoient que le sujet d’un article doit avoir eu une « couverture significative et durable », provenant de « sources fiables et indépendantes de ce sujet » (...) Mme Strickland était, avant l’obtention du prix Nobel, inconnue du grand public, et n’avait pas fait l’objet d’articles de presse. Translation: The article did not satisfy the online encyclopedia's notability criteria, that state that article subject must have had "significant and durable coverage" from "reliable and independent sources" (...) Mrs Strickland was, before her Nobel prize, unknown from the general public and had not been covered in the press. The article's title translates to "Nobel prize: why Donna Strickland was not on Wikipedia before winning that of physics".

(I have no idea whether if anywhere that should be described, but it is fairly rare that en-wp trivia makes it into French press. Le Monde is a big name of the French press.) Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 08:45, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Interesting to have a reliable source for the point that prior to this month she was "unknown from the general public and had not been covered in the press". Wikipedia is based on reliable published sources and isn't the place to push unknown people into the limelight. It might be nice to have an article for everyone with a society's webpage bio, but that could leave more unwatched pages open to vandalism. . dave souza, talk 08:57, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Before nominating [for deletion]: checks and alternatives

Perhaps we wouldn't be having to have this conversation if AfC had something equivalent to WP:BEFORE. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:00, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

True! Notice also that the backlog at AfC is huge. More requirements will make the backlog grow...it's a real challenge, and a huge responsibility that is often handled by relative newbies.Jacona (talk) 13:22, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) How is WP:BEFORE relevant? Despite the misleading publicity, as far as I can see from Draft:Donna Strickland: Revision history the draft was never deleted. It was created by a new editor, in their sole two edits, on 28 March 2018‎. On 23 May 2018 the request for it to go into article space was declined as an interim measure until the sort of sourcing described in WP:BEFORE was provided. On 2 October an IP edited the draft, adding mention of the Nobel Prize and the template for [re]submission – at this point the "draft has been resubmitted and is currently awaiting re-review." Currently "There are 3936 pending submissions waiting for review", and by then the main space article was in the throes of creation. If you're proposing that editors reviewing drafts do more work on them, why? It would only extend the waiting time for review. . . . dave souza, talk 13:36, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

student-teacher pair

The "student-teacher pair" is rather odd language for describing a graduate student and advisor/PI. Propose: in collaboration with her advisor... or she collaborated with her graduate advisor to... — Preceding unsigned comment added by SnarkyProfessor (talk • contribs) 22:30, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps, there are a significant number of readers who would not comprehend such positions though, so if possible, a wikilink to articles describing the PI or graduate advisor would turn a good edit into an excellent addition. I'd love to help, but know far too little about the graduate advisor titles at each level to make any useful contribution.Wzrd1 (talk) 01:45, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Material on AfC rejection

I've removed the material on the AfC rejection as it does not belong here per WP:SUBJECT. No indication of any impact in relation to the topic of the article, which is her, not her article. Galobtter (pingó mió) 05:59, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

I agree. It could be useful in criticisms of Wikipedia, gender bias on Wikipedia or notability in the English Wikipedia, but it is an utterly insignificant part of this Nobel laureate's biography and including it here would be undue navel-gazing. – Joe (talk) 06:14, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

I agree with moving elsewhere. Although the news outlets are understandably mixing up things, the "news" is about an alleged failure of Wikipedia:Article for creation, not about notability per se (which would be tested by a deletion). Various sources have explored the problems with AfC, so a section could be created in an appropriate article if there's not one yet. --Nemo 07:58, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Izolt please discuss here Galobtter (pingó mió) 07:44, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

This article is in the leading news section of the Guardian. Izolt (talk) 07:56, 4 October 2018 (UTC) Any reader of that story who wants to know more will visit Strickland's Wiki page not other categories of pages. This is a high profile story about her, and needs to be covered on her own page.Izolt (talk) 08:08, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

I don't think there's much we can say, really. "Her article was not accepted on Wikipedia in May 2018" is problematic, as it doesn't explain why. Yes, we can cite the explanation of Wikipedia's anti-female bias, but it is bull's four letters - I think we all here understand the article was rejected because it was a crappy stub not clearly showing notablity, using poor, primary, self-published sources, and Draftspace is even more backlogged than AfD, and borderline cases get a toss-of-a-coin decision (does WP:BEFORE even apply to drafts? Shrugh). And since none of those articles understand why, and a proper explanation like mine above is technically OR, we have to wait for better sources to discuss this, if they ever appear. Maybe someone could write a Signpost article, and maybe that would be an ok source... . For now I don't think this issue should be mentioned here, not until better sources appear. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:26, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

It's gone from the Grauniad's online leading section as seen from the UK, Female Nobel prize winner deemed not important enough for Wikipedia entry | Science | The Guardian seems to be tucked away under Americas, so that may vary in your locality. The article's got errors which misrepresent what happened, and annoyingly it lacks a comments section making it harder to put them right. Perhaps we can get a mythical Wikipedia "Site moderator" to resolve the issue? If the story has merit, better sources should appear, but it's still about Wikipedia rather than about Donna Strickland. Rather an insult to her if this trivial press spat about WP is made a significant part of her bio. . . dave souza, talk 08:49, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

I have also reverted User:Lihaas's inserton of similar material. They do not seem to feel the need to discuss it here, but the sources arise a question: are qz.com and vox.com RS? I ask out of curiosity only, as I don't know. My reversion was based on WP:BRD rather than questioning the sources issue. ——SerialNumber54129 11:11, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

• Lihaas, yes WP:TRIVIA is pretty clear, in being completely inapplicable here: This guideline does not suggest the inclusion or exclusion of any information; it only gives style recommendations. Issues of inclusion are addressed by content policies. Please discuss the inclusion of the material on the afc draft here per WP:ONUS:While information must be verifiable in order to be included in an article, this does not mean that all verifiable information must be included in an article. Galobtter (pingó mió) 11:14, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 4 October 2018

In Donna Strickland#Early life and education, change "Strickland was born on 27 May 1959 in Guelph, Ontario, Canada to Edith J. (née Ranney) and Lloyd Strickland.[ref] She has a sister Anne and a brother Rob." to "Strickland was born on 27 May 1959 in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.[ref]" as the names are unsourced per WP:BLPNAME. Capitalise the last word in the subheading "Donna Strickland#Nobel Prize in physics" as that's the title of the award. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 13:11, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

 Done, thanks. I just removed "in physics" from the heading, since it's rather redundant. – Joe (talk) 13:21, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

That was fast! Thanks Joe Roe, and I agree about the heading. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 13:26, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Protected edit request 2

In the "Early life and education" section, "Mourou and Strickland co-invented ..." should be changed to "Mourou and Strickland invented ...", no "co", as there were no other co-inventors. -- Roger Hui (talk) 14:01, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

 Done. – Joe (talk) 14:06, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Strickland's Education page and Ala mater insert could be more specific

Strickland and Moreau were grad students and research faculty at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (see the affiliation section on their CPA paper), which is affiliated with the University of Rochester but is semi-autonomous. It could be worthwhile to spell this out explicitly in her early education section, and under her alma mater. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Melkor was right (talk • contribs) 13:43, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

@Melkor was right: Do you have a reference for that? I'm not doubting you, but the two citations currently attached to that statement only say Rochester, so we'd need another. – Joe (talk) 14:33, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Protected Edit Requests - Publications

Can the citation for article DOI 10.1364 be updated so that the journal name links to its related wiki page Journal of the Optical Society B? - Tinynull (talk) 15:08, 4 October 2018 (UTC)