Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women

More women ADMINS?

wp:Request for adminship(RFA) is where Admins are given the Mop by a vote (oops wp:Consensus). Any editor (incluing IPs?) can participate in the election of ADMINs by placing a Support or an Oppose statement. Usually candidates are brought forward by nominators on behalf of the community of edtors. The popularity of the nominator carries many of the votes (my observation).

So, why don’t more women ADMINS nominate other women for adminship? Why Don't women participate more RFAs? How many of the active ADMINs are women? Ottawahitech (talk) 15:57, 20 December 2016 (UTC)please ping me

I'd be interested in hearing more about this.Westendgirl (talk) 01:21, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

@Westendgirl: You made my day by asking for more :-) Since I am rather short of time right now (too many deletions to fight), here is a link to an interesting discussion: Wikipedia_talk:Bureaucrats#RfC:_Increasing_the_activity_requirement_for_retaining_bureaucrat_rights. For those who know even less than I do about the politics of wikipedia:

• wiki_Bureaucrats are a step above wiki-ADMINs
• It was much easier to become an ADMIN before 2007 - one simply had to ask
• ADMINs who have been inactive for 3 (or is it 2) years are de-ADMINed, but can easily become ADMINs again simply by asking the Bureaucrats (I think) to be re-instated.
• End result is that an editor who has not been active on Wikipedia since, say, 2005, can simply waltz back in and get very powerful tools that allow them to DELETE (not simply revert) others contributions, wiki-BLOCK others, etc. etc.
• Getting rid of "bad" ADMINs is almost impossible. Ottawahitech (talk) 12:39, 29 December 2016 (UTC)please ping me

To answer questions and clarify some points: IPs cannot vote in an RfA, but are welcome to join discussions. I'm not sure that there is any evidence of more or less female admins, RfA nominations of female editors, or participation from female editors, as compared to the general gender ratio of editors, but it would be interesting information to know. WP:INACTIVITY contains an overview of the activity requirements. Sam Walton (talk) 12:57, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

@Samwalton9: Thanks for setting the record straight, I had no idea that ADMINs are desysopped/lose their "bit" after only 12 months of inactivity. Since it is so easy for them to gain it back, I think this is a good thing? But on the other hand it appears that one edit a year still makes them active? . Ottawahitech (talk) 23:06, 1 January 2017 (UTC)please ping me

@Ottawahitech: Yeah, it's a point of contention (see recent RfCs here and here); many users think that this is too little a requirement, since a single edit per year means administrators can keep their user rights indefinitely. Equally, finding a better definition of "active" is hard, so many others are opposed to stricter requirements. Sam Walton (talk) 23:10, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Not really sure I understand the difference in being an Admin and parenting. Seems like a lot of similar skills are involved--policing, refereeing, encouraging others to play nice, setting aside your own goals--none of which involve adding content to the encyclopedia. I would never want to subject anyone to that unless they really wanted it. Me, never gonna happen. ;) SusunW (talk) 23:41, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

There's a reason it's referred to as the mop :) Sam Walton (talk) 00:23, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

@Samwalton9, SusunW, and Westendgirl: Mop? I know some wp:ADMINs feel they are only mopping up after others, but (devil’s advocate follows):

As an editor who has been relentlessly pursued and once even wp:blocked indefinitely, I don’t feel that way at all about ADMINs. Lets face it, ADMINs are given law-enforcement, judicial, and executioner powers on wikipedia. Some exercise is diligently, but others are no different than ordinary bullies in dark alleys. Yes, citizens can protest, but it take SOME clout and a lot of street smarts to be heard on wikipedia. Ottawahitech (talk) 12:18, 7 January 2017 (UTC)please ping me

@Westendgirl: Here is a new Signpost article about RFAs. Ottawahitech (talk) 18:35, 17 January 2017 (UTC){{small|please ping me}

How to become an ADMIN

An interesting tidbit from WikiProject: "A 2008 academic study of Wikipedia concluded that participation in WikiProjects substantially improved the chances of an editor becoming an administrator, finding that one … WikiProject edit is worth ten article edits". Ottawahitech (talk) 02:41, 22 January 2017 (UTC)please ping me

Articles for Deletion

I recently wrote an article about someone whose work I thought was noteworthy and important. I felt that the reasons for deletion were dismissive of the woman's work and contributions -- it was a politician and journalist. When I look through articles that have been deleted, I see some trend to dismiss the contributions of women, whereas articles about men seem to receive less scrutiny. Has anyone ever looked at this as a potential problem? Are articles about women deleted more often? Do people see a woman's name in the list of new articles and zoom in to critique? Does anyone look at the discussion pages and see whether there is a feminist balance in the reasons for deletion? I had written about someone who has been featured in regional and national media for their political work.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Westendgirl (talk • contribs) 08:03, December 23, 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Westendgirl: Thanks for raising this important issue for discussion here. I am sure the thought that information about women is more likely to be deleted through the various deletion processes has crossed many minds. But how does one gather statistics that clearly show there is such a trend on Wikipedia?

One thing I check periodically is the ratio between the number of articles this project supports vs the number of articles nominated for deletion which can be found at wp:Women#Alerts. This number can compared to similar ratios from other Wikiprojects. Any thoughts? Ottawahitech (talk) 15:55, 24 December 2016 (UTC)please ping me

• getting deletion statistics is a real challenge partly because the deletion process here has become a convoluted mess. Some deletions happen quietly with no discussion and others are listed here: Category:Pages for discussion, all with a different set of rules. Ottawahitech (talk) 17:36, 25 December 2016 (UTC)please ping me

While I am not an expert on statistics, I seem to be among the oldest users of Wikipedia nowadays and remember some deletions. There used to be a trend to merge or delete articles concerning the wives or daughters of ancient and medieval rules due to their perceived lack of notability. We still have merger discussions for some cases. The article on Theodora Axouchina, which I created back in 2008, has been nominated for a merger to her husband's article since 2015.

Several articles on women writers or artists have either been deleted or been nominated for deletion for similar reasons. And naturally this is also the case for articles on actresses or female singers, where there is not even any WikiProject specifically covering them.

For example, the article on child actress Julia Winter was deleted without much of a discussion, because she only had one major role and a few minor projects. An attempt to recreate the article was deleted without discussion, as the deleting editor proclaimed: "she's not notable enough for an article". Dimadick (talk) 19:53, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

I'll throw my two cents into the ring. It isn't *just* that women's articles are seen as more trivial. It has a lot to do about the kind of sourcing that is available. Unless and until we can address the situation regarding sourcing, women's articles will continue to be deleted. I can best explain it by an example. Several weeks ago, I did a search to see how many articles for a well known man or woman it takes to create a biographical piece. I put in 2 names with no identifying characteristics: Gloria Allred and Geoffrey Robertson. For him, the very first link I pulled up gave a fairly complete bio: [1] (Surprisingly it does actually mention is personal life, though many articles on WP leave out family information on men's bios entirely) For her, the first five links had merely snippets in a bunch of articles, most of which focus on her work, her celebrity clients, her activism and a lot to do with Donald Trump. Little to do with her life, so I modified the search to Gloria Allred, biography. Weeding out the non-notable IMDB, and fan sites, I came up with her age, she went to high school (where?), she went to Loyola Law School in the 1970s, she went to University of Pennsylvania, she married twice; her age, she is a feminist, interested in politics, in 1966 she was working as a teacher, she was born in Philadelphia, she went to the University of Pennsylvania, she married twice. As is easily seen, multiple articles are needed to even create a biography for a woman. Imagine on someone not as famous, how many links one must pull up to complete a woman's biography? On historical figures, it is far worse, because the coverage on women throughout history has been dismal. Unless and until we figure out a way to adequately address that sources for men and women are different, we will never address the systemic inequality or stop articles from being deleted. One must work far harder to confirm adequate sourcing can be had on a woman subject before an article is created. Just my opinion. SusunW (talk) 20:16, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

@SusunW: Yes, but… Remember I was talking about deletions that happen without discussion? Here is my anecdote: I started Rachel Maines and Andrew Scull at roughly the same time, and if memory serves, with roughly the same type of information. The article on Andrew Scull is till there, more than a month after it was created but Rachel Maines was speedy deleted on 22 November 2016. Ottawahitech (talk) 22:07, 25 December 2016 (UTC)please ping me

Ottawahitech, which simply reiterates my point that One must work far harder to confirm adequate sourcing can be had on a woman subject before an article is created. I am fairly certain that there is a group of editors who focus on questioning notability of academics and scientists, particularly if they are BLPs. SusunW (talk) 22:27, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Just to clarify there is a group of editors who focus on questioning notability of academics and scientists, particularly if they are BLPs OK but in this particular case why did Andrew Scull survive speedy deletion?

One must work far harder to confirm adequate sourcing can be had on a woman subject before an article is created Are you saying that articles about women, are, and should be, more difficult to write and therefre deletion statistics are not necessary to show that pages involving women are more frequently deleted? What do others think? Ottawahitech (talk) 00:22, 26 December 2016 (UTC)please ping me

Ottawahitech my guess is that it was because Scull is male. I am not saying it should be more difficult for one to write articles about women, I am saying that the reality is that it is. Women do not get the same kind of press that men do. We cannot change what journalists write and are not allowed to do OR on WP. Thus, you will have to have more sources to cover sufficient biographical detail and/or meet significant coverage. Is it fair, no. Is it what must be dealt with, yes. I didn't say it isn't valuable to evaluate the biases and/or track the deletions. Doesn't mean that it will make those who speak loudest listen, or change anything, but if we consistently are able to show that the biases are real and not "legend", we may eventually be able to get change to happen. SusunW (talk) 04:27, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

It's possible that it was because Rachel Maines is a woman. But a lot depends on what the contents of the article were at the time of deletion and the sourcing provided. I've just expanded Andrew Scull, who clearly passes the criteria for WP:PROF, although you'd never have been able to tell that from the state of the article when I found it [2]. One reference was to amazon.com and the other didn't even mention him. Rachel Maines was speedy deleted per A7, i.e., no credible claim to notability or significance. Ottawahitech, what sources had you included in the Maines article? Were they on a par with those you had used for Andrew Scull? I'm going to re-create the Maines article later with proper sourcing, and we'll see what happens. Voceditenore (talk) 11:53, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

@Voceditenore:A subject is notable regardles of what is in an article. The question you should ask is: wp:Should notable articles be deleted with no discussion. Just my $.02 Ottawahitech (talk) 12:51, 29 December 2016 (UTC)please ping me

Ottawahitech, I assume you are referring to speedy deletion. Yes, in my view, if an article doesn't make a credible claim to the significance or notability of its subject, it should be deleted without discussion, providing the deleting admin has taken reasonable care before deleting by doing a quick Google check. I agree that admins don't always do that, but anyone familiar with the literal avalanche of new articles which are created daily (many, many, of which are wildly inappropriate for an encyclopedia) will see what they're up against. It's our job as experienced editors to take the minimal care to ensure that anything we create is unlikely to be a candidate for speedy deletion, or frankly even an AfD. Both processes consume enormous amounts of editors' and administrators' time and are usually easy to avoid. And, if a 2-sentence, badly referenced stub gets deleted, there has been a minimal loss of effort on the editor's part. Simply start again, making sure that the 2nd version has been well prepared before being put into article space. In my view BEFORE should be a two-way street. Voceditenore (talk) 14:33, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

@Voceditenore: Thank for recreating Rachel Maines and making Andrew Scull into a better wikipedia article. I hope you don’t mind if I also play devil’s advocate on the topic of recreating a new article when one had been deleted previously?

What I am most concerned about is the fact that once a new article is created the wiki-history available to non-ADMINs disappears. I wonder how many other wiki-articles about women have been deleted and recreated later, how many times, when for what reason and by whom they have been deleted, etc etc. All this information disappears from the history when a new article is created. Am I making sense? Ottawahitech (talk) 20:56, 30 December 2016 (UTC)please ping me

@Ottawahitech: There is little point speculating about causes for deletion when the articles in question were so poor in the first place. You seem to create a constant stream of low-quality articles with weak sourcing and close although inaccurate paraphrasing. You should not be surprised that so many of your articles are deleted. I doubt anything of value was lost if your original versions are not accessible to regular editors. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 00:48, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Ottawahitech, when an article is deleted and then recreated, it still has publicly available logs which tell you each time it was previously deleted, the deleting admin, and the reason for the deletion. Observe the log for Rachel Maines [3]. Or the detailed logs for the following two multiply deleted and recreated articles (on men, incidentally): Sujit Meher and Callum James Greens. None of the information you have cited as valuable "disappears" at all. The only thing that disappears from public view is the original text of the deleted article. I'm also pretty sure it's technically possible to have a program/bot which can scan the logs for articles in Category:Women and collate that information. If that's what you're interested in, perhaps propose it at the Village Pump? Voceditenore (talk) 18:36, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Voceditenore Yes, you are right. I guess I forgot about the deletion logs (BTW is there an easy link to get there?). I tried to use the deletion log to find deleted categories but was able to (I admit I did not have a lot of time to pursue this). One thing that a deletion log will not show you, but an old deleted page will, is other logged actions such as move, see for example: Bill 165 Ottawahitech (talk) 12:33, 7 January 2017 (UTC)please ping me

Ottawahitech, if the article still exists (or has been recreated), simply click on the "View history" tab and then click on "View logs for this page" which appears in small print at the top of the history page. It will show both moves and any previous deletions. See, for example, the logs for Lohengrin (opera). Voceditenore (talk) 10:49, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

@Voceditenore: Thanks for this important piece of info. It really helps me in my efforts to get some statistics about the deletion of women-related material from Wikipedia. As you probably know, for a long time I have been trying to piece together some statistics regarding the deletion of pages that I started, many of which were women-related. For example: Category: Women investors which was nominated for deletion while Category: Investors was unchallenged. Happily in this case there was an unusually large numbers of editors who participated in the deletion discussion to voice their keep vote (Thanks btw to User:Alligator bear , User: SusunW , User:Atsme, User:Dimadick, User:Montanabw,User:Hmlarson, User:Alansohn).Unfortunately the corresponding List of women investors did not fare as well, and ended up being deleted. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:53, 16 January 2017 (UTC)please ping me

Articles for Deletion (break1)

Yeah, my interest in this started when my article was deleted. I then took a look at the men in my city who have articles and they have done far less for social policy and some of them just own restaurants or have a position on city council or own some business. I then looked at the history of deletion for some random women politicians in my city and noted that them being women or of colour was not seen as significant. If you don't take this into context, it silences the contributions of women. I was then kind of stunned at the deletion process. I really can't understand why the article I wrote was deleted -- if you comb through the 13,700 articles, many prominently feature the politician, who is also now a journalist. And then I wondered how many admins are women. How many people end up dismissing the ideas and works of women, who may also take part in more collaborative movements? I've been trying to add articles about women here and there, but I started wondering if the legacy of admins or other structural flaws might be at work. I really felt kind of bullied through the process and was stunned that it went so quickly. Westendgirl (talk) 01:21, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Westendgirl I hope that the deletion situation will not discourage you. Yes, it is frustrating. It seemed to be a particularly quick AfD, though some of them drag on and on and on. No rhyme nor reason that I can tell that some are quick and others not so. I can tell you that it definitely makes a difference where the search originates. I am in Mexico and get very few hits on Bacchus. Taking those few articles, I see exactly the same pattern as I mentioned before. A few biographical details and lots of info about the school board, the budget, the politics. Granted, her notability is local to Canada, but there is coverage about her in the CBC and Globe and Mail and the Vancouver Sun, not to mention that Vancouver is a major metropolitan area. Doing a "by date" search, I get even few hits before this year. So you have strikes working against an article. "Recentism" and lack of coverage that is actually about her. I can't say that I have any idea how to fix the issues, I can only say we have to keep trying. SusunW (talk) 03:57, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

References

I wonder what is going on. The Vancouver Sun named here one of the top 100 influential women in the province. Here are a few CBC results, although there are results going back to 2013 (with one from 2008):

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/british-columbia/patti-bacchus-is-very-proud-raw-1.2678616 http://www.cbc.ca/earlyedition/podcast/2014/07/02/vsbs-patti-bacchus-on-summer-school/ http://www.cbc.ca/onthecoast/episodes/2014/02/04/patti-bacchus-goes-there/

Maclean's: http://www.macleans.ca/general/should-scientology-website-be-used-in-bc-public-schools/

I have 7 hits in the National Post. 109 in the Globe and Mail, going back to 2010, with one from 2010 even calling her a protagonist in the story (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/a-ripping-yarn-the-province-vs-vancouvers-school-board/article4353373/). These are our national newspapers. There was lots of coverage before this year but many newspapers have stopped keeping freely accessible online archives...CBC included.

Does Wikipedia not cover people who are known regionally or nationally? It's not as if this was in a small area. This work has affected policy throughout the entire province, because of the special powers granted to the Vancouver School Board under provincial charter. And it isn't just about Bacchus. I keep seeing situations like this with other politicians, like Constance Barnes. Westendgirl (talk) 19:36, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Westendgirl WP does cover people who are known regionally and nationally if there are sufficient RS about them over time. But, the issue with sourcing here is that WP does not allow use of self-generated publication, like blogs, interviews, podcasts, personal websites and fanpages, LinkedIn, etc. These types of self-generated materials are not usable for WP purposes because the format does not allow original research or synthesizing materials to draw conclusions. We can report what is written in secondary sources in our own words, but we cannot interpret what an original source is saying or implying. The podcasts are primary sources, she is talking, and not a usable source. In "A ripping yarn" you have 4 sentences about Bacchus, the rest of the article is about the school board controversy. In "Should Scientology website be used" you have 1 sentence about Bacchus. They can be part of your evidence, but they clearly do not reflect significant coverage about her. It is very frustrating, because I have no doubt that the Vancouver Sun can judge her sphere of influence far better than an editor on WP. Just because the article was deleted, does not mean she isn't notable, just that she does not meet WP guidelines for inclusion right now. You might check with the WP library to see if they can get access to Canadian news archives. I don't know if that is possible or not. SusunW (talk) 20:39, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

• Westendgirl Click on Patti Bacchus and you will see it was deleted twice, once as A7: No credible indication of importance by User:Bearcat who is a Canadian ADMIN, and a few months later through so-called "community consensus’"

During the "discussion" the following voted Delete: Bearcat who used examples of a man who is a CEO and a woman who is a lead singer of a band, User:Johnpacklambert who has a history with pages about women was named in the Amanda Filipacchi case (a page where I recently had a dustup with an editor who, I assume, followed me to this discussion thread), User:reddogsix and User:Dane who are new-page-patrollers, many of whom in my experience dedicate their wiki-lives to surveying others' contributions and nominating pages for deletion.

The only editor to vote Keep was User:Thesteve Ottawahitech (talk) 17:07, 1 January 2017 (UTC)please ping me

@Westendgirl: Something else I should have mentioned: Have you tried posting information about this issue at:

• wp:WikiProject Vancouver
• wp:WikiProject Education in Canada

You never know who will see this and may be willing to offer help Ottawahitech (talk) 16:24, 2 January 2017 (UTC)please ping me

It does - and it is women getting unevenly nominated for deletion. But that only works if people don't notice the AFD. There's no way I'd have voted to delete that - but I didn't see it, as is the case for many of us I suggest. The Drover's Wife (talk) 20:27, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree with that too, The Drover's Wife and one is limited in asking for help once a file is targeted, because then one is accused of canvassing. So, how do we fix it? SusunW (talk) 20:45, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I think notices and raising discussions in spaces like this are really important in these cases. It's not canvassing, because it's just soliciting broader input - and I definitely don't always vote keep where posted on talk pages like this, but where they obviously are notable (such as Bacchus) it can help prevent them from slipping through the cracks. The Drover's Wife (talk) 21:18, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

• Does this project subscribe to AAlertBot? If not, you should. It regularly alerts you to key changes in articles bannered for your project. The results can be transcluded on your project page and put on individual watchlists. It notifies you of AfDs, PRODs, CfDs, FAC and GA candidates, Requested Moves, etc. It's absolutely invaluable. Note that to get the best results, this would entail making sure all relevant new articles are bannered for this project from now on. Voceditenore (talk) 10:56, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

We subscribe to alerts. However, we only receive notifications if people affix one of the affiliated women projects' banners to the talk page. {{WikiProject Women}} should result in an alert, but it doesn't always. I've been involved in several AfD discussions where the project was never notified. SusunW (talk) 15:55, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

That's strange. I wonder if it's because the banner was only added after the article was sent to AfD? Or possibly the AfD opened and closed between bot runs? I remember back in October there was a two-week gap between runs, for some reason. But they're usually every three days. Voceditenore (talk) 16:27, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

The bot should run every day. If it skips a day, ping either myself or User:Hellknowz, it's likely the bot crashed an we didn't notice. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:08, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Likewise, if it misses an article, leave a message on WP:AALERTS/BUGS. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:09, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

• I can't speak for every editor who contributes to Wikipedia at all — but speaking for myself, I most certainly do not judge articles about women by harsher standards than I judge articles about men. What I do see sometimes, however, is that some people seem to think that the importance of counteracting systemic bias means that women, people of colour, LGBTs, etc., should be granted special inclusion standards significantly lower than what we would require for an equivalent heterosexual white male. There was, for instance, a draft article attempted earlier this year about a Hispanic woman who had held office as a county registrar — and when it was rejected for inclusion because county registrar isn't an office that satisfies WP:NPOL and the article was entirely dependent on primary sources rather than reliable ones that could actually carry a WP:GNG claim, the creator tried to argue that we had to create special exemptions from our sourcing and notability standards just because the words "Hispanic" and "woman" happened to be involved.
  And as a gay man who's actively involved in the LGBT topic area, I regularly see the argument advanced that the importance of improving transgender visibility requires us to suspend our notability and sourcing standards, and keep any article about any transgender person whose mere existence can be verified by any form of substandard Blogspot/YouTube sourcing at all, even if a cisgender person with the same notability claim and the same quality of sourcing would get deleted. I've also seen people look at the fact that we would keep an article about John Kerry while deleting an article about an unelected female candidate for a city council seat, and claim that gender bias was the determining factor in their difference of treatment given that Kerry wasn't "elected" to his current position either; I've seen people argue that gender bias, homophobia, racism or ableism accounted for the deletion of articles about people who didn't actually have any credible notability claim or any non-primary sourceability. Some people really do seem to think that if a person happens to be a member of an underrepresented minority, then the mere fact that they're nominally verifiable as existing should be enough to get them into Wikipedia regardless of whether a credible notability claim, and the reliable sources needed to support it, actually exist or not. But needless to say, that's not how it works — as important as it is to improve our coverage of women and people of colour and LGBTs, we still have to rely on notability standards and reliable sourcing as our yardsticks for who's includable and who isn't.
  As noted in the AFD discussion on Patti Bacchus, being a school board trustee is not a level of office that gets a person into Wikipedia in and of itself (and no, being the chair of the school board is not a notability bump over and above other trustees, either.) And what you showed for sourcing did not build a strong case that Bacchus had earned a standalone BLP separate from being named in the board's article: what you showed was namechecks of her existence in articles about the board, not articles that were substantively about her. What you showed is sources that supported including content about the board dismissal in the article about the board; you did not show sources that supported spinning off separate BLPs of individual trustees separately from the board's article. And again, as important as it is to improve our undercoverage of women, the answer to that is not to create a special inclusion standard whereby a woman can have a Wikipedia article just for serving on a school board while a man cannot; it's to find the considerable number of women who do meet our existing inclusion standards but haven't been written about yet. (For instance, as of today we still don't have an article about Melissa De Genova, despite the fact that she's served on Vancouver City Council for two years now and Vancouver is a global city where the city councillors do pass NPOL — she is, in fact, the only current member of Vancouver City Council who doesn't have an article yet. So if you're really that interested in improving Wikipedia's coverage of women by delving into Vancouver municipal politics, could you maybe start an article about her instead of trying to construct a gender-bias argument around a school board trustee whose deletion had nothing whatsoever to do with "woman" and everything to do with "school board trustee"?)
  But no, women are not being judged more harshly than men of equivalent notability and sourceability; what does happen, however, is that some people seem to think the laudable goal of getting more women into Wikipedia legitimizes the reliance on less notability and less sourceability if the topic is a woman than would be required if the topic was a man, and some people do try to raise gender bias as an argument in situations where gender bias had nothing to do with it whatsoever. Bearcat (talk) 18:11, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

• Re:could you maybe start an article about her instead of trying to construct a gender-bias argument around a school board trustee whose deletion had nothing whatsoever to do with "woman" and everything to do with "school boardtrustee"?

@Bearcat: Can you please clarify who you are addressing with this statement? I do not remember anyone in this discussion "trying to construct a gender-bias argument around a school board trustee". Am I wrong in believing that participants in this discussion are entitled to discuss their feelings in regards to deletions of articles they were involved in? Is there anything wrong with speculating about possible motives of other editors?

Also since we are all volunteers here, I believe you have no authority to dictate to other editors what content they should work on. Ottawahitech (talk) 19:31, 1 January 2017 (UTC)please ping me

Er, firstly, the whole discussion was predicated right from the start on the assertion that Patti Bacchus got deleted solely because she was a woman, rather than because her base notability claim and the quality of sourcing present to support it simply didn't meet our requirements. Secondly, there is something wrong with speculating about possible motives of other editors — especially if you're going to actively ping those other editors and then try to withhold their right to defend themselves against the false speculation about their motives. People are allowed to respond if they're being misrepresented or misquoted or misunderstood. And thirdly, making a suggestion does not equal "dictating" anything. Bearcat (talk) 19:39, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

History of wiki-deletions

Glass ceiling which was created in 2004 was up for deletion less than 20 minutes of its creation. Ottawahitech (talk) 11:48, 14 January 2017 (UTC)please ping me

Hardly surprising as at creation it was a copyvio dicdef. During the deletion discussion it was improved and expanded. I don't think that particular deletion nomination is a useful example of discrimination against women. PamD 12:09, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks @PamD: I did not know that. Unfortunately, I was not able to spend the time required to locate this historical deletion discussion, and the nominator did not include a rationale in their edit summary, so I must take your word about the reason for nomination. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:37, 16 January 2017 (UTC)please ping me

I am assuming you did not check Talk:Glass ceiling, which preserves that particular discussion. Nobody bothered to archive the discussion in the 13 intervening years. Dimadick (talk) 16:11, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

The version which was nominated for deletion consisted of:

an intangible barrier within the hierarchy of a company that prevents women or minorities from obtaining upper-level positions

from Merriam Webster. www.m-w.com.

Just that - an unadorned dicdef, attributed but copyvio. It can be found by going to "History", "Oldest" and looking. Not worth going to the barricades for. It wasn't deleted, it was improved. There may be some deletion nominations which can usefully be cited to illustrate bias against women, but this isn't one of them. PamD 18:03, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Missing women U.S. state supreme court justices

Greetings! The following are rudimentary drafts for missing articles for women who have served on U.S. state supreme courts. This is not an exhaustive list on the topic, but these are definitely important articles that should be improved and moved to mainspace. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:36, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

1. Draft:Barbara Culver - Barbara Culver (Texas)
2. Draft:Betty Dickey - Betty Dickey (Arkansas)
3. Draft:Deborah Agosti - Deborah Agosti or Deborah A. Agosti (Nevada)
4. Draft:Deborah Hankinson - Deborah Hankinson (Texas)
5. Draft:Jean Brown (Alabama judge) - Jean Brown (Alabama judge) (Alabama)
6. Draft:Kate M. Fox - Kate M. Fox (Wyoming)
7. Draft:Mary C. Walters - Mary C. Walters (New Mexico)
8. Draft:Nancy A. Becker - Nancy A. Becker (Nevada)
9. Draft:Pamela B. Minzner - Pamela B. Minzner (New Mexico)
10. Draft:Patricia M. Smith - Patricia M. Smith (Alabama)
11. Draft:Rhoda V. Lewis - Rhoda V. Lewis (Hawaii)
12. Draft:Rhonda K. Wood - Rhonda K. Wood (Arkansas)
13. Draft:Victoria Lederberg - Victoria Lederberg (Rhode Island)

Thank you for the list and for working on these, BD2412. I'll copy it over to Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Law#United States. --Rosiestep (talk) 23:58, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Tricia McCauley

A new article about actress Tricia McCauley has been nominated for deletion, because so far it only contains details of her murder.

You might be able to find something to improve the article. Dimadick (talk) 19:39, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Save the Date: April 2017

Wikimedia DC has received a grant to facilitate a contest about women in 2017. The meetup page (to be created) will have more information, but here are a few particulars. --Rosiestep (talk) 21:41, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

• When: April 1-30, 2017
• Grant: US$1,250
• Format: Destubathon Plus (to be clarified)
• Geo scope: US 50 states, plus DC, PR, and Guam
• Focus: US women
• Type: contest+campaign... it's a contest with prizes for those who want to participate in a contest, and it's a campaign if you want to participate in the event but don't want to compete for a prize.

Research on the effects of violence in mass media

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Talk:Research on the effects of violence in mass media#Latest edits. Permalink here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:24, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Violence against women

I recently found Sati (practice), Jauhar and Dowry death which are articles about women who are either murdered are compelled to commit suicide. I added this wikiproject’s banner to the talkpages, I hope this is OK? Ottawahitech (talk) 17:16, 8 January 2017 (UTC)please ping me

Hi Ottawahitech. Yes, they are within the purview of this WikiProject, so thank you for adding the banner to the talkpages. --Rosiestep (talk) 18:48, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Judy Garland

I have nominated Judy Garland for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Snuggums (talk / edits) 01:10, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Ellen Pao

What is going on at Ellen Pao? Ottawahitech (talk) 12:20, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Ottawahitech What do you mean? It doesn't look like much. —PermStrump(talk) 00:20, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

@Permstrump: Thanks for settling the issues at Ellen Pao. By the way there is now a big red link there right in the introduction: Kapor Center for Social Impact which I googled to the primary website and found out it says: DIVERSIFYING TECH BY REMOVING BARRIERS, and was wondering if this is something wp:Women in red could tackle? Ottawahitech (talk) 12:05, 17 January 2017 (UTC)please ping me

Oops, further reading of the primary website: "The Kapor family of organizations works to remove barriers to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education and tech careers for underrepresented people of color" - so I guess nothing to do with women? Ottawahitech (talk) 12:12, 17 January 2017 (UTC)please ping me

@Ottawahitech: Why not just go ahead and write the article, if it looks a notable organisation, or unlink it if not, rather than talking about it? PamD 12:57, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

@PamD: I originally brought Kapor Center for Social Impact up here was when I mistakely believed it was a women-reated article that some here may be interested in developing. Why did I not simply write it up myself instead of posting here? - I guess it is because I was hoping to get more editors interested in the general area of women in tech which is an area that, I believe, needs a lot of help. Ottawahitech (talk) 16:07, 19 January 2017 (UTC)please ping me

New category Category:Women in cannabis

The recent creation of Women Grow made me notice a lacking at WikiProject Cannabis, so I created a new category. Note also that WPCannabis is planning an edit-a-thon for this April, and we're working to ensure we include a proportion of women-focused articles on our target list Wikipedia:WikiProject Cannabis/Redlinks. We can swing by in April to announce it here to invite y'all to help expand our coverage of women in the cannabis field. Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 05:23, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

GAR for Alexandra Stan v. Marcel Prodan

Alexandra Stan v. Marcel Prodan, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. BlueMoonset (talk) 16:10, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

1978 March for the Equal Rights Amendment

There was not a Wikipedia page for the March for the Equal Rights Amendment in Washington DC in 1978. So in a sense it was a "redlink." 100,000 people marched, and altho there wasn't that much press coverage, it seems like a notable event. I just created a stub, and if anyone would like to contribute to it, that would be wonderful. Netherzone (talk) 02:20, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

The Women's Review of Books

According to WP:JCW, this is a source that's used about 34 times on Wikipedia, and we have no corresponding article on it. This seems like an academic journal likely to pass WP:NJOURNALS. Whether this should have a standalone article, or a section in the publisher's article Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College), I leave up to this project, but anyone wanting to write that article would be more than welcomed to do so. There's some guidance at WP:JWG if you never wrote an article about a journal like this. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:37, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Please add articles to underpopulated women categories

Many women's categories are underpopulated. If a category has no members, it is deleted without notice or discussion. Unfortunately, some of the underpopulated categories are completely depopulated when editors remove entries from the category, causing the category to be deleted. You can help by adding appropriate articles. See: Category:Underpopulated women categories, and adding your name to its talk-page list.

Also it would be nice to add this category to wp:WikiProject Women. Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 15:57, 19 January 2017 (UTC)please ping me

Signpost article about this wiki project anyone?

Has this wiki-project ever been covered in the signpost? Ottawahitech (talk) 20:34, 19 January 2017 (UTC)please ping me

Hi Ottawahitech. I don't think so. (adding Megalibrarygirl). --Rosiestep (talk) 20:25, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

@Rosiestep and Ottawahitech:, it's been written about, but not for the WikiProject section. There was an article about the first Women in Architecture editathon. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 20:56, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Chika Ike

Would someone mind taking a look at Chika Ike and assessing it? The article needs to be cleaned up and it looks like there might be some COI editors primarily adding content to it. Ike seems to satisfy WP:NACTOR, but the sources are not very good for establishing her Wikipedia notability. Thanks in advance. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:05, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Trenyce for peer review

I've listed Trenyce for peer review. This article is about an American singer and actress best known as a finalist on the second season of American Idol and for her work in musical theatre. I would like to get this article to the level of a Good Article sometime in the future. This is the first time that I have worked on this time of article (something on a living person). I would greatly appreciate any help on this. Comments would be greatly appreciated, at Wikipedia:Peer review/Trenyce/archive1. Thank you in advance! Aoba47 (talk) 22:57, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Nominations for Wikisource Women's history month in March?

If any of you have specific public domain works available on .pdf or .djvu relating to women's history or by women which you would like to see maybe considered for the March collaboration, which you would also be willing to spend some time proofreading of course, please feel free to indicate as much over at wikisource:Wikisource talk:Proofread of the Month, in the proposals for March 2017. John Carter (talk) 15:26, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Katy Feeney

I posted a suggestion at Articles for Creation. Requested Articles. A friend suggested to me that I notify this wikiproject, too. Here's the diff.
David in DC (talk) 18:02, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Ruth Ibanez tagged for speedy deletion

Ruth Ibanez an article I just created has been tagged with an wp:A7 within 2 minutes of creation. This is not right: the article should at least go to wp:AfD to determine if she is notable or not, but to speedy with a "not significant"? Ottawahitech (talk) 13:09, 28 January 2017 (UTC)please ping me

She holds one patent: that doesn't look like an indication of significance. I'm not surprised the article has been Speedied. You've clicked the button to defend it on the talk page, but haven't given a reason there why she should not be speedy-deleted. Surely you're an experienced-enough editor to understand how that system is supposed to work: you give a reason. One article in CNN iReport ("Not verified by CNN") covering her divine inspiration for a patent does not seem to confer notability, and there are no relevant ghits. Not every woman needs to have a WP article, not even every woman who has a patent. Sorry. PamD 13:22, 28 January 2017 (UTC) @Ottawahitech: forgot to ping. PamD 13:24, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Gotta say I don't see what the fuss about this speedy deletion tag is, short of perhaps the very little time between creation and tagging which is usually a no-no per WP:BITE. However, you've been around these parts for long enough that you ought to be familiar with WP:CSD criteria by now. But even if this were not CSD-able (which it clearly is), having a patent on a variant of some long-existing technology (since the mid 1950s at least) is a hardly a conveyor of notability. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:48, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

• @PamD: I cannot locate any women patent holders with an article on Wikipedia. I am trying to add them to Category:Patent holders, an underpopulated category that currently contains only 16 entries. If it turns out that there aren't any wouldn't that make Ibanez a significant person? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:20, 29 January 2017 (UTC)please ping me

@Ottawahitech: Maybe the category is just under-assigned. Googling "first woman patent" found the splendid Mary Dixon Kies, who isn't in that category. Nor is Hannah Slater, who doesn't seem to have any "Women..." categories, either (apart from Category:Deaths in childbirth). Is it a useful category anyway, I wonder? ... Ah, I now see that you created it. Hmmm. I'd really think that "Inventors", perhaps "Women inventors" would be a more useful category. Thousands and thousands of people, largely pretty un-notable, have held patents. My own great-uncle-in-law patented a railway carriage door safety device but lived and died as a non-notable cab-driver, whose obituary in local paper spoke highly of his service to local Methodist chapel. (Or was he the one with an earlier life emigrating from Cornwall to Australia as a tin-miner and returning? I forget). PamD 14:51, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

And on this side of the big pond we have Amye Everard Ball who was granted a patent in 1637. And isn't in the category. PamD 14:54, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

BTW did everyone see that the picture in Amye Everard Ball beside This English biographical article is a stub is that of a man. How is this for unconscious bias? Ottawahitech (talk) 15:19, 29 January 2017 (UTC)please ping me

February 2017 at Women in Red

February 2017
	Black Women & Women Anthropologists online editathons Faciliated by Women in Red

(To subscribe, Women in Red/Invite list. Unsubscribe, Women in Red/Opt-out list) --Rosiestep (talk) 20:55, 28 January 2017 (UTC) via MassMessaging