Comment by BeetleB | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BeetleB | Hacker News Reader

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> If the Wikipedia editor didn't just Google the person if there were no links why didn't they go to some minor effort rather than just assuming said article is bunk.

It is not their role to do so. Or put another way, it is no more their role to do it than yours.

Furthermore, the admin is likely not a domain expert and it makes sense to send it back to the author who clearly knows more to say "Hey, we need citations." Which is what was done.

> Or again, after a very quick search realise the person is senior and publish asking for more public input on the topic/atricle.

This was more or less done: The rejection notice said more input was needed.

As someone who spent time in academia: I'm definitely against creating pages for researchers who merely have published a lot. Their work has to be significant. While hers clearly was, it was not referenced.

> The fact it was deleted instead shows either a problem with the mods or a bias among the mods

Frankly, the fact is that you are not aware of Wikipedia's AFC submission process. Please take a look here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_creatio...

And the guidelines for reviewers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles...

Specifically, look at the review flowchart:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a8/Flow_ch...

It very clearly states that if an AFC article is not reliably sourced, it should be rejected.

While I can't speak for the actual biases of the admin, the article would have been rejected by any unbiased admin who follows the process.

> Most conversation on this is around defending a wiki admin from not being capable of determining good from bad which is getting stupid.

I agree it is stupid, but the stupidity arises from the CBC article: They chose to highlight this without doing the appropriate work to understand how Wikipedia works. While the bias they speak of may well be very real, they didn't pick a good example - opting instead for sensationalism.

I'm beating a dead horse here, but I want to repeat myself: you don't have to use the AfC process at all. You can just create a new Wikipedia article directly, without any admin review. You go through AfC because you choose to do so, not because Wikipedia has a whole complicated flowchart that gates which new articles can be created.

Before Donna Strickland was awarded her Nobel, nobody opted to do this. So the real critique here isn't that Wikipedia admins are hostile to women scientists (though, for all I know, they may be), but rather that Wikipedia volunteers don't generate articles for them spontaneously. That's a problem, but it's a different kind of problem.

> I'm beating a dead horse here, but I want to repeat myself: you don't have to use the AfC process at all. You can just create a new Wikipedia article directly, without any admin review. You go through AfC because you choose to do so, not because Wikipedia has a whole complicated flowchart that gates which new articles can be created.

It's a bit sad that so many commenters do not understand this basic fact.

Looking at so many of the comments here: People have no idea how Wikipedia works, and to a certain extent, even what it is. People are treating it and its admins as a separate entity from the rest of the world, when in reality both contributors and admins are you and me. Whenever I see a comment here saying "Well, the admin could have at least done a Google search...", I realize people have no idea what they are talking about. Why are they expecting an admin to Google about every single article they review? It's like asking the editor of a newspaper to go do some research himself instead of complaining about a freelancer submitting a poorly sourced article.

I can now relate with those teachers who in the early days of Wikipedia kept forbidding it as a source in school papers. It's been around 20 years, and it's quite clear from the comments that even well educated folks do not understand it. Wikipedia has lots of problems, but also lots of benefits. It's critical to understand its shortcomings if you intend to rely on the information contained within.

...those teachers who in the early days of Wikipedia kept forbidding it as a source in school papers.

Wait, is it somehow not still forbidden for that use? What kind of clown show are these teachers suffering?

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