
Wikipedia Equality can be done. But we need to start the discussion - NewEraOfLiberty
https://medium.com/the-hit-job/wikipedia-equality-can-be-done-but-we-need-to-start-the-discussion-a7615db924cf
======
ExactoKnight
Citation needed.

Wikipedia is actually falling victim to the opposite: ideological tyranny
imposed by a small cadre of editors.

Some Wikipedia articles now show noticeable bias (e.g. compare the "Men's
Rights 'movement'" article to "Women's Rights"). On many pages, particularly
gender related articles, there is a band of aggressive editors who will fight
reasonable efforts to balance the tone of articles. Outside contributors who
try to improve these pages will get dogpiled on. Unless you are an expert at
wiki-lawyering, you won't survive even a couple edits before you are banned or
restricted from editing. They enforce/investigate multiple accounts, VPN &
proxy usage vigorously, so once you are out, you are effectively purged. If
you are ambitious and make edits similar to what others have tried (often
because all of them are trying to fix the same biased statement), expect to be
accused of being a "sockpuppet" or of being a "meatpuppet." If that fails, you
will be accused of "tendentious editing". Of course responding to these
accusations takes extraordinary amounts of time -- which is the point. These
tactics are used (very successfully) to reduce people's resolve to contribute
or fix biased articles.

Wikipedia's ideological hijacking is a serious problem and arguably represents
the biggest threat to Wikipedia's longterm legitimacy. Those engaging in
ideological hijackings have (very rightly) realized that if they can define
what is written about a movement on Wikipedia, they can control what society
thinks about it.

~~~
putsteadywere
That is a big problem but is orthogonal to the problem the author is
discussing, which is "how do I get pages made for things that my community and
I care about, but no-one else does?"

------
putsteadywere
"Our main objective is to abolish the Notability Criteria, because this is the
major root cause of the aforementioned exclusion and inequality."

Woo! What a line to start on. I had a kneejerk 'heck no' response, but I buy
the author's argument that the verifiability criteria and upholding the
prohibition against original research can negate most of the downsides of
removing notability.

I worry that it could make Wikipedia harder to search, and that pages will
need to be better indexed.

What if my name is Paul Ryan, and I create a Wikipedia page for all 798 other
people named Paul Ryan
([http://howmanyofme.com/people/Paul_Ryan/](http://howmanyofme.com/people/Paul_Ryan/))
using whitepages.com to satisfy verifiability so that when people try and find
my Wikipedia page they are greeted by a disambiguation page that would be 12
printed pages long?

In order to prevent people from using the end of notability to obfuscate, I
think that Wikipedia may need to switch to a more Google-like ranked search
engine.

------
godshatter
Is the author claiming that the notability criteria currently in place
excludes notable women or minorities? I didn't see anything in there relating
to sex or gender or race. If there is and I missed it, the obvious next step
would be to work to amend the notability criteria in order to be more equal in
gender and/or race.

~~~
putsteadywere
It'd be better if the author was in this thread responding, but I don't know
if they have any relationship to the poster.

I think the argument is probably:

0.) some people have been historically advantaged over each other for non-
meritocratic reasons.

1.) one of the ways people have been advantaged is itself in the notability of
their actions.

[0]: [http://listverse.com/2013/10/14/10-groundbreaking-women-
scie...](http://listverse.com/2013/10/14/10-groundbreaking-women-scientists-
written-off-by-history/)

[1]: [http://io9.gizmodo.com/5077952/women-who-pretended-to-be-
men...](http://io9.gizmodo.com/5077952/women-who-pretended-to-be-men-to-
publish-scifi-books)

[2]:
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324355904578159...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324355904578159453918443978)

[3]: [https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/are-female-scientists-
hi...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/are-female-scientists-hiding/)

2.) Therefore, using notability as a prerequisite for inclusion perpetuates a
non-meritocratic historical bias.

~~~
godshatter
Is there any guarantee that getting rid of the notability criteria is going to
result in a more meritocratic system? I doubt it myself. It might help some
women or minorities that have been overlooked become more notable, but it also
opens the floodgates for anyone to be notable, which sort of destroys the
purpose.

~~~
putsteadywere
I agree with everything you said, if you say "changes the purpose" rather than
"destroys the purpose" \- change/destruction being a value judgment, but a
characterization I would make. I think the author would agree with you, and
addresses this as well.

To your question: "Is there any guarantee that getting rid of the notability
criteria is going to result in a more meritocratic system?" I think that there
are no guarantees in cultural changes, and the best way to be wrong about the
outcomes of cultural change is to predict any outcome with certainty. That
said, if uncertainty was a sufficient argument against cultural change, then
we'd all be hunter/gatherers.

------
acover
What are the most egregious submission removals?

~~~
putsteadywere
I'd like to know this as well.

