
Wikipedia rejected an entry on Strickland in May because she wasnt famous enough - p4bl0
https://qz.com/1410909/wikipedia-had-rejected-nobel-prize-winner-donna-strickland-because-she-wasnt-famous-enough/
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eindiran
This whole controversy wouldn't even have happened if Wikipedia wasn't
controlled by Deletionists. Maybe this will be the help the Wikipedia
community needs to take a step back and be a little more relaxed about
inclusion.

To quote Paul Graham on the subject, Deletionists are "constrained by print-
era thinking." There is no harm in allowing a large number of articles that
people don't frequently read, and being quick to delete articles does have
harmful side effects, as evidenced by this case.

~~~
dTal
The worst is it's inconsistently applied. Some trivial topics are covered to
the point of absurdity:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_(Sesame_Street)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_\(Sesame_Street\))
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernie_(Sesame_Street)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernie_\(Sesame_Street\))
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_and_Ernie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_and_Ernie)

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8bitsrule
My reaction to the rejected draft
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Donna_Stric...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Donna_Strickland&oldid=842614385)
is that it did _not_ make clear Strickland's notability.

I'm fairly passionate about disproportional representation of women
scientists. (E.g., Leavitt, Burnell.) In the (more distant) past I've
initiated or added to several WP articles about women scientists.

Sometimes editors may be too quick to 'pull the trigger' on stuff ... there
are _lots_ of 'unnotable personages' attempts. IMO, in this case (haven't
scrutinized it closely) it looks like they tried to be fair in encouraging
more 'proof', according to the established standards.

Side note: WP is, if anything, overly protective of orthodox scientific
viewpoints. Maybe that colored the thinking here, who knows. But it's _up to
the submitting editor to make notability clear._

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ummonk
The notability lawyers on Wikipedia are pernicious. Especially when you
consider how much in depth coverage there is of random fictional series.

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olliej
Note that there were articles for the men.

~~~
jjcm
For what it's worth, Arthur Ashkin began working in optics in the 1960s and is
considered the father of the field of optical tweezers[1]. Considering he's
the creator of an entire branch of optical sciences, I feel it warrants a
wikipedia article.

Gérard Mourou, while significantly less famous than Ashkin, has still been the
recipient of many awards in the field of optics prior to his Nobel win[2], had
previous discoveries to his name, and was the head of some labs and
organizations.

Prior to the Nobel award, Donna Strickland was an associate professor. The
three were definitely not equal when it came to notability.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_tweezers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_tweezers)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=G%C3%A9rard_Mouro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=G%C3%A9rard_Mourou&oldid=751130728)

~~~
bachmeier
> Prior to the Nobel award, Donna Strickland was an associate professor.

So obviously the thing about her being an associate professor says more about
her contributions than getting a Nobel Prize.

If you're going to try to explain away a Nobel Prize, you need to look for a
new hobby. But I guess fundamentalist beliefs are resistant to evidence...

~~~
keeganpoppen
don't you see? her work was of little to no value, worthy of no less than
total obscurity, for many, many years, and then one day, spontaneously, became
worthy of mention in the esteemed... wikis... of Wikipedia-- the day she was
awarded a Nobel Prize _completely_ out of the blue, apropos of nothing.

story checks out; nothing to see here! :^)

edit re downvotes: (not to speak for parent and OP, but) i don't think the
claim here is that the kibosh-putting-on of her wikipedia page was done with
malicious intent, but simply that bias may have played a role in that
decision. and since it was demonstrated pretty damn unambiguously to have been
mistaken in this case-- the bar for Nobel Prizes is just a _teensy_ bit above
the bar for having a Wikipedia page-- perhaps, as with all mistakes, it is
something to learn from and bear in mind in the future. methinks he* doth
protest too much?

* about as apt an application of the phrase as you're ever likely to see heh

~~~
edflsafoiewq
Generally, that is what happens. A topic spontaneously becomes available for a
Wikipedia article when a third-party source of sufficient notability comes
into existence. This is a discontinuous process.

You say that the decision was "mistaken" as though Wikipedia and the Nobel
committee pass judgements of the same nature. But the function of Wikipedia's
editors is not to judge whether her scientific work constitutes an
"outstanding contribution for humanity" (for which they are evidently ill-
equipped), nor is it to judge whether there __exist __sources which would
confer some level of notability on her. It is only to judge whether the
__particular sources presented __confer some level of notability. Looking at
the rejected article, the only references are to a paper she published and two
biographies on the websites of organizations she belongs to. There is no
evidence that "the person's research has had a significant impact in their
scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent
reliable sources" (from "Notability (academics)").

Anyway, I don't see why an encyclopedia should presage notability in the first
place. It works the other way around. Now that she has been awarded the Nobel
and her impact is beyond all contention "demonstrated by independent reliable
sources", she gets a Wikipedia article. That's how it's supposed to work isn't
it?

