

Wikipedia’s Sexism - jonemo
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/opinion/sunday/wikipedias-sexism.html

======
greenyoda
_But there was more. Much more. As soon as the Op-Ed article appeared, unhappy
Wikipedia editors pounced on my Wikipedia page and started making alterations
to it, erasing as much as they possibly could without (I assume) technically
breaking the rules. They removed the links to outside sources, like interviews
of me and reviews of my novels. Not surprisingly, they also removed the link
to the Op-Ed article. At the same time, they put up a banner at the top of my
page saying the page needed “additional citations for verifications.” Too bad
they’d just taken out the useful sources._

Childish behavior like this is much more damaging to Wikipedia's reputation
than any critical article in the media. And as long as the editors of
Wikipedia act this way, Wikipedia will never get a single cent from me, no
matter how many banner ads they slap over the top of the page pleading for
donations.

~~~
jonemo
One thing that's not clear in this story is if by "editor" she (and you too)
mean the random anonymous stranger who happens to edit a Wikipedia entry, or
someone with more privileges/authority on Wikipedia. Because if this is about
random strangers starting to edit her article, the problem might not be so
much about Wikipedia but about people in general.

~~~
forwardslash
From the talk page[1] it looks like it wasn't random anonymous strangers but
an established editor who's taken offence to her having, "the gall to complain
about her articles"

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Amanda_Filipacchi>

~~~
zalzane
Keep in mind that's his _reaction_ to her article, after he removed links
which were not in line with wikipedia reference link quality standards.

If you consider the context of what that editor is going through right now,
his reaction makes more sense.

> Due to my policy edits in removing promotional materials from articles
> relating to Amanda Filipacchi, I have been harassed, stalked and threatened
> both on- and off-wiki. I have received death threats.

------
salmonellaeater
A feature Wikipedia could use is category intersection. Then you could view a
list of pages that are in the "women", "novelists", and "Americans"
categories, and no editor would have to curate that list. It's pretty easy to
factually verify whether a page is about a woman, or a novelist. Taking human
judgment out of the picture would eliminate many kinds of bias.

~~~
droidist2
True. I think Wikipedia needs more advanced searching tools in general. For
example basically every page on a city has its population and area. I should
be able to narrow down cities with a certain population density (essentially
creating my own temporary category) and then intersect with other categories
or search those pages for a certain term in the article. The wealth of
information is all there, it's a shame it's not easily filtered.

~~~
teeja
Agreed, though enabling searches of such depth might create a considerable
computing overhead.

For example, there are lists of cities by population for most countries; if
you could manually select a subgroup for -a- country and submit that as a
search group along with other terms, might be within reach ... but to do that
for -all- countries, imagine the complexity. Maybe when WP gets a few more
million-core supercomputers.

On the other hand, that would be a -great- project for some enterprising
startup.

~~~
btilly
The computational complexity is nowhere near what you'd think if data is
available in nicely categorized and indexed form. Any random SQL database does
this kind of thing for a living.

------
MartinCron
Looking through the talk pages, I found this interesting note:

 _This is an important subcategory, but Wikipedia's categorization guidelines
clearly state that subcategories defined by ethnicity or gender are non-
diffusing. As such, American women novelists should be listed here as well as
in the American novelist category_

Which implies that if the wikipedia editors were following the basic rules,
adding the sex-specific categories wouldn't do anything to solve the "this
list of novelists is too long" problem.

------
jerrya
I agree with Filipacchi that it certainly seems wrong to remove American women
novelists from American novelists.

I admit I am curious how she feels about contests, prizes, scholarships
targeting American women novelists.
[https://www.google.com/search?q=scholarships+women+writers+a...](https://www.google.com/search?q=scholarships+women+writers+american)

~~~
joshguthrie
I second that.

------
rtpg
A tangent, but all the "list of" pages on wikipedia seem to be missed
potential for some neat data-manipulation tool. I wonder how hard it would be
to scrape that sort of information easily. Too many times have I tried to
figure out the right wording for wolfram alpha to get some neat chart,
secretly wishing for a more low-level tool

------
niggler
I'm confused by "American (Men|Women) Novelists". If both exist, then what's
the point of American Novelists?

~~~
bskap
"American Men Novelists" didn't exist until Thursday, after Amanda Filipacchi
wrote the first op-ed. "American Women Novelists" has existed since October.

