Talk:Wikimedia UK/Events/BBC 100 Women

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BBC 100 Women Editathon event at Kathmandu

We are supporting the BBC 100 Women Editathon at Kathmandu --Ganesh Paudel (talk) 05:41, 5 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

BBC 100 Women edit-a-thon on Bengali Wikipedia

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Five women who aren’t on Wikipedia but should be

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BBC's Five women who aren’t on Wikipedia but should be

I'm glad to see the bully pulpit used to improve Wikipedia, but I can't help but see this as a missed opportunity for some actual public education about notability on English Wikipedia... This article encourages the idea that anyone you admire warrants their own WP article. To be fair, I imagine most editors first experiment in this way, but it's also setup for disappointment once those editors hit the policy apparatus (notability, reliable sourcing). The BBC would do many more favors by (1) picking individuals who have an overabundance of coverage in reliable sources, and (2) actually linking all of that sourcing in the article. Instead we have several individuals who have taken noteworthy actions but fall into really easy traps—mainly that there isn't an overabundance of reliable coverage sufficient to write decent biographies—and thus both WP and the BBC look bad. For specifics, the first person is at AfD: w:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Laura Coryton, the gamer's blurb cites blogs like "The Surge", and the anti-Nazi activist becomes a token case of individuals notable for a single event. If instead the reporter dug up offline articles and other hard-to-find-yet-still-reliable coverage, then we'd have both enough to write articles and good examples of the sheer abundance of sources needed to pass muster for Wikipedia. Hopefully the article can be corrected to add more sourcing from reliable publishers (with reputations for fact-checking and editorial discretion), at the very least. And happy to help with any of it where I can.   czar 18:29, 10 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

  • Journalists are trying to get readers. If notability was interesting then we would find that our notability pages were being stolen to insert into the Daily Mail. The BBC's charter obliges them to educate so they are trying a bit. I know that the one piece of information that was discussed was notability. The intro video said "no blogs". They were told. Surprisingly many of the ones I thought were non-notable have got so much coverage as a result of the BBC that they now are. The Daily Mail publishes articles called "5 pictures of Hitler you won't believe", we might tempt them with "5 Notability Shortcuts that No one actually reads" ... but I doubt it. This BBC piece is their technique for getting readers. Thats what they do. I would have like them to mention the volunteers that work on this problem every day... but that wasnt the story. We have to define the story very well and even then we will still see puffs like this. Its not all bad. One of Women in Red's best editors has been contacted by the BBC because her created a nice article. Victuallers (talk) 23:39, 10 December 2016 (UTC)Reply
    There is a lot of room between the current article and the straight notability policy page, so the slope isn't that slippery. Even if the word "notability" doesn't show up in the article (and I think it's a terrible word for the concept anyway), the point was more to choose examples that are better equipped for pages such that readers understand that WP biographies require more coverage than the examples currently included. In fact, it would be really interesting if the author wrote a follow-up piece on why those five struggled to have dedicated WP articles—and ideally it wouldn't cast WP as the big bad wolf but instead discuss the types of anemic articles that would exist if we only used the extant sources. And, look, this is the BBC, not the Daily Mail—it's reasonable to assume that there would be audience interest. Or at least I can't bear to not reserve hope. czar 00:51, 11 December 2016 (UTC)Reply
  • no one cares about notability except wikipedians, and deleting their articles won't make them care. it is insider jargon, and a rubric for the ignorant. you have an elevated reverence for "reliable sources"; if you knew the sausage factory, you would regard it, as one step from wikipedia article creation. (i.e. it is the praxis not the masthead, contrary to the marketing - see also w:Criticism of the BBC) the articles added are all to the good and the push back is disturbing. (it makes WP look bad not BBC) and notice the utter disregard for the broken AfC process. Slowking4 (talk) 14:17, 11 December 2016 (UTC)Reply
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