User:Ethanpet113/experiments

Experiments
I've taken to running experiments on wikipedia, to test the various processes of an article's lifespan.

Eugenic Feminism
Motivation:I was uncertain whether the article creation process could be trusted, based on the existence of article which I considered to be of limited or no encyclopedic value, less so in STEM but overwhelmingly in political and social sciences.

Goals:Measure to what extent wikipedia can remain neutral in the face of a politically charged article. Create an article which could be reliably used to determine bias of editors within the associated namespace.

Procedure: A politically fashionable and politically charged concept were combined at random until a topic with an existing body of work, but which did not yet have a corresponding wiki article was created. The article was with a mix of statements some easy to verify, some which have only weak attributable source, but could nontheless be considered factually accurate. Even though the article could have been created in mainspace, it was put in Afc to test the caliber of those controls.

Expected Result:The article should be rejected by AfC several times until it is suitable for creation, after which it should be kept, or will eventually be abandoned.

Observations:
 * A deletion proposal was opened on the article in draftspace
 * The article moved into mainspace after just on review without need for re-review
 * The article was again proposed for deletion after moving to mainspace, but appears at present to be mostly votes for keeping.
 * wikipedia does a good job of insuring that for an article to be created, it must have an established body of work, and a reason why an article should have the title it was assigned.
 * As expected some editors tried to use their outrage as a poor excuse for the articles deletion, but they do not appear to be in the majority based on the AfD proposal.
 * Some editors pared down the article, arguably removing some of its essential parts.
 * There was debate about proponents of Eugenic Feminism, mainly semantic with arguments taking the form "they were feminists, and they used some eugenic principles, but you can't prove they used eugenic principles as a tool in their feminism or vice versa".

Conclusions: Pending results to be measured... whenever I get around to it but some time after June 2019.