User talk:SusunW/Archive 32

Note
I’m not really sure how to put this, but I disagree with your characterization of my views at WT:N. I hate all sourcing based notability standards and think the GNG is the worst written guideline on the entire project: as written it makes it so actually important people who lived before 1950 get deleted while the local beat cop gets an article. My biggest issue with it is that it is written so poorly as to be meaningless. I support moving towards objective notability standards, which are much easier for marginalized groups to meet and to prove notability than any reform of the GNG ever could be, as its an inherently flawed standard. I just also oppose any language that would make the current notability framework even more difficult to interpret than it already is, especially when in my view, the changes being proposed don’t actually change anything in the guideline from its natural reading. I hope this makes it more clear where I stand. Posting here rather than WT:N, because it’s impossible to actually have a discussion on that page TonyBallioni (talk) 21:05, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
 * My view is exactly the opposite. All SNG are inherently biased and mirror systemic biases. Women academics aren't notable per PROF because it focuses so narrowly on full professorships and research, SPORT replicates discrimination for sporting figures, etc. As long as anyone can edit, you are going to have issues with people operating on flawed standards because they think they know, someone they respect indicated something to them that they interpreted a certain way and they believe it, we are human. (I honestly believe that we only learn when we make mistakes, so am not opposed to errors, but on here, crisis mode and drama ensues.) SNGs are never going to work for marginalized people. Never. The segments of fields in which they were allowed to participate in were ones which were not considered prestigious, were not considered skilled, were not given the same weight of merit. Write about a state-level politician and no one questions whether they were notable. Write about a social worker who was director of a state agency, she will be deleted. How one can separate the cultural importance/impact someone has from the authority of the source is beyond my comprehension. As someone who has spent decades in research I base every single article on whether or not I have adequate sources to prove they are notable. I don't really care if a guideline says walking on the field is notable, I would never write an article if that is all I was able to source. They did nothing of any significance for the greater culture and yet we have a policy that says they are notable. The only way a nurse, social worker, suffragist is going to get a WP article is to meet GNG. As I see it, our views are diametrically opposed. SusunW (talk) 21:44, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The only way margianalized people will ever get an article is by promoting SNGs: they are the only thing on Wikipedia we currently have from a policy perspective that even attempts to fight against systemic oppression. Any sourcing based guideline will fail in part because it requires editors who are willing to do the work to find the sourcing. No matter how you attempt to change it, the GNG will always be inherently worse for the nurse, suffragist, or social worker than PROF or ANYBIO are, because while they may be flawed, they are much easier to judge and establish notability even if the GNG can’t be met. Trying to change the GNG only emphasizes its outplaced prominence at AfD, and makes it significantly harder for margianalized people to get covered, because the conversation shifts to meeting it rather than looking at the real impact the suffragist had, as ANYBIO would force us to do. This is one of the many reasons I’m so opposed to the discussion: it’s not likely to be successful to change WP:N and if it gets too much attention could make it significantly harder for the margianalized to get an article.Anyway, just wanted to clarify where we both stood because I feel like that discussion was getting complex and it’s easirr to talk here. I’m always open to talking about it, but don’t feel like you have to respond or continue to deal with me if you don’t want to. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:52, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Again, we will agree to disagree. WP:AUD is absolutely detrimental to creating articles about marginalized people, the organizations and systems they created to operate in the only spheres they were allowed to operate, or the works that they created. You specifically stated that it wasn't nearly strong enough. When in actuality, applied historically, and again, I am not speaking of as it applies to BLPs, current corporations, etc., it reinforces every bias that has ever touted regarding the superiority of mainstream culture. Marginalized people do not exist in a meritorious environment, instead living in the real world of hardscrabble. Anybio, requires that accomplishments be "widely recognized", that doesn't translate to most WP editors as among their peers, it translates into by mainstream society, thus again reinforcing bias. As for requiring editors who are willing to do the work to find the sourcing, my experience has been that truly matters not. Anyone can nominate anything for deletion (or decline it at AfC), while understanding nothing at all about sourcing, historical significance, or notability and discount all the work that went in to actually writing an article on a significant figure. Those who find the nominator credible will !vote with them, regardless of actual evidence. It's the way the world works, he who speaks loudest ... I am always in favor of constructive dialogue. When/if discussion turns aggressive, I will go silent. SusunW (talk) 22:40, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I have reread what I wrote and I do not want to imply that you have been aggressive in this conversation. As we don't know each other, it was my, possibly poorly worded attempt, to explain how I deal with the drama of WP. I think that you have followers, who quote you as their authority, who in actuality see the guidelines very different than you do, though I admit that I do not understand your position. It seems to me that you are saying that merit is an equal playing field. In my reality, it isn't that and never has been (sadly, probably never will be). Instead of being one ladder, that everyone can climb, there are a whole bunch of different ladders, each of which starts at a different level. Success or failure, very often starts as an accident of birth. SusunW (talk) 06:23, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Nah, you're good. I can be a bit forceful (understatement of the year) and if anything I want you to know that I'm not angry and do respect your opinion quite a lot, even if we disagree. My academic background before I entered the workforce was analytic philosophy, so I have a habit of writing to ideas rather than people.As I said on my talk, I'm busy the next few days, so I won't have much time to devote to thinking about complex stuff on-wiki, but my general position is this: while merit is not an equal playing field because our society is systematically biased against women, people of colour, and other groups, creating objective standards for what qualifies as important enough to receive coverage in an encyclopedia, while limited by the societal bias, is a much easier way to include more people from these groups than making an already vaguely written and difficult to decipher guideline (WP:N) even vaguer for certain types of articles. Moving to objective standards (and if need be improving them to be more inclusive) will achieve the goal of including marginalized people much more easily than relying on sourcing based standards, because sourcing based standards are difficult to interpret and are much more open to systemic biases in coverage and in the individuals interpreting them than objective standards are.At the end of the day, nothing is going to be perfect here because groups that are marginalized are marginalized on every front: sourcing and in status. My position is that it is easier to create standards for what qualifies as significant than it is to create standards for how to interpret sourcing, and that this is universally true across all article types. In this way, I typically support changes that make WP:N more strict and easy to decipher for new users (it's impossible currently.) I also generally support changes to guidelines or informal practice that make it clear that people who are significant within their cultural, historical, or societal complex should have articles.Anyway, that was longer than I intended, and is likely the most time I'll have for this topic for a few days, but I hope it makes my position a bit more clear here. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:29, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
 * When you have time, is fine. I'm not probably going back to Notability. I am not the topic of discussion and it has become that. Please read the words and not the intent behind AUD. It is the same issue I have with PROF. Words have meaning. Imprecise words create misunderstanding. SusunW (talk) 14:31, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, WT:N is one of the most frustrating places on this project. My apologies if my actions contributed to that. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:33, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I have no illusions anyone causes other people to behave the way that they do. People who behave badly choose to act that way. SusunW (talk) 05:03, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Saw this and hope you don't mind me commenting.


 * If they behave badly then take them to WP:ANI. I couldn't see anything untoward, though the thread sprawled so much I may have missed something. I wasn't even aware that the thing had become about you, although as a tip for the future it would be beneficial if you did learn how to present diffs etc because evidence is 90% of the way to swinging a discussion and making bold sweeping statements as you did without it is likely to attract legitimate criticism in the form of "show us the evidence" (which is not "bad behaviour"). Researching diffs can be time-consuming, yes, but it is ultimately likely to consume less time than having a discussion drag on for weeks because you haven't presented a strong argument for whatever it is you are proposing or supporting.


 * Tony, you have a different take on SNG from me and some others. We see SNG not as an alternative to GNG but as a supplement. That is, both SNG and GNG must be met to satisfy our inclusion criteria in those cases where the subject falls into an SNG area. SNG is intended to weed out the less significant sportspeople etc, not give them an easy way in. Although we still have far too much rubbish in such areas, of course. Worth bearing in mind, though, if you try to propose some sort of SNG route.


 * You're right that changing anything in the notability guidelines is extremely difficult. Just look at all the failed attempts to overturn the inherent notability applied to high schools, for example. It isn't all about the patriarchy etc, whatever you may read on the gender gap list and similar off-wiki focus groups.


 * I cleaned up one of your bios a few days ago, by the way. It was very good, just needed a bit of gnoming. - Sitush (talk) 20:05, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
 * As I said, I never have an issue with constructive dialogue. Perhaps it is a cultural misunderstanding. What appears to be condescension or sarcasm in the language of you and your colleague (I am learning about diffs ) were clearly directed at me. Had you approached the conversation there as you have here, we might have had an actual discussion, as from your statement above, your and my views are not so variant with regard to notability. For the record, I have no idea about Indic language issues, I very specifically said the issue recurs over no sources in English. I did ask another editor who is much more technically inclined to try to find diffs as it is beyond my skill. The format on WP is not conducive to intuitive research. I'm not interested in drama nor ANI, as I stated above, it is far easier just to remove oneself from a bad situation than continue to escalate it. I am not involved in any off-wiki focus groups, though I am involved in various initiatives of the WP foundation on increasing diversity. I am not remotely interested in affixing blame for historical power structures be they colonialists, patriarchists, racists, etc. I am however, very interested in open knowledge, which reflects a balanced view of our collective history. I'm glad you enjoyed the article. I try very hard to work on people who intersect diverse characteristics and identities, and typically those who cross international divides. SusunW (talk) 00:05, 9 October 2018 (UTC)


 * OK, perhaps I am less susceptible to criticism than you and/or have a thicker skin. I've had death threats and had to temporarily move home on police advice because of involvement with this project, as well as other inconveniences some of which the WMF had to sort out. My point about the language statement was as much aimed at Ryan Kaldari as you, and he has form for jumping into Indic stuff on cultural grounds when he seemingly knows little about the culture. You and I are probably on opposite sides of the fence when it comes to our perception of the worthiness of the WMF's Kumbaya culture: I think we should be reactive, like traditional encyclopaedias, whereas they seem to think they can be proactive and in doing so risk breaching their charitable status regarding political activity etc, as well as creating even more of a maintenance problem than currently we have. Maintenance is a problem but for people working in some areas - botany, for example - it probably never rears its head. I have to deal with major cultural differences pretty much every hour I edit here and that may colour my view and "toughen" my skin.
 * Anyway, my point was that things are so complex regarding notability guidance etc than good intentions alone are unlikely to change things. Even when people can agree that there is a problem, they cannot agree on a solution. But walking away from the discussion just makes the whole thing a waste of everyone's time; if you're likely to do that then it is probably better not to raise it in the first instance: less heartache all round.
 * There are plenty of worthy subjects out there for which no article exists and regarding which no-one would have a problem, such as the one I mentioned of yours above (which used mainly non-English sources). Concentrating on those would both increase open knowledge and keep a lid on the stress levels but if instead you want to enter the lion's den then you have to accept that you may butt up against big beasts. You also have to accept that any change takes time because most people everywhere, not just in the Wikipedia context, are innately suspicious of it: part of the human condition is that we are fundamentally conservative but with quizzical minds. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is well worth a read, if you haven't yet read it.
 * I'll leave you now as I suspect that I am not helping things. Keep up the good stuff with the Latin American bios etc. - Sitush (talk) 04:28, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I have walked through this world as a woman for nearly six decades. I understand thick skin and actual physical harm, but I also understand that you must pick your battles, know when to walk away and know when to run. In the end, we are all far more alike than we are different. Having lived in 4 extremely different countries and traveled for extensive periods of time in various places throughout the globe, I think that I have never and will never be fundamentally conservative. The older I get, the more I realize that we are all doing the best we can to simply survive, change is inevitable and that we must embrace it. Change doesn't really take that much time. (It only took women's liberationists 2 years to change the way women were perceived throughout the world.) The issue is that power structures severely lag behind public perception and desire, wanting to preserve their control. The book sounds interesting, if I can find it here (doubtful, as there are no public libraries, but there are book stores I can possibly order from) I'd enjoy reading it. SusunW (talk) 06:15, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

This is where we absolutely disagree: "it is easier to create standards for what qualifies as significant than it is to create standards for how to interpret sourcing". The statement says quantity is more important than quality. One of the very first courses offered in university for history students is about evaluating evidence, determining what the preponderance of evidence says, weighing the authority of the sources. It is far easier to outline objective criteria for interpreting sourcing than it is to create standards based on a meritocracy in a world in which there are no equal standards for merit. How close to an event was the source created? (If it is a person, the closer to an event birth, death, marriage, hiring, etc. the more likely it is to be correct. Recall is faulty. As time passes, there may be reasons one might want to bury/alter the past. But if it is an assessment of impact, is it far enough removed from the event to be objective?) Who created it? (Were they in a position to know? Are they likely to be an authority?) Why was it created? (Is it propaganda/promotional? Is it a public record, i.e. vital documentary evidence unlikely to be skewed?) Where was it created? (For example in a location where media is free vs. is state-controlled). Do multiple sources contain the same information? (Are they simply repeating bad data/bias? Does the weight of the sources support the information/conclusion?) Is the information trivia or substantive? (Length has nothing to do with import, it is the information contained therein that determines its worth). Those are fairly standard evaluations for sourcing. They are far easier to analyze objectively than notability in WP guidelines, which base notability on standards of merit, such as PROF. Every study I have read on academia (and that is a lot of material over decades of research), is very clear on who is and who is not likely to be promoted or obtain grant funds for research, even if qualifications are equal. Systemic bias is quite predictable in its outcome. It exists because the power structures which created the systems were designed to exclude "undesirable elements", to ensure that control is retained. Attempting to create "objective standards" regarding merit is impossible, because the systems that define merit are themselves flawed. SusunW (talk) 17:45, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
 * That's the thing: we're running an encyclopedia created by amateurs and where the standards are set by amateurs. In such an environment, clear and objective standards are significantly easier to deal with than standards around sourcing, which are inherently subjective. Everything you suggested is great for academia, but Wikipedia is not an academic environment (as much as I might like it to be.) In this setting, there is no way to establish sourcing standards that will ever meet your goals: they will only be further steps backwards because they will continue to get more complex and thus more difficult for people to assess. Tell someone to judge whether or not someone made substantial impacts on the history of suffrage in a country that can be documented? Yeah, there's some subjectivity there, but it's a much clearer standard. Say that someone has to have earned a nationally recognized award or starred in X number of films/TV shows? That's as objective as it gets. People can understand that, and having things that people can understand should be the goal in my view. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:53, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
 * and there you have it! "we're running an encyclopedia created by amateurs and where the standards are set by amateurs", (and I would add who are willing to fight for their right to pretend that they are experts). I learned a lot from our exchange, though we are still on opposite sides of the issue. Our goal should be to expand knowledge and create a balanced encyclopedia from our collective knowledge. I believe that if people are truly here to improve the encyclopedia, giving them real tools to analyze information is far more valuable, than providing them with checklists. SusunW (talk) 19:08, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd agree that is an ideal, but I think it's an ideal that can be easier met through "checklists", and that the current focus on the GNG is counterproductive both to expanding coverage in areas it needs to be expanded (oppressed groups throughout history) and curtailing coverage that we shouldn't have (advertisements based on manufactured sourcing.) When you're dealing with a project that is purposefully not written by experts, finding a way to have standards that replace expert judgement is in my opinion much more feasible. Also, agreed, re: people who aren't experts pretending to be. Drives one up the wall. It is the internet, though, and no one knows you're a dog. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:24, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I literally just choked on my coffee I was laughing so hard. True dat, except the problem is they open their mouths and then are exposed. SusunW (talk) 19:38, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your analytical approach in regard to how we might better address the inherent problems of interpretation and your long list of questions. I offer the above thread. Two different approaches, probably neither of which will be implemented, but maybe it gives food for thought on how we tackle the problem? SusunW (talk) 22:19, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Tony's approach, however appealing, has the fatal flaw of declaring that a subject can be notable when it is impossible to write an article about it that complies with NPOV. Imagine the case of a rule that says "Any professor who achieves tenure is notable".  Then you have a sub-rule that defines what counts as tenure (a very European concept; how do you apply it to 18th century China?) and what counts as a professor (Does this include equivalent people at institutions that don't use that title?  Does it omit non-equivalent people at institutions that hand that title out to everyone?), and what counts as a suitable school (Are we going to exclude the famous roboticist at a German technical school – which is outside of their university system?  What about art conservatories?  Community colleges?  And if American community colleges, then what about British "high schools", which I understand are often counted as being equivalent to the end of American high school plus the first year of university?).  So it's a mess, but let's imagine that we waded through that thicket and came up with an accredited American school that issues four-year degrees and the occasional master's degree (which makes them a "university"), and you have someone there who seems exactly like a typical "professor", complete with a relevant PhD from some place respectable.  But it's a small religious university and a publicity-averse person in the middle of nowhere, he does no serious research (although he's thinking about writing a book some day), and although he was formally promoted to Full Professor after the two old guys in the Pastoral Care department (when it was founded, the school was a three-year Bible college rather than a university) died during last year's flu season, we literally can't find any source that contains significant coverage of the new prof that is actually independent of the school.  As a result, every sentence would have to begin with, "His employer says…"
 * And if you think that sounds okay, then I wonder whether you would feel the same if my example involved a University of Medical Quackery, or the WP:ARBTM "universities", or the Scientologist schools.
 * It also doesn't scale well, since you would have to write thousands of rules just to adequately cover different professions. You'd need a different rule for chefs than for chocolate makers (because the obvious objective criteria are awards, and they get different ones).
 * As a result, I don't think that Tony's idea is functional in practice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:29, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
 * And now for the other half: Susun, I'm going to oversimplify your idea as "Let's have 'theoretically lower' standards when real-world discrimination means that equal requirements for sourcing would not be equitable".
 * My main problem with this is is that the nominal standard is two sources (of a certain type, e.g., independent). Accepting "less" that the current nominal standard means accepting one source articles, and that's an inherent POV problem.
 * I think the solution to that side of the problem is going to be more time-consuming. We need a change in "what everybody knows", so that "everybody knows" that an article in an academic feminist journal is much more valuable than any article placed in a business magazine by a publicist.
 * IMO the current tendency towards being defensive isn't helping. If we don't write normal stubs about marginalized people because we're afraid that they'll be deleted unfairly, then we train "everybody" to expect articles about marginalized people to be practically perfect, and to take them to AFD (for clean up, *sigh*) when we disappoint them by producing merely average stubs.  Letting a fear of AFD control our article subjects is understandable, but IMO ultimately harmful.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:03, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your input. I actually am not saying let's lower the standards. Instead, I am saying let's have guidelines that use real academic standards for evaluating evidence to analyze historical impact and notability. Let's get rid of the idea that length of a source is somehow indicative of importance. Instead let's use the weight of evidence. I am working on a Russian-Israeli scientist. She died in 1946, but her work from 1905 is still cited today. Common sense tells me she is notable if she is still cited, 100+ years after the fact. I have found over 30 sources from independent journals (in 5 languages) which discuss her work, but each contains only a few lines directly related to her. There is one, one page biography of her in Hebrew. Does she meet WP's notability guidelines as they are now written and interpreted? Probably not. But, she should. I am working on a Caribbean midwife. She was the only trained midwife in her island nation for over 50 years. I have 15 historic news sources, each giving small details of her life, she graduated from school, she helped establish the maternity ward at the hospital, she set up training clinics in various districts. No full length biography of her exists, but annually, she is celebrated in the national press. Common sense tells me, she is notable. Again, does she meet WP guidelines? Probably not, but she should. Will I write the articles? Probably.
 * IMO, you are 100% correct in saying We need a change in "what everybody knows", so that "everybody knows" how to properly assess sources and import. If the Strickland debacle taught us nothing else, it reconfirmed Women in Red's position that articles should not be sent to AfC. It isn't a platform to help create articles, but instead reinforces that notion that articles have to be written for withstanding AfD. AfD assessment evaluates conformity to rules rather than quality of content. It is an eye-opener to evaluate the editors who frequent that platform. Most are not content creators, which demonstrates that they are enforcers, not analysts.
 * I don't really worry about stubs. I don't write them, because I see no point. If I want to learn about someone, having one or two sentence leaves me still searching for information, so why would I even bother to go to WP? If we are focused on creating a real encyclopedia, with valuable knowledge, rather than a collection of trivia, stubs just don't make sense to me. WiR members seem to have a similar bent, as only about 10% of the articles created for this month's topics are stubs. What we need to arrive at is how we produce quality articles using the real sources available. Making checklists which focus on source length, publication circulation, and assumptions that materials produced by any organization which the subject might have crossed paths with in their lifetime are promotional, have nothing to do with actually assessing a source's reliability. IMO, checklists like this are simply giving people fish. Far more valuable would be guidelines which teach editors how to fish. SusunW (talk) 14:53, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Quick reply:
 * I'd be very nervous about asking editors to evaluate a person (or subject's) historical impact. We need sources to do that for us.  I seriously doubt that the average person hanging out at AFD or AFC or NPP is capable of doing that for more than one or two subject areas – if that many – and we already have significant problems with some niche areas being regularly mis-processed for lack of even basic knowledge.
 * Here, though, we seem to be back on some ground that I think we have covered before: The point of the notability rules is not determining reliability.  The point of the notability rules is determining whether the world at large paid any attention to the subject.  That's why the rules ended up this way:
 * Long source = more attention
 * Bigger circulation = more attention
 * Independent publication = attention from the world at large
 * This seems to be the sticking point. Historical importance is about whether the world at large should have paid attention to the subject.  Notability is about whether it actually did.
 * WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:20, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The fallacy with that reasoning is that notability isn't a temporary state. If the "world at large" took notice of the actions of a marginalized person and published about their discovery, founding, creation, etc. no amount of rewriting history to exclude minority participation will erase their accomplishment or notability. That they were noticed at all, in a world that tried to deny the accomplishments of minorities, indigenous people, women, etc. means that it had to be a significant accomplishment. If a subject was important historically and not part of mainstream culture, what you find is multitudes of small articles about them acknowledging the accomplishment, but often showing the bias toward them. "She discovered this, but he did ..." I used to keep a clipping on my wall from the 1920s, (which was lost in one of our moves), about an early cross-country airplane race. The headline Winners Announced was followed by a lengthy description of the course, the planes, the participants, a single statement about the well-known woman aerialist who won, and then the bulk of the article was about the male 2nd place finisher. That there are repeated sources over time that mention the important accomplishments of people that mainstream press/academia etc. ignored confirms their notability, as the bar they had to meet to make mainstream publication pay attention to them was far higher. That those accomplishments may have appeared, in the case of the doctor above, in at least 5 languages, confirms international recognition, regardless of the source length, circulation or independence of those sources. Using length, circulation and independence, when dealing with historic sources and subjects, are not scholarly considerations. They are merely tools used to maintain systemic biases that diminish a balanced view of our pluralistic and collective history. SusunW (talk) 16:03, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Split
We agree about this: "If the "world at large" took notice of the actions of a marginalized person and published about their discovery, founding, creation, etc. no amount of rewriting history to exclude minority participation will erase their accomplishment or notability."

"The "world at large" took notice" is the basic requirement for "gets to have an article on Wikipedia". The question is whether the world at large actually took notice. Taking your 1920s clipping as an example, do you think it is fairer to say that this source was taking notice of the first-place finisher, or that the source was going to great lengths to not take notice of the first-place finisher? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:50, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The world at large took notice of her. She was an internationally recognized pilot, Louise Thaden. The irony is that had the article focused on her, one would have to evaluate whether the claims were puffery. The motivation of the source is irrelevant in this case, as it clearly wasn't promotional, or at least as far as she was concerned. I'm thinking your interpretation is the classic glass half empty/half full argument. The question becomes are we creating a reference work that includes only the dominant cultures' interpretations of the world, or are we following what sources say regarding who was notable. Are we creating rules that focus on keeping systemic biases in place, or are we actually focusing on scholarship? SusunW (talk) 19:47, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Sure, other sources took notice of her, but can we agree that the particular newspaper article you describe didn't take notice of her?
 * And if (as is not the case for Thaden, but very likely is the case for others) all of the sources we can find were similar in their choice to ignore a subject, then would you evaluate that corpus of sources as evidence of "the world taking notice", or as "the world ignoring" a subject? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:42, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
 * (You do get that the question you are really asking is if the dominant power-base of "the world" noticed, those who control publishing, education, writing mechanisms? The inference begs asking if anyone else, i.e. the majority of people in the world, noticed it is somehow insignificant?) But, to answer your question, if indeed they were ignoring the accomplishment, there would be no need to mention it at all. That they did is significant, otherwise they could have just written a promo piece on the male pilot. In the examples you gave above, there is an assumption that 1 lengthy article by a journalist in the New York Times or 1 journal article published by a physician in the British Journal of Medicine indicates that the world took notice. It doesn't. It simply says that one writer wrote about the subject, (and doesn't even ensure that it was read, just had the likelihood of being read). On the other hand, 30 articles in journals from diverse countries or even cities are a far more likely indicator of national or international renown. Multiple writers thought that the topic was valuable enough to take up costly print space. (Again, I am not talking about the post-internet world). SusunW (talk) 21:43, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, I do realize what I'm saying, and what the guideline is written to support.
 * Here's the decision tree, as it stands now, for a person:
 * Someone did something. Did "the world at large" choose to spend barrels of printers' ink on it?
 * If yes, then write a Wikipedia article about the person/accomplishment.
 * If no, then do not write a Wikipedia article about the person/accomplishment.
 * You seem to be asking for the second point to be modified into a decision tree:
 * Someone did something. Did "the world at large" choose to spend barrels of printers' ink on it?
 * If yes, then write a Wikipedia article about the person/accomplishment.
 * If no, then continue.
 * Did the ignored person person/accomplishment have a significant historical impact?
 * If yes, then write the Wikipedia article.
 * If no, then continue.
 * Is the ignored person/accomplishment the sort that would have been recognized if the same thing had been done by a privileged person?
 * If yes, then write the Wikipedia article.
 * If no, then continue....
 * Now, as you know, I'm deeply skeptical of editors' ability to accurately answer question about, especially if they aren't given FUTON bias-compliant sources that actually use unmistakable words, perhaps along the lines of "This is an internationally famous person who had a major and lasting effect on the field of ____ and who obviously deserves a long article in Wikipedia". But does that sound like a fair description of the complexity that you're wishing for?  If you were making a coding flow chart, is that approximately how you would "program" WP:N?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:42, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
 * That's some flow chart, which is far more complex than I would ever use. It is really very simple. Is there a statement in a source which can be reasonably judged as reliable that a person did something unique and of import, which had significance over time, that would be of value in an international encyclopedia? Are there sufficient sources in equally reasonably reliable materials to write a complete/relatively complete biography or article about the subject? Write it. If there are not, don't. SusunW (talk) 23:27, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Do you intend an "and" or an "or" between your two questions? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:35, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I suppose there must be an and for me. I have already said I see no point in writing a stub. If you cannot write a complete article that actually imparts information, there is no point in writing it. Both must hold true. SusunW (talk) 03:52, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The GNG skips your first question and cares only about the second. Even if the person didn't do anything unique or important or that had significance over time, if you've got "sufficient sources in equally reasonably reliable materials to write a complete/relatively complete biography or article", then the subject clears the GNG and is notable until proven otherwise (unless WP:NOT applies, but AFAICT that's basically never invoked for historical subjects).
 * Do you agree that – in theory, of course – the GNG's stated requirements sound a lot like the requirements from your second question? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:13, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The first point would basically fall within ANYBIO, but in theory, yes similar to GNG. The sticking point with GNG, is that while it may work in the case of most historic figures, and certainly far better than any SNG, there is the independent sourcing requirement. Many of the sources you find are from universities they attended, churches they belonged to, clubs they were associated with, etc. or ethnic/feminist journals. The second obstacle is the presently perceived significant coverage issue, which though GNG allows multiple sources being combined to meet it, the perception is that if you do not have one lengthy source, the material contained is trivial. Trivial has nothing to do with length, but rather content. So for example, you have a statement in a current national newspaper listing first graduates from a university by field. You have a historic alumni magazine or newspaper article listing graduates for a given year. Because they place the person in time, they are not trivial they add depth to the profile, though they may simply list your person's name. Ultimately, what you end up with is a lot of sources with brief coverage, which amounts to a large enough amount of material to cover a life in depth. (Add another misconception, it isn't original research to simply repeat the data found in a source. Drawing conclusions would be original research, restating data, not.) SusunW (talk) 14:20, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Ethnic/feminist journals are independent sources. An organization you belonged to would not be.
 * So the gap between GNG (as it is written, not as it's misapplied in some cases) and your question is that GNG requires independence, and you do not. In the GNG model, independent sources decide whether a subject is "worth of notice" on Wikipedia.  In your model, who is supposed to decide whether a person is actually "worthy of notice" by Wikipedia?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:44, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
 * No, that isn't what I meant. If the claim for notability is in an independent source, significant coverage can be combined from non-independent sources or primary records to develop a complete article on the subject. And in the case of ethnic/feminist newspapers and journals, they do not widely appear to be accepted on WP as independent. Reasoning given includes limited circulation, *sigh* SusunW (talk) 20:33, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Okay, so the GNG requires two independent sources, and you require just one? And the GNG hints at – although it's been a subject of debate in the past – that the sources providing significant coverage should also be independent, and you (and some other editors, in old discussions) are treating the requirements as severable components, so that I can have an independent source say "Bob is the first ordained preacher with a university degree to be called to a church in the Dakotas", and take everything else from the hagiographic book written and published by his church when he died.
 * How would an editor write a truly neutral article if nearly all the content is exclusively available from sources closely associated with the subject? Neutral tone's easy enough, but how do I get an unbiased, balanced view of a subject if nearly all my facts come from the subject/someone with a COI?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:36, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
 * It's called a preponderance of the evidence. Multiple sources giving the same information in comparable time frames indicate that it is more than likely correct. What the is the authority of the publication? If the claim of notability is independent, there is no bias. So what if a combination of non-independent sources are used to create a complete profile. Would they likely distort biographical information? To what end? A subject's school is not likely to lie about the birth information they have on file, or a graduation date. A bar association is not likely to distort when a subject was admitted to practice law. An obituary carried in a scientific journal, written by peers of the subject are not likely to distort the career trajectory, names of the subject's publications or specialization information. Again, it seems to me it is common sense. Impact of the career, importance of the subject, etc. must be verified independently, but details of a life, birth, death, marriage, etc. are hardly something that even someone with a COI would distort. (It also needs to be stressed that oftentimes these arguments stem from material not created by someone who had a close association with a subject. I've seen it argued many, many times that the material is non-independent when a modern scholar published an article on a subject but the journal was printed by the subject's alma mater. In a country with only one national university, what other option might there be for publication, short of self-publishing?) SusunW (talk) 21:26, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

But in the context of NPOV, I'm not actually trying to find out whether Bob graduated from Harvard in 1824 or 1825. I'm not trying to sort out basic facts. I'm trying to figure out whether "Bob was the long-time preacher of Little Church on the Prairie, who was famous for overseeing the construction of the first church in town" is a neutral article, or if that praise ought to be tempered with the statement that Bob had a "melancholy accident while cleaning his handgun" shortly before he was to be indicted in the murder of an elderly spinster shortly after she decided to leave all her money to the church – only the church thought that it wasn't a delicate thing to mention while his widow was around and in control of the money she inherited from him, so they left it out of their book. If you are *only* using sources that are definitely, absolutely, uncontestedly written by people with a vested interest in the subject, then how do you determine whether your article is a neutral depiction of the subject? This question isn't about simple factual questions. It's about the big picture: How will editors know whether to present Bob as a murderer or a church builder, if you only look at sources that are trying to hush up the murder question? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:56, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Now you are distorting what I said about the claim of notability being from an independent source, as well as weighing all the evidence with multiple sources confirming that the information is likely correct. Your scenario doesn't seem remotely to meet the criteria for a national or international encyclopedia, thus the point is moot. Don't write the article, I certainly wouldn't. SusunW (talk) 05:22, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
 * My claim to notability has Bob being a very unusual person: a 19th-century Protestant preacher with a university degree who moved to a territory that white people were trying to settle.  During that century, an average of just 800 of those degrees were granted each year in the entire U.S.  That's a ratio of four newspapers for every graduate, and I've got a source saying that he's the first of these rare folks in a large area.  The simple, objective facts are uncontested:
 * his university degree (the biased book + university website + announcement in the newspaper upon his arrival),
 * the church denomination he belonged to (biased book + newspaper),
 * his wife's name (ditto),
 * their move to the territory (ditto), and
 * the date of his death (biased book + gravestone).
 * That's multiple sources that confirm that the information is "likely correct". What makes you think that he's not notable?  Which criteria does this subject not meet?
 * In the GNG model, we say that nobody unconnected with him really cared, so no article. In your model, it sounds like it doesn't matter who made the sources, or how trivial each source is individually, so long as there are a lot of them and they all repeat the same claims.  Your model sounds like one that would be recommended to graduate students who are trying to pick a thesis topic.
 * I'm really not trying to torture you (honest!). I just need to reduce this idea down to something that doesn't start with "Step 1:  Get a PhD in history, or equivalent experience".  You probably can't imagine how much I appreciate your patience with me slowing poking my way through this.    WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:49, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I still see no notability for him in a national or international encyclopedia. Almost all pioneers were white men, as were university graduates in the 19th century. (Heck, my g-g-g-grandparents made one of the 7 land runs to Oklahoma. Though g-g-g- grandpa had a university degree, they were dirt farmers there, but pioneers, along with a whole bunch of others, i.e. not notable.) Do you have a reliable source which confirms that he was one of the first 800 actual theologians with a degree (800 per year is over a million people over the century, not really that unusual); one that says the church he founded was of regional or national importance; one that says what the impact of actually having a degree did for his congregants or other students that followed him (maybe he was Norwegian and that inspired other universities to openly to cater to Norwegians; maybe his congregants were Native Americans)? Was he actually indicted for murder and did that impact his church, which was regionally/nationally important, in some way? Then possibly. You also say nothing about where the alleged murder is confirmed, since it isn't in the church record, how do you even know about it? He's a mainstream guy (plus a prominent preacher), and murder was sensationalized at the time, so there should be lots of coverage of it in the newspapers of the time. (My gr-gr uncle, one of the dirt farmers, was ambushed and murdered by a deranged stalker who was in love with my gr-gr aunt. They lived in a tiny town with no newspaper, and yet I found over 1,000 articles from across the region talking about the murder, trial and conviction of his murderer, not to mention the actual trial transcripts. Fascinating reading, but still not notable; unless of course one were writing a history of stalking and included mention of his story.) Assessing what you have given, I see that you have adequate information to produce a biographical entry on someone who has no verified notability and other than founding a pioneer church of unproven impact, left no lasting imprint on the national historic record. SusunW (talk) 17:58, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I think that you got some extra zeroes in that calculation. 800 graduates per year * 100 years per century = 80,000 graduates per century.
 * It sounds like your ultimate touchstone – what you keep circling back to in these discussions – is historical impact. If you believe that the subject had an impact, and everyone has ignored the person, then you would collect whatever scraps can be verified, and write the article.  But if you believe that the subject had no historical impact, then you would reject the article, even if plenty of material is available.
 * Am I correct in saying that, under the model of historical impact, Emperor Norton, whose main "accomplishment" appears to have been living with a mental illness in San Francisco, and whose "impact" is a bit of entertainment, would be a somewhat doubtful case for an article? (Evaluation as the source of entertainment/pop culture references would need to be judged separately.)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:20, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Norton's impact would be as a muse for literature and performance arts. Thus he would qualify. Not sure why that would be evaluated separately, other than that the popular culture main article about him fails to provide in-line sources. If indeed the information can be verified, he has been inspiring artists since 1856. SusunW (talk) 02:46, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

RfC on which you !voted, has been amended
In response to objections, I struck the two year moratorium thing at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(people). I'm notifying everybody who !voted. Jytdog (talk) 14:29, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delay in thanking you for the time you have spent working on this issue. (I was working on responses for a GA review). There seems to be a general lack of understanding on how difficult it really is to write about marginalized people. (A lot of oppose voters don't write content). The idea that significant coverage may not be long book articles, seems to always digress into discussions of original research, attempts to right wrongs, and accusations that proposals are for no sourcing. None of those are true, nor have anything to do with acknowledging that different groups may have been covered differently by existing sourcing. SusunW (talk) 22:29, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * This sort of thing raises a lot of emotions. :( Jytdog (talk) 22:30, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Always, though I am not sure why. We cannot change the past, only acknowledge that it unfolded as it did. I often spend months working on the truly significant women that I write about because I don't want to do a half-assed job and it sometimes takes that long to piece together their story from the snippets one finds. SusunW (talk) 22:35, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

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WikiProject Canada 10,000 Challenge award

 * Thanks, I don't always remember to add them to that list, but I try :) SusunW (talk) 22:06, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
 * You're welcome! Feel free to list any other Canada-related articles you've created or substantially improved since November 2016.  I only distribute awards once a year, but there's no deadline other than the 10,000 article improvement limit. – Reidgreg (talk) 22:38, 2 November 2018 (UTC)