Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-04-29/In the media

Categorisation of women novelists sparks media debate on Wikipedia's sexism


On 24 April 2013, novelist Amanda Filipacchi published what turned out to be an influential op-ed in the New York Times. In her piece, "Wikipedia's Sexism Toward Female Novelists", Filipacchi explained that she had just—

Noting that there wasn't a category for "American men novelists", Filipacchi said that readers looking at the category listing for "American novelists" might not even be aware that women had been excluded. It is "small, easily fixable things like this", she argued, "that make it harder and slower for women to gain equality in the literary world."

Other publications weigh in
Her point was picked up and endorsed by other mainstream publications including –


 * the Huffington Post ("Women novelists Wikipedia: Female authors absent from site's 'American novelists' page?", 24 April),
 * the Atlantic Wire (Wikipedia's boys club of 'American novelists', 25 April),
 * the Guardian ("Wikipedia bumps women from 'American novelists' category: Outrage as female authors relegated to 'American women novelists' subcategory, clearing space for all-male main page", 25 April),
 * the Independent ("Wikipedia in sexism row after labelling Harper Lee and others 'women novelists' while men are 'American novelists': Feminist campaigners say they are 'disappointed' and 'shocked' at the online encyclopaedia's policy", 26 April),
 * Salon (American women novelists' segregated by Wikipedia—Wikipedia's overwhelmingly male user-editors began the bizarre forced gender migration on Tuesday", 25 April), and
 * the New Statesman ("Wikipedia wars: are there really novelists and 'women novelists'? How many brilliant writers will be sorted away entirely, never making the cut as novelists because they're weighed down with the tag 'woman'?", 26 April).

These writers generally expressed incomprehension at why even the most minor male novelists remained listed in Wikipedia's "American novelists" category, while major American novelists such as Harper Lee were moved to a subcategory purely on the basis of their gender. The Independent quoted Caroline Criado-Perez of feminist website "The Women's Room":

Sarah Ditum, writing for the New Statesman, pointed out that Wikipedia appeared to sift Victorian novelists the same way as American novelists:

"Revenge editing"


The controversy deepened when Filipacchi published a follow-up in the New York Times on 28 April (this also appeared in the paper edition), reiterating her earlier points and noting that her Wikipedia biography as well as Wikipedia articles related to her and her work had come in for unfavourable attention from Wikipedians:

Articles in Salon and The New York Review of Books followed a day later. Focusing on the edits that Wikipedians had made to Wikipedia articles related to Filipacchi, Salon writer Andrew Leonard asserted that "Sexism isn't the problem at the online encyclopedia. The real corruption is the lust for revenge".

Leonard then quoted various talk page contributions by Qworty that he felt reflected very poorly on Wikipedia:

Both Andrew Leonard in Salon and James Gleick in The New York Review of Books stated that a large number of recategorisations performed by a single contributor, named by Gleick as User:Johnpacklambert, had been responsible for precipitating the crisis.

In his article, Gleick reviewed User:Johnpacklambert's edits in some detail, and gave John an opportunity to put his point of view:

Gleick added that the problem seemed to be "more general and pervasive than most had originally thought", pointing out that African-American and other non-white writers also regularly found themselves "diffused" from the default category to subcategories. He gave the example of Maya Angelou—Gleick found that her biography was categorised in African-American writers, African-American women poets, and American women poets, but not American poets or American writers.

NPR also covered the story, featuring an interview with Wikimedia Foundation employee Ryan Kaldari, who said:

The third act
With discussions ongoing in Wikipedia, on 30 April Amanda Filipacchi published a new piece on the controversy in the Atlantic, titled "Sexism on Wikipedia Is Not the Work of 'A Single Misguided Editor'. It's a widespread problem."

In this latest piece, Filipacchi took issue with the assertion made by Leonard and Gleick the day before, that a single editor—User:Johnpacklambert, according to Gleick—was to blame for the controversy. Listing a number of edits made to women novelists' biographies in Wikipedia over the past few months, with dates and the names or IP addresses of the editors who made them, Filipacchi showed that User:Johnpacklambert was only the latest in a line of editors who had recategorised major women novelists in the manner she had described in her op-ed.

In the process, Filipacchi also rebutted claims made by Liz Henry in a widely-tweeted post on bookmaniac.org, titled "Journalists don't understand Wikipedia sometimes". Henry, stating that she was "a bit annoyed at the facile reporting that does not seem to take into account the complexity of how information gets added to Wikipedia", had claimed in her post that two of the novelists named by Filipacchi, Donna Tartt and Amy Tan, had in reality never been in the "American novelists" category, and thus had never been removed. In response, Filipacchi provided verifiable dates and times when they were so removed, along with the names of the editors making the edits.

Filipacchi noted that User:Johnpacklambert had done "something particularly interesting and annoying" after her biography had had the American novelists category restored to it: he removed the category again, and instead added Filipacchi to a new category he had just created: "American humor novelists". The change was undone, and at the time of writing, Filipacchi's biography is categorised among American novelists in Wikipedia.

Yuri Gadyukin: hoax with a difference
In a piece listed by The Verge among the week's best writing on the web, Kevin Morris of The Daily Dot illuminated the unusual background of the Yuri Gadyukin hoax, which was discovered and deleted from Wikipedia in early March. The hoax, detected by Yaroslav Blanter, had remained undiscovered for three years and seven months.

It turned out that the Wikipedia and IMDB articles for Gadyukin were part of a viral marketing campaign for a faux documentary project by film makers Gavin Boyter and Guy Ducker.

Ducker explained that the viral campaign was "a way of us starting to tell a story, starting to create the world, while in the meantime we waited for people to give us the money. We were determined not be to be stopped from getting that. You have to make sure nobody stops you. That's the key to making a film."

Yuri Gadyukin may well survive the deletion of his Wikipedia and IMDB biographies—the film project is still on.

In brief

 * Churnalism: The arstechnica website reported on a new plagiarism detection tool on 24 April that enables users to check whether media stories have been copied from press releases—or from Wikipedia.
 * Wikidata a huge step: An article published on ghacks.net on 26 April noted that all Wikipedias can now make use of Wikidata in their articles.
 * Photo donation to Wikipedia now easier than ever: An article on Ubergizmo.com released on 29 April announced a new app released by Wikimedia Commons for iOS and Android devices that makes it easier to upload photos from a mobile device. Using the app, one can tag, title, and upload images through their account, which must be registered in advance. The app is available from the iTunes App Store and Google Play Store.
 * Wikipedia "Echo" making Wikipedia more social: On 30 April, The Daily Dot reported on the introduction of Wikipedia's new notification system, "Echo": a small box displayed near your user ID at the top of your Wikipedia window that notifies you when you have new messages or other activity on Wikipedia.
 * Jimmy Wales in the news: Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, has been prominently featured in BBC News this week for his statement that "boring" university lectures should be a footnote in history. As stated by the BBC, thanks in part to Wales' experience as a university student, he believes that "the traditional university lecture should have been condemned decades ago and replaced with an online video recording that can be stopped and started."