Donna Strickland, one of this year's Nobel Laureates, was not considered "notable enough" for Wikipedia as late as this May—reported by a number of sites, including the Independent. I dug into this a little. Here's the data—

This is the first deletion, back in 2014. A bit hard to read between the lines, but the basic story that an admin had Stickland's page "speedy deleted"—i.e., deleted without debate. The method was something called Copyright Jujitsu.
In particular, the admin had the page deleted not because of notability, but because it included a photograph of Strickland that had ambiguous copyright status. This is a method that people developed to get rid of content they didn't want, but also didn't want to debate.
"Copyright Jujitsu" because it is usually used against spam from companies; a PR officer uploads promotional material to Wikipedia. Instead of debating whether it's neutral, the admin can say "we'd love to have it, but the material appears to violate your company's copyright".
Usually the PR office and the IP office are separate in a company, and the idea of releasing promotional material under public domain is such a legal nightmare that the PR person goes away.
In this case, it doesn't seem like a particularly good faith use of copyright concerns, but the speedy deletion went as desired by the admin.
The most recent deletion of the page is this May, 2018, was by a different admin, and it was actually a "rejected submission"—Wikipedia allows anybody to create articles, but these are increasingly subject to admin gatekeeping.
When Strickland was awarded the prize, there was a storm about it all. Wikipedia has the great virtue of remaining, still, exceedingly open about all the actions that happen online, and so the admin (Bradv, just so you can follow it) responsible for the decision was brought in.
This all spirals out like crazy, of course—and much of it involves debate over policy (the all-caps links like PROF, WP:N, RS, V, BLP, etc)—a constellation of laws that make this network, below, found in the "Article Quality" cluster.
The admin has an extended discussion of the "Strickland Incident" on their user page. It makes interesting reading. https://t.co/ny8hr2ImQ3
There's a lot going on in it, and it's an excellent window onto where the encyclopedia is now. It confirms many of the ideas in play in our 2016 article. Here's the bureaucratization/rationalization aspect—a diagram that the admin cites to explain what happened.
—a very different approach than taken at the construction of the majority of the encyclopedia's content ten or fifteen years prior. The review of an article on Strickland is now more complicated than anything in place when, say, Wikipedians wrote the articles on the Laser itself!
Another interesting feature of the admin's account is the "not my problem" aspect—the admin sees themselves as playing a role in a sophisticated hierarchy.
This is where it gets really crazy. Strickland was, at the time of the rejection, notable enough for inclusion—even under a strict interpretation of Wikipedia's WP:N policy. Strickland was a fellow of the Optical Society.
Not only that, but the claim appeared in the submitted draft, and was sourced, as required by WP:V (verifiability). However, the admin notes that really there should have been a second source; the admin says the OSA is not a reliable source about its own membership!
Bubbling in the admin's response are references to the fact that the user who created the draft was a newcomer. One might think that this would be a good thing (new editors!) but the constant references to this fact by the admin suggests that it's a cause for suspicion.
Finally (putting my close-reading hat on): scare quotes around the question of whether or not there might be bias against female scientists, and the "mention-not-mention" critique of the accusation suggests the admin doesn't think bias is a real possibility in his decision.
Sorry, here are the scare quotes, etc—
TL;DR: a female scientist was excluded from Wikipedia by an admin who was prejudiced against the article creator, who doesn't think bias might play a role in his actions, and who sees himself as a functionary in a bureaucracy where accountability is algorithmic.
You don't need to be an expert in psychology, social science, or the nature of feedback loops to think that this is going to be a source of bias in coverage going forward.

More from Simon DeDeo

"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."


We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.

Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)

It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.

Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
This is a pretty valiant attempt to defend the "Feminist Glaciology" article, which says conventional wisdom is wrong, and this is a solid piece of scholarship. I'll beg to differ, because I think Jeffery, here, is confusing scholarship with "saying things that seem right".


The article is, at heart, deeply weird, even essentialist. Here, for example, is the claim that proposing climate engineering is a "man" thing. Also a "man" thing: attempting to get distance from a topic, approaching it in a disinterested fashion.


Also a "man" thing—physical courage. (I guess, not quite: physical courage "co-constitutes" masculinist glaciology along with nationalism and colonialism.)


There's criticism of a New York Times article that talks about glaciology adventures, which makes a similar point.


At the heart of this chunk is the claim that glaciology excludes women because of a narrative of scientific objectivity and physical adventure. This is a strong claim! It's not enough to say, hey, sure, sounds good. Is it true?

More from All

You May Also Like

Recently, the @CNIL issued a decision regarding the GDPR compliance of an unknown French adtech company named "Vectaury". It may seem like small fry, but the decision has potential wide-ranging impacts for Google, the IAB framework, and today's adtech. It's thread time! 👇

It's all in French, but if you're up for it you can read:
• Their blog post (lacks the most interesting details):
https://t.co/PHkDcOT1hy
• Their high-level legal decision: https://t.co/hwpiEvjodt
• The full notification: https://t.co/QQB7rfynha

I've read it so you needn't!

Vectaury was collecting geolocation data in order to create profiles (eg. people who often go to this or that type of shop) so as to power ad targeting. They operate through embedded SDKs and ad bidding, making them invisible to users.

The @CNIL notes that profiling based off of geolocation presents particular risks since it reveals people's movements and habits. As risky, the processing requires consent — this will be the heart of their assessment.

Interesting point: they justify the decision in part because of how many people COULD be targeted in this way (rather than how many have — though they note that too). Because it's on a phone, and many have phones, it is considered large-scale processing no matter what.
My top 10 tweets of the year

A thread 👇

https://t.co/xj4js6shhy


https://t.co/b81zoW6u1d


https://t.co/1147it02zs


https://t.co/A7XCU5fC2m