To be fair: 1) the assumption has always been that the burden of proof of notability is on the person asserting or defending it. WP:FAILN doesn’t require that an editor doubting notability look for sources themselves; it just suggests it as one of several options. 2) The editor in question prodded it rather than nominating for deletion; this is meant to provide exactly this sort of informal process as a remedy for perceived deficiencies (I would have preferred he use {{notability}}, the gentlest and most AGF way of raising these concerns, but even still a prod is not as in-your-face as an AfD nomination). 3) I admit that on the face of things an article that asserts as its subject’s chief claim to notability that she was married to someone who became president of the United States after her death is that I would like to see more first. Looking over its history, the article dates to 2004, and was expanded shortly thereafter, back when we didn’t require sources so much and a lot of articles like this got created. Perhaps improving existing articles about women should be as much a focus of our editathon events as creating new ones. Perhaps you could do the AGF thing and engage the editor on his talk page. His recent editing history does not suggest to me that he’s engaging in some sort of systematic prodding of articles like this one, rather that he’s making a lot of housekeeping edits to American political biographies and perhaps saw the Nell Arthur article (possibly in the context of looking at other Presidents whose daughters (or in one case daughter-in-law; see [[Priscilla Cooper Tyler]]) have stepped into the First Lady role) and wondered why we had it. Daniel Case

It would be valuable to have a list of cases of suspicious (and non-suspicious) deletion requests for pages about women (or any targeted group). If such lists existed, one could likely automatically detect future suspicious cases and alert interested parties about the requests. (Of course, if current monitoring of deletion requests is more than sufficient, then this wouldn't be terribly useful.) Best, AR On 01/06/2017 11:53 AM, Jonathan Cardy wrote:

Here is a source for the stained glass window, which was done by Madame Lorin (Marie Françoise Dian) of the Lorin glass studio of Chartres, (1) from the White House Historical Association, (2) some plans and more photos, and (3) the window visible in some photos of the church on Commons. A book on presidential wives says (4) there is very little info available about her in part because her husband destroyed all his personal papers just before his death, and also some about their families being on opposite sides of the Civil War. Another source (5) about their politics and home life. Another thing with women from influential families is to look beyond a job title. They may have had a title like "secretary" that women had in those days, but they may have actually been running an agency. I certainly see articles about women getting a lot more drive-by tagging, but it would probably take some research to quantify that. The research department did something not too long ago with gender and BLPs, so maybe we will see some more along those lines. I'm not sure what all the tags (and abbreviations) are for, or what people are supposed to do with them, but I see plenty of people tagging, and nobody doing tag maintenance. How many times do you see a stub tag dating back years, on an article that is clearly not a stub? The strategy with Women in Red has been to create a lot of stubs with the information available, so that when people want to add a reference, they will have an article already created. But there is no strategy for classifying and evaluating articles, and even if there were, where are the people with the skill to work on them? Because nearly everyone who has gotten even close to this topic area has been driven off, most of the articles and edits are being done by trainees. (1) https://www.whitehousehistory.org/nell-arthurs-memorial-window (2) http://stjohns-dc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ST-JOHNS-HISTORIC-STAINED-… (3) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:St._John%27s_Episcopal_Church_(… .) (4) https://books.google.com/books?id=Gn-DVd2kIu8C&pg=PA162&dq=nell+art… (5) https://books.google.com/books?id=_v0owy-Xl4sC&pg=PA7&dq=nell+arthu… On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 11:49 PM, Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote:

You can watch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:All_articles_proposed_for_deletion Cheers, Peter From: Gendergap [mailto:gendergap-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jane Darnell Sent: Saturday, 07 January 2017 11:13 AM To: Addressing gender equity and exploring ways to increase the participation of women within Wikimedia projects. Subject: Re: [Gendergap] They want to delete First Ladies now? Thanks for that! I have always wondered about that myself. On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 5:49 AM, Risker &lt;risker.wp(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Well, in fairness, Nell Arthur was never the U.S. First Lady because she died before her husband became president. On the other hand, anyone can remove a PROD, and based on what's in the article, it was a good call to do so. A few years ago, I did a bit of review on the likelihood that something PRODded would actually get deleted, and about half the time the PROD tags were removed. As I recall, I looked at about 3-4 days of PRODs so it may not be entirely representative. On the other hand, on a fair number of occasions the PROD tag was removed without the core issue being addressed, about 60%. Sometimes the reason was absurd, but more often it was a justified concern (e.g., absence of reliable sources for key facts or notability) that was just not addressed. Only a very small percentage (under 5% as I recall) had the PROD tag removed and then someone took the article to AfD. Risker/Anne On 6 January 2017 at 09:52, Johanna-Hypatia Cybeleia &lt;johanna.hypatia(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: It was a bit of a shock to see on Nell Arthur <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nell_Arthur> 's page an imminent threat of deletion. I wouldn't have thought an article on a First Lady could be so vulnerable. Somebody is claiming that she has no notability just for being married to the vice president who became president after her death. It took me about 5 minutes to find RS for the fact that she was indeed notable and she had everything to do with getting her husband's political career going. He could not have accomplished what he did without her. smh So I edited that fact in; in fact, I created a new section headed "Political career." Now I can remove the deletion threat (just in time before the ax falls!), but I became alarmed: Which other articles on women are under this threat? OK, I'm biased: I come from the town named after her dad. I couldn't just let her slip away. Below is the text of the notice, one I haven't seen before, and it has an alarming red-bordered appearance right up on top of the article, not the talk page. For equality, J.Hy It is <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Proposed_deletion> proposed that this article be deleted because of the following concern: Notability is not inherited, and subject only seems to really be known for her marriage to <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_A._Arthur> Chester A. Arthur. No indication of meeting <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people)> WP:Notability (people) at all. If you can address this concern by <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_policy> improving, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style> copyediting, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Introduction_to_referencing_with_Wiki_Markup/1> sourcing, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Moving_a_page> renaming, or <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Merging> merging the page, please <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nell_Arthur&action=edit> edit this page and do so. You may remove this message if you improve the article or otherwise object to deletion for any reason. Although not required, you are encouraged to explain why you object to the deletion, either in your edit summary or on the talk page. If this template is removed, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Proposed_deletion#Nominating> do not replace it. The article may be deleted if this message remains in place for seven days, i.e., after 06:27, 7 January 2017 (UTC). If you created the article, please don't be offended. Instead, consider improving the article so that it is acceptable according to the <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy> deletion policy. _____ Nominator: Please consider notifying the author/project: {{ <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Substitution> subst: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Proposed_deletion_notify> proposed deletion notify|Nell Arthur|concern=Notability is not inherited, and subject only seems to really be known for her marriage to [[Chester A. Arthur]]. No indication of meeting [[WP:Notability (people)]] at all.}} ~~~~ -- __________________________________ I have been woman for a long time beware my smile --Audre Lorde _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org To manage your subscription preferences, including unsubscribing, please visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org To manage your subscription preferences, including unsubscribing, please visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap