Hi! At the Wikimedia Technical Conference in Atlanta, I worked with Daren Welsh https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Darenwelsh, a spacewalk instructor for NASA, to assist Christina Koch in making the edit. I am certain this is not fake news, and you definitely should not hesitate to celebrate this milestone :)
That said, I understand if the lack of reporting is too great to make our own press release, and perhaps also for inclusion in the [[Wikipedia]] article. From what I was told, the news was shared with NASA's public affairs, but they unfortunately did not create a blog post or the like. It is my impression this historic edit is much more significant to us than to NASA (as an organization), especially considering Christina did this in her free time. We may have to be the primary source, if we want one.
I don't think we can necessarily expect Christina to satisfy doubts of the authenticity of her edit or account either, as she's understandably very busy breaking records and being an inspiration to women and space enthusiasts around the world https://nyti.ms/365aFjD :) Let's just be grateful that she took the time to do this for us in the first place. I certainly am grateful for my very tiny role!
Kind regards,
~ MA
On Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 02:22 Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Internally, absolutely.
I was more responding to it having been placed into an actual article (the one on Wikipedia itself) with the only source being a diff and tweet. An internal website log and a tweet wouldn't be enough for inclusion of something like that in an article about any other website.
Hence my suggestion for those involved to get in touch with news outlets. It's something very cool, and it certainly should be something we see reporting on. It would make a great feel-good/human interest piece, so I'm sure someone would be interested in publishing on it. And once that happens, we can put it in articles too.
Todd
On Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 12:12 AM Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I saw that user creation log and that does seem to me to be persuasive evidence, but persuasive evidence may not be conclusive proof. Carl Sagan said that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_standard", and I understand if people would like evidence that is more verifiable to the public than a CU's testimony, especially keeping in mind that hoaxes have been a problem on English Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia. However, I also think that "assume good faith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith" applies
here,
and I am mindful of another user who said that people made demands for proof of their authenticity in a way that sounded to me like the interrogators' primary motivation was harassment. Perhaps "Trust, but verify https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify" fits how I'm thinking about this. The currently available evidence wouldn't be enough for me to feel comfortable with sending out a press release, but internally (in Wikimedia spaces) I would be happy to celebrate good news if this person
is
able and willing to publicly associate the Wikipedia account with their identity as an astronaut.
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe