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(a)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(a)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 )
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