[Gendergap] Women and Wikipedia by Barbara Fisher

[Daniel and Elizabeth Case]

Amy wrote:
 
For example, suppose a potential woman editor wants to work on an article about Charlotte Ray, the first black woman lawyer. But there is not even a stub for Charlotte, so our editor tries to create the article, but it is immediately tagged for deletion for notability reasons. Having heard from many new editors, it is incredibly common that the initial contact with Wikipedia is that their article is deleted. I'm proposing that existing content is limited by the ideas of what the majority of the current community believes is notable, and it is difficult for new editors to earn the reputation within Wikipedia to influence this. So in effect the current content is limiting what new editors can contribute, and I suspect this is a major stumbling block for new women editors

My comment:

I have noticed in occasionally reviewing people's speedy tagging incident to doing username patrol that it seems too many newpage patrollers, particularly those using Huggle or something like that, confuse "unreferenced" for "non-notable". I've had to de-speedy a couple of articles where the text did make an assertion which, if properly sourced, would demonstrate notability.

Daniel Case
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