[Foundation-l] Missing Wikipedians: An Essay

[aude]

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 7:17 PM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 18 February 2011 23:24, aude <aude.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Heather Ford, a former Wikimedia advisory board member and
> researcher/writer
> > in South Africa has written an essay, "The Missing Wikipedians" about
> > systematic bias on English Wikipedia (especially) against new users and
> > topics pertinent to Africa and other diverse places/people.
> >
> > As an example, she cites the English Wikipedia article [[Makmende]] and
> the
> > deletion request made, biting the newbie.
> >
> > http://hblog.org/2011/02/16/the-missing-wikipedians/
> >
> > Please read and discuss.
>
> Author appears to be living in 2006 (deletionists vs inclusionists)
> and apparently this represents a clash between the two groups:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Makmende
>
> Where in practice it's a pretty standard if rather one sided AFD.
>

That was after the article was speedy deleted three times and the fourth
time.  They finally recreate the article with the edit summary "Introduction
of this superhero character -- this is not vandalism"

Then, Ethan Zuckerman blogged about this and chimed in on the article's talk
page, surely drawing attention and support in the AFD.

http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2010/03/24/makmendes-so-huge-he-cant-fit-in-wikipedia/


> >  What might we do to help make Wikipedia a more
> >  welcoming place for newbies
>
> Since they seem to be determined to read the listing on AFD process as
> deletion not much we can do. Some changes to
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Article_for_deletion/dated
>
> perhaps but keeping it within the current length could be tricky.
>
> >and for such diverse topics?
>
> Drop a prompt to add sources into the article creation process and
> make adding sources easy.
>

Before speedy deleting, how about tagging the article for needing sources,
leave the author a note on their talk page, and not be so quick to delete?

Cheers,
Katie



>
> --
> geni
>
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