[Foundation-l] Missing Wikipedians: An Essay

[Peter Coombe]

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.  What might we do to help make Wikipedia a more
> welcoming place for newbies and for such diverse topics?
>
> Cheers,
> Katie (@aude)
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There's some interesting points in that essay, and no one can deny
that there are systemic biases in Wikipedia. But this particular
example is portrayed absolutely incorrectly.

Deletion log for Makmende:
* 00:37, 24 March 2010 Flyguy649 (talk | contribs) deleted “Makmende”
? (CSD G3: Pure Vandalism)
* 22:53, 23 March 2010 Malik Shabazz (talk | contribs) deleted
“Makmende” ? (G12: Unambiguous copyright infringement (CSDH))
* 18:30, 23 March 2010 JoJan (talk | contribs) deleted “Makmende” ?
(G1: Patent nonsense, meaningless, or incomprehensible)

The entire content of the first version to be deleted?
"Makmende. Kenyan Superhero. Spawned. Not born. Amphibious. Breaths underwater."

And the second was indeed a copyvio of the very page it linked as a
reference (http://liwani.com/?p=167), which provides no clues as to
the "memeness" and also looks rather spammy. The third was an exact
recreation of the second. All of these deletions occurred before the
Wall Street Journal blog post was made.

Soon after this Ethan Zuckerman finds the deleted page, deletion log
and the WSJ entry. He posts to his own blog about it. [1] Just a few
seconds after his post a new page is created, with significantly more
context and a link to the WSJ entry. [2] This undergoes rapid
improvement.

>From the essay:
> Wikipedia editors claimed that the article needed to be deleted because there existed ‘no reliable sources, and no claims of notability’.

No. One editor did, taking a later version to AfD with this reasoning.
[3] The decision was unanimously to keep, and the article underwent
further improvement during the AfD. [4]

>From the essay:
> The article was deleted once again, prompting Ethan Zuckerman to write a blog post...

Despite coming later in the essay, presumably this refers to the third
deletion. As I've pointed out this was exactly the same as the second,
and came before the WSJ post.

Honestly, I think this is an example of Wikipedia working pretty well.
The only problem was perhaps a misleading third deletion summary.

Pete / the wub

[1] http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2010/03/24/makmendes-so-huge-he-cant-fit-in-wikipedia/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Makmende&oldid=351782499
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Makmende
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Makmende&action=historysubmit&diff=352988064&oldid=351864233