Category talk:Notable Wikipedians

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

Contents

[edit] Whom to include

I have some unease about some names that have been included in this category. There are a couple aspects here:

  1. I feel uncomfortable with having editors who have only edited anonymously (i.e. by an IP address) listed here (or rather, the articles they may have edited). IP addresses are changeable: some ISPs use dynamic IP addresses; even those that assign fixed ISPs don't necessarily (or ever) have lifetime contracts to lease a specific IP address. So even if Famous Person Jones really did edit with the IP address 172.16.54.21 at some point, there's no particular reason to suppose they have access to that address in general. And pertinently, there's no reason to think that some new editor won't have it (and not wish, presumably, to be described as being the same person described in an article).
  2. I'm also a bit unhappy about the standard of evidence used for some of these assignments. In many cases, an editors—but especially an anon editor—is said to be the same person as an article subject purely on the basis of having edited that WP article in a way that makes it plausible that the edit is autobiography. For example Sophia Lamar was assigned to this category recently, as an anonymous IP user. There was no comment provided on the talk page for why the category membership was added. However, looking through the edit history, there were some comments by that anon in the article, along the lines of "Sophia Lamar want the article to be this way!" Quite likely the subject was getting carried away with autobiography, and editing poorly... but I don't know for sure: maybe it was a friend of hers; maybe it was a vandal wanting to discredit her; maybe it was a stranger who was merely presumptuous. But absent a specific comment on a user page (or on some other citable source), I don't think we should just assume the personal identity.
  3. Additionally, I think "Notable Wikipedian" ought to mean that an editor is moderately notable on Wikipedia as well as meriting an article for their outside noteriety. Someone who made a very small number of edits ever, or who edited only the autobiography page, is kind of uninteresting to put in this category. The category text doesn't quite say that now, but I think it should. It's the folks whom you might actually have known as WP editors who are notable in the outside world that have a point for inclusion. I'm not aiming here for the "top 50 contributors" or anything as extensive as that: just maybe someone who has at least edited a dozen articles during their WP career. I.e. they have a meaningful "Wikipedia presence".

Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 07:54, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

1. If new editors do no wish to be associated with someone who used their IP previously, they can register a name.
2. We have little proof of any of these. The users peronal admission should be sufficient, unelss there is a reason to doubt them.
3. I don't think it is a good title either. It should be "Category: Wikipedians with article", to match the list. However, that said, anyone with an article in Wikipedia is notable. Otherwise, the article should be deleted.
-Willmcw 10:04, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
My third issue is different from what Willmcw responds to. I mean that we ought only to list Wikipedians with more than a trivial edit history in this category. For example, if I demonstrate Wikipedia editing to a famous person by walking them through two article edits; and that person never returns as editor thereafter, it's just a silly technicality to call them a "Notable Wikipedian". They may well be extremely notable; but they are only a Wikipedian in the most trivial of senses (and not interesting to include in the category... unless they come back later and actually engage in WP editing, of course). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 16:47, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Roger Ebert and friends

The best example of a trivial Wikipedian on this list is Roger Ebert. He made about three edits. (And contributed an image). OTOH, he's also one of the more prominent people who has acknowledged editing here, and perhaps one of the reasons the list was started. Why do we need to draw the circle so tightly? What's the harm in drawing it broadly? -Willmcw 20:32, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Ebert stood out in my mind when I saw his name. In fact, he made 14 edits to ten different pages (several were images, but images are important for WP too). That's a hair under the dozen I mention above, but it's not just one edit, or to just one article. The fact that Ebert is highly notable outside WP weighs a bit in his favor for category inclusion.
Contrast this with Sophia Lamar whom I mention above: even if she had edited under a username, her outside notability is only nominal (I'd personally vote keep on an AfD; but not strong keep). I don't want a rigid formula like "if edits > N and notability > Z then add category"... but a little common sense balancing is reasonable. Someone who is just an "autobiography warrior" is a demerit for cat inclusion. Someone who is highly notable in the outside world is a merit for cat inclusion. Someone who lacks a username and only uses an IP address is a very strong demerit for cat inclusion (but maybe that could be outweighed if someone was highly notable and did many edits under that IP address).
Or compare also with me (David Mertz) or Danny Yee. Both of us are moderately notable (somewhere between Lamar and Ebert :-)), but we've both been quite active as named users on WP (hundreds of pages, thousands of edits) Those seems like really good category membership candidates. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 20:59, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
Notability aside, this category helps other editors be aware of autobiography. Even if Sophia Lamar is not particularly notable, if I were editing her article I'd want to know if she was also participating. Many "Wikipedians with article" do not pick usernames based on their real names (no reason they should), which makes it unclear when they are engaging in autobiography. -Willmcw 22:37, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
I dunno, it makes it seem like your motive is to "out" autobiography writers. The thing about MacDonald seemed to have that character. I don't find that a worthwhile goal as such. Rather, I think that for people who are notable, i.e. readers will come across their article because they are interested in the external activity of that person, it's a mildly interesting footnote to learn the person has been involved in Wikipedia itself. Not to disparage the person or article because of autobiography, but simply as a bit of trivia on a notable person. In any case, if you are interested in informing editors of a page, why not just put the info on the talk page for that one article rather than clutter the category? (we could make a new template for that fact, if needed).
One of the articles Roger Ebert edited, FWIW, is the one on himself, though I hardly think that says anything bad about him, nor about the article (likewise for David Mertz, Danny Yee, Jim Duffy (author) and most notable WPians; most of whom have touched their articles). I do think the edits by Sophia Lamar, Jeffrey Vernon Merkey and Kevin B. MacDonald are not such good edits (POV and all), but other than trying to jab at them, I can't see any point in adding an IP address that edited a single article as a "notable WPian". For that matter, I'm pretty sure that my colleage Alan Soble, whom I started an article on, made an anon edit or two to his article (perfectly proper and NPOV); but he's not (yet) a "notable Wikipedian". Most autobiographers are not "autobiography warriors"; good Wikipedians are perfectly capable of making NPOV, non-argumentative edits to pages about them (or about things they're involved in, like Roger Ebert on his collaborator Russ Meyer).Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 23:06, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Autobiography warriors

I've had a lot of experience with autobiographers on Wikipedia. As you say, there are undoubtedly many who have passed under the radar, mostly by making the kind of NPOV edits that no one obects to. But there are also the many who have become edit warriors over their articles. Yes, they tend to focus mostly on themselves and possibly a few associates/enemies. Alerting other editors to their activity serves a definite, and positive purpose at Wikipedia. MacDonald is a prime case of an auto-bio-warrior, apparently Merkey is too. I could give you a longer list if you want. -Willmcw 23:36, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Having worked myself on the Merkey article, I certainly understand the danger. In fact, I'm basically the first editor who "jumped into the fray" to rescue the article from the awful doggerel Merkey had placed there, and turn it into something encyclopedic. A bunch of other good editors have taken over that task, and since Merkey was blocked, it's basically a quite good WP article on a minor notable.
On the other hand, as a minor notable myself, I've also seen anti-autobiography witchhunt go way overboard. When the page on me was nominated for AfD, just about every argument made for "delete" was "David edited it, therefore delete it" (also no serious claim of non-notability). But not one single editor on the AfD, on the talk page, or anywhere else, ever alleged that any specific edit I made violated WP:NPOV or WP:V. So I also see the danger of being knee-jerk opposed to autobiography: it happens that subjects of articles tend to know something about the topic (likewise for books written by WPians that merit articles, or music recordings, art works, software projects, etc; the authors usually know something about the works).
I would propose, Willmcw, a compromise approach. We would need to get "buy in" from some other editors, but just as an idea. Rather than use this category for "autobiography warriors" who have done little on Wikipedia other than work on autobiography (and especially if they've done so anonymously rather than with a persistent username), we should have some sort of template on the talk pages of articles to indicate that they've been subject to "autobiography wars". Something along the lines of {NPOV} or {accuracy}. Or maybe it could be a category like Category:Autobiography dispute.
I think alerting editors who actually want to edit a particular page that there's been this kind of problem in the past is worthwhile. But I also think this current category should be reserved for the really useful examples: named editors who have participated non-trivially in WP (and who are subject of Wikispace articles, obviously). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 01:29, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
I agree that "vanity" is not a good reason for deleting an article, but that doesn't really affect this discussion. I think there is merit in a possible tag to mark autobiography-related disputes. However the addition of such a tag may inflame a dispute even further, while the current tag is relatively neutral. Maybe an "autobiography" category? I don't see the need to change how this category is used, as a catchall for all people notable enough to have a Wikipedia article, who also happen to have edited here. You are defining a tight, and rather subjective, limit on this category, and I still don't see the reason. You've identified the problem of an IP user who isn't the same person, but that is apparently only a hypothetical problem. The fact that an editor may have only "trivially" participated in WP is a judgement call, and one based only on past edits. I just don't see the harm in the current category definition. -Willmcw 01:58, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
There's not really a "how this category is used" to rely on here. A month or two ago, there were fewer than half as many names listed (and all of them, as far as I could tell then) met my "narrow" criteria. Just very recently, some editors have made an strong effort to expand membership in this category; in many cases, IMO, by including very borderline examples. Eliminating the anonymous users, as a principle, however, would certainly go a long way towards answering my concerns. The current definition is kind of a non-definition: what's a "Wikipedia user"? (I recently learned that for RfA's, apparently an IP/anon or a just-added usernmae is automatically excluded from being considered a Wikipedia user—for reasons that are compelling and obvious enough)... actually, technically, someone who viewed pages but never edited is a "WP user" (not sure how we'd determine that [server logs?], but definitionally they could be listed).
As to the IP address being a non-identical person, it is a known and specific issue. User:Tregoweth is the editor who added a lot of names to this category (dunno how he figured them out to add; some clever sleuthing, I reckon). One he added was Sarah Lane, who was an interesting case. Lane apparently demonstrated Wikipedia on TechTV (putting in spurious content to see how long it would take to fix itself). This anon editor who is said to be Lane has exactly two edits, one year apart: the first is the one mentioned in the article itself as demonstrated on TV, the second is almost surely someone different (my wild guess is someone else who works at the same TV studio). See [1]. It's true that whoever now has MacDonald's IP address has not decided to edit WP with it, but that's pure accident; if we start going crazy (as editors seem to have) with adding anons as "Notable Wikipedians", we'll get lots more collisions. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 02:31, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
"...Whoever has MacDonald's IP address..." Why don't we assume that it is MacDonald? There's no evidence to the contrary. Here's a guy that definitely should not be included: User:Tcon125, as he is so non-notable that his article may be speedy deleted. Again, "Wikipedians" is defined - people who edit Wikipedia, so that's not a problem. Certainly, IPs included should only be included if there is strong evidence, including a long edit history. I think that the category was expanded because the list was converted into a category, then folks realized the list had benefit as well. The trouble with a list is that most editors wouldn't think of checking it. Anyway, if you want to split the category into "Notable Wikipedians" and "Wikipedians with articles", then I wouldn't object. For me, the bottom line is that articles which have significant participation by their subjects are marked. Maybe the "autobiography" tag on the talk page is a good idea. Let's wait until we've had more invovlement from other editors. Cheers, -Willmcw 02:53, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
In the meantime, I've added a non-category version of the tag to Kevin B. MacDonald. -Willmcw 03:02, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
But he likes Star Wars... how much more notable can you get :-).
Btw. Good job on the non-cat MacDonald tag. I'm totally with you on that. I have to confess that I accidentally added a non-cat version to Merkey as well. I used {{subst:Notable Wikipedian}} to get the expansion, so I could modify the text to include the lifetime block thing. But I did not initially realize that the substitution apparently stopped the template from adding category membership. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 03:07, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
The Category:Wikipedian autobiography seems workable. Thanks for doing that. Cheers, -Willmcw 08:43, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] I have an issue

I feel that a distinction should be made between "Notable Wikipedians" who are active contributers and "Notable Wikipedians" who attempts to propagandize articles about themselves or articles about things they are involved in, such as Adam Curry and Podcast or the staff of Marty Meehan on his article. These are obviously a different breed to the press, who make a huge stink about it, and never fail to add that its just one reason Wikipedia is worthless as an information source.

I created the category Category:Articles edited by interested parties but I want to rename it to involved parties instead. I think its going to be voted for deletion, which may be justified as the name is somewhat vague.

Well... if this category is kept, you certainly need to add every single article I've ever edited to the category. I haven't edited anything I'm 100% disinterested in. So however many hundreds of articles that is. But even taking less contentious examples: I'm a notable wikipedian who has written a book and a lot of articles on the Python programming language; I've also edited the Python article. So it even goes so far as me having a financial interest in the topic of the article (a bit indirect, but definitely extant). Still, the category seems far less than useful to add to the Python article. I've also edited articles about some academic colleagues of mine—no financial interest, but I definitely have a certain (positive) personal sentiment about them. I don't think it has made those articles POV (nor even my edits), but I have a certain interestedness in such articles existing. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 01:46, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
As was said in the very paragraph you are responding to interestedness is vague and I was hoping to rename it. You do bring up some very interesting exceptions, but I don't think the idea as a whole is completely lost because of them. I merely need help isolating the unique qualities of these particular articles, and that's what my question was about. Thank you for pointing out your experience, I will think on it.
I am toying with Articles surripticiously edited by their subjectYeago 03:28, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, I feel there is an important distinction. Perhaps add Articles edited by interested parties as a child category of Notable Wikipedians? (Or rather, vice verse since only sometimes its the subject him/herself editing the article).

The debate is here. I'd really like some feedback, especially if you see a way to salvage this category. Please don't consider this a solicitation for approval, I really just see a distinction here and I'd like some feedback ("you're right" | "you're crazy!") =)

Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2006_February_16#Category:Articles_edited_by_interested_partiesYeago 00:36, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge with Wikipedians with articles

I just don't see the difference between this article and Wikipedians with articles based on the descriptions. Have a separate list for notables without articles about themselves if you want, but does either article currently cover that? I think it should be combined into a single list. Just note when a notable Wikipedian has a Wikipedia article about himself, or when he's written one, or whatever. -Barry- 21:52, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, they're different kinds of things: one is a category, and one is a list. Which would you keep? BTW, the tag doesn't link to the article, it links to the nonexistant Category:Wikipedians with articles. —Keenan Pepper 21:55, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I see that now. Then the Wikipedians with articles article should be expanded to include notable Wikipedians who don't have articles about themselves, like Lars Marius Garshol, and I'll link to that article from this section and explain that the article covers more than this section. -Barry-
And now I see there's a List of notable Wikipedians. They don't need to have articles about themselves, so this "category" (and the "project" Wikipedians with articles) did fill a niche by only including those with articles. Still not sure what a "project" is though, as opposed to an article. Maybe I shouldn't have included a Wikipedian without an article on the project page. I'll leave it to someone else to revert if they want. All I know is that better explanatory text and links to the related articles/categories/projects, ect. is needed. -Barry- 22:36, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
Oh, it took me a while to realize what you were talking about. Wikipedia:Wikipedians with articles is in the Wikipedia: namespace, not the main article namespace, so it's not part of the encyclopedia proper. The label therefore says "project page" instead of "article". See Help:Namespace. —Keenan Pepper 02:30, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notable admins

Does anyone know if there are any administrators in the category? Myrtone

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../n/o/t/Category_talk%7ENotable_Wikipedians_620e.html"