Who the hell is Linda Yaccarino?

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ericbarbour
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Who the hell is Linda Yaccarino?

Post by ericbarbour » Fri May 12, 2023 11:18 pm

It is my suspicion that she would have been "notable" before Musk made her the CEO of Twitter's parent company today. But she wasn't---for years her name was buried in a list of NBCUniversal management people.

Then yesterday, that fine-quality WikiAutist Muboshgu created a redirect, as Yaccarino was being mentioned in news media as the top candidate for Twitter CEO. 19 minutes later, Muboshgu created a draft article. "Maybe we better do something" etc.

After a day of arm-flapping, Fuzheado showed up and made the article "official" by "blessing" it. With his noodly little Wiki-Wee-Wee.

Obviously Wikipedia violated/twisted its own WP:ONE policy here. And Muboshgu continued to grind it, making me wonder if we have an administrator who is performing paid editing.

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Re: Who the hell is Linda Yaccarino?

Post by ericbarbour » Fri May 12, 2023 11:24 pm

We could always have a WP insider dox-out for the weekend. Muboshgu has done a bang-up job of hiding his real identity, despite using the "Muboshgu" handle on a variety of websites in the past 20 years. Judging from repeatedly being named in media items about past Wikipedia editwars, he might be "notable enough for a WP article".

According to this he's a "psychologist in the Bay Area" "who asked not to be identified for fear of harassment". He's a big obsessed baseball fan, been on WP and Commons since 2009, and is politically left-of-center.

His 2017 RFA was an asslicking contest. Only the true Wiki-Robots and politicizing suck-ups get such positive treatment these days.

Otherwise it will be a challenge.....so go to work. Show us you're not merely another angry blocked editor.

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Re: Who the hell is Linda Yaccarino?

Post by Boink Boink » Sat May 13, 2023 8:29 am

Hilarious

Last week, the woman was a complete nobody. Not my view, but it isn't hard to find "reliable sources" and even prominent feminist Wikipedia editors who feed said sources, who espouse the view that not having a Wikipedia biography equates to your achievements being insignificant. Having a Wikipedia biography is tantamount to recognition, even praise. So they claim anyway. They do rather have a conflict of interest though. Imagine how crushed they would be if the world one day realised Wikipedia is unimportant, and women can succeed without it, and indeed inspite of it.

But as a Wikipedia criticism site, we must first see the world through their eyes, in order to debunk it as the delusional self aggrandizing nonsense that it is.

So, last week, she was unimportant. Insignificant. This week, she's interesting enough to have a "Did You Know" entry on the highly prized (again, not my view but....) internet real estate the is Wikipedia's front page.
Did You Know that that Linda Yaccarino (pictured), Twitter's new chief executive officer, created an ad campaign for the COVID-19 vaccine that featured Pope Francis?
Well, I can truthfully say, I did not. But I can also say that anyone who is in the habit of reading Deadline, an eminently reliable source for Wikipedia surely, the provided source for this factoid no less, they would have been were of who Yaccarino was from at least January 2021....

https://deadline.com/2021/01/nbcunivers ... 234665264/
Linda Yaccarino, NBCUniversal’s chairman of global advertising and partnerships, has been named chair of the Ad Council’s board of directors.

She succeeds David Fischer, Chief Revenue Officer of Facebook, and will serve in the role until June 30, 2022. The role of chair rotates among representatives of four industry sectors: media companies, technology companies, ad agencies and advertisers.

Since its beginnings in the 1940s, the non-profit Ad Council has developed public service communications and marketing efforts for a range of social causes. Its signature campaigns have included Smokey the Bear’s anti-forest fire messages and slogans like “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk” and “Love has no labels.” It has responded to events like the September 11th attacks and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy and has recently tackled Covid-19.
And yet.....no biography.

Obviously I am not invoking an INHERITED argument here. Wikipedia doesn't even list Ad Council chairs in the Ad Council article, never mind grant them biographies. Poor old David Fischer hasn't got one. But it was perhaps unsurprising given this kind of reporting, that there would be other reliable sources out there attesting to her significance.

Indeed, this April 2001 MSNBC piece the Wikishits also included in this biography seems to be exactly up Wikipedia's street regarding gold standard "significant coverage", an interview with Yaccarino precisely because she has risen to the top of her field, in a traditionally male dominated industry.

https://www.msnbc.com/know-your-value/w ... o-n1264871
Women may have been hit the hardest during the Covid-19 pandemic. But if there’s a silver lining to the turmoil of the past year, it may be the deepening acceptance of the long-overlooked truth that women make incredible leaders.....Yaccarino ― who now runs a $10 billion-plus annual advertising operation ― rose to the top of her field......She recently chatted with Know Your Value’s Mika Brzezinski on what it will take to bring more women into leadership positions.
So clearly, the answer to who Who the hell is Linda Yaccarino? (a not unreasonable question for 99.9% of the population) is that she is a woman who was more than notable enough for a Wikipedia biography under their usual basic standard of notability (significant coverage in multiple reliable sources) since at least April 2021, by which time she also quite clearly passed the entirely unofficial but still very useful test for inclusion, DOES WIKIPEDIA LOOK LIKE A COMPLETE JOKE RIGHT NOW, but didn't get one until she quite literally became headline news.

The reason of course is obvious. Wikipedia is institutionally sexist. Largely because the editing community, from the bottom rung of the editors to the rarified air of their Supreme Court, is one massive sausage fest.

There wasn't even a dispute, she was just ignored. Overlooked. People in that shit house like to dispute it, but seriously, this is the inevitable result when your "community" is so toxic that your editor base is tiny and it is mostly male. You just ignore that which even the mainstream media is finally noticing. Women!

Cases like this make it clear and obvious that their long standing go to excuse for their lack of women biographies, namely claiming that reliable sources aren't covering the women they would like to write about, If this was ever really what was stopping them, isn't valid now. They have no excuse. Other than saying sorry for pretending to to the world (and fleecing people for donations off the back of it) that their model works.

It doesn't. And it never will without the sort of significant cultural change Wikipedia has shown itself incapable and indeed unwilling to do. Even now, the Wikipedia Supreme court is genuinely having a hard time deciding whether the serially aggressive battleground editor Volunteer Marek should be banned. Studies have shown this is a significant factor in dissuading women from either joining or sticking with Wikipedia.

The DID YOU KNOW entry here should actually be....

Did You Know Wikipedia's sexism problem was headline news a very long time ago but we still haven't changed, and fuck you if you even think we're trying (or genuinely care). To rub your noses in our collective crotch and fleece more money from the terminally gullible, here's a biography of a women we could have written about at least two years ago, but who we only noticed this week, when she literally became headline news. Enjoy!


The kicker his that if she prove to be a capable operator who gives Elon what he wants, a profitable Twitter that is a haven of "free speech", the Wikipedia editors will rapidly turn this biography into a hit job.

On the flip side, I'm all for Wikipedia recognising women, but it is a sad reflection of how Wikipedia does feminism, namely in a transparently activist way to try and compensate for the sausage fest and negative headlines, that this appears to be yet another case of Wikipedia misrepresenting what happened, attributing the work of a committee working with others, to a single woman. As the source makes clear "As Ad Council chair, Yaccarino also partnered with the Biden White House in 2021 to create a coronavirus vaccine campaign featuring Pope Francis."

So in the version it is about to put on the front page, Wikipedia is probably ignoring or downgrading the contributions of the rest of the council, and Yaccarino's predecessors and appointer, plus members of the Biden Administration and indeed the Vatican. At least some of which you might hope were women too. An oversight the could have been avoided, had this biography been present and edited for two years.

Although at least in this case, the person was the chair. We have no information on whether or not it was her idea, the source only suggesting it played a part, building on prior work by Universal under Yaccarino and a clear brief of the incoming chair. It wouldn't matter to Wikipedia. Such nuance is of course beyond their primitive means, with any such dispute quickly devolving into a shouting match between ten angry men and one angry feminist. Purely because of the negative headlines, the feminist wins a surprising amont of these battles. But never the war.

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