Jess Wade's unsurprising inability to tell different people apart before she immortalises them with a Wikipedia page

Dedicated to one of the WMF's "finest persons"
Post Reply
User avatar
Jake Is A Sellout
Sucks Warrior
Posts: 717
Joined: Mon Mar 15, 2021 1:01 am
Been thanked: 113 times

Jess Wade's unsurprising inability to tell different people apart before she immortalises them with a Wikipedia page

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Fri May 14, 2021 11:14 am

As is obvious to anyone who studies this utter shit show of a Wikipedia editor, Jess Wade's method of writing a Wikipedia biography, rushed as she is due to her self set target of writing one a day, consists of little more than a bit of Googling and speed reading.

An experienced writer knows the pitfalls therein. They know, for example, that two people can have the same name. It pays therefore to take the time to do your research properly, to get it straight in your head, who you are reading about, and thus who you are writing about. The timelines, topics, waypoints, etc.

Not so much, Wade.

User avatar
Jake Is A Sellout
Sucks Warrior
Posts: 717
Joined: Mon Mar 15, 2021 1:01 am
Been thanked: 113 times

Re: Jess Wade's unsurprising inability to tell different people apart before she immortalises them with a Wikipedia page

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Fri May 14, 2021 11:44 am

Rather hilariously, this case might have only happened because Wade is ideologicallly predisposed to assuming there can't possibly be two women called Kathleen Collins who are of similar age, who work in similar fields, in American universities.

Even more hilariously, she really should he aware that mixups like this are going to be more likely, precisely because of the very thing she complains about - women scientists are often overlooked in the media, leaving coverage that is sparse and incomplete.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =981493410

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... ple_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... ple_people

A few things to note......

1. It fell to one of the victims of this nonsense to have to engage with Wikipedia to try and get it fixed

2. Jess Wade played ABSOLUTELY NO PART in the effort of fixing her mistake. Even though she was pinged to that talk page, and indeed was left a note about it on her talk page, she just ignored it. Too busy carrying on making more mistakes, I guess.

3. Jess Wade didn't even acknowledge her screw up, neither apologising to the person who she had written a false biography for, nor thanking the Wikipedia editors who worked fast to fix her screwup (no doubt fearing the negative publicity)

4. How long it took. Wade published the false the biography on 14 Aug 2020. The subject tried to edit it directly on 15 Sep 2020, stating "I found this wikipedia page accidentally." The subject then apparently had to send Wikipedia an email in the last week of September. The issue wasn't actually resolved until 2 Oct 2020. And even then, it doesn't sound like they were entirely sure. As one Wikishit said "The article could still use some work". Quite. It has, of course, not had any significant edits since then.

User avatar
Jake Is A Sellout
Sucks Warrior
Posts: 717
Joined: Mon Mar 15, 2021 1:01 am
Been thanked: 113 times

Re: Jess Wade's unsurprising inability to tell different people apart before she immortalises them with a Wikipedia page

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Fri May 14, 2021 12:06 pm

The introduction of a Wikipedia biography published by Jees Wade on 7 May 2021;
Ellen V. Rothenberg (born 1949) is an American biologist and Distinguished Professor at the California Institute of Technology.
According to the edit summary of this edit (which changed the year)......
I am Ellen V. Rothenberg and you had the wrong birth date for me. I was born in 1952. There is another Ellen Rothenberg in Wikipedia, an artist, who is older, but she is not the same as me.
As such, the article now reads....
Ellen V. Rothenberg (born 1952) 
Since it is Wikipedia, and since it is Jess Wade's common practice not to properly source her biographies, and since it is also Jess Wade's common practice to completely abandon her creations shortly after she has hit publish, there's no way to know whether this was actually a case of Wade not knowing who she was writing about when she copy-pasted 1949 from wherever (the other person was indeed born in 1949 according to Wikipedia), or clever vandalism.

User avatar
Jake Is A Sellout
Sucks Warrior
Posts: 717
Joined: Mon Mar 15, 2021 1:01 am
Been thanked: 113 times

Re: Jess Wade's unsurprising inability to tell different people apart before she immortalises them with a Wikipedia page

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Thu Jun 10, 2021 1:44 am

Another super ironic example of this dumb bitch apparently not realising that two different women can have the same name, and work in science!

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1027318874
Margaret Ellen Mayo Tolbert is a biochemist and was the first African American and the first woman in charge of a DoE lab. Margaret Tolbert is a chemistry professor at CU Boulder

Post Reply