Useless Jess Wade ineffectual at combatting Wikipedia racism

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Jake Is A Sellout
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Useless Jess Wade ineffectual at combatting Wikipedia racism

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Tue Oct 12, 2021 6:39 pm

As we all know, Jess Wade is beyond shit as a Wikipedia editor, her self image and media reputation is so undeserved, so far removed from her verifiable truth, it is tantamount to fraud.

And I say fraud, because I refuse to live in a world where how she behaves could be down to simple delusional stupidity, something she genuinely cannot help, but she still somehow managed to get a job as an actual scientist in a serious institution. Or at least, hasn't yet been found out and fired.

But hey, given what she is and why she came to be a Wikipedia editor, she could at least be relied upon to make a big noise when Wikipedia editors were being sexist. And while most of the time she did this she was simply playing the woman card as a defence mechanism to cover for her obvious failings as an editor and indeed a human being, sometimes she was actually right. Because the Wikipedia community is of course, sexist as fuck.

So you would think she could be useful in other areas too, no? That she could make a similar noise about that other terrible dirty secret of the Wikipedia community. Their utter racism. For amid all the self congratulatory YES WE BANNED ANOTHER NAZI bullshit of recent years (Drmies, you aren't fooling anyone), they are of course quite unwilling to accept that, as with women editors and content, they are blind to their own racism.

We know this already, chiefly in how they laughingly declined to show support for the Black Lives Matter movement by shutting down Wikipedia for a day, because they see that as a political act.

Out here in the real world, whether or not you think black people deserve to die for being black, is thankfully, no longer a matter of politics, but right and wrong. We have moved on. Just about. Some are slower than others, and it's no accident that Wikipedia is America's idea of an educational tool, rather than, say, something that can be relied upon to be accurate and comprehensive and neutral.

Racism has a different form these days. Keeping positive black role models safely hidden from view, is one such example. Traditional encyclopedias used to do this, sure, but their world has moved on too. Traditional encyclopedias and professional reference works in general, now do things like hire people specifically to look for and correct their own systemic bias.

Wikipedia, not so much. Like many things, Wikipedia leaves it to the very people who are the cause of the problem, to be the solution. Hence why even after twenty years, there is a non trivial risk that when your child looks up the page for the US President to do a school project, assuming you are that bad of a parent, he or she or they will be shown a Nazi flag.

Which President perhaps tells you that it isn't always random vandals doing it. Takes quite a bit of insider knowledge to pull off that specific attack these days. I'm just sayin'. Would they do it? Well, they let people be Administrators, the supposed bastion of neutrality, while openly displaying hateful and divisive "tell you about myself" boxes on their user pages, so you be the judge.

Enter one Michael Johnson. Not a hateful Wikipedia Administrator, but an African American scientist. By all accounts, one that is doing well, heading his own lab doing important work in a prestigious university.

You probably already know that's not enough for Wikipedia notability, and not for a black man certainly.

Well, it might interest you to know that this particular black man was highlighted way back in 2014 by "The Urban Scientist" in their blog for Scientific American. That is the pen name of none other than black women and STEM activist Danielle N. Lee. And it should be enough to say they do have a Wikipedia biography, to tell you they are an important figure. Albeit not one created organically but by a class project, because, well, you know. It begins with R.

But if you want it from a reliable source, Scientific American says....
DNLee is a biologist and she studies animal behavior, mammalogy, and ecology . She uses social media, informal experiential science experiences, and draws from hip hop culture to share science with general audiences, particularly under-served groups.
She was quite clear why she made her choice....
Introducing Dr. Michael D L Johnson and Black Science Blog

Black Science Blog is the youngest blog I've featured so far. It is a science blog for non-scientists. It addresses the growing divide between scientists and non-scientist by breaking down the jargon and addressing the how, what, where, why, and when questions of science, all while using anecdotes from the author's, Dr. Michael D.L. Johnson's personal life. Having been born and raised on the Southside of Chicago by a single parent, his journey to STEM success and earning a PhD certainly defies the negative narrative dominates the media about such individuals who experience such early environments.
....and really, what more would Wikipedia editors need to persuade them that this is exactly the sort of man who should be being recognised by them, if they're serious about countering systemic bias. And to realise that to delete his biography would be a shocking act of racism?

If you're one of those people who is uncomfortable with Wikipedia having pages on people just because they're activists who happen to be run of the mill scientists, and Lord knows the fact Jess Wade somehow has a biography, and a clearly fraudulent one at that, is reason enough to justify such cynicism, well, you will be pleased to know that Dr. Johnson has one quite legitimate claim to what Wikipedia defines as notability as a scientist.

His appearance as the 2020 speaker for the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Judith H. Greenberg Early Career Investigator Lecture Series, which is "presented by an NIGMS-funded early career researcher working on the cutting edge of science", would seem to quite easily meet the NPROF bar for seeing "significant impact", since that is a lecture that is quite obviously "considerably more prestigious than giving an invited lecture at typical national and international conferences in [his discipline]". His discipline of course being immunobiology, not "general medical sciences".

The Wikipedia editors are of course, unmoved, refusing to recognise this man's worth either as a scientist or a science communicator, let alone as a role model. And it hardly needs explaining, the only realistic explanation for why they would do so, is because he is black. His story is black.

At time of writing, Jess Wade stands alone in defence of this man's right to be recognised by Wikipedia, which doesn't count for much, since she created it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... scientist)

This man will soon become yet another victim of Wikipedia's ingrained racism.

I could step in I suppose, but my ISP is majorly blocked from editing Wikipedia. Probably because a black man tried to edit once.

It doesn't need to be this way. Jess Wade could have played her part.

So, I hear you ponder, what exactly has Jess Wade done to cause this calamity? She is helping, right? Quite a lot, really.

As mentioned, she isn't jumping up and down highlighting the racism occurring here, which could be enough to cause a rethink. And before you say, ah, well, she would get blocked if she did that, do me a favour.

Jess Wade is unblockable, as has been proven the countless times she has jumped up and down and unjustifiably yelled sexism. As well as of course the fact she proves every single day that she not just can't but doesn't actually want to follow Wikipedia rules on BLP sourcing (unsurprisingly, this biography too had an example of her sloppiness, one of the references for what he actually studies, number 5., being a dead link straight out of the box, presumably because it was an internal redirect, and she either didn't check it after publication or her unsound methods are unchanged despite her having made this exact type of mistake many times before).

Her original sin was of course not even mentioning in her biography that Johnson's story, his status as a positive black role model, was exactly why his blog was plucked from obscurity and singled out for dissemination by an authoritative source working for a reliable expert publisher.

I don't know why she does this, other than her complete lack of training and entirely self taught experience in biographical writing, but I do know she has an absolutely terrible record in this regard more generally. I am always surprised by what she chooses to put into Wikipedia as a noteworthy aspect of the subject's life, and what she inexplicably leaves on the cutting room floor. Especially given her media puff pieces claim she is there to tell people's stories. Bollocks.

She did somehow manage to spot that Johnson does meet the Wikipedia notability criteria due to that lecture, but it does rather beg the question, and it would certainly match her past record of general incompetence, was she actually unaware of it at the time she wrote this man a biography? Did she only find it when scrabbling around for a policy compliant reason to vote keep in the AfD debate?

If so, what the hell was she basing her opinion of why this man was notable on in the first place? It would hardly be the first time she has simply seen someone she likes and admires and based her decision to include them in Wikipedia entirely on that basis. Like Wikipedia is just her personal activist blog, or an extension of her Twitter.

Hence why it is just so easy to hate her for claiming, quite wrongly, that she is a competent and experienced Wikipedia editor who is remotely qualified to speak about its biases and do something about it. She's an utter fuckwit is what she is, an embarrassment to all women and feminists out there, because it's beyond obvious that she has a severe case of either DIDN'T READ THE FUCKING MANUAL, or worse, did read it, disagrees with it, and so is trying to change the manual by BREAKING WIKIPEDIA, ONE ARTICLE AT A TIME. Which is, as you might expect, against the Wikipedia rule that specifies what is and is not disruptive behaviour.

As per the famous Wikipedia rule Ignore ALL Rules, you can of course ignore any rule and do whatever the whatever the fuck you like if you think that rule is preventing you from improving Wikipedia. But the way you can tell Jess Wade is not doing this, is because someone who was competent and had experience of being a full and complete part of the Wikipedia community rather than some egotistical self absorbed self isolating activist, would have already realised by now that you can only get away with Ignoring All Rulez if two criteria are met: 1. You actually say, I am invoking IAR, and 2. Your action is not met with resistance.

I know, its a bit contradictory but it really is the only way to make such a rule work rather than become a dickhead's charter. It is one of the few logical things about Wikipedia full stop, which is perhaps explained by the fact it was written early in their history, long before the lunatics took over the asylum, to use Larry Sanger'a famous quote.

Otherwise, it is disruption, and you should be blocked. Notwithstanding Jess Wade has general immunity from being blocked, given she is far too valuable these days as a PR tool whose mere existence and tendency to talk rubbish to the media somehow convinces the gullible that Wikipedia is a force for good.

Last but not least, she has probably already ticked people off given that her only other contribution to the debate was to insinuate one of the other participants is a bit of a Billy Bullshitter. Granted, she said it as if it was a genuine querry, but to those who know her, the patented Jess Wade derisory sarcasm is all over this shit...
Delete. GNG doesn't appear to be met, and certainly not NPROF unless someone can demonstrate C7. Just an early-career researcher with early-career Scopus citations. Compared to his 94 coauthors with 5+ (a very low number in this field; some undergrads have that many papers!) papers: Total citations: average: 6597, median: 1795, Johnson: 547. Total papers: avg: 79, med: 38, J: 22. h-index: avg: 29, med: 20, J: 13. Top 5 citations: 1st: avg: 677, med: 344, J: 105. 2nd: avg: 428, med: 176, J: 94. 3rd: avg: 303, med: 148, J: 52. 4th: avg: 255, med: 113, J: 42. 5th: avg: 221, med: 105, J: 38. JoelleJay (talk) 19:51, 9 October 2021 (UTC)
Genuinely interested in which undergrads you know with 5 papers JoelleJay. Jesswade88 (talk) 20:17, 9 October 2021 (UTC)
To avoid all doubt, and meticulously stay the right side of Wikipedia's civility requirement, published not actual of course, she could have just said plainly, I have never heard of undergraduates with 5 papers, could you give me an example?

But what would Wikipedia be, if Jess Wade's talent for self promotion and general ego wasn't somehow quite effective at buying her general immunity even from the basic requirements that editors be respectful to each other? That thing that they already know would attract more women editors. Which perhaps explains why they don't do it.

Lord alone knows she could have quite easily been banned long ago just for being rude to the point of obnoxious, repeatedly and unapologetically, but that would have caused Wikipedia some difficulties, because she could have quite justifiably said in her defence (although I am quite sure she never knew it at that time), why are you banning me, I haven't been nearly as much of a prick as RexxS, for example.

The irony being, RexxS is no longer a Wikipedia editor, not because he was rude, but for having done things as an Administrator which are not very good, and only happen when a naturally rude person is allowed to be a Wikipedia Administrator. You would think they would learn, but no.

Jess Wade still thinks she could be a Wikipedia Administrator, and that the only thing stopping her is Wikipedia's ingrained sexism. Now that is some next level bullshit.

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