London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Jimmy Wales; who played who?

[CrowsNest]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/ ... -page-gap/

That's a wonderful piece of press London Mayor Sadiq Khan managed to wangle out of Wikipedia. Rather brilliantly, it seems Jimmy had to turn up, but the Mayor suddenly found he was otherwise engaged.

As the article pronounces (on 12 June)......

Today, we will be adding women CEOs, editors, entrepreneurs, lawyers and artists who, in spite of their talent, profile and significant contributions to their industry - are still without Wikipedia entries.

Among the new entries that will be created is Perminder Mann, the CEO of Bonnier Publishing UK, one of the UK’s top publishing firms, who has featured on The Bookseller magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the industry; Farrah Storr, the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, who previously launched Women’s Health, one of the UK’s bestselling health and lifestyle publications, is also getting her own page. The entrepreneur and coder Emem Rita Usanga will be recognised in our Edit-a-thon, too, thanks to her work as founder of Bnkability, a platform that helps small and medium-sized companies become investor-ready.

It is not just female business leaders on today's list, but those who have played a key role in our history. This year marks the centenary of women securing the right to vote, and Gillian Wearing’s statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square features the names and images of 59 women and men who took part in the struggle etched on to the plinth. One of the women, Maud Palmer, the Countess of Selborne, who was President of the Conservative and Unionist Women’s Franchise Association and part of the suffrage campaign, is also without a Wikipedia page. Not after today.

Sadly for Wikipedia, as of today, only two of these woman have pages, neither having been created by any of the new recruits, but by Zeromonk and Warofdreams, for whom this was not their first rodeo. Neither were they created on that day. Zeromonk did Mann today (15 June), and hilariously, it turns out Warofdreams had previously created a page for Palmer back in November 2017. The other two articles have not been created.

Perhaps realising he'd been used by an even bigger self-promoter than he is, Jimmy was soon backtracking.......

I spoke briefly at the event, although unfortunately Sadiq Khan had to cancel at the last minute. They had organized for 4 schools to send about 20-25 students each (my estimate by looking at the crowd) and gave them some training on how to edit Wikipedia, and encouraged them to add new pages for women of London who didn't have articles. They had worked with Wikimedia (I think Wikimedia UK, but I wasn't directly involved other than a ceremonial appearance) to do the training and to select articles. It was a lovely event and the young students seemed quite happy to be there.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:40, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

He's not wrong, they seem happy in this pic.

https://mobile.twitter.com/MayorofLondo ... 02/photo/1

So it's kind of sad to see how the people organising this event couldn't get their shit together and ensure the publicity lined up with their actual efforts.

As you can see on the projector in that pic, at least one new editor, presumably one of these girls, did create a new article for Nan Ino Cooper. They have yet to make another edit to Wikipedia.

Still, all was not lost. Jimmy got a shoutout from the Mayor......

https://mobile.twitter.com/MayorofLondo ... 6675799047

[ericbarbour]

And for completion, Sadiq Khan is a remarkably long WP article for a "Mayor of London", a position regarded as "mostly ceremonial" whatever that means. Almost 100k bytes long and almost all added since 2015, when Khan became "important". Largest editor: Midnightblueowl, a gnome who grinds articles on politicians and religions mechanically, and loves The Adventures Of Tintin.

WP insiders are attempting to watch this article. Philip Cross and Doug Weller are obvious. Weird mix of sockpuppet accounts also. For some reason the notorious Shakehandsman has been in there doing things. (Ask me about him sometime.) Khan is a left-leaning Muslim so he was bound to receive happy treatment from Wikiland; remains to be seen how much of this happiness was "Jimbo mandated". Compare it to Khan's predecessor whom Wiki-nerds tend to hate because "omg he's a Tory and pro-Brexit" blah blah.

[CrowsNest]

And for completion, Sadiq Khan is a remarkably long WP article for a "Mayor of London", a position regarded as "mostly ceremonial" whatever that means. Almost 100k bytes long and almost all added since 2015, when Khan became "important". Largest editor: Midnightblueowl, a gnome who grinds articles on politicians and religions mechanically, and loves The Adventures Of Tintin.

WP insiders are attempting to watch this article. Philip Cross and Doug Weller are obvious. Weird mix of sockpuppet accounts also. For some reason the notorious Shakehandsman has been in there doing things. (Ask me about him sometime.) Khan is a left-leaning Muslim so he was bound to receive happy treatment from Wikiland; remains to be seen how much of this happiness was "Jimbo mandated". Compare it to Khan's predecessor whom Wiki-nerds tend to hate because "omg he's a Tory and pro-Brexit" blah blah.

London has two Mayors, a ceremonial one dating back centuries, and Khan's post, a political office invented in the first days of the Blairite centrist period. It is important, but not 100kb important.

In terms of importance, Khan was a relative nobody before he became London Mayor, but even in that post he is probably not even in the top 20 list of most powerful politicians in the UK. The fact that his biography is way larger than, say, Jeremy Heywood's (current Cabinet Secretary), shows that Wikipedia is pretty useless for any outsider trying to judge

Khan, like all previous London Mayors, has recognised the post is as much about promoting yourself and shifting with the winds, than it is about the mundane job of good governance. He's the Mayor of Jimmy's adopted city and was a Blairite until that became a dirty word. Now he is basically whatever he needs to be to look important. So you can see how Jimmy would probably be an admirer.

[CrowsNest]

I have been reading in many places that an article on Farrah Storr was created in the edit-a-thon, but I see no article on Wikipedia for Farrah Storr (or any variants of the name). Nor do I see any page for Emem Rita Usanga. I can't find any trace in the AfD archives either, so it's not clear if they were deleted or were never created in the first place.

They might all be simply publishing the press release without checking.

I wonder where he read that?

Tune in next week for more exciting editions of No Shit Sherlock @ Yesterday's News.

Silly, arrogant, coddled and protected Wikipediocrat.

[ericbarbour]

It is important, but not 100kb important.

It seems that one could say the same for thousands of WP biographies. I just checked the long pages list, and as of today the longest biography on Wikipedia is David Campese. 356k bytes for a rugby player. Entirely the work of an IP address that probably belongs to either an obsessed fan or a paid editor, since it's from Drouin, VIC and Campese himself lives in the Sydney area.