When and why did Jess Wade abandon her one article per day pledge?

[ChaosMeRee]

A plot of Jess Wade's number of article creations over time would make interesting reading. Even more if rendered in byte count.

These are just yearly snapshots.....

* September 2023 - 11 creations, average ~5,000 bytes per creation, largest 7,783 bytes
* September 2022 - 19 creations, average ~5,600 bytes per creation, largest 10,277 bytes
* September 2021 - 27 creations, average ~5,600 bytes per creation, largest 8,711 bytes
* September 2020 - 28 creations, average ~6,900 bytes per creation, largest 13,107 bytes

....but the pattern seems clear. Her productivity has been nose diving.

The fun part is asking why.

Harassment by evil people was hopefully a factor. A radical course of action surely embarked upon only when it became clear that Wikipedia had absolutely no intention of listening to and acting upon valid concerns with her editing. They falsely characterised this as harassment, and so I guess they invited her critics to become harassers. Remembering as they did that Jess Wade very early on responded to valid criticism with personal attacks, and faced no action.

Bizarrely, she was treated as if she were a victim. A sign of what would come next. Jess becoming the only Wikipedia editor in history who had a protective shield placed around her. No amount of evidence that she was a sub-standard editor who showed no ability or willingness to improve was sufficient to breach this bubble. Not even proof she showed a callous disregard for the BLP policy.

This wasn't as noble as it sounds. The Wikipedians had merely realised that for as long as an ignorant media didn't realise what was really going on, Wade's crusade would be excellent PR for Wikipedia. Proof it had changed, that it was inclusive now, and was fixing its gender gap. Obviously this wasn't universally welcomed by the rank and file, who preferred it if Wikipedia just stayed the same or genuinely fixed these thing the right way, but the sad reality of being a low ranking member of a cult, is that if the higher ups want something, you are powerless to stop it.

It is quite satisfying that it didn't really work out for these bastards. Wade didn't inspire people, and Wikipedia's brand is on a downward trajectory. Cheats never prosper.

The names of all those who protected her have been recorded. There will be consequences. Anyone making the argument that Wikipedia is just a private website so where's the harm, will suffer the indignity of having every single glowing press report of Wade's efforts, lauding her as a model editor and inspiration, printed out, rolled into a cylinder, and shoved right up their rectums. And believe me, it is long enough to make a kebab out of the corrupt fuckers.

The fascinating part is that I had always assumed it was her desperate desire to keep to her original ambitions goal of writing one article per day, that was behind her never ending litany of mistakes. She's a supposedly intelligent person, so the obvious explanation for her apparently not even catching typos and copy paste errors in her creations, was her not even having the time to proof read before hitting submit. It obviously also explains her many failures in sourcing and other issues that take a bit more time and effort to get right.

She was very clearly even ignoring basic tasks that are mandatory for ordinary unprotected editors. She does know how to add categories. She does know how to use wikilinks in her articles, and she does know how to wikilink her own creations from the wider encyclopedia. She just never does it. There are a group of sad bastards who silently trail in her wake fixing these things, not bothering Wade with a word of criticism. But it doesn't take long to find instances where they have failed to catch things. Not everyone has the time to log in to Wikipedia every single day for year after year.

That of course explains why they never bother to fix the hidden issues. The stuff that takes time to find and correct (but is always there), because it requires reading the article and its sources. For any other editor, that is considered their sole responsibility. Not Wade. She has never been corrected when she has often said that this is what collaboration on Wikipedia is all about. She poops, others clean it up. Nom nom nom.

So it is very bizarre indeed to see that even as she has been slowing down, and her creations are getting smaller, they still feature exactly the same mistakes.

So what is going on?

Clearly this isn't burnout. She did sustain her target rate of one article a day for an incredible length of time, years even. She really doesn't have a life it seems. Or at least didn't. How ironic would It be that it was the fame and opportunity that came with her exploitation of Wikipedia, that means she now has better things to be doing of an evening or weekend than hastily cobbling together Wikipedia pages?

It clearly Isn't a lack of women to write about. Even if it is getting harder to find missing women who are currently notable, which is doubtful, Wade's strategy of taking Wikipedia's academic notability standard literally and immediately creating a biography for any woman who is in receipt of a highly prestigious award or honor, or is made a fellow at an exclusive society, is appointed to a named chair or distinguished professorship, obtains a highest level Administrator post or becomes the Editor of a notable journal, is a hell of a lot of smart women becoming eligible for Wikipedia every year. And that covers just the easy wins. You can also add any woman who hits the news for having has a significant impact in research, teaching or just as an academic. The Royal Society alone elected 17 women fellows. Almost an entire month's work for Wade.

It isn't wholly explained by a theory I have where her employer eventually discovered that she was only capable of meeting this target of one article a day by spending significant amounts of her work time doing Wikipedia research, and told her to knock it off. She is on record as having said she would while away the time waiting for lab results this way. It kind of fits. Her production is down ~third, which is close to how much time I imagine she could have been devoting to it while at work.

It could be that she has a puppy. They take up a surprising amount of time, but are a heck of a lot more fun and far better for your mental health than Wikipedia. Even for Wade, in her protective bubble. That's pretty hilarious.

We will of course never know the reason if it is something that reflects poorly on Wade.

I'm definitely interested to know if she plans to level out, or indeed if there is something about the reason for her nose dive which means it is in fact, terminal.

Can she survive the landing? Will anyone even dare ask her why she stopped? I doubt it.

[ChaosMeRee]

You would think the co-founder of Women In Red would know more about their superstar editor.....

As somewhat of a figure head and media spokesperson of the effort to boost the number of women included in Wikipedia, is anyone else here concerned (or have they even noticed?) that the number of new biographies written by Jess Wade is falling at an ever increasing rate, and the ones she is producing are becoming smaller and more basic? I am pretty sure this isn't because she is nearing her goal of rebalancing Wikipedia, but it also surely cannot be because she is finding it harder to find people to write about. Others here may know differently. James W. Reader (talk) 10:14, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

There are other potential reasons for the change in her production rate. Jesswade88 is a scientist, ergo, is busy doing science. Plus, let's assume that she also has a lovely personal life. --Rosiestep (talk) 12:40, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Jess Wade has of course been a full time post-doctoral research scientist for the entire time she has been a Wikipedia editor, so that's probably bollocks. If she had made a discovery or earned a promotion or even just become "busy" in a way that would account for her apparently having to reduce her Wikipedia output from ~193,000 bytes per month to ~55,000 bytes per month in the space of three years, we would have probably heard about it. No, we would have DEFINITELY heard about it.

She has also never struck me as having much of a personal life (eat, sleep, work, Wikipedia), but she did have other hobbies, friends and go places at the height of her productivity. Or at least that was the image she was projecting on Twitter. People have in the past accused me of being a stalker for knowing such things. This is the perfect opportunity to remind them that due to Wade's special status on Wikipedia, such as her freedom to use Twitter for things that everyone else is expected to do on Wikipedia, it was absolutely necessary to periodically check her Twitter feed simply to stay abreast of her Wikipedia activities (it is where I learned she was entirely ignorant of copyright, for example). Nobody would need or want to check her socials otherwise, BELIEVE ME.

It would therefore surely take a MOMENTOUS change in her personal life to explain this nosedive. Since she has Tweeted a million times about the relatively mundane development of her getting a puppy, we would have DEFINITELY heard about it if she had got married, had a child, or anything else significant enough to make you decide you had better ways to spend your free time than what was previously very clearly something that was a CORE part of your being.

Lest we forget, Jess Wade genuinely believes(d?) Wikipedia editing is a form of activism on a par with her editing children's books and making speeches. Not the sort of thing you sacrifice for trivial reasons, I would have thought.

Either Rosiestep doesn't know, doesn't care or is keeping it a secret.

My reaction to all three scenarios given what they so surely tell us about the real Wikipedia/Wade?

[ChaosMeRee]

just four paragraphs and two references...

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1188982487

Not a single award or educational achievement is cited.

Only the third article this month too.

She is hitting new lows even for her.

[boredbird]

just four paragraphs and two references...

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1188982487

The references are just her employer websites.

How would Wade even know to write about this person when she's not in Wade's field and she's never been in the news?

How does she know this when it's not on either website? No google, the employer pages don't mention it and the Helmholz page doesn't list anyone, it's just a €29,000 grant anyway.

and awarded the Helmholtz International Fellow Award.

Even her three papers she's not lead author on any so who would even notice?

Face it it's paid editing. They hear about her service from colleagues they tell her what they want in there and she puts in in.

[ChaosMeRee]

The references are just her employer websites.

What is that based on? The Academy doesn't employ Wedzicha, and she is no longer the Editor In Chief of the AJRCCM (or indeed any of their journals by the looks of it).

How would Wade even know to write about this person when she's not in Wade's field and she's never been in the news?

She is employed by Imperial, the place Wade works....

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/j.wedzicha

That is curiously not mentioned (or used as a source) in this biography. That could suggest it was paid editing. But not when one considers Wade has never been remotely reluctant to openly write about people connected to Imperial, or use Imperial pages as references. So why start now?

If all of those biographies about Imperial people were paid for, why has Wade suddenly started to supposedly try and hide the fact she is writing about people who work at her own university? It would be ridiculous in the extreme to think this is because she is afraid of being exposed as an undeclared paid editor now.

Anyone asking her if she was engaging in UPE via her Wikipedia user talk page, no matter how politely, if they weren't bringing clear and incontrovertible evidence that Wade is being paid to edit and she is knowingly not making the required declarations, they would be reverted and banned before Wade could even issue a denial.

Shit, I bet the Wikipedians are so desperate to ensure Wade stays on Wikipedia, they would revert such a post even if it did contain incontrovertible proof Wade was engaged in UPE, using some bullshit excuse, probably an insistence that all such complaints should be filed privately.

Knowing this, why would Wade, if she is guilty of undeclared paid editing, bother to even hide the fact she is writing about people who work at her University? Why start now?

Fuck me, isn't it even blindingly obvious that even if Wade was paid to write this biography for this person, and she hasn't declared that, and there was some way you could report that publicly on Wikipedia, that the powers that be at Wikipedia wouldn't find some way to turn that into a misdemeanour not worth blocking or even warning her about? Special rules for special people.

Wedzicha doesn't work in remotely the same department* as Wade, she is clearly an automatic pass for Wikipedia notability, and the resulting biography doesn't contain a single promotional sentence, and quite clearly, if the primary source that says she is "internationally known for her research in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease" whose work has "substantially changed the clinical management of patients" and has had "enormous impact on national and international policy in these disease areas" including "significant contributions to Department of Health policy" and the "development of a national service framework for COPD", then this biography does the subject an absolute disservice if it was meant to promote her.

Who in their right mind is paying for this shit at all, when it is so CLEARLY below Wade's usual standards, and barely even guarantees this page cannot be speculatively nominated for deletion either on grounds of notability or even undeclared paid editing, which, while pointless, would permanently cast a cloud over the subject.

No, this is all quite fanciful when compared to the more obvious explanation for why Wade's interest in Wikipedia is so clearly waning. She is just done with the place. She realises she has failed in her goals, she realises she is undeserving of a medal and is merely part of a PR exercise designed to hide the fact Wikipedia hasn't changed and is just as hostile to women editors not named Wade as it always has been, and just as reluctant to "highlight" notable dominance minorities as it always has been, and her entire Wikipedia life has been a sham.

She obviously can't admit that to herself and throw away what it has personally brought her. So she just slides away......in this case, half way through a her usual work, unpaid grafting at the Wikipedia coal-face.

It is so obvious to anyone who watches her editing. This biography represents a new low. It is as if Wade was half way through her usual workflow, and just stopped. She said to herself, fuck it, and just hit submit and headed off to bed, to cry herself to sleep over a wasted decade of her life. Time she could have been spending on advancing her career, either by working really hard or sucking a lot of dick.

It is so obvious. If she hadn't unexpectedly tapped out here, her very next step could very well have been to add the subject's Imperial profile as a reference to support the two sentences in "Early Life and Education", something she has done a million times before. But she didn't. Nor did she expand that section to her usual three or four sentences.

It's rare, perhaps even unheard of once she set herself her one page a day schedule, that a Wade biography is actually far shorter and has far fewer factoids than the subject's own university profile, which is in this case (and typically in all cases) merely a four paragraph summary itself. Why would Wade leave things like the fact Wedzicha was The Lancet Ombudsman on the cutting room floor?

you need to question an editorial decision, your first step should be to contact the relevant Lancet journal. If you are not satisfied with the journal’s response, your next point of contact is our Ombudsperson whose task is to record and, when required, investigate allegations of editorial maladministration. Our files will be freely open to his or her inspection, and confidentiality will be respected in all cases.

It Is of course absurd to think she chose to leave that out if everything in her world is rosy, even with her style of sometimes haphazard and frankly illogical editorial choices. She merely never got around to it, she tapped out before she could copy and paste it into Wikipedia. Her usual workflow has been interrupted. And given she did get as far as submitting something passable as a complete yet stubby page, ignoring her usual omissions of mandatory elements (categories, incoming links), it obviously wasn't some emergency.

The fact this biography only has two references rather than the usual five to ten, was a clear and obvious signal something was clearly wrong with it, or rather, with the with wiki-robot that is Wade. She is malfunctioning. Low on power. Needing an update. Depressed!?!? Lol.

She has produced work as short as this before, but never this lacking in (primary, non-independent) sourcing. It is quite remarkable to think the point at which she stopped and just submitted what she had, was once she had done the bare minimum required in terms of sourcing an academic biography - two sources for BASIC, with one supporting criteria 3 of NPROF (her preferred criteria).

If you believe her pseudo boss Rosiestep, the person who is theoretically due a 10% cut if Wade is a paid editor, she stopped here, in a clear return to her rookie days where all she was trying to do was prove to the horrible men of Wikipedia she had made a Wikipedia biography that should not be deleted, so stop trying to delete them!, is because Wade is a busy scientist with an active social life.

Yeah, OK.

If that was remotely true, then what was she doing in all the years when she had NEVER stopped at this stage of a page's development? That is the entire point of this thread. To alert people that Wade never used to be this shit, even by her shit standards. She never used to phone it in. She used to keep to her self set target of one biography a day faithfully, like a literal robot. Freaky stuff. Unhealthy. And when that slipped, she would never submit a biography this poor. She would defer publication for as long as needed to ensure she submitted to her usual standard. Now apparently she can't even do that, having had over a week to get this month's paltry two and a half Wade biographies out the door.

If Wade Is a paid editor, she is getting fired very soon. It is absurd to think a nominal client like Widzecha would not look at this latest effort, compare it to Wade's work of even just last month, let alone last year, and not feel absolutely cheated and want her money back.

Which is perhaps the single most obvious reason to think she is not being paid and never has been (If all of the above still did not convince).

* - calling Wedzicha a physicist is an amusing mistake, poor even by Wade's usual standards of inattention (she obviously mixed up her templates, or worse!) , and it hasn't yet even been noticed by the gaggle of Wiki Elves who trail in her wake to catch her more obvious mistakes. So according to Google, as of right now, Wedzicha is a physicist, and has been for fifteen hours and counting. But who cares? Not Rosiestep or Giraffe Stapler.

If you're looking for the leeches who are probably getting something for nothing when it comes to Wade's untouchable status, start there. Wade does this shit for free, or at least only the indirect benefits. That is and always more than enough to think she is scum.

In comparison to Wade's output and effects on fellow travellers, an undeclared paid editor working exclusively on unambiguously notable women scientists, alerting people like Wedzicha that they really should be on Wikipedia and their biography need not be the least bit promotional in nature to look like it does and always has belonged on Wikipedia, certainly while NPROF is policy, so if they wouldn't mind coughing up a reasonable payment to make it so, would look like a fucking saint.

I would say that person would never be detected or exposed (assuming they always made sure subjects knew up front that UPE is banned but it is also the only realistic way of getting these people into Wikipedia in a drama free way) to the point I bet the authorities at Wikipedia would secretly get together and agree that even if they ever did find out about it, they could and should IAR that shit, retrospectively if necessary.

By contrast, if anyone has ever gone on record as saying an editor as rude, sloppy and clearly in receipt of special treatment in matters of basic and obvious policy compliance in everything from sourcing to notability to even basic editing requirements, is entitled to a secret retrospective IAR defence if it turns out they are also knowingly violating the rules on paid editing, that person is beyond stupid.

That person is a wiki-dead man, or woman, walking.

Hence why it is absurd to think it has ever even happened. As it surely would have to, if someone were engaged in paid editing at the scale and indeed poor quality of Wade. Someone would talk, eventually. A client of Wade's would look at cases like Bouman and Phelps and Raman and the hilarious two becomes one screwup, and think this cannot stand. They would have reached out to someone in authority with proof Wade is evil, and if they didn't stop Wade, they would take that failure to act to the press (in the full knowledge they could and would remain anonymous, knowing Wade has written so many biographies now, nobody would ever be able to successfully identify who killed Bambi).