https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... _Worldwide
......which lists thousands of notab!e women who currently don't have a Wikipedia article.
I knew Jess Wade had been a pathetic failure, but it's only when you see a page like that, you realise just how much of a failure.
At time to writing, Jess Wade has created ~2,180 biographies. That link alone, which is from only one resource, the 2006 Dictionary of Women Worldwide: 25,000 Women Through The Ages, seems to be saying there are over 3,000 notable women still missing from Wikipedia.
As far as I can tell, and nobody really knows, as well as the direct impact of her meagre efforts in directly creating biographies, Wade aimed to be a major force in recruiting other editors to create biographies for these missing women, and by extension, shame the outside world into writing about these women in the reliable sources Wikipedia needs to base their biographies on. No reliable sources, no biography.
So, why has she failed?
The reasons are obvious.....
1. Wade isn't very inspiring.
Jess Wade is a virtual mute on Wikipedia. She doesn't participate in the back office areas of Wikipedia, not even the areas specifically dedicated to expanding the number of women biographies. She rarely even responds to people contacting her on her Wikipedia talk page. That includes the many people who come to her to merely shower her in undeserved praise.
She doesn't edit the way most Wikipedia editors do. She creates her biographies offline, and posts them in one edit. That can be a sign of an expert editor capable of creating a Featured Article in one hit, but that is categorically not Wade. Once dumped, she rarely returns, not even to fix the mistakes in her work that are identified by her fellow editors in the next few days.
The women she (sometimes clearly very unwillingly) makes instantly visible to Google in that one push of a button, are abandoned to their fate. By design, Wade only writes about women who are barely known outside of their field, for whom there is very little independent (i.e. unbiased) biographical coverage.
So they are acutely vulnerable to the widely known ways Wikipedia can harm living people, from vandalism to revenge editing. As well as the ever present suspicion that the glowing biography was written by or for the subject. It isn't an accident that Wade is frequently accused of being an undisclosed paid editor. The sad truth is she is far too incompetent to pull off such a thing. Would you pay for someone who clearly doesn't even proof read their work?
Why would anyone be inspired by someone who is so completely unworthy of even being called a Wikipedia editor? Her incompetence only becomes clearer as time goes by and she racks up more and more edits and more years on Wikipedia, without showing any signs she is remotely as knowledgeable or experienced as her peers. Quite the opposite at times.
It's so wierd, her manifest shitness, that you find yourself constantly amazed that this person supposedly has the personal qualities of a scientist (intelligence, diligence, ethics, curiosity, adaptability, lifelong learning). As far as I know, she doesn't have any kind of disability that would explain her decidedly atypical capabilities as an editor. And if she has, she clearly hasn't done a damn thing to compensate for them.
2. Wade is clearly the recipient of special treatment.
Jess Wade gets away with being a virtual mute on Wikipedia. She gets away with doing all of her Wikipedia related business in private channels such as her Twitter. It isn't an accident that many of the people she writes about seem to wrongly assume she is their only point of contact when it comes to requests or complaints.
Wade gets away with using unreliable sources, or even not providing any source at all. She gets away with using non-independent sources to support claims that speak to notability. She gets away with ignoring Creative Commons licensing requirements. These are all serious acts of negligence if done once. Wade does it frequently, sometime daily.
Wade even gets away with not categorizing her biographies or ensuring they are not orphans, two very basic features of Wikipedia whose sole purpose is to help readers find Wikipedia pages. All of her minor problems, her frequent typos etc, get fixed (after a fashion) by a small but loyal band of sycophants who silently trail in her wake. Needless to say, that is not a service provided for all editors. Only the famous ones.
Why would anyone willingly join Wikipedia and emulate Wade, if they knew the truth? No, you won't be allowed to get away with any of these things. You will get a grace period where you will be forgiven the mistakes of a n00b, and sometimes even that is an extremely short period. Then you will be expected to demonstrate basic competence, or be subjected to harsh corrective measures. If you do not demonstrate awareness and improvement after warnings, you get blocked. If that doesn't wake you up, you get banned. This is especially true if you emulate Wade and work exclusively in an area where poor practices carry the highest risk of harm.
I can't think of a single person whose commitment to a cause would override their natural human instinct not to be treated like a second class citizen. An absolute fucking mug.
3. Wade is clearly motivated by personal advancement as much as she is by a higher goal.
A cursory look at Jess Wade's achievements as a scientist reveal something that is common to many famous Wikipedians. They are unremarkable in their real lives and careers. She may not have realised it at the time, but Wikipedia has been fantastic for her personal prospects. She is literally famous.
Jess Wade even has a Wikipedia biography as a result of her editing efforts, which is ironic. The biography claims she is first and foremost a British physicist. It details her fields of study before even mentioning outreach or Wikipedia as notable elements of her story.
The vast majority of her biography is of course not about her work as a physicist at all. If you set aside the fact the coverage is clearly biased and rare!y fact checked, this problem of balance could be fixed by changing the biography to identify Wade's only claim to fame as far as the outside world cares, as an activist. Needles to say, fixing this biography is not possible.
The "Research and Career section is so pathetic, someone has padded it out with a long list of all the journals she has been published in. This doesn't happen in other biographies. It is considered puffery, promotion, trivia, link spam. A Wikipedia Administrator such as Drmies would typically come along and rip it out with a condescending or even accusatory reason, and that would be that. Attempts to fix even that in Wade's biography will similarly be impossible, even for a flat track bully like Drmies. Special treatment for special people.
Wade has clearly personally benefited from her undeserved fame. She has a book deal, she goes to all manner of conferences, and even has a medal.
The media doesn't seem to have noticed yet, but one obvious explanation for why Jess Wade seems to have abandoned her target of writing one biography a day, throttling back to one every few days, is because she is now too famous to keep to that hectic schedule.
What else explains it? It sure isn't because she is running out of women to write about. It clearly Isn't because she has accepted that to do a proper job writing a Wikipedia biography takes more than an evening. Her work is still sub-standard.
Maybe there is another reason, but she will probably never reveal it. Like anyone who benefits from glowing PR puff pieces masquerading as journalism, should she ever be asked a question whose answer might not paint her in a good light (I can certainly see a scenario where her bosses eventually realised how much of her paid work time was being spent writing Wikipedia drafts and told her to knock it off), her response will be no comment.
People looking to emulate Wade for the right reasons, would naturally be disgusted to learn Wade isn't really the selfless hero she is made out to be in the media. Being very unkind, reading between the lines, it could be said Wade simply fell into Wikipedia as something to do on those lonely nights at home. Setting herself a target rate of production was perhaps no different to how some people set themselves a step goal or a calorie goal. The vacuous acts of empty vessels. And now that Wikipedia has improved her situation, she is evidently OK with abandoning her schedule.
She obviously can't simply stop, because awkward questions would result. Her latest puff piece sees her hilariously express her complete surprise that there are still plenty of people out there who aren't on Wikipedia. She lacks the self awareness to consider if she might actually be to blame. If we accept she was hoping to inspire others to join her in her efforts.
4. Jess Wade is a cunt.
One of The most obvious reasons that Wade is a virtual mute, is the because in her early editing, when she was more communicative, she quickly showed her true nature. A born victim. A militant activist. A horrible person.
There was never a problem with her editing that couldn't be explained or excused by Wikipedia's ingrained sexism in her eyes. One of the many ways it became clear Wade was destined for special treatment, was that she was never faced any consequences for very ironically being just as much of a rude, hostile, vicious little bitch in how she responded to people criticising her editing, as the worst of the worst of the famously hostile male editors were capable of.
It NEVER mattered to Wade whether the criticism was valid or not. Wade's cuntish mindset is revealed in the long-standing quote on her user page....
As far as I know, nobody ever objected to the mere fact Wade was creating biographies. It's laudibleIf you don't like that I do it, sorry, I'm not going anywhere.
work, accepting as we must the most Wikipedia editors don't do it for plaudits at all.
They objected to the way she was doing it, which was invariably against established Wikipedia policy if not just plain half assed. Even today, Wade still cannot even get her head around proper capitalisation, probably because she just doesn't care.
Far more serious mistakes are in her inglorious history, up to and including merging the lives of two different women simply because they had the same name and were both scientists. I'm not even sure a mistake of that magnitude would even be caught these days, such is the protective bubble that surrounds her now.
Rather than reflect and engage, which is Wikipedia dispute resolution policy, Wade deflects and attacks. Worse, she used her media profile to write hit pieces. She cynically exploited the fact journalists don't have a fucking clue about how Wikipedia works, to broadcast her ignorant views to the ignorant populace. It clearly worked. Very quickly, all attempts to stop Wade violating policy stopped
Wade never understood or accepted that many people had perfectly valid objections to her manner of editing, rather than merely what she was trying to do and her reasons for doing it. She always assumed it was sexism. She has always had a pretty thin grasp on Wikipedia policy, and that was always going to be the case given her arrogance, victim complex and completely uncooperative and incommunicado approach to a project whose core principle is collaboration and communication.
Believe it or not, such is Wade's total delusion about her competence, she genuinely believes she would make a good Wikipedia Administrator (and naturally, her only explanation for why she isn't one already, is Wikipedia sexism). What an absolute cunt. That will only be obvious to those who know how Wikipedia works. People who understand what Wikipedia expects and demands from its Administrators (setting aside the fact they rarely get it).
Wade is too much of a cunt and too ignorant/arrogant when it comes to policy, that she hasn't a hope in hell of obtaining the same position that even the habitually hostile and policy violating Drmies obtained with ease. And if you're minded to explain that as a product of sexism, there are women in that role who are as bad if not worse than Drmies, notably Bishonen.
Nobody wants to work with a cunt. Anyone inspired by one, is clearly not a good person. Anyone protecting one while claiming to have a noble reason for doing so, is clearly an even bigger cunt.
Wade's favourite response to criticism was to make the rather moronic point that there are worse editors and articles than her on Wikipedia. Not a single one of those was written by a famous editor with her supposed experience, and allowing any moron to edit is a well known flaw of Wikipedia. Harbouring and protecting half assed famous editors is not.
It should quite rightly shock people it even happens, and disgust them when they realise the reasons - Wade is good PR for Wikipedia. Small donations are already declining as people find even more reasons to distrust the Wikipedia brand. Unmasking the truth behind the myth that is Jess Wade, Superstar Editor, could be a death blow.
And who would be in the last bit surprised if the person who ultimately destroys Wikipedia, is a selfish arrogant entitled activist cunt? It was written in the stars.
