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User talk:Jimbo Wales

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    Draft:Clifton Conference

    I would be happy to have help with this subject if you or any of your page watchers are up to it. Happy New Year. FloridaArmy (talk) 18:35, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

    If you check the talk page of the article, I think you will find what I found to be very interesting and useful. Let me ask you - do you have access to an online resource similar to what I used? I find it very powerful at researching articles about this kind of topic which is in the modern world quite obscure. Much of the pushback you get from people can be easily defeated, I think and hope, if you are able to produce citations and quotes from a large number of newspapers.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:08, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
    (talk page watcher) @FloridaArmy: Huh, weird, my hometown(ish) on Jimbotalk. I have no idea when I'll next be in Swampscott (sometime between April and never), but if you'd like me to check the library and/or a giant book of old newspapers my mom has, I'm happy to next time I'm in town. -- Tamzin (she|they|xe) 20:22, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
    Thanks User:Tamzin! Jimbo dug up quite a bit and posted to the entry's talkpage. My broader concern is that subjects like this which are so important and so often missing from Misplaced Pages are often rejected even when submitted through a broken Draft process. Subjects like this one and the one noted below are essential. Why are they being rejected and deleted? I accept my share of responsibility but I try to do what I can. There is a WP:Before process for Aritcles for Deletion, but for draft submissions (that would never even be taken there) common sense and basic core values and guidelines go out the window. It's a travesty really. So much is missing and we're not making it easy to fill in the gaps. I will add some additional examples from my experience if anyone wants to comment or make a suggestion. FloridaArmy (talk) 21:21, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

    I am only one person so I don't think it's okay to put all the onus on me. I acknowledge my many flaws as an editor. Still, I think we as a community should ask why we omit these subjects and reject them as drafts and how we can do better. FloridaArmy (talk) 21:34, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

    Sprague, Alabama (Draft:Sprague, Alabama) is another example. I came across Sprague working on another subject. It is noted as a place where numerous enslaved people labored. It turns out it where one of the largest cotton ginning operations in Montgomery County, Alabama. The area, outside the state capitol, later used convict labor. We've documented it had a post office, telegram station, railroad station, and was home to many African Americans but still it gets rejected. Okay, sourcing is a little thin, but I add an extensive article from a historical society discussing Sprague and the corton ginning business, one part of a theee part series. But still it's rejected. So Misplaced Pages doesn't cover this community or any of the people who were enslaved there. And we know the schools are also difficult to include. So all of those people and their history is excluded from Misplaced Pages. I hope you can see how Misplaced Pages's policies and procedures work to exclude and discriminate against African American subjects: politicians, schools, cultural institutions, artists and musicians, and even their communities. It's a shame really. Again I know my failings as an editor are many, but even when these subjects clearly meet Misplaced Pages's inclusion criteria, subjects about African Americans, as well as Africans and other minorities, are deemed "not notable". It's a big problem we need to work on. FloridaArmy (talk) 10:28, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

    And as each one of these subjects is rejected it makes it that much harder to include the rest of them. If we included Sprague then it would be easier to include its schools, its political leaders, its cultural institutions, people who are from there. So it's a mass exclusion, a historical ethnic cleansing. And it's a wiping out of much of an entire peoples' history. And it doesn't help that related subjects like Nathan Turner Sprague (Draft:Nathan Turner Sprague), a businessman and state senator, also languish in draftspace (in this case since November 2022) so they show up as redlinks. So we can't learn about the people who lived in these communities or any of their history because our policies and procedures make it easy to omit them, block them from being added, and for our administrators to excuse doing so. We must do better. There's no excuse. FloridaArmy (talk) 10:48, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

    John Wayne Niles (Draft:John Wayne Niles) another important historical figure who just can't quite seem to get over the bar for notability on Misplaced Pages. Sad but true. FloridaArmy (talk) 12:15, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

    Clinton J. Calloway (Draft:Clinton J. Calloway) also deemed not notable. For some reason his entry in an encyclopedia on prominent African Americans and the other sources aren't enough. FloridaArmy (talk) 12:29, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

    Waters Turpin (Draft:Waters Turpin) writer who has extensive coverage in Oxford Reference that is cited along with other sources, but still he is rejected from Misplaced Pages. Not suitable. FloridaArmy (talk) 21:02, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

    Draft:Middlefork Savanna

    Greetings Jimbo, it's me again. Do you think subjects like this one are notable? A 687 acre preserve of endangered habitat. I don't understand why we would want to exclude subjects like this. Seems insane. FloridaArmy (talk) 18:39, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

    Jimbo has no special powers to declare things notable. No one does, actually. Notability is not decided by what people think or feel about a subject, it is determined by whether or not people have written substantial text about the subject outside of Misplaced Pages and itself. The article in question does not show any independent writing about the Middlefork Savannah; most of the references in the article are written by the organizations that manage the park. What we need are in depth sources that are independent of the park or the organizations associated with it. As soon as you find those, you're good to go. --Jayron32 18:43, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
    One thing I will add; while the Middlefork Savanna itself may not be notable enough to support a stand-alone article, that doesn't mean that Misplaced Pages doesn't contain information about it. A good solution is to add the information about the Savanna to another article. --Jayron32 18:45, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
    Jayron32, I am afraid I'd like to ask you to not be so confrontational. FloridaArmy asked me my opinion, not for some kind of royal ruling. I'm perfectly allowed to give my opinions and people are perfectly allowed to ask for them. You are also allowed to give your opinion, which you have, but as I say, in an unnecessarily confrontational way. FloridaArmy has been around for many years, as I think you know (but if you didn't know, well, a newbie is also worthy of kindness).--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:12, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
    I apologize, Jimbo. It was not my intent to be confrontational. I was trying to provide some advice to them with regards to what sorts of things are likely to help with the notability concerns they had. I withdraw my advice, and apologize both to yourself and to FloridaArmy for the trouble I have caused. I will try to do better. --Jayron32 19:22, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
    WOW. That's really awesome. Totally accepted. *hugs*--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:09, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
    From a five second Google Books search, the place looks notable. If you spend half an hour on Google Scholar and at WP:TWL you should have no problems replacing the current citations in the article by reasonably high quality independent sources. —Kusma (talk) 19:57, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
    Yes, official nature reserves (as long they're not tiny) tend to have sources. I've written a couple about UK ones myself, though I did need dead-tree sources for them as well. The problem is often sifting through to find the sources, as Googling the place tends to throw out lots of list-type results, such as "X, Y and Z are some of the places you can visit in ABC county". Black Kite (talk) 11:49, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
    I've added some sources to the draft which I think should be sufficient.It does seem odd that articles created though AfC are required to meet a much higher standard than those published directly to mainspace. This article is an interesting case study. It was moved to draftspace by MB 30 minutes after its creation, because at the time it looked like this – fair enough. But 20 minutes later, it looked like this – not perfect by any means, but the article in this state would have been unanimously kept if it had been sent to AfD. However, the article had now entered into a complex bureaucratic space where many more demands were being made of it. A few minutes after completing their improvements, the article creator, OhanaSurf, requested information on how to submit the page for review, and received no response. They have not edited since. If the draft had not been taken up by FloridaArmy, it would by now have been deleted as stale under G13. So the outcome of this process is that we may have driven away a good content creator, and we almost lost an article on a notable subject. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 13:49, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
    It is not just odd, it is very bad. There are two major problems: (1) the bar to pass AfC is higher than that for surviving in mainspace for a new article and (2) new articles are generally held to a higher standard than existing pages. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of good faith newbies leave after their first attempt at creating an article. Unfortunately Misplaced Pages is far too successful and popular to allow for easy solutions. —Kusma (talk) 16:06, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

    . There are the standards for what topics we should cover, and the messy, inconsistently applied, more subjective minimum standards articles about those subjects must meet in order to exist in mainspace. The thing is, the community increasingly wants some kind of quality-based standard for having an article, but is ever-reluctant to codify any such requirements (or otherwise can't find agreement on what those requirements should be) beyond the core content policies because of the nature of this project. So we wind up with processes like NPP and AfC which function most of the time to move/keep spam and very low quality content out of mainspace. Contrary to some of the claims above, Misplaced Pages has not decided that these subjects aren't notable. An individual AfC reviewer has decided that the article about that potentially notable subject just isn't good enough. Whether the standards imposed by reviewers is too strict or too inconsistently applied is a very valid conversation, but it's not the same as saying it's not notable.

    Experienced users, in addition to being on the whole competent at starting decent quality articles, know NPP/AfC are largely toothless because you can just opt not to use AfC or move an article back to mainspace if an NPPer moves it to draft. Anyone doing so should anticipate it being nominated for deletion, but as Sojourner points out, that's a different debate. AfD typically evaluates the subject; AfC/NPP typically evaluate the article. That does mean we impose a higher bar for content on brand new users, users who think they're binding/mandatory (an impression many seem to want to cultivate), and users whose history led to them being required to go through AfC.

    I suspect that over time, we'll continue to see a slow move from an emphasis on quantity to an emphasis on quality, and standards for mainspace will generally continue to increase (unofficially, if not officially). That doesn't seem like a bad thing, even if it's occasionally frustrating. For now, it can seem unfair, but it's worth remembering that the difference between "showing that an article is notable at AfD" and "showing an article is notable through citations that demonstrate notability" isn't actually a huge difference in labor, and the latter is more helpful to readers. YMMV. — Rhododendrites \\ 16:04, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

    What isn't good enough is our coverage of these subjects. Making a quality argument for subjects we omit is a bit off the wall. Sorry, you draft isn't good enough so we won't say anything about these subjects. That's what our institutional racism has determined. We choose to tell our audience and editors we will continue to exclude these communities, these people, these institutions, and these leaders. We have a massive bureaucracy of rules and regulations that we can choose to apply on such a way that African Americans and other minority groups are excluded. It's grotesque. The quality of our coverage of these subjects is absent. It's shit. We have NOTHING about them. Zero. Failure. They are redlinks. All the excuses and explanations in the world don't make that okay and we shouldn't support obstructing those working to add coverage of important subjects we've neglected and worked at omitting. We are violating NPOV by excluding these subjects. We are supporting bigotry and fostering ignorance by excluding these subjects and pretending they aren't notable. We are discriminating against these subjects. It's not okay. Black Lives Matter. We need leadership from Jimbo and others, and indeed he helped on one of the entries above. We need our admins to step up on these issues and to stop making excuses, engaging in obfuscation, and obstructing. The status quo is not acceptable. FloridaArmy (talk) 20:37, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
    A Google Scholar search shows that at least seven academic papers have been published about the Middlefork Savanna. I do not see what this topic has to do with institutional racism or exclusion of African-Americans or anyone else. When I contribute well-referenced content about African-Americans, there is never a problem, because it is well-referenced. Cullen328 (talk) 20:43, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
    We're discussing our processes Cullen not just an individual subject and another editor broadened the discussion started above in this section. Have you used your abundant editing skills to help include these subjects Cullen? FloridaArmy (talk) 20:54, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
    I am discussing the topic in the section header. I am not discussing other sections on this talk page, which I did not even read. I do my very best to contribute well written and well referenced content about notable topics, including quite a few African American related topics. Cullen328 (talk) 21:32, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

    Schools for African Americans not welcome

    At the risk of beating a dead horse I will give another example. Since 2015 we've had an entry on Newbold School, a small Adventist school in England with some history and significance although it appears it has had absolutely no independent sourcing until today. And then we have Newbold High School a redlink. I've created a draft for it Draft:Newbold High School, I believe it would survive a deletion discussion, but it's not even worth submitting to Article for Creation because it will be rejected. Newbold High School was the ONLY public high school in the entire county available to African Americans for more more than 15 years. Its students came from all over the county and some volunteered to drive younger elementary students to school before making it to the high school themselves. It was underfunded. It was built with no gym or auditorium. But is has active alumni. It produced local political leaders and educators. But again, this high school which was closed with desegregation and made into an elementary school will be rejected by our reviewers. The only only high school for African Americans in an entire county isn't considered worth including on Misplaced Pages. This is what institutional racism looks like and I hope we improve and change our ways. It's sad and disheartening that this is how we treat these subjects and their history. There is coverage and the entry can be expanded, but instead it and others like it get rejected and deleted. Not welcome here. No Irish need apply. Misplaced Pages's waterfountains are for whites only. FloridaArmy (talk) 20:55, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

    If Newbold School went through AfC today, it would absolutely be rejected. The distinction is in when it was created and at the level of the user, not the subject.
    At the level of the user: because of your restriction requiring that you go through AfC, you, and not these subjects, are held to a higher standard than others (this is meant as a discussion, not to be critical of you/your work, by the way). Whatever subject you choose to work on would thus be held to that higher standard. The way around that is to appeal the restriction.
    As to when it was created: There are absolutely race-based systemic biases at work here, and this touches on the intersection of systemic biases in participation on English Misplaced Pages (which were perhaps most acute in its early days), and our policies that have evolved to be harder on new content than old content. The various topics that weren't covered back when Misplaced Pages was more lax about quality will see more impediments to creation/expansion than the material that was "grandfathered in" from the early days, so any biases that existed then will carry forward for some time. Not sure what the best thing to do about that is. Creating articles, to be sure; some people argue for more weeding out of old articles that no longer meet our standards; maybe a wikiproject/task force with an emphasis on lists of topics a la Women in Red? — Rhododendrites \\ 21:18, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
    What needs to be done is to make it our policy to include high schools that served African Americans. They are notable. It was a struggle to get them established. Their construction and opening was always significant and important for the communities they served. Their operation and type of instruction was always controversial. High schools weren't even allowed for African American students in much of the U.S. for decades. This isn't complicated. These are notable subjects. State-wide officeholders are included, everyone who plays on a pro team, lots of subjects far less notable are welcomed on Misplaced Pages. Not every one needs its own entry but certainly ones like this one that served entire counties and were landmarks in progress and also monuments to the limitations African Americans faced in the United States are worth including. These schools ARE NOTABLE. Period. We need to welcome them, expand on them, and include more of them. FloridaArmy (talk) 21:34, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
    High schools in general are no longer auto-notable. They used to be in practice, but a series of very long RfCs has added schools to the ever-growing list of things that are not notable-by-fact but rather based on WP:SIGCOV, etc. There are so many that were created in the days when just existing as a high school meant people would !vote keep, however, that it's another example of whatever was created years ago carrying forward while whatever wasn't covered years ago having a higher bar to creation (including African American school, most likely). The trend is to regard fewer and fewer things as automatically notable because of a particular fact. Even "everyone who plays on a pro team", long a standard source of systemic bias, has been eroded over the past couple years. One could get the impression it's still true by looking at the articles that exist, but there, too, is a higher bar for new articles. I dare say we have seen the end of anything being added as "inherently notable", regardless of whether it helps or hurts our bias. — Rhododendrites \\ 22:16, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
    The other solution with high schools is that they can be discussed as part of the town/city/county seat that they are in, as part of a "Educational System" and then use redirects to these sections so that that schools are searchable or appear on appropriate disambiguation pages. There is a general tendency that editors think that not having a standalone article means we can't cover a topic, but when you have a situation where it makes sense to cover one topic within another (a high school within a school system), then why not use that and not worry about fighting article creation? (I know FArmy has a few unique cases of towns that no longer exist that make this a more difficult prospect but those are exceptional cases). In reality, we *should* be reviewing our existing high school articles to this standard and doing merging as appropriate. Masem (t) 15:49, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
    FloridaArmy, as a British person I have no background or knowlege on African-American high schools, but if what you say is correct - that "African-American High Schools" are inherently and generically notable - then, if there is supporting WP:RS to that effect, that is something that could be brought up at somewhere like Misplaced Pages talk:Notability (organizations and companies) with a view to amending notability guidelines. But you need to produce good reliably sourced analysis that reflects WP:DUE, rather than just asserting your own opinion, to make that claim. DeCausa (talk) 22:52, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
    Here's Misplaced Pages's coverage for Adkin High School in Kinston, North Carolina, the county seat and a 2/3 African American community. FloridaArmy (talk) 09:10, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
    A simple Gsearch for the subject '"Adkin high school" kinston' brings up 6500 sources, many in books and several directly detailing more than just the walk-out. Tons of RS. I'm not seeing the problem with this particular example. So write the article.
    This is unfortunately a pattern with User:FloridaArmy. We write articles based on reliable secondary sources. We decide on notability based on those sources. That the sources themselves may not as of this datestamp collectively reach GNG for a particular subject, well, that's a function of our limited access to sourcing which clearly exists, but might require a secondary work for us to eventually utilize. And so FloridaArmy gets upset that the secondary sources aren't sufficient in case by case tests. And they come to Jimmy's page to complain that our requirements for notability are too stringent. Again.
    This is a righting great wrongs issue, and I'm sympathetic to User:FloridaArmy's plight. And judging from past responses, I believe Jimbo is somewhat in your camp as well. We all are. Nobody wants FloridaArmy to stop makinfg the effort. I can see it's frustrating for FloridaArmy.
    Rhododendrites's suggestion above for "a wikiproject/task force with an emphasis on lists of topics a la Women in Red" is an excellent one and I'd join such a group to help. I'm sure others would as well. In a strange way, all wikipedians are trying to right a great wrong (supplying access to somewhat obscure information). BusterD (talk) 15:36, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
    FloridaArmy seems to be quite good at identifying notable topics that are missing an article. Unfortunately, many of the drafts mentioned above do not show the notability of their subjects, so they are correctly rejected. Perhaps making lists of red links would be a better way to utilise FA's talents than attempting to write the articles. —Kusma (talk) 15:57, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
    Agreed. There's another factor which FloridaArmy's last example raises: self-selection. Most of us tend to build pagespace (and here I confess I'm in a real slump recently) from an intrinsic interest in subject matter. I tend towards biographies and when I write I tend to choose subjects about which I'm already engaging. The historic community surrounding an influential local high school sounds a subject likely to be found notable, but not really in my wheelhouse or even on my radar until this morning. I'm happy to give an attaboy to the page creator; I never fail to credit FloridaArmy's good faith and impressive number of page creations. We share an equal desire in creating the world's best online encyclopedia. I just wish the user would spend more energy on the somewhat spare quality of the pages they do create. Advice I could give myself, I suppose. The wikiproject/task force is something I could get behind and would support with membership and activity. I do not even follow Jimbo's talk page that much and rarely comment here, but even I can see how often FloridaArmy makes this exact case on this exact talkspace. BusterD (talk) 18:03, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

    I'm glad we all agree these subjects are notable and important. Our focus should be on getting them included and rooting out the issues causing them to be rejected and deleted. Waters Edward Turpin (Draft:Waters Turpin) has several sources including extensive coverage in an Oxford reference work on African American authors. Is there a reason authors covered extensively in other reference works and encyclopedias shouldn't be included here? And for many of the other subjects, you can't understand American history if we keep finding ways to censor, exclude, and obstruct additions on notable minority contributions and history. FloridaArmy (talk) 19:31, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

    • I suspect that if you had expanded Draft:Waters Turpin to actually include the material in Oxford Reference (which is actually reprinted from the Afro-American Newspaper) and from the CLA Journal, it would have stood a far better chance of being accepted. At the moment, apart from some basic biographical information, it simply says "Waters Turpin was a professor and writer. He wrote some novels and plays". Black Kite (talk) 19:40, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
      I was going to say the same thing - yes, there are sources to document this person existed, but none of the present ones tell us why they are notable - we're looking for content that goes beyond the basics of a bio, but explains their relative importance to the world as a whole. (Yes, there are lots of white/Caucasian people bios on WP that are similarly poor, often stemming from poor SNG, and I would recommend their deletion too). WP is not a Who's Who, which is one thing that I see FArmy often lament but not really understanding and calling that as bias. Masem (t) 22:12, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
    The article is poorly written and doesn't show the subject's notability. This is not a systemic issue. —Kusma (talk) 19:43, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
    It seems, FloridaArmy, the reason why your drafts are rejected isn't to do with a problem in the way Misplaced Pages regards the notability of these subjects - it's just the way you've written them. Maybe you need to think about Kusma's earlier suggestion that you should focus on identifying redlinks and look to others to create the article. DeCausa (talk) 20:04, 8 January 2023 (UTC)


    Excuse me for saying BULLSHIT. If I used the Oxford source extensively I could be accused of overusing it as another editor was for John Wayne Niles (Draft:John Wayne Niles). And I believe a newspaper may be quoted in the Oxford reference but that the entry is from their reference book on African American authors. And now we're again getting these excuses one after another. Sources are used too much, too little, never quite good enough. Which is why we have shit coverage of these subjects. We have Columbia University's entry noting how fond students are of Nutella but nothing about the Dunning School (or Dunning's mentor there) spreading more than a generation worth of distorted white supremacist propaganda passed off as American history. Again and again there's always some issue for exclusion. Does extensive coverage in an Oxford reference work make a subject notable or not? The author is notable. It shouldn't require peacock language or leaning more heavily on any of the sources to establish he's notable. If he's notable he should be included. If you want to expand the entry go for it!!! Right now we have nothing on him or thousands of other notable minorities, their schools, their history, or their leaders because this is what editors who try to add them in face. I'm experienced I know our criteria and STILL there are excuses why in THIs case the coverage or my citing of it and the content I wrote up somehow doesn't pass muster. You want to say more about him have at it. But that's not a policy. What I wrote up is properly sourced, identifies him with the most significant aspects of his career and lists his works. And again, we have another example in the very same list of examples where a notable subject was rejected in part because a good source was used too much!!! So which is it? Too much, too little. Too this. Subjects loke these used to notable now they're not even though they are but the way their written up isn't good enough. Let's just be honest. We aren't going to include these subjects. We don't care about them. We haven't written about them for the 20 or so years Misplaced Pages has been around and we're not satisfied with how other editors write about them. They have to meet totally different standards than the rest of our content. Good luck. Back of the bus. No one has a problem with the unsourced Adventist elementary school but schools that African Americans had to protest for, march for, get jailed for, struggle to get funded, those we have no room for unless they have 50 sources and are finished when submitted. None of this is in policy it's bullshit propping up white supremacism. FloridaArmy (talk) 20:07, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
    For what it's worth, I actually think that the source in Draft:John Wayne Niles is not overused, though more sources would be welcome. But I'd strongly suggest you don't insinuate that other editors are displaying "white supremacism" again (in fact, I'd very strongly suggest that you redact that), as that may not end well. Black Kite (talk) 21:45, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
    I didn't suggest anyone is white supremacist. I stated that our actions prop up our white supremacist encyclopedia and a distorted and exclusionary version of facts and history, which is true. I'm certainly not the first to note we don't include African or African American subjects. But if you want to punish me for dropping truth bombs have at it. You don't think Columbia University providing generations with the intellectual underpinning for Jim Crow is worth noting? Nutella fetishes and fireplace rituals are more notable? We cover Adventist elementary schools but not historic schools for African Americans. We cover obscure physics theorems (lightly sourced) but Oberlin College's school that was open to Black students took a tooth and nail fight to grt included. A culturally significant region in Africa isn't worthy of inclusion, nor the lawyers who challenged white supremacy in state supreme courts, but our pageless encyclopedia has plenty of room for gamer trivia. This is a white supremacist institution. We have no problem identifying people as African artists or African American authors but try putting im Jimbo's entry that he's the white founder of Misplaced Pages. I've included it where relevant and people go nuts. I understand facing our institutional bigotry is upsetting and disconcerting. If I didn't think it was important for us to cover factual and inclusive history I wouldn't make a fuss. But it is. It's obscene that we censor Biden's African travel ban and other examples of racial prejudice he and his family have shown over his long career, but when our editors don't like something we keep it out. It's salted. Never to be spoken of again. No one should question why our policies make it so difficult to cover Black lives the way we do white ones. FloridaArmy (talk) 22:14, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
    You really want to avoid claiming anything here being "white supremacist", as that is on the road to potentially being blocked, since that's a label you are applying to all WPians.
    We do know that sourcing for most of history absolutely biases against minorities, women, etc, and that our early days of developing WP, we didn't really think about that too much. We do now recognize that we need to better include the underrepresented groups in history in addition to scaling back on how many white male people have been documented even as trivially as possible. It's why notability is used heavily to deem what's good for inclusion since that normalizes the systematic biases across the board. But we do have a lot of work to do to still remedy underrepresention, both on looking for volunteers to seek out more topics for inclusion and figuring out what to do with the cruft that was generated when WP was first started. This is us trying to fix the systematic bias of reliable sources, not in any way shape or form to maintain a "white supremacist" view. Masem (t) 22:24, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
    Masem every time I've posted here about this issue you've attacked me and defended the status quo. We all know the spiel about "the sources are biased so it's not our failt!" It's rote here. Same old schtick.
    No one has yet answered me if substantial coverage in an Oxford reference work, as well as some coverage in other sources, establishes notability? I know the answer. I've added lots of entries supported by well established reference works. But this case is different. And it's always different. This was our coverage of school segregation in the U.S. It was totally dishonest. Propagandistic. Dunningesque. School segregation was only in the South and started with Jim Crow laws. Our editors have biases. Our personal biases support our institutional racism and a white supremacist narrative. We crush anyone who speaks of the problem or challenges it. I hear you loud and clear. I get threatened here a lot. It's not going to stop me from pointing out our discrimination, exclusion, and other abuses that go on here. FloridaArmy (talk) 22:47, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
    No one has attacked you, but you are close to attacking others. You must assume good faith that those replying are trying to help you solve the problem.
    I will caution you that we have to cover topics as reliable sources cover them. You may believe that the current situation around school segregation is not covered the way you think it should be, but to present this view, you need to show that it is covered in reliable sources, and that view has to be in proportion to what sources are out there (per WP:UNDUE). It's why our articles that involve far right conspiracy theories like Pizzagate conspiracy theory give almost no coverage nor give any validity to those that want to push the theory. Same with the Hunter Biden laptop conspiracy. In the same way, while I respect that you want to include sourced commentary that the common standing views of issues dealing with race and minority, we can't take the opposite extreme of viewpoints that lack credible sourcing (like the police are by code and default hostile to minorities, though we should include studies and analysis that do point out that police officers due tend to distrust minorities more than others in appropriate articles).
    We are trying to work with you, but if you are going to see us as hostile towards you, you will likely find yourself blocked or the like. You're doing good work in finding sources, but there's a next step that we've tried to guide you towards over several months that hasn't really happened yet. Masem (t) 23:54, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
    I just want to be ABSOLUTELY clear User:Masem that now you are attacking me for correcting our entry on school segregation in the U.S. that stated "The formal segregation of blacks and whites in the United States began with the passage of Jim Crow laws following the end of the Reconstruction Era in 1877." You think I made up Prince Hall's efforts against school segregation in Massachusetts in 1787? You think that the mob that attacked Noyes Academy in 1835 was a hoax? You think I made up Roberts v. City of Boston (a case cited in Plessy v. Ferguson) and these aren't factual events but hoaxes akin to pizzagate? And I'm not sure what your redlink about Hunter Biden's laptop is all about, but that has been big news and involves issues of censorship and media bias that have been widely covered. We don't have an entry on it? I'm not surprised. FloridaArmy (talk) 02:21, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
    Please read what personal attacks are and are not. I am not attacking you in any way, only cautioning that the methods you use to argue your point are problematic. I never said those edits are bad, just that how you are discussing modern-day issues of racism from the media seem to align with extreme theories that we don't cover without reliable sources. Masem (t) 02:59, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
    We need to be careful to differentiate between saying someone in particular is a racist or white supremacist, which is a personal attack - and saying there is systematic racism or white supremacy in WP, which is demonstrably true, as it is for nearly every other institution. FA has not accused anyone in particular of being a racist in years; we need to be careful to not threaten them for criticizing the institution of WP as racist. I don't agree with FA about everything they're saying, but they should not be getting into trouble for criticizing WP in general. Floquenbeam (talk) 23:47, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
    • Langston High School (Arkansas) (Draft:Langston High School (Arkansas)) is another subject not notable enough for Misplaced Pages. Established in 1913 in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the first high school open to African Americans there, a school with numerous famed alumni, whole articles about different aspects of its history and the new school opening to continie it's legacy, but nope. Maybe we can mention it somewhere else and redirect. FloridaArmy (talk) 02:36, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
      • I just moved that into main space also. It was notable from the first version--though that may not have been clear to the reviewer, for various reasons (and I'll leave it at that). Drmies (talk) 03:10, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
    • I have a ton of problems with FloridaArmy's editing (the writing style, the sloppiness, the inconsistencies) and with their personality (the aggression, the accusations, etc.), but their selection of topics is always right on. I just moved three four declined article drafts into article space; I don't know what kind of standards User:Mattdaviesfsic and User:TheChunky were upholding, but they aren't my standards. Quality matters too, of course, and I hope other editors will pick up on their articles and help them onto the front page and into GA/FA territory. Drmies (talk) 02:47, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
    • Robert H. Wood (Draft:Robert H. Wood) is an interesting subject. One of the first African American mayors in the South. Appointed by a Reconstruction era Republican governor and then won re-election. Held numerous other offices. The next African American mayor of Natchez, Mississippi, the county seat, didn't follow for many many many decades and paid tribute to him. Lots of sources. I'm sure lots more out there. But rejected. Not notable enough for Misplaced Pages. FloridaArmy (talk) 03:42, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
      Again, going off advice from these drafts and above, look through the sources you have to find out why Wood was significantly notable, besides just being an African-American mayor. For one , it may be that he was the first African-American to be elected mayor and the only one during the Reconstruction era. You also may need to explain about Alcorn's role here (who after becoming governor tried to work to improve conditions for African-Americans and quell KKK violence). There's clearly something more to be written about Wood, but you need to think more than just that he was African-American - you want to explain why he held a special place in history due to being African-American. Stating bland facts is why these articles are failing notability. Masem (t) 03:57, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
    He's Misplaced Pages notable because he received substantial coverage in reliable independent sources, and he's important because of what I noted above. One of his parents was African American and still he was able to become a mayor in an important city in Mississippi in the 1870s and had other leadership roles. FloridaArmy (talk) 11:38, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
    This ties into Jimmy's comment below (that you are currently tied by the AFC requirement) - those reviewers at AFC are backed up and they are not going to be able to trace into sources if your written draft doesn't show why the person is notable, which is probably why some of your drafts that have been identified above have been accepted when more time can be given to the review.
    You can help yourself by making sure it is clear of the importance of the person or place or institution is clearly stated in the article, backed with sources. For Wood, you simply say he was mayor of that town, when the importance is that he was first installed as mayor by Alcorn as part of the Reconstruction post-Civil war, and then appears to have been the first African-American mayor elected (in the next election). You say elements of these, but nothing that gets to the powerful reasons why Wood should be remembered. The more you include on facts or third-party analysis that emphasizes why these are importance African-American people/places from that time period, the more likely you'll get AFC drafts accepted. To wit, a lot of your school articles seem to try to rely on "so-and-so graduated from there" statements that you may think deem importance, but which really doesn't establish importance to those that are not as familiar with the topic, and those unfortunately are the ones you want to impress with the topic. Masem (t) 13:35, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

    I would argue that we need to think clearly about two different problems here. The first is the information ecosystem which already exists in the world and is the historical artifact left to us by previous generations. The second is our own policies and processes, which inherently have to grapple with that body of records that went before us. I am supportive of FloridaArmy's campaign to get more coverage of notable topics in the area of African American schools, and much more broadly than that, African American leaders.

    The first problem that I have run into when I have tried to help is that for at least some topics, there really simply are not enough sources at all. They don't exist. In some cases, the history is probably lost forever. A big event of historical importance at a traditionally black high school in 1920s Alabama may have received almost no press coverage, while goings on impacting a traditionally white high school might be very well documented.

    But in other cases, and Draft:Clifton Conference is a good example, there are sources, loads of them. But in part because FA is under restrictions requiring a trip through AfC, the article was rejected as a draft even though it only took a couple of minutes for me to ascertain that there are plenty of sources and that the topic is notable. It took longer for me to read through the sources, and would taken even longer - time that I won't likely have - to read through the sources and write them into the article. This is a problem.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:03, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

    About our process for approving at AfC

    From the discussion above, it seems pretty clear that any editor who is placed under a restriction requiring them to go through AfC is required to write and submit a much better and more complete article than someone who can simply create a new article and tag it as a stub.

    I am not here commenting on what the right level of quality should be for a stub to continue existing - that's of course an interesting and important topic. What I'm noting is a strong disparity between two paths for a new article to be created.

    Would it be sensible to say that the correct standard at AfC should be more or less the same standard as for the creation of a new stub article? And separately, do I have it wrong, and stubs are nowadays also treated to such exacting standards? Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:43, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

    There are several inconsistencies like this, which come about through tensions in the community's priorities. The big one in this case is the tension between increased concern for article quality (rather than quantity) and preservation of The Wiki Way. Most people would agree that a new article should have at least two decent sources, for example, but we're not going to find consensus to make that a hard rule so those kinds of standards become part of our processes rather than our policies. Specifically, they become part of processes where other tensions are in play, e.g. the desire to ensure Misplaced Pages is not misused by people more interested in promotion vs. the ability for everyone to edit easily, and the large amount of content created every day vs. the small community of volunteers reviewing that content. One of the big unofficial roles of AfC is a bad content trap. We bank on people not realizing (until they're experienced/competent) that it's not mandatory, but as soon as people realize that, they just create articles directly. The reason it's a big topic of conversation here is because FA is experienced enough to know that AfC is a higher standard but for them it's not optional. In other words, if we lower the bar at AfC, it's not just FA's articles about African American schools we're letting in. There's a lot wrong with AfC (and we haven't even gotten into the backlog), but it's one of the few quality controls we have, and I don't think there would be much appetite for allowing e.g. a single-line, single-source stub even if someone who doesn't go through AfC can get away with it by creating it directly. — Rhododendrites \\ 13:48, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
    We could try to emphasise the "bad content trap" more by applying the strict rules only to companies, bands and their albums and self-promotional BLPs. A random YouTuber with only two clearly independent sources and some promotional links shouldn't be let through, but an article about some 19th century person or building can be perfectly fine with one book source, one other source and a link to a non-spammy website. —Kusma (talk) 17:00, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
    I think this is really the key. If you look at the Draft:Clifton Conference article as it existed at the start of this conversation (I haven't checked to see if it has changed), it seemed completely fine to me it was - at least, if it were tagged as a stub. It was 100% factual, didn't contain any over the top claims, doesn't seem the sort of thing that would attract spam or trolling, no BLP issues possible as it is an event from 114 years ago, etc. Because there do exist additional sources, there is a chance that someday someone would improve it. If we make rules based on "companies, bands and their albums, and self-promotional BLPs" and the incentive problems that occur there, we will do serious damage to parts of knowledge that are less privileged, such as an educational conference of some apparently real importance.
    I think it is false and not helpful to throw around the term "white supremacist" here - but Florida Army is upset and I can understand why. For a variety of "good" reasons taken at various places, the system as a whole has a major flaw in this area and I believe we need to make some policy changes to address it. One place I would start is some changes to AfC's standards to take into account that things that are low risk and not attempts to spam should be accepted more easily, and I would also take a look at notability requirements in some cases to begin to acknowledge more clearly than we already do that not all topics are going to have the same number and quality of sources for historical reasons that are ugly.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:36, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
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