A news item involving Donna Strickland was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the In the news section on 2 October 2018.

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This article has been mentioned by a media organization: Davis, Nicola (2 Oct 2018). "Nobel physics prize winners include first female laureate for 55 years – as it happened". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 Oct 2018. Sumner says the fact that Strickland's Wikipedia page has only appeared today is telling.'It took a Nobel prize for Donna Strickland to be noticed enough to have a (short) Wikipedia page written about her. Another example of how womens' contributions to science go unnoticed and uncelebrated,' she says. 'It takes the science equivalent of an Oscar for a woman in Stem [science, technology engineering and mathematics] to get noticed!'

This article has been mentioned by a media organization: Koren, Marina (3 Oct 2018). "One Wikipedia Page Is a Metaphor for the Nobel Prize's Record With Women". The Atlantic. Retrieved 3 Oct 2018. Unlike her fellow winners, Strickland did not have a Wikipedia page at the time of the announcement. A Wikipedia user tried to set up a page in May, but it was denied by a moderator with the message: "This submissio's references do not show that the subject qualifies for a Wikipedia article." Strickland, it was determined, had not received enough dedicated coverage elsewhere on the internet to warrant a page. ((cite news)): External link in |quote= (help)

She spoke today that she was an intern during suaid studies.Lihaas (talk) 11:19, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Why wasn't the declined AFC draft moved to create this article? --2600:1700:FB00:9C00:D4FE:243:70E7:A0ED (talk) 14:40, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It can be history-merged to give credit to the original author. --Hegvald (talk) 16:05, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

History merge is for cases where content of another page was copied. It appears Donna Strickland was written from scratch or using a little of Gérard Mourou but not Draft:Donna Strickland. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:15, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

User talk:TonyBallioni had redirected the rejected draft at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Donna_Strickland&diff=862221162&oldid=862211426 and that loses the history on the incident which should be preserved, so I think a merge is warranted. Emceeaich (talk) 00:44, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No, no, and once more no. As PrimeHunter has said, HISTMERGE is only for pages where the attribution got messed up. This is just a case of two pages being created in different spaces. There was no copy/paste page moving, and thus there should be no histmerge. Primefac (talk) 00:46, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hist merging would be a nightmare here and completely screw up the page history. This is a parallel versions issue. If there is any usable content from that draft, it can be merged by hand with Edit summary attribution. Also, for the record: the history has not been lost. Anyone can view it through the Permalink in the history if they want to write about it off-wiki. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:02, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think Emceeaich is right. The page history might be a little messy as a result, but the history of this page is messy (even gathering a little bit of press attention), and that should be preserved in the history of the page. Moreover, there may be some prose that may get lost by leaving it over in the Draft namespace. Hist merging isn't that tough; I can do it if no one else is up to the job. -- RobLa (talk) 01:15, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Not only are there paralell histories, there is ZERO content shared between them from a "copy/paste page move" perspective. Please please please do not attempt to do a histmerge, because if it's confusing now, it will only get more confusing. For example, how the hell would you figure out the sequence of edit 1, 2, and 3 when viewed through a "diff" view? Those three edits would be sequential if a histmerge were to be performed. Just don't do it. Please. Primefac (talk) 01:22, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't sound like a compelling problem. What does seem like a compelling problem is that the draft could get garbage-collected away after a few months, and the robots.txt for Wikipedia means that the linked version might not be preserved by archive.org (though I made a point of requesting an archive manually, which seems to have worked). Still, I'm still inclined to do the merge; that will capture the history of this page in a truer sense, even if the history around Special:PermaLink/862211036, Special:PermaLink/862211426 and Special:PermaLink/862212846 is a little messy. In fact, it probably just makes sense to leave all Draft:Donna_Strickland revisions after the first edit in the current Donna_Strickland article out of the merge (e.g. -426), which would mean the diff between -036 and -846 would continue to make sense. -- RobLa (talk) 02:17, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It has nothing to do with being difficult: I could do it very easily if it would be beneficial. It has to do with mangling page histories which would be the last thing you want for a high profile article that is getting media attention. Additionally, keeping it in the current form in draft space is the easiest way to make sure the history stays together and can be seen by the public or anyone who wants to write about it: we don’t delete redirect drafts and the actual history of this event is much more clearly laid out there than it could ever be here after a hist merge. Finally; you can merge the content by hand and then do edit summary attribution if you’re afraid of the text being lost, which is how we handle this in ever other situation and one of the main reasons we don’t delete draft redirects. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:32, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm....are you sure redirect drafts don't get deleted out of public view? I agree that the status quo (if preserved) would be slightly less confusing for someone trying to piece things together. But I have a hard time believing that there is as much diligence applied to preserving draft revisions as there is to preserving main namespace revisions. As I propose in my response to Primefac, making the merged history make sense doesn't seem too difficult. -- RobLa (talk) 02:17, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

RobLa: Yes. We do not delete redirects in draft space. They are not eligible for G13. Part of the reason we don’t delete them is to preserve the history because many have been merged into main space and we keep them to comply with our license attribution requirements. Also, your reply to Primefac would make a huge mess of this and would confuse the article histories for absolutely no reason: it would also be extraordinarily difficult to unmerge if you did this, which isn’t ideal since you have two other admins here who are telling you that this is not a reason under policy to use the tools. I’m pinging JJMC89 here to also comment since he’s somewhat of an expert on histmerges (even if he can’t do it himself.) TonyBallioni (talk) 02:42, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

TonyBallioni, thanks for the clarification. I'm still a little bit skeptical that the draft history will be safe without moving into the main namespace, but I'm not inclined to mess around with the article in the near term. I'll drop a note on this page and/or the Draft page if I change my mind. -- RobLa (talk) 03:12, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(Repeating what others have already said.) The point of history merges is to maintain license-required attribution. This is a clear instance of parallel and unrelated (no shared copyrightable content) histories. Given that, the histories should remain separate. The history of the draft isn't needed for anything currently and could be deleted (not that it should). If someone wants to copy something from the draft, Campbpt0 must be attributed. (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) — JJMC89 (T·C) 03:37, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of the coverage around her Nobel prize has centered around Wikipedia's anti-woman bias. May be worth a mention in the article itself.

For example:

"Wikipedia rejected an entry on today’s Nobel Prize winner in May because she wasn’t famous enough" https://qz.com/1410909/wikipedia-had-rejected-nobel-prize-winner-donna-strickland-because-she-wasnt-famous-enough/

“It took a Nobel prize for Donna Strickland to be noticed enough to have a (short) Wikipedia page written about her. Another example of how womens’ contributions to science go unnoticed and uncelebrated" https://www.theguardian.com/science/live/2018/oct/02/nobel-prize-in-physics-2018-live — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.13.30.42 (talk) 20:17, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This part: "Only 17% of the current biographical entries on Wikipedia as of October 2, 2018 are about women, and the site is particularly thin on women in science" is not anyhow related to her research or her notability. I think it should be removed. Teemu (talk) 20:41, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps this warrants a separate section in the article? Axeman89 (talk) 20:50, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps an article about the phenomenon itself, rather than a section on Strickland's article would be more appropriate? Ilikeeatingwaffles (talk) 21:26, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that belongs in an article such as Criticism of Wikipedia, not here (where it's self-referential trivia). Robofish (talk) 21:47, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Whether it's "trivia" or a telling symptom of a larger problem is debatable. But ultimately it's not about the subject of the article, and shows signs of being just a single-news-cycle phenomenon. A brief mention at Criticism of Wikipedia or Gender bias on Wikipedia is certainly appropriate. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 03:48, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, with a link from this article. The deletion of the original article was the sort of action that will damage the entire reputation of Wikipedia. It’s a good opportunity for soul searching, and while I don’t want to call out the deleter (who has made huge positive contributions) is would be great to see him (and I’m guessing the gender here) help out with suggestions of ways to move forward. Bennetto (talk) 02:24, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The deletion was entirely proper and within wikipedia policy. Please review policies before casting aspersions. Natureium (talk) 15:19, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, one of the male 2018 chemistry prize winners George P. Smith (chemist) didn't have an article either. It was created two hours ago. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:59, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

OK, but was an article about him previously proposed and then rejected by the community? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A601:41E5:EC00:5560:9C2D:9DD5:358B (talk) 15:07, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimeHunter: Continuing for the record, since Wikipedia's Jan. 2001 launch:

• of 212 Nobel laureates, 69 (33%) had no Wikipedia bio when prize was announced;
• of 48 laureates in physics, 17 (35%) had no WP page when award was announced—all except Donna Strickland being male, including one each in 2014 & 2015. KalHolmann (talk) 15:17, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Not knowing the editor who chose to reject this article, it's hard to see this as one of the archetypical cases of Wikipedia bias re: notability. I don't read enough science bios, so just from reading what was originally submitted for Strickland, I wouldn't know how she compared against other non-notable entries (I've certainly seen more egregiously non-notable bios). But it didn't look like there was a debate. The editor stated his case and no one appears to have made an objection, and there's not much reason to think that her bio, with a few changes, would've been approved. Wikipedia's ignorance here of Strickland is more a symptom of Wikipedia's reliance on real-world metrics for fame and achievement than intended anti-woman bias. Maybe the argument could be made that Wikipedia could be more proactive than the real world in recognizing success. But Wikipedia's overlooking of Strickland seems nearly irrelevant compared to how so many of Strickland's peers and colleagues seemed fine with seeing her as just an associate professor. 24.130.146.8 (talk) 12:07, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The draft [1] wasn't declined because she was claimed to be non-notable but because the submitted page had no independent sources. The decline box clearly stated the reason and made a resubmit button. The three sources were a paper by the subject, a biography at a society she had been president of, and a profile at the university she works for. If the author or somebody else had added independent sources and resubmitted, it would probably have been accepted. The decline also linked to relevant Wikipedia guidelines. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:20, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This is an opportunity to get people to understand how to create good biographical drafts that meet notability and sourcing criteria by engaging in deliberate conversation (and possibly getting media coverage of the discussion). I knew about the Women Scientists project and as a historian came across someone who seemed to merit inclusion but it was only after 5-10 hours of hard research that I was able to assemble an article that really got across her noteworthiness. She passed in the 1980s and the sourcing is primarily field-specific (and relied in large part on obituaries) but that was a function of the time period and the relative paucity of coverage back then in general (although a condition that will exist for many scientists that are excellent but don't embrace the media machine -- wonder about the relationship between those two traits!). People are creating fairly useless stubs because they don't understand the importance of (1) really hitting the audience with why the person should have an article and (2) doing the drudge work to dig up source material to start the article. ... Of course, realistically, that is not the conversation we are going to have about this (and I've witnessed sexism play out so it is not a negligible factor in many editorial decisions and does not deserve to be ignored either). JBVaughan (talk) 13:25, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

To add to this, when the draft was rejected it had a total of three sources, none of which were reliable sources independent of the subject. If anything, this goes to show that Wikipedia does not accept biographies of living people without proper sourcing. The draft had claims of notability, which is why it was kept for further improvement and not speedily deleted, but it could not be accepted as an article without better sourcing. Media claims about gender bias or failure to recognize academic achievements miss the point.

To anyone reading this and wondering what went wrong: Articles require significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. Bradv 13:44, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• If anything, coverage should probably go on Gender bias on Wikipedia, and not here. And the rejection of the draft was perfectly warranted given how poor the sourcing was at the time. The sourcing has been improve, and so now there is an article. That's how the systems is supposed to work. The only problem here is that the media don't understand the difference between accepting a draft and deleting an article. GMG^talk 15:33, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I work for the Optical Society and noticed that there is some editing work happening to round out this profile. I noticed it was missing images and some content. I'm currently assisting with updating the bio on our website as Dr. Strickland has been actively involved with the society including as our 2013 President and we've seen a lot of interest for obvious reasons today. I don't want to make any edits myself due to COI but I wanted to extend the offer of assistance in acquiring media or information/references if desired. - Tinynull (talk) 22:53, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the offer. You may wish to upload a profile photograph to WikiMedia Commons. No COI issues would arise doing that but you would need to agree to licence the image under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 license. — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 23:21, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I just want to second what Blue-Haired Lawyer said. It would be great to get an image for this article and I don't think there are usually COI concerns regarding the upload of images. Orser67 (talk) 00:29, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I've uploaded the following for use: File:Donna_Strickland,_OSA_Holiday_Party_2012.jpg and File:Donna_Strickland_speaking_at_OSA%27s_Leadership_meeting_in_2013.jpg. We've released both of these images as CC BY SA 4.0 on our website to validate they are now free to use. Copyright for both of these images was fully held by The Optical Society, they were taken by a contract photographer and I did verify our contract assigns ownership of the work to us. - Tinynull (talk) 16:05, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]