MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
There is consternation at Wikipedia over the discovery that hundreds of novelists who happen to be female were being systematically removed from the category “American novelists” and assigned to the category “American women novelists.” Amanda Filipacchi, whom I will call an American novelist despite her having been born in Paris, set off a furor with an opinion piece on theNew York Times website last week. Browsing on Wikipedia, she had suddenly noticed that women were vanishing from “American novelists”—starting, it seemed, in alphabetical order. In the A’s and the B’s, the list was now almost exclusively male:
Comments
It is not really a 'women problem' so much as a male(s) with ocd and poor reasoning skills problem.
by EmmaZahn on Thu, 05/02/2013 - 2:50pm
I suspect a pedalogical problem. Where children in school, when assigned to write on famous or accomplished women, are not finding enough homework help from their wikipedia. Gotta have more lists of women to complete those essays...ye olde self-perpetuating societal problems....
by artappraiser on Thu, 05/02/2013 - 3:19pm
The problem isn't adding them to the "American women novelists", the problem is removing them from the "American novelists". (It'd be different if they'd created a category called "American men novelists" or some such.)
by Verified Atheist on Thu, 05/02/2013 - 3:24pm
No, as the essay details:
It is a really good read. I could not help but laugh at the guy's lunacy. He does not like general categories (like that's not the first place people look) so he subdivides endlessly.
by EmmaZahn on Thu, 05/02/2013 - 3:29pm
Oh, well, that's interesting in itself. I do think Wikipedia has gotten better at reining in the obsessives (whatever their obsession--conspiracy theories, for example) with editorial oversight procedures....so this is proof that one person can still have considerable sway. But the fact that there is public controversy over it is reason for hope.
by artappraiser on Thu, 05/02/2013 - 3:35pm
But the fact that there is public controversy over it is reason for hope.
Yes, that and that Jimmy Wales weighed in when he read about it. He asked his editors, WTF. But Lambert was still busily re-categorizing when the linked article was written. Really glad that meta discussion is somewhere I can only see if I look really hard for it.
by EmmaZahn on Thu, 05/02/2013 - 3:48pm