Eppstein was off-base, but you escalated it into the realm of the personal
attack. That's both counterproductive and even somewhat hypocritical. In
particular, your blanket denigration of academics is amazingly offensive to
many more Wikipedians than just your wayward reviewer.
Powers &8^]
-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel and Elizabeth Case [mailto:danc...@frontiernet.net]
Sent: 16 June 2014 21:45
To: Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects
Subject: [Gendergap] Oh man, I feel like a woman ...
It's one thing to read about the sort of harsh reactions women get while
editing that discourages them from continuing.
It's a second thing to experience it yourself.
Late last week I was browsing Slate when I read their reprint
(http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/06/11/lolly_wolly_doodle_brandi_te
mple_s_north_carolina_children_s_clothing_startup.html) of this month's Inc.
magazine cover story, about a company called Lolly Wolly Doodle, a
children's clothing company started by Brandi Temple a woman in North
Carolina with no real prior business experience, who had by her own
admission never wanted to be anything more than a trophy wife when she was
younger. She apparently figured out how to sell on Facebook, something major
retailers have failed to do, and she's now the CEO of a rapidly-growing
company that's gotten some serious venture-capital funding, doing over half
of its $10 million+ annual business on FB and by their own lights the
largest retailer on that site.
I checked to see if we had an article on this company. We didn't, so I
started one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolly_Wolly_Doodle, complete with
an infobox with the company logo and a free image of one of its dresses I
found on Flickr. I reflected as I did so that the reason that this company
had gotten all the media coverage it had in the tech and business press yet
remained off our radar said entirely too much about our gender gap ... if we
had just a few more probably regular editors who also are avid Pinterest
users, I bet, we'd have had at least a stub a long time ago.
But, that was all water under the bridge. Or so I thought.
I nominated it for DYK on Friday. Late today, I get these responses:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Did_you_know_nominations
/Lolly_Wolly_Doodle
<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Did_you_know_nomination
s/Lolly_Wolly_Doodle&diff=613195333&oldid=612812989>
&diff=613195333&oldid=612812989
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Did_you_know_nominations
/Lolly_Wolly_Doodle
<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Did_you_know_nomination
s/Lolly_Wolly_Doodle&diff=613195754&oldid=613195333>
&diff=613195754&oldid=613195333
They were enough to ruin the good mood I was in following the USA's World
Cup win over Ghana and our neighbor coming over to invite my wife and I to
her daughter's graduation party. I have real trouble believing that Eppstein
even read it ("whole paragraphs" are sourced to the company's own history on
its webpage? Huh? That it's not neutral and too promotional? Everything it
is sourced and attributed. And that dismissive conclusion about
"story-telling mode about the struggles of the founders to find their way in
the world" Maybe it's just me, but I don't think a similarly-written story
about a business set up by men would get this level of criticism.
Sorry if anyone was bothered by this, but I had to vent. I will be going
into greater detail about why this review was so off base when I request
that someone else review it instead (something I have very rarely done with
all the DYKs I've nominated).
Daniel Case
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