Talk:Tressie McMillan Cottom

VCU Award Relevance

This award's been taken out twice: once under the specious claim that Wikipedia's policy on not being a resume applied, the next time without reference to policy. I fail to see why it's inappropriate to have the award listed. The award fleshes out the picture of McMillan Cottom, showing how her work has been recognized at the local level as well as the national. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Triplingual (talk • contribs) 10:29, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

The Virginia Commonwealth University Humanities and Sciences Excellence in Scholarship Award is not mentioned anywhere else than the university website. It i significant only to that institution. If no one else cares about it, why should we? It appears to be just padding. The fact that two different editors have reviewed it and thought it not notable should be an indication that it might not be notable. noq (talk) 10:54, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. Only one editor found it not notable. One mistakenly claimed it was someone building their resume on Wikipedia. As to why 'we' should care about it, I'm part of 'we', and I do care about it. This is part of how academia works in the US; recognition at smaller scales builds into networks and recognition at larger scales. Not always in a linear fashion, but still. McMillan Cottom's early career award from the local institution connects to her ASA early career award. If I were reading about her for the first time, it would be a meaningful part of her story that there was a progression from local notability to national notability. If she were a late-career academic, it wouldn't be so pertinent.

I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday, nor have I memorized every Wikipedia policy. I promote and facilitate Wikipedia editing in my circles, and unfortunately have to warn people about editors who don't feel like it's their job to support becoming a (better) Wikipedian but just to say No, without explanation.

For anyone reading this later, the relevant guideline is at Wikipedia:Notability_(academics)#Specific_criteria_notes, and there's nothing there saying any particular award can or can't be listed. Note also that the same guideline explicitly states, "notability is a test used by editors to decide whether a given topic warrants its own article". Notability is not, to my reading, about whether any specific item goes in an article about a notable person. In fact, precedent suggests otherwise. Many things are included in lists in Wikipedia that do not meet our notability threshold for an independent article. I'm happy to have a conversation about this award, but no Wikipedia guideline has been shown me so far to say that local awards can't be put in. If it can't be shown that Wikipedia guidelines about awards/listings prohibit it, there's no reason it shouldn't be in. Triplingual (talk) 14:30, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

I must be missing something here. Where in the notability criteria you linked to does it say local institution awards should be included in academic profiles? Has any other recepient of the award had it listed in their wikipedia entries? Your quibble about the edit comment only specifying notability on one of the reverts is not relevant - the same content was removed because two separate editors did not think it relevant to state it. As for building on previous awards, at what level do you stop - should you list any handwriting certificate awarded at lower school levels because that builds the picture? Why do you care so much about this particular local award. It does nothing to the notability of the subject, it does appear to be cited for anyone else - and the website seems to indicate it is awarded annually. Google is not showing tens of hits about it. what makes it so significant that this article needs to highlight it where no other article does? noq (talk) 17:12, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

One thing I am new to still is edit disputes. We don't seem to be getting anywhere (I could fairly ask you why you care so much about excluding this particular award), so it seems like it might be time to bring in other people. What's a good way to do this? Since this page is part of (of interest to?) some projects, putting an RfC in 2-3 of those would be my first step. Sound fair? Triplingual (talk) 01:46, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Add a link to this discussion to the talk pages of relevant wikiprojects would be more useful as a first step. This will highlight the issue to people with an interest in the subject. noq (talk) 12:12, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

A week later and nobody's commented. What next? We edit back and forth until someone notices? Triplingual (talk) 01:51, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

That would only get you blocked for edit warring. Unless you can get support for the change, then the status quo prevails. You can follow WP:dispute resolution if you feel so strongly that this is essential for the article but I don't see why. noq (talk) 12:10, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Status quo isn't a cudgel, though; that would be status quo stonewalling. I've put something on the 3O page about this. I feel strongly that the award shed additional light on Dr. McMillam Cotton and that there's no Wikipedia policy against it. Nothing's been cited so far, at least, that speaks to notability of a particular award, only of the weight of certain awards toward meeting article notability threshold. Triplingual (talk) 01:17, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

I just read through this discussion. Triplingual, I cited WP:NOTRESUME because it is the closest illustrative example of WP:NOTEVERYTHING, the policy section of which NOTRESUME is a subsection. It was not literally an accusation that a user was padding their own resume in userspace, but an attempt to show how community consensus has handled similar kinds of additions to biographical articles under the WP:NOTEVERYTHING policy, and I'm sorry if that was not clear from the short edit summary.

If you've done a lot of editing on academic articles, you've probably also seen some other arguments against including local awards, including WP:UNDUE (because they are rarely covered in secondary sources, while other facts in the article are highly covered), or WP:NPOV more generally (because they favor the assessment of one institution, in this case the subject's employer, over more general assessments by, e.g. national committees or organizations). I hope this helps explain my single revert of your addition, and why other editors often agree with these kinds of reversions on these kinds of articles. Bakazaka (talk) 17:44, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Response to third opinion request:

Thank you for discussing this. As the article subject seems to be an academic/writer, I believe it is generally OK to include some awards, particularly if they are notable or highly selective ones. I noticed that there are a couple of awards already listed (in this version [1]) which seem to be awarded by academic societies. Now, coming to the specific dispute about Virginia Commonwealth University Humanities and Sciences Excellence in Scholarship Award, I looked at the content guidelines. Any information has to be verifiable (WP:V) and supported by reliable sources WP:RS which are preferably third party ones. In this case, the information can be verified, although the reference is the university website itself. The next guideline we can look at is WP:UNDUE to determine what should be included. Since Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, we usually summarise and state the information according to its relative prevalence in sources. In this particular case, the award given by the University has not really been covered in the media. In contrast, the awards by the academic societies are mentioned in multiple references. If we go by proportion of coverage, it is clear that faculty award doesn't get as much news coverage as the other 2 awards. It would be unfair to include it. To conclude, my opinion here is that we should not include the faculty award in the list. DreamLinker (talk) 19:13, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, DreamLinker, I'll refrain from adding it in again. I will note, though, that I think this is an instance of how Wikipedia can fail its audience. All this sweat over excluding something that actively contributes toward a reader's understanding of an article's subject's contributions to scholarship while Wikipedia as a whole is riddled with specious information and fan articles with verified, consensus, and reliable — but also pointless or misleading — facts. (For instance, the putative national heritage of Melissa Auf der Maur or the brand of bass she played in her first major band.) Triplingual (talk) 01:35, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

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