Talk:Ijeoma Oluo

Edit conflicts

Hello, pinging User:Antonioatrylia that's great you are interested in improving the article and adding templates here, I'm also in the midst of working on this, wondering if you are interested in helping resolve some of the citation needed tags you've added here? Let me know and I'll take a break. If not, I'm working on it now and hate to be in a position where our edits are happening at the same time. Monikasj (talk) 21:54, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Photo op

Oluo is doing a book thing at Elliott Bay Books on March 7. I don't know of any other scheduled public appearances; the last one was a $40 arts & lecture series. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 06:43, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

• I found some photos on Flickr licensed CC-by-SA with the no commercial reuse restriction, and I sent Flicr mail to the photographer requesting they remove the no-$ licensing so we could have the photos on Commons, and they came through. They're pretty low res but at least it's something. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 03:06, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for doing that. It might seem low res to us but it is still clear enough to identify what she looks like. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 10:22, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

External links to archives of articles

Here are some examples of Featured articles that include external links to a writer's works: Rachel Carson#List of works, Anna Laetitia Barbauld#List of works, Bruno Maddox#Selected bibliography. If these were links to Amazon or Google Shopping to buy books, that would be promotional. Linking to the work itself is nothing of the sort, particularly if the entire reason a Wikipedia article exists is the notability of a writers work. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 17:13, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

I am sure you must know that something existing in another article is a failed arguement. Try again. Antonioatrylia (talk) 18:07, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Hm? No it's not. The second sentence in WP:OSE explicitly states such "arguments can be valid or invalid." Seems to me it's incumbent on you to explain why these examples of FA writer entries, which have been heavily [...understatement] scrutinized by the community and found acceptable, differ from this writer entry in a way that would give us reason to treat links differently. Innisfree987 (talk) 18:36, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Indeed, anyone tho thinks an FA is "just another article" has never nominated one. It's reasonable to not agree on how to best layout an article like this. If the list of works includes external links, should it be moved below the external link heading? Perhaps. FAs suggest they can go in the ususal place, above see also. MOS:LAYOUT puts works as part of the appendices group:

1. Before lead
2. Body
3. Appendices
4. Bottom matter

If an external link is in the works section, then it's in the appendices part of the article, which is defined as not part of the body. The external links to the article archives are not in the body. Could they still be reasonably moved to the external links section instead of works? Sure.

What is not reasonable is to simply delete it all outright. It's very hard to build an new article when content is constantly being nuked out of existence before editors can work out what the final product is going to look like. Since either location for the links is not egregiously wrong and neither is perfectly right, there is hardly a reason to urgently delete any of it. Discuss it. Move it around. Read WP:Editing policy. That policy, not a mere guideline like the MOS, requires good faith effort to retain reasonably good content and work out how to use it, rather than wholesale deletion of anything that isn't yet perfect. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 18:43, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Irrelevant factoids?

Wikipedia articles tend to collect a lot of low-value factoids and statistics. This can be useful, since for many topics Wikipedia's obsessive collection of data makes it more complete than any other source. Often if you want a complete cast list for a TV show or movie you're better off at Wikipedia than IMDB (which I think is backwards but whatever).

I can see why we might decide to remove Oluo's birthdate and the name of her ex-husband. On the other hand if you don't have an exact birth date it's awkward to identify how old someone is, and it matters a great deal whether a person's writing is from the perspective of a 20 year old or 60 year old, or, in this case a 37 year old. I'm totally fine with saying Oluo is "in her late 30s" but without the exact date it raises questions as to the sourcing. It's just easier if you use the actual date.

Her marriage and family status is only relevant because so much of her writing is about intersectionality, family relations, intimate relations, gender questions, etc. If Oluo wrote mystery novels or books about coding in Python I'd see no reason to mention her ex husband's name. Beyond that, here are some more factoids:

• [1] Didn't change her name back to Olou from Jacobson for 11 years. Any reason to care? I'd say probably not but perhaps if further context is added we could bring it up.
• [2] Vegan. Also don't care. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Category:Vegans doesn't exist (why? see [3]), though sadly Category:Vegetarians does, along with List of vegetarians. If any evidence existed that Oluo belongs in Category:Veganism activists I could see the relevance.
• Oluo identifies as queer which means we'd put this article in Category:Queer writers and on List of LGBT writers. I'd suggest not mentioning this unless we can cite further content on the topic. Oluo quit The Stranger over an anti-trans article, but that seems to be the extent of what we have to say about this at the moment.
• [4] Atheist. Same reasonaing above. It's weird that we deleted all the vegans categories because it's not a defining characteristic, but Category:Atheists and, in this case Category:African-American atheists, still exist. See [5][6]. *shrug*

The WP:BLP policy is to err on the side of caution and remove questionable facts, which I support. But as I said, we have to also consider the entire reason Oluo is notable, which is the topics she writes about, and the fact that so much of her writing is personal. This can make the details of authorship relevant in ways they normally wouldn't be. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:20, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Made birthday more vague I changed her birthday in the infobox to still include the year, so you get an idea of her age, but not the exact birthday. I think that's a great compromise Lonehexagon (talk) 23:13, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Comment Personally I tend to err on the side of keeping extra information if it seems relevant to her topic at all, but I do agree with removing any information that is possibly incorrect, or otherwise not documented well. I don't have an opinion about the name change. It's pretty well-documented she's queer, as she's stated it herself on Twitter at least a few times. Lonehexagon (talk) 23:13, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

If we have a source that doesn't violate WP:BLPPRIMARY then there is nothing wrong with including the exact birthday. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 23:16, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

References

Part deux

Same question, but about mentioning being raised by a single mother, e.g. per this from her brother (specifically, "What would it have been like to grow up with a dad?") and this from IO ("With our father gone, Mom’s greatest fear was that she would be a white woman who didn’t know how to raise black kids"). Worth including? Innisfree987 (talk) 18:44, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

DYK nomination created

Template:Did you know nominations/Ijeoma Oluo created, crediting Antonioatrylia, Dennis Bratland, Emir of Wikipedia, Innisfree987, Lonehexagon, and Monikasj. I'll try to get the QPQ done, but feel free if you wish to take are of it. Please fix if your name should be added/removed. Also an alternate hook or two wouldn't hurt. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 19:01, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

I removed my name as I didn't expand the article. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 19:07, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Place of birth in DOB holder and where the subject lives in the lead sentence

Hi, I removed place of birth from the DOB holder and removed where the subject is based out of the lead sentence. Unless where they live the reson for the notability, it doesn't belong there. I also removed a duplicate linked article. Thank you, --Malerooster (talk) 23:48, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

I disagree a bit; I don't think it needs to be the reason for their notability (any more than being American or being born in 1980, in this case, is the reason they're notable) so much as a key aspect of understanding their biography. In this case, I think both are, as they figure significantly in the subject's work. Innisfree987 (talk) 00:05, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Huh? Please see WP:BLPLEAD and the 100,000 - 1,000,000 bios on this site please. Really?--Malerooster (talk) 00:14, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi Innisfree987, first sorry, not trying to be a dick, but these edits really are MOSBIO. We do not put place of birth in the DOB field. Also, I know on NO well written bios that used xxxx-based in the lead sentence. --Malerooster (talk) 00:19, 8 February 2018 (UTC)ps, this is NOT a contested version, user Bratland rv me in error, see my talk page, thank you, --Malerooster (talk) 00:21, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, I appreciate it. It'd really be great if you could just revert yourself for the time being so we can try to reach consensus and not resort to edit-warring. (ec: I've still reverted, so what remains at this point is the contested version.)

If you look at the edit history, you'll see that several of us have spent a lot of the last week reviewing this author's work and through that work, I at least came to feel these location details are essential to summarizing the biography (for that matter BLPLEAD also acknowledges location can be essential context). If you want to format them differently, I'm up for discussing alternatives (seems a bit arbitrary but oh well) but simply deleting the info three times per a guideline rather than any substantive argument about what information is most relevant to understanding this specific biography, as developed from nearly 50 references, feels detrimental to the entry. Innisfree987 (talk) 00:34, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi Innisfree987, I do ALOT of work on bios that usually involves gnome type edits, ie removing place of birth from DOB field, trying to formalize the lead sentence per MOSB:LPLEAD, removing duplicate links, removing duplicate links from the See also section, ect.ect. Please take a look at ANY well written bio and you will see it almost never has the subjects "location" in the LEAD sentence. Oh course there are exceptions, but it is VERY unusual. Please look at my contributions. I went to the category artists from Portland Oregon, and only made it through the Bs., but I tried to add nationality, move where they are "based" out of the lead and into a Personal life section, ect, ect, ect. As the article stands, the 2nd paragrapgh talks about the subject being one of the most influential people in Seattle, yadda, yadda, and that's fine, it takes care of the "based in Seattle" part. Anyways, can somebody please help me out here, I suck at explaining things and writing, I am a math teacher ;). Cheers, --Malerooster (talk) 22:43, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

So, I still disagree: to me the second paragraph now comes a bit out of nowhere. If you feel the info really has to be removed from the first sentence, I'd suggest we add it to the beginning of that second paragraph, to say for instance, "Born in Denton, Texas and based in Seattle, Washington, Oluo..." To me this does a considerably better job of representing the substance of the entry-- gnoming still has to take into account the actual information needing to be conveyed (after all, the whole bit is to explain things in writing! :) ) Innisfree987 (talk) 06:57, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

In absence of objection so far, I'll go ahead and add this back in but obviously we can pick the discussion back up if others disagree. Innisfree987 (talk) 18:43, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

African American?

Dennis Bratland Before I added "Nigerian descent" it only said "American Writer" not "African-American." And as the information in her "Personal Life" indicates her parents are Nigerian and White American. Saying she is an African-American writer is totally wrong. It's a matter of common sense.

Wayn12Wayn12 (talk) 19:40, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

what do the sources say? EvergreenFir (talk) 19:53, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

The phrase "writer of Nigerian descent" is something a Wikipedia editor made up. They made the choice to emphasize her Nigerian father and ignore her white mother. No sources call her that. Wikipedia editors should not be making up what to categorize people as based on whatever their own biases are. We must follow our sources without second-guessing them.

Several sources here describe her as African-American, such as the Seattle Times. It says she is "an African-American queer woman". She also calls herself "mixed-race", but does so in the context of discussing black Americans. African-Americans, in other words.

One editor's own common sesnse might tell them that she isn't African-American, but no sources agree. It's their opinion alone. If we could cite a reliable source who specifically contradicts the many sources that say she is African-American, then we could consider that this might be a subject of disagreement. WP:WikiVoice is the specifically applicable policy: "avoid stating facts as opinions." All of our sources state this as a fact; none of our sources dispute it. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 20:01, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Appeal to Common Sense is a logical fallacy of the ipse dixit variety. We base articles on reliable, published sources, not one editor's "common sense". See also WP:NOTCOMMON. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 20:53, 31 July 2018 (UTC)