Research talk:Newsletter/2021/July
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Request: Please iterate and improve
[edit]@HaeB: Hi. I hope you're doing well. I have some feedback for you regarding the summary and reflections you wrote on the paper Ms. Categorized: Gender, notability, and inequality on Wikipedia. I hope that you consider my feedback and iterate to improve your post. Below are the specifics:
- In your analysis, you have included at least one serious accusation against the author of the paper: p-hacking. As you may know, p-hacking is not a term that is lightly used in the research and academic circles. Strong evidence is needed to use the term against a researcher, and there are consequences for a proven case. I request that you remove this portion of your analysis.
- I request that you re-read your analysis and remove any part that may be read as a personal attack to the author. For example, "But not, apparently, to Francesca Tripodi,". The way this sentence is written is belittling the knowledge of the author and can be perceived as intimidating, as a result a personal attack. Another example is the use of the characterization "the author of this deeply flawed paper" as it is hostile. (Please review the first reference at the end of my comments for more.) Note that the focus on research reviews is the research work and not people.
- As I know you're fully aware, the topic of gender gap on Wikipedia is of critical importance. There have been many studies on this front, and the community of volunteers and organizers has worked tirelessly for many years to address some of the gaps identified. In this context, some of the words you have used in the review can be misunderstood as gender gap is a fallacy or misinformation. I believe that your intention is not to convey that message, however, given the sensitivity of the topic I ask you to please review your post and update it in a way that can reduce the risk of this misunderstanding.
Please take into account that as editor-in-chief of the Research Newsletter, your words carry extra weight and that brings more responsibility for you. I acknowledge that writing good reviews is hard and we, including myself, all need to continuously work and improve our work. To that end, I share a couple of references that I learned a lot from: On Civility in Reviewing and The ethics of scholarly peer review: a review of the literature. I would appreciate if you get back to me regarding my feedback to you. Thanks! LZia (WMF) (talk) 23:05, 11 August 2021 (UTC)