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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Edith Jordan Gardner

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Much obliged for the improvements! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:04, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Edith Jordan Gardner

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Edith Jordan Gardner (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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After reading the talk-page discussion of this person's notability, I just can't see it. Yes, there are some mentions of her in the local press, and an entry in a gazetteer of women. But what entitles her to a place in our encyclopaedia, where is the in-depth coverage that would allow us to write an article that demonstrates the importance of her achievements? She was a high-school teacher, perhaps a capable one, for some fifteen years, and then got married. Her principal claim to fame appears to be (according to the Oakland Tribune) that she was present at the opening of Stanford in 1891; she was there as her father's daughter, but notability is WP:NOTINHERITED. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:12, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Indiana-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 11:30, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 11:30, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 11:31, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Thsmi002 (talk) 11:36, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Women_in_Red. Elisa.rolle (talk) 11:37, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Xxanthippe: you're wildly out of line here. Don't question the motives of people who create articles in good faith or turn this into some WP:WAX crap. Women of color don't get any more representation because I'm focused on physics. Or because some people write about lepidoptera, or US roads. Writing about dead white females likewise doesn't impede your ability to write about women of color profs, so if you think Priyamvada Gopal deserves an article, the best way to go about that it to write that article, not delete others completely unrelated to it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:46, 24 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I deny questioning the motives of any editors, certainly not yourself. I have no reason to suppose that anybody's motives in this AfD are anything but sincere. My suggestion was that some directions of editing are more likely to be productive than others. As for your later WP:Hey, I have noted the improvements to the article but I think it is still sub-marginal. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:21, 24 June 2018 (UTC).[reply]
I think that if you want to make a good contribution, you need to write about what interest you and what you feel comfortable to write about. a) Priyamvada Gopal is a living person, and aside for few, rare exception (mostly to save other people articles from deletion) I do not feel comfortable to write about living people. b) I mostly write about independent women, LGBTQ people, ... I do not care about their race. If the majority of people I write are white, is propably because that is what I found availble during my researches. The lesbian/bisexual/transgender women of color I know about have already wikipedia pages (Audre Lorde, Barbara Jordan, Angela Hunter,...). I created the article about Barbara May Cameron. I could also start an argument here (already anylized by some social studies) that homosexuality among people of color has been hidden way more than among white people. Most of the time homosexuality among people of color, if not possible to be hidden, was passed as bisexuality (see most of the novel by E. Lynn Harris, that even if was writing fiction, was also representing an attitude of people of color). To close the point Priyamvada Gopal is a living person and I did not research her, but she is probably not a lesbian. Therefore it remains only the fact she is an independent woman (most likely). Not enough to make her an article I would be comfortable to write. But other users, like the one naming her here, should be really consider her. --Elisa.rolle (talk) 09:11, 24 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lean delete, but someone could examine [1] in deeper detail and perhaps make a case for it. Seems she wasn't just a member of some of these clubs, but rather their president. That could bolster the case for notability. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:08, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, per WP:HEY basically. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:47, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
She was the chairman of the Department of Legislation Oakland Forum. Member of the Oakland Forum of the League of Women Voters. President of the Town and Gown Club, Member of the Berkeley City Club, Stanford Club of the Eastbay and Cornell Women's Club of Northern California. Elisa.rolle (talk) 15:18, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Regardless of some editors' beliefs that society ladies should not be notable, or that women who marry and are forced from their jobs for being married should lose any notability they once had, the referencing of the article (including a major newspaper obituary and an entry in a major biographical dictionary) makes clear that she does pass WP:GNG. The nomination statement itself is a bit of a giveaway; the nominator has clearly read the obituary, which explicitly states "she was an outstanding person in her own right", and details her teaching and later lecturing career, but instead falsely pretends that the only thing it says about her is her presence at an event and inserts the opinion (unjustified by any reading of GNG) that this is not something worthy of notability. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:45, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
In case that snide remark is intended to cover me, I am very far from believing that "society ladies should not be notable". But it is clear from the article that, like most school-teachers, she was not a "society lady" in any normal sense of the term. Johnbod (talk) 21:41, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
David Eppstein, to support your position, how many times in the 1910s when a MAN died, the news was reported in relation to the WOMAN in his life? "Fiance of Miss Jordan is found dead in room", she was so much more notable than her fiance, that she is the one in the head title of the newspaper reporting his death... Elisa.rolle (talk) 18:17, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. The article about her in a biographical directory such as Women of the West; a series of biographical sketches of living eminent women in the eleven western states of the United States of America is a reliable source that can be a good basis for an article. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 18:24, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Sourcing now establishes notability. XOR'easter (talk) 19:01, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, as I have already explained on the talk page of the article, on the difference of the tens of thousands of other dedicated American High School teachers, this teacher, who was also active in the League of Women Voters, was included in "Binheim, Max; Elvin, Charles A (1928). Women of the West; a series of biographical sketches of living eminent women in the eleven western states of the United States of America", and in that book there are just few hundreds of women. Moreover as I told above, how many times in the 1910s when a MAN died, the news was reported in relation to the WOMAN in his life? "Fiance of Miss Jordan is found dead in room", she was so much more notable than her fiance, that she is the one in the head title of the newspaper reporting his death... I think enough for WP:GNG here. And I also improved the article with more reliable and independent sources. Elisa.rolle (talk) 19:06, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Greatly improved today by multiple editors. Meets notability. — Maile (talk) 20:01, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Article greatly improved during a short four hour period with the addition of many new citations (many behind paywalls and hard to initially access), especially the addition of new citations that supported her work in the Women's Right movement PRIOR to the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920. Too bad the article had required the threat of deletion before people would step up to help locate badly needed citations that were need to support the person's notability. (BTW, Jordan was probably mentioned prominently in the Los Angeles Herald article about Berwick's death because Jordan was well known in the high society circles of Southern California at that time, based upon her being mentioned numerous times in the society pages of the L.A. Times, while Berwick was a virtual unknown who rarely left Northern California. In contrast, Jordan is barely mentioned in the Northern California newspaper that had reported the same event and it appeared that Berwick was well known on Northern California social circles. BTW, has anyone been able to newspaper articles about Jordan's engagement and marriage to Nathaniel Gardner in 1915? I wonder if Jordan is mentioned more prominently than Gardner in those articles.) If a few more citations can be located, I believe that the article has the potential for GA. 50.195.200.161 (talk) 02:07, 23 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
50.195.200.161, added 2 articles from the wedding and clipped the one from the engagement, so that people can read them to source. I agree with you, I was retired and I did not want to contribute anymore, but I soon realized that, if I wasn't to do something, the page was to be deleted just because no one seemed to care. I have already noticed in the past that, if you start to take care of a page, other will join (thank you) but apparently you have always to take the first step to spur reaction. Elisa.rolle (talk) 09:28, 23 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Elisa.rolle: don't be discouraged, people tried to get the article on particle deleted once. It's now considered a WP:VA4 article, and led to the formulation of WP:BCA. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:39, 23 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Headbomb:, I'm still of the idea to remain retired. Just want to avoid an article I created get deleted for the wrong reasons. I wrote the article, but the article is not "mine". And removing useful and worthy info from Wikipedia is not something that I like to see. Elisa.rolle (talk) 22:00, 23 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Elisa.rolle: The question is, does such "useful and worthy" information stand a better chance to remain in Wikipedia with or without you around to make a case for it? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:04, 23 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Headbomb:, there is so much ignorance here on Wikipedia (and I'm using the term ignorance in the positive sense, not as a derogative word) that is really difficult for me to decide to retire and stay so. Example from today? Mildred McMillen, she moved to Provincetown from France with her companion, Ada Gilmore. Their couple portrait is one of the few surviving pieces at Smithsonian American Art Museum, where the same Gilmore is showcased. In 1925 Gilmore left McMillen to marry Oliver Chaffee, another well known artist. Where is the ignorance? In McMillen's page, Gilmore is not named, while it's enough to read the many biographies of McMillen in various books and they are always paired, their portrait considered one example of LGBT domestic partnership [2]. Ada Gilmore and Oliver Chaffee do not have a page, even if they are often named in other people biographies of the time. But a group of people decided it was better to convince me my knowledge was not necessary to Wikipedia, and every time I notice something wrong and try to help, they use petty means to let me know my contributions are not welcomed. Elisa.rolle (talk) 23:24, 23 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Elisa.rolle: As someone with works in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, and Indianapolis Museum of Art (at least), Gilmore is clearly notable and would be easy to defend at an AfD should a new article be taken there. The material on her relation with McMillen seems harder to source though, or at least harder to find sources that don't bury it in heavy layers of euphemism such as "cozy cameraderie" or say that the existence of their relation was "unclear". —David Eppstein (talk) 01:20, 24 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@David Eppstein:, if I was to write the article, I would not assume they McMillen and Gilmore were lovers. But it's true that they moved from Chicago to France and then Provincetown together and that they lived together during this period. They send Christmas Cards to friends as a family unit (McMillen, Gilmore and their cat). Therefore they were companion (and I use companion and not partners or lovers). The fact that Gilmore is not named in McMillen's biography is an important missing point. I said LGBT domestic partnership cause Provincetown is now a gay resort, and people studying the genesi of this gay resort identified also McMillen and Gilmore as examples. I know that Ada Gilmore's article would survive an AfD, but my point is that, in one year, no one noticed a) Gilmore is missing from McMillen's page b) Gilmore does not have a page herself. Elisa.rolle (talk) 08:46, 24 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Elisa.rolle: See new article Ada Gilmore (and minor expansion of McMillen). —David Eppstein (talk) 22:05, 28 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Thanks to further expansion, the article now documents notability.--Ipigott (talk) 12:16, 23 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Well, there seems to be consensus here that this person meets the WP:GNG; that is, in case anyone has forgotten, just a guideline. As it tells us, "significant coverage in reliable sources creates an assumption, not a guarantee, that a subject merits its own article. A more in-depth discussion might conclude that the topic actually should not have a stand-alone article—perhaps because it violates what Wikipedia is not, particularly the rule that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information". For a person to have a Wikipedia article, he or she needs to have actually done something of some significant interest or importance, unlike this person, who lived a fairly ordinary and uninteresting life typical of a person in her social position at the time. I suggest again that of the fairly limited coverage she received, a good part at least is due to her very notable father. To the "keep" !voters: if she is so significant, where is the coverage of her in modern reliable sources? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:15, 27 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: "Coverage in modern reliable sources" does not have much meaning for women's histories. Prior to 1970, there were no academic studies of women in history. Only the "famous" (which is quite different from notable) were researched. Most of the women who were abolitionists and suffragists, considered prominent historical figures today, had no biographies written prior to that time. That lesser known women are still being discovered should surprise absolutely no one. That modern sources are yet to emerge on many significant historical women should also not be surprising. SusunW (talk) 17:03, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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