I thought the title was ambiguous enough to describe my rant.
http://www.themarysue.com/sarah-stierch-fixing-wikipedia-women-in-science/ for editing important historical female articles. However, many people beat her way to the punch. One of them is myself, who really rescued the Ada Lovelace article. Edits like http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ada_Lovelace&diff=235039658&oldid=235036842 are ignored while she does very little except hold an "edit-a-thon" and that is more PR than actual content.
Is this really what Wikipedia has to stoop to? Claiming other people's work while making a big PR scene about it? I guess if you can't actually produce then you steal credit from others. How does this move the whole women's rights movement forward, or whatever she is supposedly trying to do?
What this shows is that men are able to edit important female biographies, and that there was no real problem with that.
Someone, not her, did add more content, but http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ada_Lovelace&diff=505664066&oldid=505396196, it isn't really objective or biographical. There is a lot of rumors, innuendo, or strange accounts that have no real purpose.
When I wrote the section, I was neutral because there were conflicting accounts: "On 21 April, Byron signed the Deed of Separation, although very reluctantly, and left England for good a few days later. Byron did not have a relationship with his daughter and he died in 1824 when she was nine; her mother was the only significant parental figure in her life."
However, the guy added some unnecessary POV and hid some original research against my citation: "On 21 April, Byron signed the Deed of Separation, although very reluctantly, and left England for good a few days later. The acrimonious divorce, with allegations of immoral behaviour against Byron that Annabella would continue to make throughout her life. This would make Ada famous in Victorian society. Byron did not have a relationship with his daughter and he died in 1824 when she was nine; her mother was the only significant parental figure in her life."
What does that add besides unnecessary speculation? Yet is put in there under her "edit-a-thon." Is she saying that the only thing women can add to important topics is just rumors and scandal? That is rather demeaning to everyone when she passes that off as a contribution.
Here is another winning addition to the encyclopedia: "Annabella did not have a close relationship with the young Ada and the child often left her in the care of her grandmother Judith Milbanke, who doted on her" and " she had to present herself as a loving mother to the rest of society."
How does this advance women's rights? The "biography" used to justify it is not academic in any way. It was a pulp biography pushed out by a publisher hoping to make a quick buck. Just look at the awful reviews http://www.amazon.com/dp/0071388605/:
"It's a thriller", "an approach that serves well in this popular account of a complex life and time", etc.
That is good for fiction, but not academia.