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Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
I've come across this page through my research, for which I am including Ms. Melvern's books as sources for my thesis. The first thing I noticed was that the page was clunky and undivided, and did not include a Bibliography. I also noticed that it was very unbalanced, and seems to be deliberately set up in a way that discredits the author. To find a list of her works, I went on her website, and noticed that on the top bar of her website, she had included a post which describes the vandalism her Wikipedia has undergone - but I cannot find any record of this in the page edit history, which seems strange? I have cleaned up the page, and need to do further work on cleaning up bare URLs. I will also be reviewing the content of the page to give a more balanced outlook. It is fair to include the criticism of scholars such as Reyntjens and Thompson, but it is unfair to include that in isolation, ignoring the significant praise she has achieved from others, and her considerable expertise on the subject. If anyone can explain why I can't find any of the edits described here on her website: https://lindamelvern.com/wikipedia/ that would be amazing!
Thanks
Africanedits (talk) 13:46, 16 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Africanedits They were revision deleted due to containing WP:BLP violations (against someone other than Melvern). It may be helpful to separate popular versus scholarly responses to Melvern's work as has been done on other controversial articles related to this topic. The article was not "vandalized" against Melvern. I believe she may be referring to a series of edits around 11 December 2020 in which an IP editor identifying as the article subject removed critical reviews and replaced them with praise, which was reverted by experienced editors. Such biased editing is highly frowned upon at Wikipedia, see WP:COI. (t · c) buidhe 19:08, 16 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Buidhe Thanks, very useful. I hadn't appreciated that context, as I couldn't look through the edits in question! Agree with you - I think the article should detail the scholarly responses to each of her works, but at present, nearly all those responses seem to be about Intent to Deceive. I've updated all of the Rwanda books in the 'Critical Response' section - any feedback welcome. Africanedits (talk) 10:45, 17 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
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