Talk:Aubri Esters

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Did you know nomination[edit]

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by BorgQueen (talk) 14:16, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Created by Elttaruuu (talk). Self-nominated at 06:08, 19 February 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Aubri Esters; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.[reply]

General: Article is new enough and long enough

Policy compliance:

Hook eligibility:

QPQ: Unknown
Overall: @Elttaruuu: Thanks for contributing to DYK; your article needs some copy editing as the [earwig score] is exceeding the limit. RV (talk) 09:32, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thank you very much for the revision. It appears to be satisfactory to me, and I've marked it for review. RV (talk) 02:15, 23 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've had a look at the article. The date of birth is unreferenced, which is not acceptable for a bio. Close paraphrasing is mostly good now apart from one instance:

  • Article: if she were to have died of an overdose, she would want the world to know it.
  • Source: if she were to have died of an overdose, Esters would want the world to know it.

Once fixed, this is good to go. Schwede66 19:20, 1 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! I did fix both of these concerns. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elttaruuu (talk • contribs) 19:36, 2 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging Schwede66 to check to see whether the issues have been adequately addressed. Many thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:39, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for the ping, BlueMoonset – I failed to watchlist this article. No, the close paraphrasing wasn't adequately addressed, I'm afraid. All you did is rearrange some words and changed the tense. I've written it in my own words, though, hence it now passes. Schwede66 05:17, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]


Tone and sourcing issues[edit]

There's issues throughout with purple prose (seriously, we're going to say in Wikipedia's voice As a preteen, Esters was so adept at computers, she figured out how to hack into her middle school's web system.?), but a bigger issue I've found is source-text issues, examples including:

  • Article uncritically accepts significant details of the subject's life and presents them as facts when they are from the article subject and should be phrased as such.
  • Esters was a drummer. She studied interrelated media on a scholarship at MassArt cited to [1]. No mention of drumming, or a scholarship.
  • Esters is responsible for bringing the first fentanyl test strips to harm reduction organizations in Boston.—one source here is irrelevant, the other says "Esters was eventually able to help bring the strips to Boston" (not giving her sole credit.)
  • Esters was a community organizer with the Mass Alliance of HUD Tenants (MAHT) group cited to a page that has nothing to do with her, apparently relying on the fact that a byline is by the published details to discern her role. The WBUR obit lists similar qualifications without relying on primary source interpretation. Like other cases, this feels like refbombing.
  • Esters refused to let people ignore the urgency of the overdose crisis. Once, she interrupted mayor Walsh to express, "My people are dying!" cited to two sources, one which again mentions nothing about the quote or Esters[2]
  • Esters died of a drug overdose in the middle of the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. Her death occurred during a spike in deaths from fentanyl overdose caused, in part, by the isolation brought on by social distancing. Social distancing forced many people who use drugs to use without the company of people who would typically reverse their overdoses with naloxone. Everything here is cited to sources that are irrelevant to the subject and the facts—whether or not Esters died of a drug overdose. It's not in these sources.
  • Improper use of primary sources such as Twitter posts (who is Dr. Mark Eisenberg and why is he important enough to quote?) or Facebook.

This article should never have appeared on the main page is such a shoddy state; the fact that much of it was originally plagiarized should have been disqualifying right then and there. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 17:41, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Yes, clearly closer to hagiography than biography. Sheila1988 (talk) 18:47, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Clean up and note[edit]

I did some cleanup of sources and language. I'm sure it could still use some help. Just would like to state: 1. I have learned a lot about what is and isn't acceptable on Wikipedia since I wrote this article in February, my second month editing on Wikipedia. 2. Please check the different potential biases we may have while editing this. Harm reduction work, which by the way is incredibly under-documented in the Wikipedia project, straddles a lot of legal lines. It is rapidly being learned about and brought into more "accepted" spaces of social work, medicine, and public health, but it is an ancient practice that has been given to all of these fields by marginalized people, easily and forcefully erased people, people on the bottom, and people with short life expectancies. They are not only under-recognized but they tend to be deeply shamed, ostracized, and harmed by the institutions that would provide enough notability for an article. Yes, it is important to encourage more secondary sources outside the wiki project to be written on them but also, with someone like Aubri, when we live in the time that enough of those sources already exist, we should take the opportunity to make sure their stories are included. Additionally, she was a transgender woman and we clearly live in a time where that is contentious. She was not sober, she actively and proudly used drugs. These are traits that are vulnerable to hyper-criticism and vandalism. Regardless of how readers feel about those facts, she was considered a leader and it is a fact that her work has saved lives. Elttaruuu (talk) 19:23, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for opening this discussion @Elttaruuu. I appreciate that this was an early creation. With that in mind, could you please go through and remove elements that you’re now aware don’t comply with policy, especially any claims with refs that do not actually verify them, such as these? Adding them is misleading and a serious violation of community trust. It’s also just not really fair—and disruptive to the project of building the encyclopedia—to create for others the work of looking at dozens of citations to see if they actually show what’s claimed. Thank you. Innisfree987 (talk) 19:30, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely! You got it. Elttaruuu (talk) 19:33, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Much appreciated! Innisfree987 (talk) 19:38, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I combed through and removed what was not claimed in sources. I also addressed these:
Issue: Article uncritically accepts significant details of the subject's life and presents them as facts when they are from the article subject and should be phrased as such. Solution: took the section where the sources are her writing and interview and quoted her directly.
Issue: Esters was a drummer. She studied interrelated media on a scholarship at MassArt cited to [1]. No mention of drumming, or a scholarship. Solution: added the correct link to this information (a few days ago).
Issue: Esters is responsible for bringing the first fentanyl test strips to harm reduction organizations in Boston.—one source here is irrelevant, the other says "Esters was eventually able to help bring the strips to Boston" (not giving her sole credit.) Solution:Wrote more accurately, took out words like "first" and sourced how Esters learned about strips to be able to bring them.
Issues: Esters was a community organizer with the Mass Alliance of HUD Tenants (MAHT) group cited to a page that has nothing to do with her, apparently relying on the fact that a byline is by the published details to discern her role. The WBUR obit lists similar qualifications without relying on primary source interpretation. Like other cases, this feels like refbombing. Solution: OP stated WBUR article reported the exact qualifications so I don't see the issue with saying facts like she worked with MAHT and VPI. But also such as in point 1, since a primary source is included, I was sure to quote her. Which was great help because it pointed out that MAHT was successful in their organizing endeavors, something I had not covered in the article yet. Also less presentation as fact and more as quote from the article source, as recommended.
Issues: Esters refused to let people ignore the urgency of the overdose crisis. Once, she interrupted mayor Walsh to express, "My people are dying!" cited to two sources, one which again mentions nothing about the quote or Esters[2]
Esters died of a drug overdose in the middle of the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. Her death occurred during a spike in deaths from fentanyl overdose caused, in part, by the isolation brought on by social distancing. Social distancing forced many people who use drugs to use without the company of people who would typically reverse their overdoses with naloxone. Everything here is cited to sources that are irrelevant to the subject and the facts—whether or not Esters died of a drug overdose. It's not in these sources. Improper use of primary sources such as Twitter posts (who is Dr. Mark Eisenberg and why is he important enough to quote?) or Facebook. Solution: The uncited commentary about COVID isolation and overdose has been chopped. The quote from Eisenberg IS in This The Nation article. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/police-boston-health-coronavirus/ Elttaruuu (talk) 20:04, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Elttaruuu, please do not detag the entry without consensus or at minimum until editors with concerns have had a reasonable amount of time to review. I only checked one of these items and the purported solution still had the same problem (failing verification) that I have raised repeatedly. I will get to checking the rest of the entry as I am able. Innisfree987 (talk) 01:06, 29 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I checked four more sources and all of them failed verification. This is a serious problem. Innisfree987 (talk) 02:51, 29 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Innisfree987 do you still see the above issues present in the current article? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 20:21, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@David Fuchs, I’m sorry, I don’t have time to do more review at present, having used up my available on-wiki time yesterday and today cleaning up a different issue the same editor introduced. Apologies I can’t be more help, appreciate your attention to this. Innisfree987 (talk) 23:44, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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