What Wikipedia Taught Me About My Grandfather

November 24, 2014 1:30 AM

To me Frederic M. Richards was Grandpa Freddy, a jolly man who always wore a silly brown jacket with elbow patches, who delighted in showing me how to spin the lazy Susan at the breakfast table, who insisted I help him move a one-ton rock up his path, who challenged me to fruit-eating contests. To his parents and siblings he was the weird youngest son. To a generation of biophysicists he was, apparently, a defining thinker.

Thanks to Wikipedia and the tireless efforts of one 73 year old volunteer, Ben Lillie discovers his grandfather could've won a Nobel Prize.
posted by MartinWisse (7 comments total)

A nice article, and it also fills in the blanks a bit on one way good Wikipedia pages happen. Here's a part of that:

As busy as (Jane S. Richardson) was, though, editing Wikipedia was something she cared about a lot. “This is one of the things I’m looking forward to when I retire,” she told me.

Richardson started the Biophysics project because she felt that working on Wikipedia entries was something all scientists should be doing. "All of us refer to [Wikipedia]," she said. "Early on we were really negative about it, but most of us aren't any more. In general it really is the place to start whenever you’re looking up something." She also said the article would likely have influences she could never predict. I’m an example. "I would never have thought that this biography would be illuminating to his grandson," she said.

So Richards set about improving the biophysics articles out there.

To figure out where to start, she sat down with her husband (also a biophysicist), and they thought about their own careers. "There were three people who had really influenced us very strongly," she says. "The other two had pretty decent Wikipedia pages, and Fred’s just seemed terrible." In addition, it turns out Fred had written a short autobiography, giving her enough material to work with. So Richardson learned the criteria for a Good Article, set to work on writing more about Fred, got feedback, and over time it became the most developed and cleanest of the WikiProject Biophysics biographies.As busy as she was, though, editing Wikipedia was something she cared about a lot. "This is one of the things I’m looking forward to when I retire," she told me.

posted by JHarris at 2:56 AM on November 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

There's more interesting stuff in there besides, including how to gain a reputation a someone who can hold his liquor without actually drinking alcohol.
posted by JHarris at 3:01 AM on November 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

This is a lovely story on several levels. I'm glad I took the time to read it.

Also, take a look at the picture of Frederic M. Richards roughly half-way through the article. He's posing a neutral expression but there's a mischievous smile about to break out on that generous face.

I'll bet he was a fine grandpa.
posted by Lesser Spotted Potoroo at 3:11 AM on November 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Most of Wikipedia is backwater like this and still largely underdeveloped.

Currently, out of the 4,655,276 articles on Wikipedia, 20,926 are categorized as good articles (about 1 in 223), most of which are listed below. An additional 4,414 are listed as featured articles (about 1 in 1,060) and 2,748 as featured lists (about 1 in 1,700).

For every GA there's probably another that could be easily upgraded to GA so roughly 99% of existing Wikipedia still needs a lot of work. I read somewhere that more man hours have been spent watching Game of Thrones than creating all of Wikipedia.
posted by stbalbach at 5:34 AM on November 24, 2014

It's heartening to read about a corner of Wikipedia doing well. So much of what you read about editors is ridiculous badness, inbred culture, petty squabbles. Is Wikipedia doing better in general? Or is it just that biophysics is a small enough field that bad editors aren't meddling?
posted by Nelson at 8:16 AM on November 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I really liked this article. It brought back memories of my grandfather. I knew him as Grandpa Abe. To my mother, his daughter, he was a stern man, but a good man. She never really got too close with him. I had a different view of Grandpa Abe. I never knew until much later that he was at one time a lawyer negotiating against the Jersey City branch of the teamsters. I did not hear the stories about Jimmy Hoffa or how at the end of one negotiating session some union boss/mobster got up, said the meeting was adjourned, grabbed my grandfather by the pants leg and said, "Abe, just wanted to check, because you seem to be the only jew I ever met with a set of balls."

I knew him as a rabid baseball fan. While the entire family was somewhat leery of him at family gatherings because he was so formal and stern, I never noticed that side. Abe would walk over to me and my brother and say in a somewhat conspiritory tone, "The Mets are playing. Let's see if it is on TV." We would then sit in a room away from the adults and Abe would tell stories of old time baseball players, of Ralph Kiner then the announcer for the Mets. I was a die hard Yankee fan, but I would keep my mouth shut when he went on and on about the Mets, the only national league team in town. The only time I heard him say something nice about the Yankees was when they made Ron Bloomberg the first person, and a Jew, to ever come to the plate in the major leagues as a designated hitter. He did mutter something like, "It figures the guy took a walk. Damn Yankee"

My final memory of him was when I was in college and went down to Florida for spring break. I stayed with my grandparents for two days to visit. I saw it as an opportunity to dry out actually, but it turned out to be a great 48 hours. Abe was stone deaf and even more cranky than ever at that point. The first afternoon, I came upstairs from sitting by the pool with all the bubbes and there was Abe sitting about 3 feet from the TV with an earplug of the TV sound in his left, his good ear. Grandma said really loudly, "Abe get up, time for lunch." Abe, ignored her. Then I said, "Grandpa, Lunch!" He just looked over at me and said, "Pull up a chair. The Mets are on. Unless it is a hot dog and a beer, we can get lunch later."

That was the last time I saw Abe, He dies a little more than a year later.
posted by 724A at 8:55 AM on November 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

If you like the article, you should check out Ben's podcast The Story Collider which is a collection of scientists telling very entertaining stories. It does a great job of humanizing science and scientists without being patronizing or annoying (I'm looking at you, Radiolab...)
posted by artichoke_enthusiast at 10:24 AM on November 24, 2014 [2 favorites]