Talk:Virginia Marie Peterson

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Making the case for notability when a woman works with a much more famous male partner[edit]

Many thanks to @Roastedbeanz1 for adding a template notability query banner.

Because of the fame of her husband (Roger Tory Peterson) it was quite difficult to find third party sources to support the notability of Virginia Marie Peterson's innovative and trailblazing work in creating and adding the first range maps to popular, best-selling field guides. I welcome efforts and discussion about how to find references to answer the question of "does Virginia Marie Peterson meet Wikipedia notability criteria?"

With more digging, I have discovered that Mrs. Peterson was awarded a medal by Harvard University for her conservation efforts and innovative contribution to the field guides field. I will add this. There is a huge scholarly literature on the importance of range maps in ornithology and conservation biology, and I think that this may be called forth as an additional means of providing substantiation for Mrs. Peterson's Wikipedia biography notability. What do you think, fellow Wikipedians?

For those Wikipedians who may be new to editing and creating these kinds of pages: there is a large amount of scholarly literature demonstrating how the important contributions of notable women whose achievements meet Wikipedia biography page criteria are obscured and overshadowed when they work with famous men. Some of these men have been credited with the work of the woman, and they have benefited with awards including Nobel Prizes. Well-known examples include Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Rosalind Franklin.

The Wikipedia Women in Red project aims to remediate this imbalance and to restore credit to the women whose notable contributions lie in the shadow of famous men. Virginia Marie Peterson was a redlink through this project for many years. Her name has come up as a page creation topic in wikipedia editathons I have attended, and also in biology undergraduate course editing assignment projects. In past years, I have seen both the redlink, and the work by other wikipedians to create a page.Festucarubra (talk) 11:45, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

With your reasoning, I have decided to revert the tag. I apologize. Roasted (talk) 11:49, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

thank you @Roastedbeanz1🙏🏽🙏🏽 Festucarubra (talk) 21:23, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Quick follow up. It's very kind of you to apologize, @Roastedbeanz1. But, actually, I don't think there is any reason for you to do so, because I was well aware that there some were challenges here. I knew that more work was needed. You motivated me to do that work, which was a good thing because I found and added more pertinent information to the biography 😮‍💨😅! Festucarubra (talk) 22:20, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]