Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Archive 12

White privelege (sociology)...

has been listed for deletion absurdly enough. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/White privilege (sociology) Murderbike 20:29, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Sectarian violence/civil war in Iraq

There is a discussion over whether English sources carry more weight than foreign language ones in deciding what the name of the article should be. Any thought? Please reply on the talk page. Thank you.--victor falk 12:33, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Discussion at commons

Please check out Commons:Deletion requests/Kolkata Red Light photos, and comment. --Soman 09:29, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

liberal fanatics ridicule conservative ideology in editing articles

it happens all the time and they always get away with it, gunning down their opponents like bats out of hell. now, why is liberal ideology such a large force to be reckoned with, in an npov project? how come tendentious editing and userboxes are mostly tailored according to liberal ideologies, while conservatives are actively shunned by liberals gaming the system in collaborative edit wars, with the conservatives outnumbered? wikipedia's not supposed to survive on mob rule and democratic principles. how come undue weight is given to credibility for liberal ideologies and their proponents? this is the internet's conservative talk radio. liberal rush limbaughs and michael savages run wild. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikiblastfromthewikipast (talk • contribs) 00:19, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Similar things are said about conservative, ultra-nationalist, and other ideologies overrunning parts of wikipedia. Wikipedia is about neutrality (WP:NPOV). If more editors fully understood it, there would be less problems. If more people allowed all significant viewpoints to be shown (from reliable sources), then there would be less complaints, because people could not say that their POVs were not being expressed.

People who insist that ONLY their particular POV be expressed will not be happy, and should leave or be banned from wikipedia, if they try to impose their POV exclusively in any article. It is against a core wikipedia policy (WP:NPOV). WikiProject "Countering systemic bias" is about expanding wikipedia's expression of all significant viewpoints. Especially, those viewpoints suppressed by institutionalized bias, racism, bigotry, ignorance, culture, etc..--Timeshifter 15:12, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I think the real problem in politically charged articles is with consistency. There are good editors who rightly and rigourously challenge unencyclopedic material in subjects they're sympathetic to but then do nothing when it's a subject they might not agree with in a similar situation. MrMurph101 18:07, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

That is true if good editors say nothing at all on a page section they happen to be editing. I don't waste time fighting other people's battles in page sections I am not editing. There are so many sections of articles with unbalanced POVs that I am interested in balancing. I don't have time to work on sections I am not interested in. But I try to say something against all unbalanced POVs (even ones I agree with) when it is brought up concerning parts of articles I have worked on. I try to be intellectually honest and fair. I don't just do this out of charity. I want my edits to be treated the same way by others. When I point out some unbalanced POV that an editor has inserted, I want them to be intellectually honest too. Fair is fair. It is common-sense fair play.--Timeshifter 20:18, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

There's a kernel of truth in what Wikiblastfromthewikipast says, but his statement about "liberal fanatics" seems to suggest he's a POV-pusher who believes Wikipedia is a part of the Liberal media. That's not systemic bias. That's preventing vandalism per WP:FRINGE.

However, I am a "Liberal fanatic" and I will say that there is systemic bias against "American Conservatism" on Wikipedia because Wikipedia is international. The only people who like American Conservatives are American Conservatives. Both European Liberals and European Conservatives alike have a very low opinion of Americans, particularly Conservative Americans like George W. Bush. See the article on anti-Americanism. Whether this is warranted or not -- whether it's motivated by American Conservatives being religious extremists or the Iraq war as some American Liberals suggest, or whether "Europeans are just envious, America-haters" as American Conservatives suggest -- it remains a widely accepted social trend that can be substantiated by opinion polls and statements by certain political leaders (such as Jacques Chirac and Ahmadinejad, both Conservatives but viciously anti-American) and is likely to lead to systemic bias, although I can't think of any specific examples. Zenwhat (talk) 19:53, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Proposed Countering Systemic Bias Barnstar.

I have proposed a Countering Systemic Bias barnstar, to be awarded to Wikipedians who go the extra mile to fight systemic bias. Your input is most appreciated. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 13:34, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I ahve already posted a comment there but I think it's also a good idea to write about it it here, in the CSB project. Please go ahead: make a nice design (challenging) and make that barnstar a reality. Excellent idea. --Sugaar (talk) 08:59, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Systemic bias due to patterns of media ownership and control

Could the source requirements of the closely-intertwined WP:RS, WP:N and WP:V contribute to systemic bias? The media are increasingly being owned and controlled by a small number of corporations. In the U.S., for instance, newspaper ownership is being increasingly concentrated as local papers are bought out by large companies. The effect of this could be counteracted by the growth of blogs (which negates the effect of that old problem, "Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one") but our policies discourage using blogs as sources. So the situation now is that if the media fail to cover a particular topic (e.g. due to that topic making the advertisers who comprise much of their revenue base look bad), then an article on that subject could wind up being deleted. I cite Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Health Ranger as a possible example. What do you think? Stayman Apple (talk) 14:42, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm... a complex case. I'd agree in principle with your concern about the increasing concentration of the major media in few hands and so on. But the article itself mentions a magazine and books of his authorship that could be used as sources and aren't.

Also I don't think it's appropiate at all to project the internal debate of Wikipedia (or an opinion on it) in the article itself. It should be in the talk page or the RFD. (Im undoing your last edit because it's abusive and in breach of policy).

This is a encyclopedia and, well, we are not expected to write about our neighbour's love stories, if you know what I mean (it's an extreme example). But, on the other hand, notability requirements are problematic sometimes (I have already found myself in such situation).

I'd suggest you to ponder seriously if that person is really notable and why. Personally I don't have that very clear: I would think about the local hygienist association rather than in this Health Ranger would I be asked about this issue.

Personally, I have just had the idea of googling for "Health Ranger" and it gives 51,900 hits ("Health Ranger" "Mike Adams" gives 43,800 hits), so probably it's the fault of the people interested in this article not to have been able to shown independent sources, as it's obvious that many of these hits must be something more than blogs and obscure sites (though I haven't been able to find any yet, that's your job). --Sugaar (talk) 16:38, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

women / minorities in occupations

In part as a result of the discussion on a recent WP:CFD for Category:Female models, I have begun a project to write articles on women in various professions. The first such article to discuss the topic generally and link to the sub-articles is Occupations, gender roles, and women's history - I drafted this much-needed article and it was promptly tagged original research (6 minutes after posting the item, tagged stub). I've been adding some of the numerous cites available on the topic. Please feel free to help out.

The larger context is that although these are all well-studied topics, some editors in wikipedia feel that categorizing female professionals (or ethnic professionals) as such is overcategorization. Consequently there have been numerous deletion discussions on Category:Female models, Women in science, Category:Women writers, and so on. Some categories (Category:African American scientists) have been deleted; others have survived. WP:CATGRS is the general guideline on the topic and it states that an intersectional category is appropriate where an article can be written about that topic. As I suspect most people involved in this project know, the history of women in various occupations (and the history of gendering of occupations generally) is a significant topic in women's history, gender studies, and women's studies. Help on this project would be greatly appreciated.

One problem that we face is that editors with little experience in or knowledge of the field tend to see this interdisciplinary topic as original research, and tend to police it rather heavily (I'm feeling uncharitable at the moment so I'm going to allude to the differences in levels of policing of fictional topics and academic topics especially those pertaining to gender and ethnicity.) So basically any stub has to have (1) a topic sentence that explains it; and (2) an extensive list of references from the start to justify and explain to people that this is a well-studied topic. Anything more, or less, is likely to get slapped with tags, AFDs, and so on.

I would also like to make a high priority to write an article on African Americans in the sciences, so that we can revisit the category deletion for Category:African American scientists. We had, as I recall, hundreds of articles appropriately categorized, and the deletion of that category was a travesty. I take blame, because I didn't at the time challenge it at deletion review; I had personal issues going on and couldn't take responsibility for it. So it will be a recuperation process.

--Lquilter (talk) 17:42, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Category:Defenders of slavery

This category is very US-centric. Slavery existed in other places. 72.83.236.152 03:45, 1 December 2007 (UTC) and still does. It was the European money and the African organisation that made "US" slavery possible. Victuallers (talk) 14:56, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Banners

I 100% support this project but wish that you could resist putting your banners at the start of an article. Wikipedia is primarily for reading I hope. You are quickly evaluating an article and seeing that it is all about the UK or the USA etc.... thats a useful thing to do. However we can all do it... might be nice to be reminded after we've read it that it may not be a world-view... but does it have to be in the readers/my face and more prominent than the title. And I know ... lots of well meaning projects do this. Still not a great idea. Thank you for listening Victuallers (talk) 14:53, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Systemic Bias on disputing canons - Ethiopian vs. Roman Catholic, etc.

I urgently need help with another editor, User:Leadwind, who has been pushing a Roman Catholic POV, particularly with regard to what texts are to be considered canonical. I have pointed out many times that Wikipedia cannot assume the role of the Council of Nicea and simply declare a certain disputed text to be either canonical or uncanonical or "pseudepigrapha" (false writing), but only state neutrally which groups consider it so. But he remains impervious to the NPOV policy requiring him to attribute disputed POVs, and insists on writing that the Book of Jubilees (the canonical, Holy Book of the Ethiopian Church) simply "is Pseudepigrapha written from a Pharisee perspective", because his cited scholar says so - instead of admitting that there are other points of views, and that it is only considered so by European churches and European Bible scholars. The most bizarre thing is, he has chosen as his platform to edit war this point, the article Tower of Babel, which merely contains a quote from Jubilees - making a whole discussion about its canonicity in that article rather off-topic anyway.

I have pointed out that this is equivalent to writing a note in the section that quotes the Book of Mormon, to the effect that it is "a forgery written by Joseph Smith" - no matter how many might consider it so, it would not be neutral to take sides like that, and hardly germane to the article anyway. But he refuses to listen. Please come to Talk:Tower of Babel and help me restore NPOV. Thanks, Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 22:27, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Redirects to this page

WP:BIAS is coming up as a redlink. Is that supposed to be happening? Chubbles (talk) 22:31, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I (re?)created the redirects, I don't know what happened before.--Cúchullain ^t/c 22:36, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Demographics

The average wikipedian is Asian according to quantcast.com. This reflects in the bias you see. The pages related Asians are always pro Asian and sources that are pro Asian are used regardless of whether they are racist against whites, blacks, ir hispanics. I think this worth mention.YVNP (talk) 08:33, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

That's not what Quantcast says at all. According to its statistics, the average user of Wikipedia within the U.S. is slightly more likely to be Asian that the internet average. Warofdreams talk 23:13, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Figures also support that Asian US families are more likely to have a computer with internet access. This expains the slightly higher frequency for wikipedians. (Whenever you investigate a conspiracy you find its not the big clever plot you thought it was!) Victuallers (talk) 23:23, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

A minor point, but if Quantcast's figures are as they say, then the comparison shown is against the average user of the internet from the U.S., so if Asian U.S. families are more likely to have a computer with internet access, it should have no effect on the statistics. Warofdreams talk 23:46, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

It says whites 94, blacks 112, hispanics 114, and asians 136 for the english wikipedia. That is definitely indicative of a mainly asian user base.YVNP (talk) 03:57, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

That conclusion is incorrect. Please read what we have written above. You may also need to read our articles on statistics. Warofdreams talk 09:54, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

My mistake, it says wikipedia is mostly white and Asians are the smallest demographic. I apologize.YVNP (talk) 23:30, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

might I point out that the term "Asian" is itself an example of the sort of bias this project is supposed to be countering? In America it means "East Asian", ie Chinese, Japanese etc. In Britain it means "South Asian", ie Indian, Pakistani etc. Peter jackson (talk) 11:41, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

GA helps fight systemic bias

Some of you may be aware of the constant bickering between FA regulars and GA regulars. FA regulars believe that the GA process is broken and lacks accountability. Any attempts by GA regulars to help the GA process gain more official recognition, such as placing the green plus sign at the top-right corner of GAs (similar to the FA star), are vehemently opposed by FA regulars.

Members of this WikiProject should support the GA process, as GA helps fight systemic bias. Several aspects of the FA and GA criteria lead to systemic bias in the selection of FAs and GAs, but in those aspects, the GA criteria is far lower than the corresponding FA criteria, making it easier for articles on typically under-represented topics (such as Singaporean topics) to achieve GA status. Using Singaporean topics as an example:

• FA demands that "the prose is engaging, even brilliant, and of a professional standard". GA demands that "the prose is clear and the grammar is correct". As most Singaporeans are not native speakers of English, it would be nearly impossible for them to write FA-standard prose. However, with a little help, some of them (like myself) can write GA-standard pros.e.
• FA requires that an article be "comprehensive", GA requires that an article be "broad in its coverage". FA standards of referencing are also higher than GA standards of referencing. Referenced information on Singaporean topics is scarce, making it nearly impossible for Singapore-related articles to meet FA standards of referencing and be comprehensive. Broadness is easier to achieve, and with lower standards of referencing, GA standards are a more reasonable goal for most Singapore-related articles.
• FAs require images; GAs do not. Finding images for articles on Singaporean topics is difficult. To compound the problem, semi-free images (such as "for educational use only" or "for non-commercial use only") images are prohibited, and the policies governing the use of fair use images are far too restrictive. For many Singapore-related articles, there are simply no appropriate images to illustrate the topic. This would disqualify those articles from FA status, but they can still achieve GA status.

I must stress that there is nothing wrong with the FA criteria being systemically biased. Articles that represent the best of Wikipedia should have prose that is of a professional standard, be comprehensive and well-referenced, and contain images. However, it is simply unrealistic to expect certain articles to meet the FA criteria.

Therefore, we (and the GA regulars) should encourage more Wikipedians to become prolific writers of GAs on typically under-represented topics. Perhaps we could have monthly collaborations, aiming to push at least one article on a typically under-represented topic to GA status per month. We could also post "write a Singapore-related (or any typically under-represented topic) GA" assignments at the Award Center.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 16:05, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad that you have had such a positive experience with GAs. In my experience, the main problem with the GA review procedure is that having just one reviewer who typically has no specialist knowledge of the topic of the article often leads to demands for changes which are simply not possible to implement, or would require an enormous amount of work more in line with what might be expected for an FA. The FA review procedure encourages discussion; specialists can explore how the article utilises the sources available in the field, while non-specialists can examine whether it is accessible to the typical Wikipedia user. If one user raises objections which are impossible to implement, they can be reasoned with through discussion.

Finally, I'm doubtful about your last two points on FA requirements. FA reviewers should expect the article to utilise the sources which are available; if there are few sources, these should be fully utilised. Provided, of course, that an article of reasonable length can be written, there being few sources in existence should never be an objection. FAs do not require images, but if images are available, they should be used. If it is genuinely impossible to find an image which can be used, then that is not a reasonable objection in a FA candidacy. If Wikipedians can produce more GAs on typically under-represented topics, that's great, but I would hate anyone to be put off working towards an FA. Warofdreams talk 23:56, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

There are many experienced GA reviews (The Rambling Man, LaraLove and Dihydrogen Monoxide, to name a few) who give excellent reviews. However, some GA reviewers are inexperienced or not very familiar with the GA criteria; they tend to do a bad job. I share your concern that luck determines who reviews a nomination and hence the quality of the review.

Nobody wants to discourage FA writing. Although prolific writers of FAs (on typically over-represented topics) worsen systemic bias, they are our most valuable editors and should be encouraged to keep up the good work. To counter systemic bias, we need prolific writers of GAs on typically under-represented topics. With 5 GAs to his name, Aldwinteo has greatly improved Wikipedia's coverage of Singaporean historical sites. Similarly, Jacklee helps fight systemic bias by writing Singapore-related GAs.

We should also support attempts by GA regulars to help the GA process get more official recognition, as it would encourage GA writing and countering of systemic bias. After saving Xiaxue from deletion, I contacted the subject of the article through e-mail, hoping that she would send me several newspaper articles about her (remember, referenced information on Singaporean topics is scarce). In my e-mail, I mentioned that an article I wrote had won a "Wikipedia award" (remember, she knows hardly anything about Wikipedia). A green plus at the top-right corner of the article (similar to the FA star) would lend authenticity to my claim. If GAs appeared on the Main Page, it would be less USA-centric. Readers of Wikipedia would probably find a Singaporean movie that prompted the government to reform the country's education system fascinating.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 10:52, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Possible bias at work in AfDs

The biography article Naresh Sonee and the associated article about his book have both been nominated for deletion. They undoubtedly need major cleanup and rewriting. However, a lack of notability is the basis for the AfDs. The author of these articles has posted a number of translations of reviews and articles from Hindi, establishing, I think, notability. I think it may be an example of systemic bias that that it continues to look as if they will be deleted. Would some editors from this project take a look, and post your opinions, whatever they may be? Aleta (talk) 21:24, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

This issue has been raised several times in the past, mostly by me, a young Singaporean who hates to see articles on notable Singaporean celebrities, buildings, etc. nominated for deletion (or even speedy deleted). It was at my suggestion that "Be careful not to worsen the bias with your deletion nominations." was added to "Why it matters and what to do" section. More Wikipedians, especially deletionists, should be made aware of this issue. --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 11:14, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

IMO {{afd}} is so deeply broken it should be abandoned, and replaced with a better mechanism for clearing cruft. Currently violations of the wikipedia's policies on civility, assume good faith policy, no personal attack policy, and don't bite the newbies are so routine in the deletion fora they pass without notice.

IMO the reliance on "notability" has been a failed experiment, which should be abandoned. It seems to me that for controversial topics notability really devolves to either WP:ILIKEIT or WP:IDONTLIKEIT. It seems to me that {{afd}} nominators routinely discount the "so-called" notability of articles based on credible they personally find some aspect of the topic.

For example, in the work I have done on articles related to war on terror, it has been my experience that the more willing wikipedians are to accept the spin of Bush Presidency spin doctors at face value, the more likely they are to want to suppress material a reader who wants to reach their own informated conclusion would need. Notability is a common argument they try to use.

Anyone else fed up with these claims of notability?

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 21:48, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I am not against notability per se, I just believe that it is currently being determined incorrectly (and am not sure if a reliable metre for it can ever be designed). Take a look at Category:Wikipedians against notability, it seems that you're not the only one who feels that way. There are of course userboxes to express this, User:DanielZimmerman/Template AntiNotable, and User:Chris is me/Notability hurts. Puchiko (Talk-email) 23:02, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Getting My Feet Wet

Howdy. New user here with a strong interest in this project and the issue of bias in historiography. Thus far I've done approximately nothing but intend to contribute a lot at some point in the undefined future. Anyway. I just stumbled across the Crimean_Tatar_diaspora article. It needs help. I just added the sourcing template but am really not sure where to go from here or even if that was the right thing to do. My main concern is to see that a historically repressed minority group is able to have it's history told on wikipedia. Due to the lack of sourcing and blatant POV in an article that ties in to a contemporary political situation, it would be really easy for someone acting in bad faith to wikilawyer the article out of existence. My thinking is that it's best for sympathetic parties to raise the issue now rather than wait for someone to start a politically motivated edit war on down the line. While this isn't systemic bias on wikipedia in the strictest sense, it's closely related enough that I figured this to be the best place to raise the issue.--Vlvtelvis (talk) 07:09, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Blatant Political Bias at Wikipedia

The article on the Ottawa Panhandlers' Union was recently deleted based on the claim it wasn't notable. I'm an organizer with the union, and since I've given literally dozens of interviews, had live, hour-long debates with representatives of business interests on the air, and people produced numerous citations in the media, this is a ridiculous claim. Furthermore, those people who voted in favour of deletion mostly used the argument "I've never heard of it," but when people who were familiar with anti-poverty activism were asked to show up and voice their opinion, those who had worked on the article were accused of sockpuppetry.

To make matters worse, we have (or rather, *had* -- the article and logs are of course now deleted) proof that Ottawa City Hall had been vandalizing the article, and that one of the people involved in the discussion was engaged in a false flag campaign, pretending to be one of the members of the union while claiming he had voted numerous times. The personal details given by the member (his arrest record, his hepatitis status) could only have been known by someone with access to his personal records (ie/ the police). When one of the main contributors to the article tried to find someone who would listen to what had been done to us, he was permanently banned from Wikipedia.

This might sound paranoid, but since the Panhandlers' Union started a copwatch program six months ago, I personally have been the target of harassment ranging from having my Internet account hacked by someone who stole my identity to having posters put up around the city which featured me with a gun in my mouth and the legend "panhandlers follow your leader."

Since the deletion of this article actually interferes with our ability to organize (media usually show up to interviews with a copy of the Wikipedia article in hand), we have to take some sort of action. Unless anyone here can recommend a better course of action, we're going to have to see if we can find some activists in Florida willing to help us put a picket line in front of the Wikimedia Foundation offices. SmashTheState (talk) 14:37, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Responded on user's talk page. delldot talk 14:58, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Does "international" mean every country except the USA and Canada?

Talk:2007 in film#"International" box office totals. -- Jeandré, 2007-12-30t17:44z

bias related to the basic notion of providing knowledge

Isn't Wikipedia itself necessarily biased against e.g. certain methods of information suppression as employed by e.g. religions/cults or governments? Not necessarily talking U.S. homeland security issues, but e.g. Straussian neoconservatism with its idea of noble lies (think Public relations preparations for 2003 invasion of Iraq) or anything Scientology (and the Abrahamic religions as far as e.g. evolution is concerned). Wikipedia's basic idea of providing knowledge necessarily includes the notion of promoting intellectual self-direction of individuals, which is directly and inevitable opposed to methods of keeping people underinformed as continually employed by many governments and religions/cults. Personally, I think that's the exact reason why so many intellectual people contribute to WP in the first place, and I wouldn't want to see this bias being countered. I dorfbaer I talk I 17:00, December 31, 2007

Inequality in S E Asia coverage

I just managed to sort out locator maps for the cities in Cambodia and in checking the articles on the cities -they are even worse than I thought. Provincial capitals like Pursat etc which have tens even hundreds of thousands of inhabitants as yet don't even have basic facts and are still one liners, yet places on provincial capitals in the UK and America etc would have hundreds , even thousands of articles on that place alone and an oversized article to boot. What you see on the Pursat article is the product of nearly two years work. Few people have even attempted to actively try to develop some of the major cities and towns in places like cambodia, vietnam, Laos etc let alone the smaller settlements. At best there are only three or four people working on articles on countries like this and even then this isn't particularly consistent . I can't attempt to sort out places like this alone!!! Basically if you compare it to a developed country such as the UK - with Cambodia, Burma, Vietnam, Laos etc only places like London, Birmingham and Manchester are covered and have half decent articles -the rest of the country - 99% isn't even really covered except a few minor stubs here and there. It is a huge problem gaining access to a decent and reliable amount of information. Could somebody please make a note that countries like those cited above have very poor geography related articles. I need a hand. ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^Talk? 17:02, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

TFD

Template:Recentism has just been nominated for deletion - see discussion - 52 Pickup (talk) 07:50, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

The "secret cabal"

Have anybody attempted to address this yet? Zenwhat (talk) 00:50, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Armenian ethnicity in lead sections

Discussion at Talk:Alan Hovhaness has indicated that the ethnicity of Armenian and Armenian-Americans is being added or deleted from the lead sections of the subjects articles against MOSBIO policy. Ethnicity has been added to lead sections without demonstration of relevance, indicating either a pro-Armenian agenda or an unfamiliarity with policy and pracice. Worse yet, ethnicity has been removed from articles entirely, not simply moved from the lead to the body of the article, indicating an anti-Armenian agenda. Either way the quality of articles covering topics related to Armenia need improvement. See also discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Armenia#Armenian ethnicity in lead sections. Hyacinth (talk) 01:04, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

List of most common surnames

I wanted to point out that my recent reorganization of List of most common surnames exposes an unsurprising but glaring example of systematic bias ... no African country and few countries of Oceania are represented. It would be useful to have some people with experience in familial naming in those regions of the world join Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy to help to fill these gaping holes. Regards User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:37, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Buddhism

Can I ask for some advice, or possibly even help? This article (& probably most other articles on Buddhist topics) has been largely put together by Western(ized) Buddhists, & is heavily biased by their versions of Buddhism. This manifests in (at least) 3 ways:

• Much more space for forms of Buddhism that are popular in the West than for those popular mainly in the East
• Much less space for aspects of Buddhism that are played down in the West but much more important in the East
• Interpretations given as fact that might well be different from those/some found in the East (This can be very difficult to sort out, involving a lot of research)

User:Gimme_danger produced an attempted revision, to which I contributed, on a subpage. Despite a number of notices on the talk page, there were virtually no comments, & nobody other than the 2 of us contributed. I decided to try to get something done by simply putting the revision in place & inviting people to change anything they didn't like, in the usual way. Instead, they simply kept reverting it & ignoring all my attempts to discuss the issues properly on the talk page. Eventually I suggested a neutrality tag, & someone put in a pov-check.

I then posted on the talk page a detailed analysis of many of the issues, which nobody seemed particularly disposed to disagree with, but, apart from some contributions by User:TonyMPNS, little has been done. A major problem is the chaotic way the article is arranged. Buddhist teachings, those that are included at all, are randomly scattered through several different sections of the article. This probably constitutes bias in its own right, and at any rate makes it difficult to say where the omitted material should go. Unfortunately, having repeatedly reverted our attempt to give the article a coherent structure, they have ignored repeated requests to suggest one of their own.

I just noticed today that the tag has been removed. I'm not even sure whether it's the right one for the situation. Can someone advise on that, & what's the correct way to proceed? Peter jackson (talk) 12:06, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

On using official Sources

"propaganda" was a loaded term which has been deleted, also I have been of the opinion that wikipedians treat official sources especially of third world countries with more disdain than necessary, it can be very useful, to take a random example the Nigerian giv website offers good info not only on their foreign relations (the NIgerian POV)

http://www.nigeria.gov.ng/NR/exeres/8D44B602-C2A5-4478-B216-0DF74EE9CDD1.htm

but also some interesting info on the country and its leaders which could improve our articles on them

Nigerian Defence Minister http://www.nigeria.gov.ng/NR/rdonlyres/7813232F-EDDD-417A-853A-6F9508EE5193/1077/MinofDefenceAhmed.pdf

or on Government agenda http://www.nigeria.gov.ng/NR/exeres/59AA73E9-CEC6-43B3-B153-27D568A56B7D.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.65.163.248 (talk) 19:44, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

There are certainly official sources that can be used. Many official sources are reliable, including in third-world countries. Good official sources, for example, the BBC, which is an independent British Government agency?, or even al-Jazeera, for a non-Western example, which has freedom from official influence when reporting on nearly everything (excepting what occurs in Qatar) are often hard to find in non-Western countries, especially those which are in English (as these are often for external consumption).

With many non-Western official sources (and some Western official sources) there is often no firewall that prevents political influence from being exerted on the factual commentary featured in certain official sources. The staying away from less reputable official sources (for example, the various U.S. government-run "public diplomacy" (a.k.a. mild propaganda) broadcasting and news services for foreign countries) might be an ingrained habit of Americans who, generally, don't even trust their own government to tell the truth. A note of my own systemic national bias: If we Americans don't trust our government, and we have good reason not to, then rest assured, we trust non-Western governments even less, because we don't know them, their people, or what their agenda is, and we know they have an agenda. Even more, if they're dictatorships, we'll never trust them, and if they try to assure us they're trustworthy, we'll take that to mean they're completely untrustworthy. Sorry...we Americans are a suspicious lot. The only thing that can convince us to take a source as reliable is long acquaintance with what and how it reports, the presentation of multiple sides on an issue, commentary from multiple sides on an issue, and a strong reputation for telling the truth.

This being said, there are plenty of non-Western official sources that can be used. But in unfamiliar territory, Westerners do tend to keep an eye out. Perhaps this is systemic bias; perhaps this is prudence. Katana0182 (talk) 06:20, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I think official sources can be used, the qualifier "offical" should be added. Otherwise the article will be biased. An article on Tibet which is filled with critisims of China and dose not note that the Chinese have spent billions modernising Tibet, that standards of living and life expectancy is now higher than ever would be biased. And vice versa.

There is also lots of things in offical sources which are not controversial; information about national parks, government initiatives, projects with international organisations and other countries, information on visa requirements, citizenship etc.

Finally I do not think systematic bias and prudence are mutually exclusive as the above editor thinks. You can use official sources and be prudent at the same time, for example add critisism and counterclaims of official claims. It would not be prudent to write an article on Kashmir for instance and use only Indian Gov POV. It would be prudent to mention Indian gov POV. It would be prudent to use the stated agenda of the Nigerian Government (here), in an article on the heads of the present government. Otherwise you can harldy claim to be countering systematic bias.

Sparten (talk) 07:11, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Translation suggestion

I don't think this has been mentioned anywhere here, so: if there is a deficient article on the English wiki that has a far more expanded version in a different language, make a translation request over at Wikipedia:Translation. That way, your desire to have a decent english-language article becomes known to a lot more people, particularly those who are unaware of WP:CSD. - 52 Pickup ^(deal) 09:48, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

One-hit wonders

I've been vaguely aware of this page for a long time, but never paid much attention to it. Not long ago, looking at the page titled one-hit wonder, I was struck by the incongruity of classifying Nena as a one-hit wonder. She's had dozens of hit songs and now 30 years into her career she still keeps turning them out, and she's still doing four or five concerts every month and they sell out weeks in advance. Her name is a household word in Germany. In a TV commercial the narrator says "Today Nena tests the new Outlander from Mitsubishi" and we see her testing the sound system, listening to music in the car. The public knows who she is when the narrator mentions her name—otherwise the commercial would fail to accomplish its purpose. Only one of her songs was a major hit in English-speaking countries, so she's in a list of one-hit wonders.

So I put a parenthetical remark after her name in a list, saying that in her own country she's had a long successful career and it's only and she's listed only because in England and the USA she's had only one hit. Someone deleted my parenthesis on the grounds that the same is true of several of the other musicians listed there.

It is certainly appropriate for Wikipedia to record the fact that Nena is a one-hit wonder among English-speaking people, but the statement should not be just an unqualified assertion that she's a one-hit wonder.

I'm not sure what the best way is to organize this information. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:01, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

What you said absolutely makes sense. did you take it to the talk page? Murderbike (talk) 18:38, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

The current version of the article appears to address the issue, but as with many lists of this sort, I'm worried that it appears to be mostly OR Nil Einne (talk) 17:36, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Several glaring omissions in the essay

"The origins of bias" fails to mention that the Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia, is an American charitable organisation that advocates freedom of content. Wikipedia is thus dominated by supporters of free software/content. Consequently, certain groups of articles often suffer from uneven coverage and are written from a pro-free software/content point of view. While the free software/content movement has a substantial following in some countries (and their governments release lots of content into the public domain), it is completely unheard of in others. Finding or creating free images of (for example) a Singaporean actress is thus very difficult, if not impossible.

Attempts by governments to restrict access to Wikipedia, such as the Great Firewall of China, also worsen systemic bias. Although such censorship is easily circumvented through open proxies such as Tor, Wikipedia has a policy against editing through open proxies. Why does the "The origins of bias" section not touch on this?

In the "Why it matters and what we do" section, consider adding a bullet point encouraging Wikipedians to contribute to articles on under-represented topics that they are unfamiliar with. For example, as a Singaporean, I can fight systemic bias by contributing to Singapore-related articles. This may be the most effective way to counter systemic bias.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 14:39, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

If nobody objects within the next 72 hours, I will edit the essay to include these points. --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 17:04, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Over a month has passed and nobody has commented. I edited the essay to include the points outlined above. The wording may need to be refined. If you disagree with the changes, feel free to revert, but please discuss on the talk page after doing so. --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 07:33, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Mostly good, but while there is nothing wrong with a Singaporean writing about Singapore topics, there shouldn't be any statement that Singaporeans should write about Singaporean topics. If a Singaporean wants to write about Pokemon or a New Zealander wants to write about Singapore, that's at least as good (remember, we're supposed to be writing from published sources, not from personal experience). Sometimes it's better, since there tends to be less personal involvement when controversial issues come up. --GRuban (talk) 14:06, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Non-English sources

We're debating the wording of Wikipedia:Verifiability#Non-English sources. Please comment at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#Requirement of direct quotation for use of non-English sources. Thanks, cab (talk) 05:16, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

To clarify, this is a discussion, not a straw poll. We don't need "Support"/"Oppose" votes, we need positive alternatives as to how this policy should be worded. cab (talk) 08:58, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Non-biased presentation of locations

This appears to be a major problem for people from the US and Canada: all locations around the world are described either in terms of what US state, Canadian province, or country they are in. From experience, I know that this is what many North Americans do in real life, but it has absolutely no place here.

For example, February 21, 2008 lunar eclipse. Look at the gallery of images under "Observations" and note how the locations are described. Here are the first few:

• Halton Hills, Ontario
• West Hartford, Connecticut
• Rostock, Germany
• Nashville, TN
• Sasolburg, South Africa

Now should we look at this and conclude that Ontario, Connecticut, Germany, TN and South Africa are all countries? And the use of TN here is even worse (yes, i know it means Tennessee).

Which is the right way to present this information? I can only see two alternatives:

1) Just countries

• Halton Hills, Canada
• West Hartford, United States
• Rostock, Germany
• Nashville, United States
• Sasolburg, South Africa

2) Include state and country information for all locations

• Halton Hills, Ontario, Canada
• West Hartford, Connecticut, United States
• Rostock, Mecklenburg-Western Pommerania, Germany
• Nashville, Tennessee, United States
• Sasolburg, Free State, South Africa

It MUST be one or the other. - 52 Pickup ^(deal) 08:33, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

It seems that the second choice is the way to go. I try to do that when I remember. Murderbike (talk) 08:46, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Obvious just country wouldn't work, as there's something like 39 Springfields in the US...even even some names like Paris have more than one. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 12:33, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

It has to be two. Otherwise you get things like "Springfield, USA" or "Cochrane, Canada" where there are more than one. This is also necessary at times in the UK, which has numerous repeated names as well. --NellieBly (talk) 23:24, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Can we distinguish between places of the same name according to how well known they are in an unbiased way, at least in some cases? It really shouldn't be necessary to say Paris, France to distinguish it from all the Parises in the USA. Peter jackson (talk) 11:29, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

The second option seems to fit me best. However, I'd only like to see it for federations. So definitely not: Kladno, Středočeský kraj, Czech Republic, just Kladno, Czech Republic. We should probably propose this to be included in the MOS if we want people to know about it and abide by it. Puchiko (Talk-email) 12:48, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Very good idea Puchiko. Murderbike (talk) 15:30, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

That won't work consistently. The UK is not a federation, but there are numerous duplicates. Peter jackson (talk) 14:44, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Allright. But, I mean, nobody in his right mind would write: Kladno, Středočeský kraj, Czech Republic. It just isn't done, not in English sources nor in Czech ones. There are hundreds of towns named "Lhota" in the Czech Republic, but nobody puts what kraj they're in anyway. If it is necessary to distinguish them, the nearest large city is listed. So we shouldn't list the kraj either.
Only include the state/province/other administrative region when it is common to do so. Puchiko (Talk-email) 17:05, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

This isn't a database. It would be nice if there was one rule, but its not whats done. The article New York City is a nice example. It could just say "New York" because its so famous. Annoyingly there is a state of new york so it has to be called New York City. It could be called New York, New York, USA .... but its not going to work. Sorry to mess up the perfection of a rule. It has to be a compromise Victuallers (talk) 21:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Although I dislike the American tendency to refer to American states as if they were countries, I do not think a one-size-fits-all solution is viable. How would places of small countries that do not have states, like Singapore, be described? Would GRCs be considered states for the purpose of describing places? Tampines, Tampines GRC, Singapore sounds awkward. --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 17:03, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree that there is no standard solution. E.g. "Rostock, Mecklenburg-Western Pommerania, Germany" sounds absolutely ridiculous to me as a German. Locations in German-speaking countries are disambiguated differently. E.g. "Freiburg" is a very common name (meaning free city). Freiburg im Breisgau is named after the surrounding landscape, which is not a legal entity in any way. The same with "Freiburg im Üechtland", but as it is predominantly French speaking it's referred to as Fribourg even in German. Freiburg an der Elbe, in short "Freiburg/Elbe" is so named because it is on the River Elbe.

The German states have absolutely no place in addresses or the like. (Some US-centric web forms insist on them, but that makes no sense.) The situation in French is very similar, see fr:Rennes (homonymie) for a good example. They would never use the départements for this purpose. It's "Rennes, France" not "Rennes, Ille-et-Vilaine, France" or "Rennes, Brittany, France".

A related problem has come up in Great Fire of London, by the way. Some editors insisted on writing "London, England", which just doesn't sound right in British English. Similarly, I think articles about US places should sound right in US English and make it clear that they are about the US. New York City is at the same time a city where this shouldn't be necessary and demonstrates how add this information unobtrusively. --Hans Adler (talk) 12:58, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I realise I was slightly off-topic. In such a list, how about "Nashville, Tennessee (US)"? --Hans Adler (talk) 13:00, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Since we agree that neither of the two options is optimal, I suggest that there should simply be a guideline stating that all place names must mention the country. --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 06:34, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Can I suggest an alternate viewpoint. We should never mention country or state unless it is necessary to do so for dab reasons. If a reader wishes to find out where a place is, then all they need to do is click on the link. The idea of expanding the identifying info is definitely something that has come from paper encyclopaedias. Maybe we don't need all that extra info in our faces. Crispness (talk) 06:51, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Those who print Wikipedia articles and read the hard copies do not have links to click. Sometimes there is no reason to mention the country; for example, in Geography of Singapore, all locations mentioned are assumed to be in Singapore, unless otherwise specified. Generally, however, we should always mention the country. --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 02:40, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Free image of Maryam Abacha?

Does anyone know where I can find a free image of Maryam Abacha? She was a first lady of Nigeria and a staunch defender of the Abacha regime - she needs a photo posted...

I got photos for Kenyan Mohamed Amin and Nigerian Bimbo Odukoya easily because both are already dead. Maryam Abacha is still alive. WhisperToMe (talk) 06:15, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'd start with Wikipedia:Requested pictures and commons:Commons:Picture requests. Requests on those pages can take long to get fulfilled (and often never get fulfilled at all), but it's worth a shot. Puchiko (Talk-email) 14:38, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia's overly restrictive image policies worsen its systemic bias. While the governments of some countries, such as the USA, release lots of material into the public domain, others do not. Moreover, the free software/free content movement is American and is hardly heard of in countries where most citizens struggle to make ends meet. Finding or creating free images of (for example) a Singaporean actress is thus very difficult, if not impossible. --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 16:50, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

What is systemic bias?

I'm trying to understand if this Wikiproject is something I want to be a part of, but the systemic article is a disambiguation page with the following entries:

• Any body system in general, usually the nervous system.
• An insecticide whose mode of action is via uptake into a plant, entering the pest when the plant is consumed.
• Systemic circulation (as opposed to pulmonary circulation).
• Systemic (amateur extrasolar planet search project)

I do not know which of these meanings is intended here. I apologize in advance if this question is better suited to Talk:Systemic bias, but I figure since this WikiProject is countering it, its members would be well placed to clear up my confusion. Thank you. Blackworm (talk) 09:07, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi. Here's a summary: Wikipedia's content is produced by its contributors. Wikipedia's contributors tend to come from certain demographic groups (The average Wikipedian on English Wikipedia is (1) a man, (2) technically inclined, (3) formally educated, (4) an English speaker (native or non-native), (5) white, (6) aged 15–49, (7) from a nominally Christian country, (8) from an industrialized nation, (9) from the Northern Hemisphere, and (10) likely employed as an intellectual rather than as a labourer) So Wikipedia's contributors are the type who are more interested in writing about a new computer game, but not so interested in writing about Laos politicians. Therefore, this project exists to help the articles about Laos politicians get written, and get written well. Below, I have transcluded the articles this project encourages people to work on, maybe this will give you a better idea of what's it all about.

Feel free to ask any further questions you might have about this project or systematic bias. This is the correct page. Puchiko (Talk-email) 14:29, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you Puchiko. Am I to understand that this project has as a central tenet that the demographics of a group of editors, if not representative of humanity as a whole, automatically introduces unacceptable bias (requiring active opposition) in the articles that group creates and edits? Thanks in advance. Blackworm (talk) 21:52, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi Blackworm, It's demonstrated by numerous examples on Wikipedia that the typical Wikipedian demographic tends to over the long term (hence "systemic") make certain topics overrepresented and others underrepresented. The purpose of this project is not to actively oppose the overrepresentation (WP:NOT paper, after all, so we don't have finite space to fight over) but to bring up the quality and quantity of the types of articles that tend to be underrepresented and so make an effort to help correct the problem that way. Wikiacc (°) 01:34, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I'm not sure if that answers my question. Put another way, is it automatically true, as this project seems to assert, that if there are more X in Wikipedia that in the general population, then Wikipedia must be biased in favour of X, requiring counterweight? If so, is the same true of a smaller group of editors? I'm not concerned yet with what steps we take to counter the bias, I'm concerned with the proof that this specific kind of bias exists, whether it is distinct from other bias, and whether we can measure its degree exactly, so that we may counter it towards neutrality and not beyond. What steps does this project take to address the risk of overestimating demographic ("systemic") bias? Is systemic bias an established, true concept that Wikipedia as a whole embraces? If not, it seems that a group of editors making edits in that belief is no more adherent to WP:NPOV than another minority of editors banding together to put weight behind some other point of view that unites them. Why is WP:NPOV not enough, and some bias must be sought out and countered more than other bias (as seems to be the case here)? I hope all that doesn't sound too critical, and thank you for responding; this discussion is very interesting. Blackworm (talk) 05:04, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Blackworm, I understand your concerns, but I think that you over-complicating matters. For example, take a quick look at the coverage of politicians: compare the huge number of articles on the careers of American politicians (often so detailed that they have been split over several articles), and compare it with (for example) Category:Politicians of the People's Republic of China: only 182 articles on national politicians. The imbalance is enormous, and we can find similar imbalances in many other comparisons: for example, under 300 articles on South African soccer players against over 1000 articles on soccer players in the Republic of Ireland, even though the RoI has 1/6th of the population and in much of Ireland Gaelic football is the dominant game. (In other words, Irish soccer players are over-presented by a factor of over 20:1).

So the systemic bias is quite evident: editors tend to write about the subjects they are most familiar with, leading to an imbalance in coverage. This project is simply trying to redress an imbalance which very clearly exists.

You raise some interesting points about whether we can exactly measure the degree of such boas, etc, but this isn't really the place for that discussion. The evidence is very clear that the bias exists, and that the bias reflects the demographics of editors. Whether it does so precisely, or axiomatically, or inevitably is, I'm afraid, a rather irrelevant question when it's clear that it is happening and that steps can be taken to counteract.

I'm sure that there is a interesting dissertation to be written somewhere on the points you raise, but there is no useful purpose served in repeatedly pursuing the point here. If you find evidence that the counter-bias efforts are leading to overshoot, please come and present it here. If some forms of bias are raising undue attention than others, then please present evidence and seek support for work on the neglected areas.

However, all I'm seeing is that for months you have been single-handedly pursuing the same open-ended questions, and I don't see it serving any useful purpose. The evidence of the systemic bias is there, and if you choose not to act on it, that's your privelige. Please can, you now just drop this endless interogation? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:42, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

You haven't presented evidence of systemic bias in my opinion. You've presented two examples of apparent disproportionate levels of editor interest. You seem to be making the claim that this is due to Wikipedia-wide bias, but you haven't shown me how you reached that conclusion. All you've asserted is the demographic characteristics of Wikipedia, and from this you conclude bias -- as if it is simply a truism no one should question. The project page seems to make the same logical leap. I'm asking it be explained, which is why I ask precise, unambiguous questions above regarding the precise source of this alleged universal, systemic bias in Wikipedia. It's not enough for someone to tell me, basically, "It's just there, trust me... Take this one article... So it's there. And by the way, please shut up and go away."

Assuming I claimed to have evidence of counter-bias efforts leading to a lack of neutrality, who would judge the merits of my claim? The members of this project? Doesn't that seem like asking a group of white male editors whether the articles they have contributed to are biased in favour of white males? Blackworm (talk) 23:34, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Blackworm, we don't have scientific proof that systemic bias occurs throughout the entire Wikipedia on a noticeable level, but there are a number of examples of the levels of coverage being influenced by the Wikipedia demographic. I would say, actually, that it isn't the demographic of Wikipedia that influences the degree of disproportionate coverage so much as the availability in common world languages of information on the Internet or otherwise easily accessible across the world. Whatever the cause is, though, there are numerous examples to back up the claim that certain topics are covered more than others to a degree disproportionate to the general population or most objective standards of importance. The purpose of this project is not to discuss how far this claim applies--whether to all of Wikipedia, certain sections or only in isolated examples (a dubious possibility, but a possibility nonetheless)--but to work to address it where we know it does. --Wikiacc (°) 01:30, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't see the problem. Let's assume for a moment that systemic bias doesn't exist. Will it hurt Wikipedia to have an article about the Persian Women's Movement? No.
Besides, I do believe systemic bias exists. No, I don't have evidence. But I work on a lot of articles related to my country, even extremely important people have stubby articles. Puchiko (Talk-email) 16:25, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Look at all controversial topics. They all are at least on danger of being biased. Articles about illegal drugs often don't give the reader a clue, why anybody would want to take them. Sure there are reasons. Somebody on Talk:War on Drugs#Ridiculously biased complains, the article is written in an anti-war-on-drugs style. I suggested to reflect how Wikipedia writes about bad things. When one reads about the holocaust nobody gets the idea there were two sides of the same coin. Still (almost) nobody complains about this. User:Sbharris, who has more than 10,000 edits, just invokes Godwin's Law an says “This article doesn't even come close to representing the consensus of most of the societies of English-speaking peoples, which is what you'd expect from a Wiki on a topic in the English wikipedia.” […] “And as for the government "abiding by the law", in the US, what the governments ends up "abiding by" IS the law. That is how the law is defined.” I contradict both statements. I also had to “fight” to get a section Racism and unequal enforcement of drug laws in. The law abiding Wikipedians don't like to hear that their laws are racist and therefore infringing other laws. If we only write what the other (mainstream) encyclopedias write, there would be little sense to write Wikipedia. --mms (talk) 09:38, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Blackworm, the differential interest of editors is exactly what is meant by systematic bias. On all topics it limits what we can write about. The point of being aware of it is an attempt to persuade those editors who have the ability to write about the less covered topics to extend our coverage there. The English WP is actually in a wonderful position to be able to do this, because--even with differential interests and knowledge--we are so large that we have a considerable number of good editors from all cultural and language areas. Many good editors from these areas work here, as well as on their own language wikipedias. Our least covered areas are ones where deliberate repression and bias limit the contributions, as well as those areas still too poor to have widespread opportunity to participate. There may not be much we can directly do about that, but we can individually and as a group make an effort to widen coverage where we can. At the very least, we can prevent the deletion of articles on the basis of "no English language sources' or "not of interest to an english-speaking audience". We already have the policy to prevent it; we need the vigilance. DGG (talk) 05:19, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

RFC for Gay

Hello, there is a request for comment at Talk:Gay#Request for Comment that is badly in need of some outside voices. Most of the people who have commented so far were already involved in the debate. The nature of the dispute is such that people involved in this project may have very useful input. Please take a look, and comment if you so desire. Thanks, Aleta ^Sing 17:14, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Women in Africa

Most of the Women in Africa articles need creation, and others need dramatic expansion. I'm working on Women in Côte d'Ivoire and help is always needed. Lotsa PD CIA / State Department summaries get posted onto Wikipedia, and are largely law based (which makes the colonialists look good, much at variance with reality), or about how women have no power in African society (and need to be saved by the west). The truth is rather more complicated, with women often agents of their own liberation, set back by colonialism. That'll end my rant, but please chack out these articles if you know something about the places/peoples/history mentioned. T L Miles (talk) 20:46, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Decent starting points can be found here: Gender Country Profiles, Afrol.com. T L Miles (talk) 14:06, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Day-of-the-year articles

Wikipedia:Days of the year is a proposed guideline for what is and is not worth including in various date pages (such as 1 May, 2 May, 7 September, etc.). Editors interested in countering systemic bias may wish to participate in the discussion on the article's talk page to ensure that less-represented areas of Wikipedia are sufficiently allowed for in these pages. — Dulcem (talk) 22:39, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Mathematics

Greetings folks, I set up a subproject concerning mathematics. I have had seen on-going themes in the content and structure of things especially dealing with logic. I think the issue really does rise to the level of needing some kind of organized awareness of this bias. Any help or advise would be appreciated. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 22:55, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Interlanguage Links project in the Hebrew Wikipedia

Please take a look at this: Wikipedia:WikiProject Interlanguage Links/Ideas from the Hebrew Wikipedia

I also added this link to the main page of this project.

This project has a positive side effect: it facilitates writing articles about the culture specific to that language. Users who are interested in this may find this project interesting.

We still have plenty of work to do, but i think that we've been pretty successful with this project in the Hebrew Wikipedia. I don't have exact statistics - that's also in the works, but we have added links to hundreds and maybe thousands of articles, and we have written some articles about Israeli culture as a direct result of this project. I am trying to export this success to other languages.

Actually i believe that it will be hard to do in the English Wikipedia, because it must have 100,000's of articles without interlanguage links, but medium-sized Wikipedias in the 5,000-150,000 article range may be very successful in it.

Please feel free to ask me for more info about it. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 09:30, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Help requested on Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

I see in the project page that the issue of Chinese views on Tibet has been raised before. There is a team of editors at this article that immediately revert any criticism of the Dalai Lama, immediately revert any viewpoints sourced to Chinese publications, and immediately remove the NPOV dispute template that I tried to add. The lede of the article claims that the Dalai Lama is the present Head of State of Tibet, which is obviously not the case, although the claim is sourced to the Dalai Lama's personal website. I launched an article RfC, but I would appreciate input from the members of this project. --Terrawatt (talk) 07:29, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

It didn't say that for long. It now says "head of the Tibetan Government in Exile" which seems to be the correct compromise. --GRuban (talk) 14:51, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

It is understandable that one who finds himself in a minority of one, would see the other editors on a page as a "team." In practice, I find that highly unlikely. Terrawatt is fairly articulate and has been generous of his opinion. It's just that not many others are buying what he is saying right now. I would say that editors are working hard at dealing with legitimate concerns raised on the talk page about bias or POV. Sunray (talk) 02:06, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Here is a grid of the most recent POV deletions of well sourced criticism. Note that the same editors show up over and over:

1. Edit by Strettolicious, sourced to Reuters. Deleted by Yunfeng[1][2][3], Binguyen[4], Tdudkowski[5]

2. Edit by Geoffduggan, sourced to New Yorker and others. Deleted by Yunfeng[6][7], Binguyen[8], Tdudkowski[9][10]

3. Sunray engaged in an edit war to restore the formulation that the Dalai Lama is the head of state for Tibet. [11][12] --Terrawatt (talk) 21:34, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Geoffduggan is well known as an edit warrior for a fringe religious group. Terrawatt's proposed changes generally amount to negative appraisals of the subject's personality that either do not add any information to the article (Hitchens) or that are sourced to a Chinese government mouthpiece (female living buddha). The article is not improved by either type of addition. That is why a number of editors, not acting in concert, including me, have been reverting those changes. Yunfeng (talk) 21:43, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a clear set of policies by which we can judge whether an article is "not improved." However, you appear to be applying an entirely different standard, having to do with your individual POV. Calling the female living Buddha a "Chinese government mouthpiece" is an excellent example of the sort of prejudice that the WP:BIAS project is trying to combat. --Terrawatt (talk) 21:47, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Religious bias

It may be useful to summarize here some forms of bias I've noticed while working on Buddhism, tho' I'm not sure all qualify as systemic.

• As I mentioned in the section on Buddhism above, articles on Buddhism are mainly written by Western Buddhists & reflect their perspective on Buddhism, which is not at all representative. No doubt this applies to other religions as well.
• Sometimes there is a tendency to say such-&-such religion is found mainly in such-&-such countries. This is colonial thinking: religion of "natives".
• The afterthought mentality. This is common in English-language books on Christianity: "Christians believe ... Oh but actually Catholics believe ..." (Eg "The Bible consists of 66 books. Oh but actually the Catholic Bible consists of 73 books." Given that Catholics are about 1/2 of Christendom, this is obviously biased. How big does a group have to be before it's wrong to treat it this way? Clearly a fairly small group can reasonably be treated as an exception to a rule stated 1st in generality.

Peter jackson (talk) 15:06, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Reasonable comments, but what do you suggest? Buddhism is found in many countries, but, for example, I can't imagine writing 10 sentences about Shintoism without one of them being, more or less, "found mainly in" Japan. And how do we write about the Bible without saying that, in general, "Christians believe" in a book roughly twice as large as most Jews do (though there there are sects of each that...)? Surely at least in the article lead we need to simplify things, there just isn't room to write: Catholics believe this, and Mormons believe this, and Ethiopian Jews believe that, and... --GRuban (talk) 12:57, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't intending to suggest anything in particular. i was merely providing food for thought.

I should have specified that I was talking about universal religions. Obviously for ethnic religions like Shinto the ethnicity is a central fact about the religion.

Actually the Christian Bible isn't anything like twice as long as the Jewish one, but never mind. How you deal with things depends on context. The main point I was making was the importance of being aware of these sorts of things, which is what this project seems to be mainly about: avoiding unintentional bias.

Certainly the article lead needs to simplify, but that has to be done in a fair way. Major points of view should be explicitly mentioned. Medium-sized ones should be allowed for by saying most or something similar. Minor ones can be ignored. Major/minor should be determined by objective criteria, not by the prejudices of the contributors.

Applying that to the Bible, there are various ways to deal with it. For a start, the lead is not going to give a list of the books of the Bible, so there's no need to go into detail. You might, if the article were solely about the Christian Bible, which it's not, simply not go into the question at all. You could just say it's a collection of books & say something about the Old & New Testaments. Or you could say there's a certain amount of disagreement on the contents of the OT. Or you could say there's a somewhat variable collection of writings called apocryphal/deuterocanonical whose status is disputed. Or you could say the Catholic Bible has 73 books, the Protestant 66 & the Orthodox is rather fuzzy. Or ... There are quite a variety of ways of doing it in a balanced way. Unbiased people with the requisite factual knowledge & an awareness of these sorts of issues should be able to deal with things sensibly. I can't remember how the Bible article actually deals with things, tho' I did point out (not logged in) that the displaying of the Tanakh & NT books while the deuterocanonicals were in running text was biased, & that's been corrected. Apart from that it looked reasonable.

"with the requisite factual knowledge" I said above. That's often a problem. I find a lot of contributors in Buddhism articles are simply unaware that any other Buddhists disagree with their brand of Buddhism. This is probably because Buddhist writers tend to believe their version is the "true" one, & so just say "Buddhism teaches ..." or whatever. This no doubt happens with other religions too. A lot of it can be sorted out if contributors are a representative sample, but that often isn't so. Peter jackson (talk) 14:25, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

WP:VA

I just came across this today. It's a list of 1000 articles every good WP should have (ie in any language). Has anyone from this project checked it? Some sections look biased to me. Peter jackson (talk) 14:36, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Can you be more specific as to which sections seem biased, and in what way? --GRuban (talk) 18:44, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I haven't donea detailed study, but the writers, artists & philosophers seem to be predominantly Western. Peter jackson (talk) 10:02, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I see the point, but can't immediately think of more world-shaking non-Europeans (not to say there aren't any, just admitting my handicaps :-)). Can you find a less biased list of most notables for comparison? --GRuban (talk) 13:24, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Systemic bias in subject

I've been working on the land value tax article, and I'm having a lot of trouble with a USA-centric section. It's about legal issues that have (as far as I can tell) only been problematic in the USA. If the subject itself has a bias, how can we avoid bias in the article? --Explodicle (talk) 17:17, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Find a reliable source that says "this is primarily a US issue", and say so, citing the source. --GRuban (talk) 13:21, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

CFD on Monrovia

Have a look at [13], an attempt to equate importance of the national capital of Liberia with four rather non-notable locations in the US. --Soman (talk) 09:50, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks - that needs objecting to. --GRuban (talk) 13:20, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

VC

see recent name-change and copy editing at Viet Cong. i rest my case. --Soman (talk) 18:54, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Images?

What about images? One issue I know about and was recently reminded of is Template:NoCoins. But there are others. A common complaint of course is our lack of diversity in images containing people, i.e. the fact that most of those not intended to show a specific person or race/group of people tend to be of white/caucasian people. Another issue of course is the lack of free images for places, people and objects from the developing world. Both of these are of course difficult to solve given then difficulty obtaining good free images in the first place. Nil Einne (talk) 18:09, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Wikipedia:Racism

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Wikipedia:Racism is a talk page without a project page. If this WikiProject does not want that talk page, please list it for speedy deletion. Thanks. Bebestbe (talk) 22:44, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

religious dietary laws

WP has some fine articles on Islamic dietary laws, Jewish dietary laws, Vegetarianism and religion, and even Rastafari dietary laws, but it lacks information on the dietary laws of Christianity, Hinduism, or Bhuddism. This, I believe, is because we have assumed that only religions with a long list of taboo foods are "unusual" enough to have an article on dietary law. The assumption is that not having religious taboos on food (e.g. Xiantiy, Chinese folk religion) is "normal." Of course neither is more or less normal than the other and both require explanation. If fact many forms of Xianity do have rules on feasting and fasting that need to be explained, as does the Hindu "sacred cow". Please help me in creating a centralized summary of dietary law, with a new article provisionally entitled religion and food or religious dietary laws. --Kevlar (talk • contribs) 16:56, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

• The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
• The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
• A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 22:02, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

?

This just proves how pretentious TOW really is. Nice one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.199.176.178 (talk) 01:31, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Citizens' band radio

Please see Citizens' band radio. I am being reverted by overzealous editors who keep removing the {{global}} tag. I don't want to 3RR, so am forwarding to this wikiproject. =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:51, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Too many words?

Is it constructive to present this draft here? If not here, where?

I hesitate to add this to the talk page at Hyūga class helicopter destroyer for fear that someone will complain that it has "too many words." In a context which arises before I posted my initial edit to that article's second paragraph, it becomes possible to begin to appreciate what's gone so very wrong as the result of an unthinking reliance on Jane's Fighting Ships and Global Security.org. An unmindful insistence on what is published in a reference book without giving due weight to consequences which flow from the Japanese context leads inexorably to mistakes in this instance.

Wikipedia's current treatment of JDS Hyūga implicates deep-rooted paradigms based on premises which effectively function to exclude or excise crucial issues from the body of the article; and this becomes a defect when it affects significant content which remains otherwise inextricable in reality. Relying solely on English-language naval ship catalogs, the edit history reveals how otherwise credible edits and edits have thwarted, deleted or blocked, thus stunting this subject's development -- see Talk:Hyūga class helicopter destroyer#Article name

Personally, of course, I don't care what the article about JDS Hyūga is named, nor do I care about the terminology used to describe this vessel -- but I'm persuaded that WP:NPOV expects us all to care very much about the "why" which informs whatever name or terminology is selected.

Although generally valued as highly credible resources, Jane's Fighting Ships and Global Security.org promote systemic bias in at least this one instance because their congruent terminology derives from primary sources bearing the imprimatur of the Japanese government. As such, reliance on this "gold standard" for descriptive terminology relating to Japanese naval ships is defensible, and any reasoned consensus based on such standards is also defensible; however, neither can be considered determinative. There is an inherent caveat in reliance on the imprimatur of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force and the newly formed Ministry of Defense (Japan). When the logical progeny of such reliance produce deleterious effects in Wikipedia, this subtle cancer mandates giving more than lip-service to WP:V and WP:NPOV.

As you may know, the Constitution of Japan prohibits "aircraft carriers"; and therefore the Japanese quite sensibly identify the JDS Hyūga with a unique, non-aircraft carrier name. In Japan, if ducks were prohibited by the Japanese Constitution, then something which waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, and behaves like a duck would be sensibly given a unique non-duck name. As it relates to use of the term "aircraft carrier," this unique bias is informed by the constitution which was imposed during the post-war occupation by the Americans; and it, along with many other salutatory aspects of the Constitution, has been embraced by subsequent generations of Japanese.

Among the Japanese, the practical decision-making which sometimes calls for a prudent substitution of flexible notions of "fiction" for "fact" is recorded across the span of centuries. This aspect of Japanese history and culture need not intrude into this Wikipedia article about the Hyūga except when an otherwise useful fiction is proffered as sufficient rationale for devaluing, denying, and deleting edits and citations (consistent with WP:V) which state that JDS Hyūga is an aircraft carrier with another name.

Sdsds construes the phenomenon in terms of a familiar line from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet -- in that passage in which Juliet muses about "that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet". In my view, this specific quotation does capture the essence of a very important aspect of this somewhat complicated issue.

Perhaps a more apt illustrative exchange is to be found in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew in that scene in which Petruccio looks at the sun and defies his new wife to disagree when he identifies it as the moon -- especially in that passage which begins, "I say it is the moon ...

In that Wikipedia article about the first of the Hyūga-class vessels, I would hope to make a constructive contribution by re-casting this controversy using medical terminolgy:

In oncology, the metastasis of cancer is conventionally described as insidious or "developing so gradually as to be well-established before becoming apparent." It is also well-known to be pernicious or "highly injurious or destructive." It is unfortunate that criticism of Wikipedia has not yet encompassed the oncological model, but it is arguably true that the metastasis of systemic bias, like cultural bias elsewhere, is insidious, pernicious and sometimes invasive.

Prior to this, the non-NPOV problems in Hyūga class helicopter destroyer have escaped a thorough examination. The thin record of postings in the initial section of the talk page suggests a nascent pattern of thwarting discussion and inquiry; and the subsequent record on that talk page confirms this unwanted hypothesis.

Across the arc of talk page exchanges amongst potential contributors and others, the consequences of intense, concerted resistance made it impossible even to reach a threshold from which to begin parsing aspects of this non-NPOV cancer. Such illustrative "consensus" becomes a powerful element of proof -- a multi-faceted demonstration of an undetected, highly persistent, insidious and pernicious problem.

Initial examination of this suspect article included a complete review of the edit history, including scrutiny of relevant external links which were deleted without any efforts to incorporate plausibly useful data.

An ameliorative edit was initiated. This involved one sentence only, supported by an in-line citation with an external link to a credible source. The talk page record reveals that this precisely-targeted intervention was reverted twice without substantive discussion. The edit encountered further resistance which blocked access to any threshold from which to begin to address the unacknowledged bias which remains the article's pervasive flaw. --Tenmei (talk) 05:57, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Misuse of WP:FRINGE

There is a wikiproject that is very self important, called WP:FRINGE. It ought to be renamed WP:HERESY, because its role seems to be to determine WHOSE books and published ideas are acceptable ("ours") and whose books and ideas are NOT acceptable ("yours") for purposes of determining the official "truth" on any matter, and to persecute those ideas that are determined by that august Council as heretical or not acceptable ideas people aren't supposed to be thinking, by declaring them unmentionable things that nobody must ever read about on wikipedia (even though, anyone buying these books or reading them online can easily get a different story).

We now have a problem because somebody actually tried to make an article listing all the African Empires on one page. Oh no! DBachmann, who seems to be the main driving force behind deciding what is "FRINGE", very often based on blatantly ethnic considerations, considers this "fringe" material. See Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#African_Empires. Note he grudgingly admits that there were indeed several Empires in African history. But once you start talking about them all on the same page, you're entering DBachmann's fringe radar, because you're not SUPPOSED to talk about them all on the same page, and therefore any of the sources that do, have been a priori disqualified as FRINGE, and are therefore ruled inadmissible for "our" purposes, don't you see. Blockinblox (talk) 14:06, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the basis for such an article could be. How big does something have to be before it counts as an empire? Peter jackson (talk) 17:01, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion regarding the globalize tag

Such a tag is often unsightly, and I have come across their frequent use when the addition of a simple phrase to the article (such as, say, "In the United States") would have alleviated all concerns. Perhaps you could establish a policy of tagging the talk page instead?

A local point of view is hardly a problem on the scale of notability issues, or POV issues, or lack of sourcing, after all. RayAYang (talk) 17:30, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

As I understand it, the point of the globalize tag is to emphasise that this is a significant problem. I don't know of any cases where adding "in the United States" would solve the issue, and although there may be instances where the article could be moved from "X" to "X in the United States", this would still imply a need for an article on the main topic, taken from a global perspective. A point of view covering only a small part of the world, whichever area it may be, is a serious issue with an article and probably means that for most readers it is inaccurate, of very limited use, or misleading. Warofdreams talk 22:11, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

The new "Biographies" section in the essay

Dejudicibus added a new section, entitled Biographies, at the end of the essay. The section raises several interesting points which should be considered. However, I think the points in the section should be integrated into the rest of the essay. Could a more experienced member of this project, with a better command of English, do this? --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 05:16, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Synchronized swimming

See my note at Talk:Synchronized swimming. This appears to me to be the sort of systemic bias that this project is itended to comment, right? (None of the 2008 team medalists were from countries detailed here, so the focus appears particularly misplaced.) - PhilipR (talk) 21:17, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Nonsense sentence

This sentence makes little sense:

Countries where either English is an official language or English-language schooling is common (e.g. Germany, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, India, Pakistan and other European countries or former colonies of the British Empire) participate more than countries where the first tongue is not English; hence the latter remain under-represented.

Obviously, the first tongue of Germany and the Netherlands is not English. Arguably, the same may be true of other countries in that list.

Since the point isn't to say that Germans participate more than Germans, but Germany fits in both classes of country, this sentence needs a rewrite. Perhaps a simple change from "participate more than countries where the first tongue is not English" to, "participate more than countries where English is not widely taught," would be sufficient. But I don't want to change a project page without trying to build consensus- Regards, PhilipR (talk) 06:59, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

or even just 'participate more than other countries...' Change it. Mdw0 (talk) 00:06, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Missing sport shooter biographies

Hi! I'm presently writing event articles for the Olympic shooting competitions. I have noticed that a lot of the competitors are redlinks, and at least redlinked finalists (top eight or top six depending on event) feel like disturbing omissions to me. For that reason, I've created this list, and I will amend to it as I move backwards through the 1996, 1992 and 1988 Olympics. Several of the people listed are multiple Olympic medalists. Creating these biographies is something I will take on myself in due time, but of course any help would be appreciated. This is not entirely a systemic bias issue (a fairly large number of the redlinks are even American), but partly; and seeing how members of this project (mostly Punkmorten, I think) have shown interest in writing sport shooter biographies, I thought I'd post it here, more as information about the situation than as an actual request for action. -- Jao (talk) 14:01, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Bush Doctrine

Hi, I have been editing on the Bush Doctrine, and I find that there are numerous attempts at removing content or similar actions that is very frustrating to any constructive editing process. The rampant nature of this seems akin to some sort of activism - or is at least emerging as such. Can you guys chime in if you have a look at the article?

The Talk:Bush Doctrine page is getting rather verbose - but I had to literally fight to keep any addition to the article, and this made it very tiresome. I am continuing to appeal for editor consensus so that there is no sabotaging or time lost to edit wars or similar. I also ask that my actions on contribution be considered. I declare having absolutely no political, partisan, activist or otherwise organized affiliation - as my history of contributions to Wikipedia will confirm, and I voice my concerns on the article using straight logical deduction and common reasoning. However, I see that users are quick and prone to disputes over any addition to the article. When trying to reason on content, it is quickly becoming about the editor person, instead of the content itself. This is very aggressive, and makes the editing problematic. It's not supposed to be an 8h full day job... I understand there is a US presidential election coming on, and that this makes the topic sensitive - but it is after all about an outgoing set of policies from the current presidency. I am not trying to be a whiner, but I feel like it is tiresome to stand alone in voicing to keep NPOV and continuing improvement of the article. The continuously arising disputes have been very time-consuming and detrimental to my efforts of improvement. I always try to include several renowned sides to the claims, and counter-claims. Well, some comment could be useful - also if you feel I have done something wrong - so that I can improve on this and avoid disputes like this in the future. I really have almost no experience with Wikipedia disputes before this, so I'm still trying to learn and keeping my thinking straight. I wish I had something like Megaphone desktop tool to gather attention to an article, but I guess that would be "outside activism" and special interest - violating the NPOV I come to trust on Wikipedia. Anyway, consider this message a "Wikipedian-interest activism" then. ;-) Thanks. Scierguy (talk) 00:00, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Template banners

The banners say the article DOES NOT represent a worldwide view. Just because an article is specific in regards to an Anglophone view, that doesn't necessarily mean a worldwide view would be any different. The article may have been edited by a diverse group with no appreciable difference in the tone or information. There are also articles where a bit of research may turn up other examples from across the world, but not necessarily. The banners should say the article MAY NOT or MIGHT NOT represent a worldwide view. Mdw0 (talk) 06:24, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Disagree. The banner is a complaint, that the someone has found a specific issue with an article. If it just said "may or might not" then it becomes meaningless. --GRuban (talk) 12:58, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Dunno about that - it still highlights the fact that bias exists, but having no option but to denigrate the entire text simply because of a possibly valid Anglophone focus simply invites deletion rather than discussion. Mdw0 (talk) 23:24, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

It's not a deletion tag, merely a prompt for assistance. Being incomplete isn't a reason for deletion, it's a reason for expansion. --GRuban (talk) 13:56, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually I meant deletion of the tag. I mean, how do you counter a judgement of systemic bias and have a tag like that removed? You'd need to appeal to some authority that someone with a worldwide view would write virtually the same article. The unestablished judging the unprovable. If systemic bias is as prevalent and unavoidable as suggested, then every article should have this tag as a default. Maybe we need set criteria that an article accused of bias needs to satisfy to allow the assumption of bias to be waived. Mdw0 (talk) 01:06, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

You deal with it the same way you deal with an NPOV or Wikify or other complaint tag; hopefully the person placing the tag has already specified on the article talk page exactly what they think the article is missing. So you go and address it in the article. If the tag placer hasn't specified on the article talk page, then track them down (on their talk page, for example) and ask them to do so. Then the two of you work it out. "Dude, like what could possibly need globalization in an article about C++? Like, it's a programming language, how does the country someone's in affect that?" "This article doesn't address the ways that C++ is used differently in Ghana and the Maldive Islands. There, they only program standing on their heads, while eating Tutti-Frutti, which has been shown to lead to 18% fewer coding errors." "No way, man, that is like totally addressed by the 'Inverted programming' subsection, which you must have missed..." If they don't answer in a reasonable length of time, and you genuinely don't think there is anything missing from the article, you delete the tag and direct them to WP:TROUT. :-) --GRuban (talk) 14:52, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

OK, fair enough, but I'm just concerned that once a tag goes on, how do you get it off?The burden of proof of a deletrious tag isn't up to the same standard as the text. If someone 'gets a feeling' that not enough research has been done to rule out worldwide viewpoints, but then can't be bothered to actually do any research themselves, because the bias is systemic its very difficult to prove the bias isn't enough to warrant a tag. What is the burden of proof when it comes to eliminating all possibility of a different view? How do you present enough of an argument to a tagger that the bias isn't enough to warrant a tag? Very tough. Mdw0 (talk) 02:21, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

You reach Wikipedia:Consensus. That's a vague concept, but it's how things work around here. Ideally, you change the text until you and the tagger actually agree this is the best possible phrasing. Second best, if you can't reach actual agreement, is any of:

• one of you is sick enough of the argument that you give up, or at least put it off to go fight more important battles
• you ask for other opinions from editors, and enough show up on one side that it becomes clear that one of you has an extreme view
• you come up with an alternate way of phrasing or looking at the problem that avoids the issue

Most common is some combination of all the above (an alternate way has the support of some people, and the others think it is not ideal either, but no longer worth arguing over). There are a number of ways of getting other opinions: Wikipedia: Third opinion, Wikipedia: Request for comments, or just asking at a noticeboard or WikiProject concerned with such matters. Like, say, here. Do you have a specific issue in mind? --GRuban (talk) 17:23, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Again, all fair enough and standard stuff, but in most other arguments there's an assumption that a consensus can be reached, or that there are facts that either can or cant be verified. In systemic bias, the bias is systemic, so you're arguing about degrees of bias, and what constitutes enough of a bias to warrant a tag, which is more to someone's opinion and is much more difficult to argue against. You can never definitively prove there is no bias, or that the view wouldn't be different by someone from somewhere else because you cant ask everyone. Also, the tag can go on without any justification - there should be a criteria, a level of bias that defines what warrants a tag. I don't have a particluar issue or argument about a particular article, I've just seen the tag around and thought about the difficulty of countering a particular accusation of systemic bias if you agree with the idea that a degree of bias is systemic. The ability to find consensus must be hampered by this contradiction. Mdw0 (talk) 23:47, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

This project is about systemic bias, where the system is Wikipedia, which is edited by technically savvy westerners, so bias tends to creep in in throughout. The tag, however, is about specific instances where the bias is believed to have cropped up in a given article. We may or may not be able to fix the system, since that's a vague problem we can argue about for ages, but we can certainly fix specific instances.

Case in point, this argument. If you and I keep talking about issues in general, we may never reach anything. But if you cite a specific page with a tag, I'm pretty sure we can fix that page, or agree the tag should be removed, or agree on specific steps that should be taken so that tag will no longer apply. --GRuban (talk) 14:16, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Sexism, especially in WP:ATTACK

I just stumbled on this page in book marks and took a quick look. I wonder if there tend to be more personal attacks on editors thought to be women than men. I know it's that way in email. But obviously there would need to be systematic study of that, through a) official complaints; b) surveying individuals obviously women vs. those obviously men as to how often and how harsh of attacks they experience; and c) looking at any articles mentioned as being where attacks frequent or users who do so frequently to see who is attacked. I'm not going to do it, but just wanted that particular bias to be on the record :-) Carol Moore 00:32, 19 September 2008 (UTC)Carolmooredc

Chihuahua

The Mexican state of Chihuahua was recently moved to Chihuahua (Mexico) to give a shot at equal billing to the breed of dog named after it. My arguments against this move, invoking systemic bias, are set out on Talk:Chihuahua (Mexico). I'd be grateful if any CSB experts could take a look, and perhaps share their thoughts. Aille (talk) 15:01, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

If the link went straight to the dog site it would warrant a tag, but it goes to a disambiguation site, which is fair enough. Mdw0 (talk) 01:34, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

The move was proposed years before, and rejected. Then it was done without discussion. The new location is ambiguous (there are plenty of Chihuahuas in Mexico). The disambiguation page link Chihuahua (state) is now broken. Bad all around. I weighed in on the page. --GRuban (talk) 19:23, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Article distribution

Here is a sample chart

From my own curiosity, I calculated article topic distribution for 200 random articles. The results are interesting and can be found here.--Knulclunk (talk) 14:27, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

In all honestly, anyone with minimal stats knowledge would probably talk about how 200 is far from a good sample. But it's still interesting...though the results are hardly unexpected to me anyway. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:51, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

You have to distinguish cases. The pie chart shows 36% of articles about the US. That means 72 out of 200. By simple rule of thumb, the margin of error is roughly ± square root of 72(This computer doesn't seem to do the symbol), or ±8½. That's enough to make clear the excessive emphasis on US. For smaller nos. your remark is correct. Peter jackson (talk) 15:35, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh those statisticians... alway ruining a good party. I figured I would keep going to see if distribution leveled out at 500 or 1,000. I wonder what percentage of 2.5 million do you need to be within ±3.5%? --Knulclunk (talk) 15:41, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

What about articles on clearly international topics (such as lunch or school) or non-Earth topics (such as planets)? Could you also take a random sample of FAs? --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 04:45, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

What a great idea. I was thinking earlier that this kind of statistics should be done more often, maybe on a yearly basis to assess the evolution of Wikipedia articles. We could make a bot or a program which will generate a list of 1000 random articles, and I could create a program which will make their analysis and their count simpler. Eklipse (talk) 08:41, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Eklipse, I think that your proposal to semi-automate this process is very worthwhile. --Wormcast (talk) 20:47, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, excellent job! I actually just suggested that exactly this type of survey be done, only to find out that you had already done it. My only gripe is that I can't discern some of the colors on the 'Type' chart; e.g. Geo. Political and Geo. Landforms. --Wormcast (talk) 20:41, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Featured and good topics

Members of this WikiProject should be very concerned about the Featured Topic process. It indirectly encourages editors to write only about American (and European) "popular" topics, because writing FTs about under-represented topics (for example, Singaporean historical sites) is next to impossible. Currently, over 70% of FTs are about "popular" topics (sports, video games, media, music, literature and hurricanes), while only about 40% of FAs are about "popular" topics.

While GA exists to counter the systemic bias of FA, the recently-introduced GT process fails to counter the systemic bias of FT. The GT criteria are too high and the gap between the GT and FT criteria is too narrow, so writing GTs about under-represented topics remains next to impossible. I proposed that the GT criteria be lowered make GTs more accessible to under-represented topics, but my proposal is being shot down. Could members of this WikiProject please participate in the discussion? If my proposal is rejected, FTs will remain dominated by American "popular" topics.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 11:48, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

The Essential Guide to World Comics

The good news: I have The Essential Guide to World Comics and I will use it to write articles about comic book series and anthologies published in many areas that WikiProject Countering systemic bias is trying to fill in. I just started some articles about African comic book series. Hopefully I will get some others out of the way. WhisperToMe (talk) 06:09, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Possible bias for one country of a shared royal family

There is an ongoing discussion at Template talk:British Royal Family#New face of the template about the use of an image that isolates one country out of sixteen that share the same royal family. If those familiar with WP:BIAS rules and precedents could weigh in, it would be appreciated. --G2bambino (talk) 07:33, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Category:People by race or ethnicity

There is a major CFD discussion taking place re this SuperCategory that may be of great interest to members of this Project. If you would like to participate, please go to this CFD section. Thank you. Cgingold (talk) 00:26, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Of interest to this Wikiproject

In looking over one of the critical statements of this project's page -

"Bias is not only manifested in article creation – deletion is a source of intellectual bias; affected articles more likely to suffer deletions, i.e. "I don't like it", "I don't know it", and "I don't care" comments in deletion discussions. Similarly, systemic bias may cause articles of local interest to places (from where few Wikipedians come), to be nominated for deletion for lacking notability, because they are obscure to the majority of Northern Hemisphere Anglophone editors"

- I wondered whether it would be instructive to add an example. Perhaps not, but in any case, I was recently party to an AfD which rang all the alarm bells this project is designed to respond to, and almost lost it. It reached, in my opinion, almost Kafkaesque levels of bad faith and judicial mishandling. Worth a look, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Los Baby's. Chubbles (talk) 05:04, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Best example of systemic bias yet

From Personal life (a core topic article):

"In the past, before modern technology largely alleviated the problem of economic scarcity, most people spent a large portion of their time simply attempting to stay alive."

Someone needs to tell all those people in Africa that economic scarcity has been solved through technology! Kaldari (talk) 18:02, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Not to mention that the idea that pre-civilized life was "nasty, brutish, and short" has been completely discredited. Murderbike (talk) 00:01, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

This project, and this article, speaks so much truth it burns my eyes. The amount of truth contained in this article boggles the mind. Everything that is wrong with Wikipedia is in this article, the reason why it will never work and why it is doomed to failure. But at least Wikipedia mans up to admit it's inherent flaws, and that I think is pretty great. Kudos. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.243.188.11 (talk) 01:44, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Hmm... seems more like the personal life article is poorly written. Why don't you take a crack at it?--Knulclunk (talk) 15:54, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

FA, FSA, GA and systemic bias

I have previously explained how the FA criteria are systemically biased. Now the FA regulars are proposing an FSA process that would further worsen systemic bias by encouraging editors to write about American roads and popular culture, while neglecting articles about Singaporean history and Laos politicians. In response, I am working on a proposal that would solve the problems FSA was intended to deal with and also help fight systemic bias. Members of this WikiProject are invited to participate in the discussion. --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 08:52, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Reporting Systemic Bias against Native Americans at Washington DC

There is a group of editors that "owns" the article Washington DC and will not allow any mention of the historic fact that it was an important Native American trading site, Nacotchtank. They "decide" what is important, and apparently Native Americans are non-people, irrelevant and deserve not even a summary mention in the History section on that article. They are using every excuse under the sun to justify their bias, which is against our policy that says we have to be comprehensive and not leave important facts out just because of their race. (in short, the very definition explained by WP:BIAS.) There is no legitimate way to justify this kind of racial bias which I have never seen on any other article with regard to Native American history, but it seems they just don't want word getting out on wikipedia that it was a Native American village - all the more absurd and outdated notion, when practically every book, article, or even travel guide available on DC in this day and age will tell you this easily found fact. See for instance here Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 23:59, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, just by comparing the 3 articles, the founding of Washington, D.C. in 1749 was almost 70 years later than the collapse of the Native American village Nacotchtank prior to 1668. The Washington D.C. article which is about the contemporary city, really has a lot to cover. The history section hatlinks to The History of Washington, D.C. article, which does discuss Nacotchtank.--Knulclunk (talk) 00:21, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Like I say, I have never seen that lame excuse used for any other city article. "The city was founded in 1749, so anyone else living in the same area before that, may not be mentioned"? It's just a weak excuse to cover the identical racist attitude against First Nations because of just one thing: Their race, which makes them unmentionable non-people in the eyes of racists. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 00:27, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

While I agree that there is no reason there should not be a brief mention of Nacochtank in the Washington article, please remember to assume good faith and please don't accuse other contributors of being racists. --Wikiacc (¶) 12:48, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Eh, throw a sentence on top of the history section, similar to Chicago. I wouldn't want to be "racist". --Knulclunk (talk) 15:06, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

delete Category Mollusc of country

This task is within the scope of this project issue "how material is presented". Feel free to share your opinion of this problem at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 December 17#Molluscofcountry. --Snek01 (talk) 12:27, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

creation of a template about countering systemic bias for notability criteria on people/incidents with non-western/male/rich-country/etc demographics

i've come up a few times in practice with people proposing to delete a bio page (or non-bio page) on someone from a country which doesn't have a huge english/internet presence. The arguments for deletion are usually non-notability as defined by google. IMHO it would be useful to have a template to stick on the talk pages of such articles so that the well-intentioned, "average-demographic" wikipedians can understand why the notability guidelines need to be thought through carefully in order to counter the systemic bias. In the long run, this should go on the notability guideline page, but i'd rather start by doing this in practice rather than starting from a theoretical principles discussion with people who... mostly come from the same biased demographic category(ies)!

i've started a proposed template at User:Boud/TemplateSystemicBiasRefimprove, essentially based on Template:Refimprove and WP:WikiProject Countering systemic bias. Please feel free to improve it or comment on the matching talk pages directly in my userspace (or here, whichever seems the best place for the discussion). i'm new at templates and anyone with more experience could probably make plenty of improvements. People who have thought through the systemic bias problems most likely could think of improving the template.

My idea is to leave this for enough time to get a bit of feedback, and then try it out in the real Template: namespace. If someone wants to go ahead faster and just try it, feel free :). Boud (talk) 23:03, 22 December 2008 (UTC)