Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Archive 6

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Useful Links for CSB editors

Regional notice boards

Dictionary of African Christian Biography of wider interest than might be assumed from its title.

Collaboration

Judging from the votes, it seems that Famine is to be the new 'CSB Collaboration of the Week'. I'm going to change the templates etc. to reflect that. — mark ✎ 16:33, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Can we measure Wikipedian's Bias?

Wikipedia says of itself that it has a systemic bias due to the demographics of those who choose to edit it. But has wikipedia's bias ever been measured? Do we actually know the demographic of wikipedians, or are we just assuming they are white middle-class American men? Such an assumption cannot be very scientific, expecially given the poliferation of national calllaboration's, from Chinese to South African (and thats just on en!).

We could try to measure Wikipedian's bias by producing a survey asking questions such as, nationality, languages spoken, income, education, etc. Anybody interested in helping with this idea? Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedian's survey Seabhcán 14:57, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I am fiercely opposed to asking this sort of question of individuals. We already have numerous pages (mostly linked to by Wikipedia:Wikipedians) on which people may volunteer information along these lines if they so choose. Want to publicize those or add more? Great. If you ask me personally about my income, in particular, I will consider that harrassment, and I doubt I'm alone on that. -- Jmabel | Talk 16:31, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)
Answers would of course be voluntary. Seabhcán 16:49, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Simple answer: no, you could not reasonably determine the demographic bias. Not that way. It's *possible* to model a proxy for demographics by using the IP logs, but it could get a bit sticky. And it would certainly take a lot of time, effort, not to mention potential privacy issues.
If we assume Wikipedia is reflective of the internet, it is reasonable to describe it as biased toward white, male, upper-middle SES, well-educated, north americans; especially in comparison to world populations. This, at least, there has been a lot of research on. - Amgine 20:21, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Just posted the following at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countering systemic bias#Can_we_measure_Wikipedian.27s_Bias.3F

My personal bias (excuse the pun) is that bias is something that exists in every person—it's basically a function of our being human and being shaped by our own experiences and background. The High Road, IMHO, is to understand what one's own bias is and work from there—identify opinion as opinion and try to work with others to achieve objectivity and completeness is a priority, as it is for projects like Wikipedia. (And yes, I have worked as a journalist and do have a blog.) The way I do this on Wikipedia is to place an honest statement of my background and an attempt at describing my own bias on my user page. I know this will make me an easy target for people that want to discredit me or my contributions based on their perception of "people like me". So be it; it is the price of honesty.—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 20:54, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 20:50, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

  • I forgot where on wikipedia that I saw this, but there was a page that provided a link to take a personality types test. You know the Jung thing. The posted results said that most of users are INTP, including myself, this also only indicates the personality type of those taking the test. I hope this gives some kind of an idea. Jaberwocky6669 02:29, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)


I want to use this opportunity to thank you all for the work you are doing in the CSB project. And what a great article explaining it, very well written. It made me think of my grandparents who died a month ago. If they were born some ten, fifteen years later, they could have been wikipedia readers, maybe. Let's hope that today's and future grannies and grampas will hop on the wagon soon. Honestly, isn't wikipedia editing _the_thing_to_do_ when you are 70+ ? Let's not forget to put these kind of people on the invitation list... :-) -- .~.

Systemic Bias resulting in POV?

Is there any place where collaborated efforts can be done to avoid systemic bias resulting in POV (assuming that there exists such thing).

Zain 20:36, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I think this would be an appropriate place to start. Post a message explaining what you want to do, and then, if needed, make a subpage of this one to organize it. Tuf-Kat 00:36, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)


Well starting it and maintaining it will require a lot of time and I don't believe I would be able to organize it as it should be. So if it is already there I'll be happy to join it. If it is not there, then I am not sure how it will work, because how will some body determine that which party is underdog only because they are outnumbered.
Now let me try to put it, in some express able points
  • Some times a thing can be told in a lot of ways and readers can get different perceptions according to the way some information is given. For example see the difference between ‘Killed due to Bombing’ and ‘Resulted in collateral damage’ both are same facts but method of telling has different effects on the user.
    • For this I believe we should have a consistent policy how to mention things. So currently in practice is that majority wins.
  • Which information should come in main page and which should not be given and only links should be provided.
    • A clearer policy should be provided or majority wins here too.
Plus many other issues like this where different standards are used in different articles. Some will write ‘killing’ some will write ‘collateral damage’. As all the information here is from different sources, one article declares one source more credible and some other article sees the same source as not credible. Decision on relevancy like how much you think that ‘islamic Millitancy’ should get any mention in islam article or ‘Israeli terrorism’ in ‘jew’ article. Currently there is no policy and majority of the contributors decide.
These are the situation where only way to determine is the majority, Because more then one way is technically correct but choosing different way results in different user perception.
Authenticity of a source is very difficult to prove on talk, it is matter of opinion mostly. So here too majority wins.


In these situations which I mentioned, we should have a method which will make majority a lesser important factor. And merit becomes more effective
Zain 01:47, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Effectiveness of Sock puppets as an Example

If you read Wikipedia:Sockpuppet it says and I quote

"In addition to double-voting, sock puppets should not be used for purposes of deception , or to create the illusion of broader support for a position."


It indicates that sock puppets unless identified, effect the content of the article 'negatively'. Same should be true if number of editors having affiliation to particular opinion/position is more then other.
So as it is mentioned in the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias

" The encyclopedia tends to focus on certain topics while neglecting others"


so we can reasonably assume that 'The encyclopedia tends to support certain positions while neglecting others'

"Same should be true if number of editors having affiliation to particular opinion/position is more then other." Absurd. By this standard, how do we favor science over pseudoscience, sane opinion over lone loonies, etc. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:28, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)
Let me give you example on Wikipedia article on wikipedia. I quote
"Wikipedia's systemic bias of covering some topics in much greater depth than others is also considered significant, something that even the site's proponents admit
So as we have created 'WikiProject Countering systemic bias' believing that popularity among wikipedia's editors alone can't be held as 'significance standard' on a subject. We should have some thing equitant for 'significance of a particular position'. As we believe that the popularity among editors can't be the standard of 'significance of subject' similarly popularity among editors alone can't be the standard of 'significance of position'
Zain 20:08, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Main Objective

As we have this project to counter topic focus caused due to 'demographic of its contributors', we should have some thing which counter position support caused due to 'demographic of its contributors'.
Zain 12:09, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wouldn't that be the WP:NPOV policy and, for example, the NPOV tutorial? — mark ✎ 19:02, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Although these are helpful but are quite short of what is actually needed, that’s the reason you see all the edit wars and other such things on different articles. You can see from the ‘official comments’ on sock puppets. That they do make an illusion of broader support effecting contents of article ‘negatively’. Same results can be expected from ‘systemic bias’. So we need some measures to avoid ‘systemic bias resulting in POV’ as we are trying to avoid ‘systematic bias result in lesser attention’ in this project.
Zain 20:24, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I don't entirely understand what you want, but nevermind... Your feelings are here on this page for anyone to read, and take into account when they are willing to propose a policy or project or something. Do you have any concrete examples of what you would like to do? (or what you would like someone else to do?) Tuf-Kat 22:01, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)
:-( Confusion is understandable let me explain why
Actually I initially, to ask Is there any project or sub-project for 'countering systemic bias result in POV' the answer was that , there is no project as such. And was asked what you precisely need. So I started to try to explain so let me try to put in simple words
As out numbering causes neglect of an article. outnumbering also causes neglect of a position. Let me try to give you an example (which might not be valid) One is Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Baha.27i_entry_is_being_held_hostage which I found by chance. Although I haven't really looked into it for validity but similar valid situations can exist. In such situation 'Systemic Bias' causes POV.
Zain 22:34, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Say no to reusing featured articles; produce new ones

A discussion is going on here about reusing featured articles on the main page. One of the arguments mentioned is that 'most of the most interesting featured articles have already been featured'. I think that most editors that are involved in CSB will not agree with this statement. I think that it is in the spirit of CSB to produce as many featured articles as possible and not to rely on the 'canon' of previously featured articles. Maybe people could take a look there and put in some words. — mark ✎ 01:35, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

What is "Systemic bias"?

The Systemic bias article is a sub-stub! It's not even a stub! :( Maybe before countering systematic bias, it should be defined better so everyone knows what they're countering? The stub gives a definition, but surely it's worth an article? --Sketchee 07:00, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. Also, as it stands, some of this is specific to systemic bias in Wikipedia, which is not appropriate for an article in main space. I'll try to give it some work. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:00, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)
I was amused to see that the only country mentioned in the systemic bias article is the United States. --Lee Hunter 14:00, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
I've added an example from India. --Lee Hunter 14:00, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

Descendent Projects

This has been somewhat suggested above by other users: I think one thing that may be helpful is to start descendent projects stemming from this one. I think it's a large project with a lot of people who want to help but wants to do different things. No one wants to be told what to do or work on. It seems a bit unwikipedian if we all try to focus our efforts in one place at a time too much.

We started the Music subprojectWikipedia:WikiProject Composers just a day ago. That new project page lists a growing "How to help section" so that people can just jump in, pick something that sounds good to them and get to editing. It's all intentionally flexible. With three people we've already gotten a list going on neglected topics and people working on articles. I think it's a bit intimidating as is for someone to jump into CSB and edit an article.

The WikiProject page has a large number of categories for projects, but few projects in most of them. Almost any main category of Wikipedia could be made a Wikiproject effectively. If people think that Africa needs more attention, then they can use an African Wikiproject to focus that attention. The countering system bias project can then just focus as a mother project assisting in alerting people of neglected projects and serve a call to arms when a project isn't made. (ie "The attention is needed to write about War! We need people to start a War Wikiproject to guide the creation of these articles.") Then this CSB project can serve as guidelines making sure that in other categories.

The possibility is there that people won't want to work on Wikiproject X. This is why the broadest categories would need to be found. Rather than starting a descendent project from here to tackle just Guinea, there is more likely to be people who'd want to work on project Africa. With the people who want to work on Wikiproject Africa already altogether, it would be easier for Wikiproject CSB to ask them if they could please tackle the Guinea article(s). The Geography subpage, IMHO, and actually all the subpages would be better handled as seperate Descendent Wikiprojects with one of it's stated goals when filling out the template. This wikiproject can still link to To-Do lists of subprojects, members can participate in both the subproject and main CSB project. Everyone is free on Wikipedia to edit any page, so if CSB members want to edit descendant projects in that manner it would be just like editing any other page as no one can own projects anyway.

Just my ideas and opinion. Don't mind me! :D--Sketchee 10:52, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)

That is a very good idea. Wikiacc 02:31, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"Labor union" vs. "Trade Union"

See Labor union, List of labor unions, Category:Labor unions. In the rest of the world outside US, these are refered to primarily as "Trade Unions". Also, Trade Unions, is neutral in term of US vs. British English. Anyone feeling like chipping in on the talk pages? --Soman 13:38, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

List of labor unions was at List of trade unions for years before someone moved it in November, for the "sake of consistency", was the option to move labor union for consistenct considered ? Jooler 11:12, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)


The so-called "Google Test"

I so-called Google test is often used to claim that one particular usage is more common or correct, but I believe that this is based on the false assumption that articles on the Internet truly reflect International uage. It is my opinion that trying to prove that a particular form of words is more common using this method proves no such thing. I contend that it merely proves that one particular usage is more common on web pages in the United States. I think that there should be a Wikipedia namespace page clearly stating the flaws of the "Google test" Jooler 11:46, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Good idea! I've noted some on [1]. Maybe somebody can add and/or move to a new page? Elf-friend 00:15, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

An easy task

Here's a suggestion for a simple thing folks can do to further the aims of this project: Work on enhancing the date (September 22, May 1) and year (1922, 1733) pages to broaden their scope and better link to underrepresented people, places, and events. Of course, this alone won't fix Wikipedia's systemic bias - no one change will - but it might help increase the exposure of these articles, and maybe get a few people to think more broadly about Wikipedia's content as a whole... CDC (talk) 03:52, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Another CSB article on FAC

Lord's Resistance Army has been expanded significantly since it's listing on CSB Open Tasks. It has gone through Peer Review last month and is a Featured Article Candidate right now. Please read the article and support it with your vote if you think it's worth it. The FAC request is here. Thanks! — mark ✎ 12:40, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It's a great article. That's why it's Featured now :). Now where was that CSB accomplishments page? — mark ✎ 02:17, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Speaking of great articles, Nafaanra language is now on FAC.  :) Please check it out and support if you think it is worthy. - BanyanTree 02:24, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

CSB Wikiportal

I just read about Wikiportals. Should there be a Countering Systemic Bias wikiportal? Anyone up to the task? – Quadell (talk) (sleuth) 18:54, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

the effort would probably be better focused on identifying and fixing problemsGeni 18:55, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"Terrorist organizations" cat up for deletion

I have started a vote for deletion for the Category:Terrorist organizations at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion. My reasoning is that placing the category on a page rests entirely on personal judgement and is thus inherently biased. Note that none of the articles in the category are current powers, despite the brutal methods used by almost all armies throughout time. I have removed this category from a number of articles such as Sudan People's Liberation Army and Mau Mau Uprising as, regardless of their various violent acts on civilians, the label just seems to mean "Organizations I think are nasty". Please vote if you see the same problems I do... or object if you disagree with me. - — BanyanTree 21:51, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Régime

Howabout noting words like regime as danger-flags for potential systematic bias in the politics paragraph? (This page already has some discussion) Ojw 21:44, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That would be something for Wikipedia:Wikiproject Countering systematic bias, I guess. See the project details page of countering systemic (not systematic) bias for some reasons why it would not fit here. — mark ✎ 12:20, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I thought something similar, but Wikipedia:Wikiproject Countering systematic bias doesn't exist, so might you have a better hint? I've also started a discussion on this at Talk:Regime#Negative connotation in Wikipedia articles. Ojw, the discussion you mention has been moved to an archive, and now the archive link is gone, but it is here: Talk:2003_invasion_of_Iraq/archive#Request_for_comments_about_use_of_.22regime.22. DirkvdM 09:03, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Proposal for reorganization of CSB

After fiddling around with CSB for a while and trying to think through some of the issues that I've experienced, I have a proposal that I think may make some sense. It involves the abandonment of WP:CSBCOTW and a focus on the open tasks list, basically making CSB a two-page project. I'll lay out my case below. This is meant as the starting point for discussion, rather than a decree, so feel free to say if you disagree in whole or in part.

Argument

Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias is inherently unfocused. An editor who is knowledgeable and interested in one of the neglected areas of Wikipedia, may have no interest in another neglected area.

A Collaboration of the Week requires focus from members. In a normal WikiProject, each member is assumed to be capable of contributing to the weekly collaboration, because they share a common knowledge and interest such as the projects for Sydney or Biology. This is not true for CSB. Every CSB CotW excludes some members, regardless of whether or not they wish to be active in the project. The CotW is thus stagnant both in nominations and edits to nominated articles.

The open tasks list reflects the diversity of CSB members. The CotW does not. The list allows members to see progress made, even if they do not think they can meaningfully contribute to the topic being worked on.

CSB is ill-organized. The main page is messy, hard to follow, and spends a great deal of time repeating content already on the open tasks list. There are numerous subpages for members, new articles, etc that are not integrated with the rest of the pages.

Despite its problems, CSB plays an important role in Wikipedia. Many neglected topics do not have enough editors to form their own WikiProject or notice board. CSB allows these efforts to be pooled and displayed on this page, and informs the rest of Wikipedia of their own biases. CSB should not be abandoned.

Proposal

Abandon the CSB Collaboration of the Week. Make the open tasks the center of collaboration, not in the sense of everyone working on one article but as in everyone working on the broader goal of making sure that neglected topics get some attention.

WikiProject Countering Systemic Bias Open Tasks
WikiProject Countering Systemic Bias is an attempt to create and improve articles that are systemically neglected. Feel free to help with any of the following tasks .

Change the template to reflect an open tasks focus. (Idea to the right) Anyone may add an article from the open tasks list to the template, or replace one of the older items on the template. The main guideline is to make sure that a balance of articles are represented and that they are occasionally rotated. While the template is meant to replace the one now in use, it could also be placed on the talk pages of articles listed and elsewhere.

Reorganize the CSB main page. Merge the descriptions of neglected areas into the tasks list. Abandon the new articles page. Move the member list back to the main page. The front page should be relatively short, with: intro, "what you can do", announcements section (for related WikiProjects, notice boards and happenings), and member list.

And now I'll get off my soapbox. What do people think? - BanyanTree 01:19, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Discussion

You've said a lot of things that needed saying. The CSB pages do read as if they were set up by some long gone former civilisation, and we are left wandering/wondering in the ruins (marvallous as they are). The CSB COTW is the second most successful COTW on WP — righ after the COTW. So, I think there is a general problem with this kind of thing. It's a shame, but Wikipedia isn't always good at collaboration. I've seen a good few articles nominated, and won, COTW that could have been candidates for CSB COTW. All in all, I agree: a reworked open tasks list might provide a better focus for us to work on.

I'd also like to mention template:limitedgeographicscope. When I've used it on a page it has had quite an impact: editors have felt really get to grips with improving the scope of the articles. Perhaps we could think of a few other templates that could mark out the biased articles. Gareth Hughes 01:41, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent idea, and we should implement it soon. In my view, part of the purpose of the CSB project is to push interested people to research and write outside of their "comfort zone" of topics they already know well - that's how it is for me. As I understand it, this is the intent of the COTW, but I think a modest expansion of the number of emphasized topics would help to draw more people in. Might it also be useful to note in our introductory material that the CSB project welcomes people who don't (yet) have great expertise in one of our focus areas? Some suggested starting points for research might help draw people in. CDC (talk) 04:50, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The template proposal is great and will certainly prove to be effective. I fully support it and I say: the sooner the better! As for abandoning the 'new articles' page — that's ok, but let's just make sure that we record the progress somewhere. I like the way it is done now, with the 'Request for review/attention' and 'Satisfactory' subsections in every category on the Open Tasks page. If CSB is getting really big, we might need to implement a subpage system (a bit like the Village Pump), but in general, Open Tasks looks good the way it is now.

The template Gareth mentions indeed is a good way to call attention to the state of an article and also to attract potential participants. I make note of the fact that it should be placed on Talk pages of articles (back when we started to work with these templates, there was some discussion about this and people told us to place messages for editors on the Talk page). Thank you for your proposal, BanyanTree. Let's go for it! — mark ✎ 09:51, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

One more thing. The 'Related changes' link on the Open Tasks page is pretty useless if people sign their comments there (because then the recent changes of the listed articles are interspersed with User and User talk page changes). What to do about that? Is it best to keep everything anonymous, or should we just take leave of the Related Changes idea? I liked it a lot because you could see CSB at work; but I also like to know which people are working on which things. Maybe we could include a 'Related changes' link on the Template instead, just to get an idea of the activity CSB generates. — mark ✎ 10:02, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Hmm... I like seeing who is working on what more than I appreciate seeing the net change in the listed articles, but I am pretty ambivalent on the whole. I also think the template idea for the open tasks list may be necessary, as it is getting unwieldy as a single page. People seem pretty positive about the proposed changes above, but I'll hold off implementing it for a bit to let more people comment. - BanyanTree 15:43, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

While we are discussing a reorg, could we also address the discussion at: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countering Systemic Bias Open Tasks#Being Bold with headings. One of the first things to be done would be to collate the the "Categories" on the main CSB page and the CSBOpenTasks page.—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 02:53, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

OK, I've implemented the changes. The intro ended up being much more wordy than I had expected and could probably do with some ruthless cutting. I'm also not sure that people will agree with my tone, examples, etc. What do people think of the structure, at least of the main page? - BanyanTree 01:49, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

CSB sprawl

I didn't realise that CSB was quite such a sprawl until I checked the index. Some are simple redirects, some have talk pages too, but I'm sure these pages can be rationalised:

What can be done? Some of these can easily be deleted (by those who can do such things). It would be good to move everything to properly named subpages. Open tasks needs a good tidy up. Perhaps each area of CSB should have its own subpage, but perhaps we should revisit those areas. Gareth Hughes 23:02, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I found about five pages I had no idea existed in the course of the reorganization. Generally speaking, I strongly feel that WP:CSB is for describing the issue, other projects with which CSB has an affinity, and other advocacy/awareness-building activities. Meanwhile, you can safely assume that anyone who makes it to WP:CSBOT has already been converted, and more non-actionable information just slows them down. We want people to be working the problem at that point, not reading more about how bad it is. That's the reason I just removed two sections from the OT and put in language in the intro that allows the removal of some sections that claim a problem, and then don't offer any concrete ways to work on it.
There appears to be enough background to make a large subpage describing the bias in depth. I would propose making Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Project details the foundation of that page and encourage people to merge in the History, Geography and Politics articles, which appear to repeat much of each others' content. All those listed articles should be at WP:CSBOT, not spread out over three extra pages. The 1/4th boxes are neat and give me an idea for an article talk template, but let's worry about broad structure first.
And at the risk of task overload, shouldn't Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering Systemic Bias Open Tasks be at Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias open tasks, to bring it in line with Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias. I was forever getting the capitalization changes between the two wrong when typing out links. - BanyanTree 18:12, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Pwqn has corrected it. — mark ✎ 20:35, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

"Christian Bible"

user:jcbos wanted to delete Christian before Bible in the first sentence of the article New Testament. He calls anyone who revert that deletion a POV-pusher. His single argument is that he claims Christian Bible to be a pleonasm. He is very busy on the Dutch Wikipedia where he managed to organize a stampede against the addition of "Christian" before "Bible" in the first sentence of the article on New Testament. How systemic can bias be and countered? Gebruiker:Dedalus 13:19, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

User:Jcbos attempted to remove the word "Christian" before Bible on English Wikipedia well, in a couple of dozen articles, but steady reversions of his edits by at least 6 other editors finally brought him to the Talk: page, where it was shown that "Christian Bible" is actually a disambiguation. He still considers himself to be correct, and that those who reverted him were "POV pushers", "trolls" and "un-wiki", but I think you are right, his belief that the Christian Bible is the real Bible, and that everyone should know what is meant by "Bible", is really an example of systemic bias. Jayjg (talk) 17:20, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Ummm... it's impossible for one person to have systemic bias, as such bias is... system-wide and unintentional. If Jcbos tried to effect a change consciously, and was consciously blocked by a number of other editors, then that is an edit war, which is precisely the opposite of a systemic bias. If Jcbos had a hundred friends he enlisted to enforce his views, that would still be a systematic bias, not a systemic one because it was done consciously. NPOV and "systemic bias" are defined entirely differently. However, topics that are systemically biased against are probably more subject to NPOV because of the limited number of contributors. If a large number of people care enough about an article and its accuracy to get into an edit war, that's a clear sign that it's not CSB material. It's a bit of a Catch-22. - BanyanTree 17:40, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the reactions. I understand the actions of Jcbos is something else than systemic or systematic bias. I should not have brought the point here. Sorry to bother you all with that specific edit war. Gebruiker:Dedalus 08:43, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

"systemic" vs. "systematic"

Can someone else please have a look-in on Talk:systemic bias. I've said my piece, but others should weigh in. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:58, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

I have given up on trying to defend this: I just don't care that much. If others want to look in on it, it would probably be a good thing. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:31, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Edit Button

I'm kinda dumb, so I dont know what this means...

  • Even among their general socioeconomic and ethnolinguistic demographic, Wikipedians tend to be more technically inclined. This is due to the simple barrier represented by the "Edit" button, which many readers either do not recognize or refuse to utilize. The inclination is more towards computer science and physics than areas such as agricultural science.

How does the edit button play in all of this?? Jaberwocky6669 02:17, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

we know that the vast majority of our readers do not edit. The mentioning the edit button is simply an effective way of pointing out the devide between the two groups.Geni 01:41, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Open task drive

I think its time we revised the lists of open tasks, many articles that started off as stubs now look like good articles. I'm offering to keep track of suggestions in my sandbox and update the open task page somewhere toward the end of the month. --nixie 04:56, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

School notability

I am concerned that the trend towards applying a "notability" requirement for schools will create a situation where we have articles for most old and/or elite schools, but no coverage at all of schools in the middle and lower range of achievement. A case in point is the Clover Park Votes for deletion. My preferred solution would be to include schools articles based on the quality of the article, not just the school. Perhaps wikipedians interesting in countering systemic bias have other suggestions? Kappa 00:59, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There's a tendency in that direction, but let's face it: more elite schools than non-elite are unique in ways that would matter to people who've never attended them. Quite a few non-elite schools merit articles either because of events that have happened there or because they have managed notable academic accomplishment in trying circumstances. But most schools don't deserve an encyclopedia article of their own. It's perfectly reasonable to write about the average school in the article about a community or school district of which it is part: there simply isn't enough to say to merit an article. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:34, Apr 24, 2005 (UTC)

If you look at the way the VfDs are going, if anything there is a bias toward keeping all school articles even the substubs. I'm not entirely conviced that this is the concensus of Wikipedia editors in general, it seems more like a concerted effort by a set of editors. I don't know that anyone from this Wikiproject is going to want to devote time to writing about their local highschool, or fixing school stubs when things entirely more significant and encyclopedic are missing or stubs. --nixie 06:16, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • If someone wrote about an average high school in a country that has no school articles at all, I think that would be incredibly significant and useful. Look at Category:Schools in China. If stubs and substubs are the issue, judging by article quality should resolve this. Kappa 10:20, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hmm

I was under some naive impression that the related tasks would have something to do with articles that have "bias" problems, which to me indicates how articles are manifested and slanted, rather than the mere ommission of topics. "Systemic bias" is particularly limited to ommission perhaps, but this would be better called "cultural oversight." In otherwords there seems to be some oversight in the apparent scope for what constitutes "systemic bias." <comment>The notion that an 'inherently biased demographic' can or should take upon itself the task of filling in gaps, could equally be viewed as the enforcement and spreading of bias, rather than the correction of it.</comment>-SV|t 14:23, 1 May 2005 (UTC) -SV|t 13:57, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Bias problems other than omission can be brought up here, but it's usually harder to show that those are "systemic". Usually those more reflect who has been working on an individual article, which is not a systemic issue. The systemic issue that was at the root of this was that the demographics of Wikipedia had led to outright neglect of certain areas that were clearly as important as much of what was being written (either omission of entire topics or in cases like linguistics articles that considered only Indo-European languages). The thing with omissions is that they are invisible, the "dog that doesn't bark in the night". There are other mechanisms already for POV disputes; I'd be open to seeing a few more of them brought up here, but a little fearful that they might start to overwhelm the main focus on which this project has had at least moderate success. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:23, May 1, 2005 (UTC)
  • The goal of this Wikiproject really isn't fixing POV issues, however if you go through the list of open tasks there is long list of acticles that are biased due to the authors nationality, take a look at unemployment for example and you'd think it only existed in the United States. Its really spurious to suggest that by filling in glaring omissions that this project is creating bias--nixie 23:43, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
  • I agree this project has a confusing name, "systemic underrepresentation" would be my choice. However, I would think an Anglophone POV article on something important in China or Africa is a lot better than nothing at all, as long as the facts are verifiable. Kappa 23:50, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Northern hemisphere bias

There's no mention of northern hemisphere bias. Mentioning it is needed so that people become aware of it. For example, in addition to the other definitions, I would define an average English-language Wikipedian as living in the northern hemisphere. --  B.d.mills  (Talk) 04:37, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Most English speakers live in the northern hemisphere (not sure of the numbers), so this would not be unexpected. There are obvious subdivisions among the majority group that may be slightly unproportional compared to each other. I have no idea of the actual numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if you compared, for example, New Zealand to Ireland or South Africa to Canada that the numbers of articles are off from what you'd derive looking only at population. CSB can only handle a finite number of tasks, and trying raise the coverage of, say, Argentina relative to England seems more fruitful than trying to make sure that Perth and Atlanta get comparatively equitable treatment, as one could be fairly sure that both are better covered than Lagos. That's my take on it. - BanyanTree 05:50, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
The northern hemisphere has Canada (32m), the USA (296m) and UK (60m) whereas the southern hemisphere has Australia (20m), New Zealand (4m) and South Africa (48m). There are many other countries as well with native English speakers (look for the pink bits on old maps), but a great majority of native English speakers live in the northern hemisphere.
The systemic bias often manifests itself as a worldview that apparently assumes the equator is as far south as you can go. For example, the Southern Oscillation was so named because the tropics were considered the "deep" south. Other manifestations of this systemic bias includes a failure to consider the southern hemisphere in seasonal references, assuming that an expression like "summer solstice" is unambiguous, and being careless with other hemisphere-specific references.
Your idea for equal treatment is sound but I can come up with better examples. I would expect individuals in the cities concerned to provide good copy for their own city no matter where that city lies. One place that better demonstrates systemic bias is the depth of coverage of constellations in the northern sky and southern sky. Every northern hemisphere constellation has at least some detailed coverage, and many include extensive references on deep sky objects. The southern sky has far less coverage. Compare the detail for the northern constellation Triangulum and the southern constellation Grus. (I'm currently working my way through the constellations and filling in some missing bits myself). --  B.d.mills  (Talk) 12:38, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Measuring Wikipedia community expectations of encyclopedicness

See m:En validation topics - particularly Mathias Schindler's suggestion to measure "Encyclopedic general interest". This would give an actual numerical measurement of what the community thinks is needed in an encyclopedia. (It also solves the last hole in my 1.0 plan.) - David Gerard 20:43, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

People, this is an important topic. Go put in some words there if you feel like it. I think the main problem of measuring "Encyclopedic general interest" by voting is that our user base is not our audience. — mark ✎ 08:57, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Post-colonialism in literature

From the Wikiproject requested page Post-colonialism in literature, I have created a redirect to Postcolonial literature in line with the similar page-naming scheme for Postmodernism in literature (to Postmodern literature). I'll expand Postcolonial literature when time allows.

Ziggurat 02:17, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

{{limitedgeographicscope}} on Tfd

The {{limitedgeographicscope}} template mentioned on the project page is up for deletion at [2]. Kappa 10:49, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. I added my vote for Keep, the score is running at 20 for Keep and 4 for Delete. --  B.d.mills  (Talk) 02:19, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Damian Ohanyido Okoli

Does anybody have ideas for verifying this article? It's up for deletion and the consensus seems to be "delete if not verified", which seems reasonable, and Google isn't a lot of help. If this guy exists a lot of the information in the article should be verifiable and he probably passes any reasonable notability test, but this is the encyclopedia of the Google generation.

--Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:17, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

==

opinion: mention of Native langs in Languages in the United States

hi, i would be interested to know if anyone has an opinion concerning this: Talk:Languages in the United States#native langs: first or last?. i know that i have a definite opinion about this, so maybe someone else can help me in viewing the situation with good eyes. am i supposed to put this request somewhere else? thank you. peace. — ishwar  (SPEAK) 01:13, 2005 Jun 1 (UTC)

Statistics for non-anglophone countries

In this articles it is claimed that "While areas in which education in English is widespread, such as The Netherlands, Hong Kong and India, have decent coverage when compared with many other nations, they remain under-represented compared to those countries that speak English natively."

However, the Dutch encyclopedia has only around 3000 articles per population. I would be more interested to see how Sweden measures up, with the Swedish encyclopedia having almost three times as many articles per population. Are there any hard facts available? If not, where does the claim about The Netherlands, Hong Kong and India originate?

Filur 08:53, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think the statement is referring to coverage within the english wikipedia, and not all of the different wikipedias. A comparison of the number of articles in a native language wikipedia per population, and the number of articles on that country in the english wikipedia are quite unrelated in my opinion. I don't know about the specifics of the above claim, but anecdotallly would suggest there is some truth, at least as far as the Netherlands and Hong Kong go, as well as various other European countries. Peregrine981 13:00, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)
Yes, it is anecdotal. Though the initial post made me wonder if the ratio of articles under a country category to national population would be a useful, but very rough, measure of coverage. So articles in the category Category:United States,and its subcategories, divided by US population, versus the similar figures for other countries. Does anyone know of an easy way to count all the members of a category tree? - BanyanTree 14:47, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I realize that the statement refers to the English Wikipedia. However, the Swedes and Dutch are both proficient at English, so if the Swedes put up three times as many articles in their native Wikipedia, one must at least suspect that they also write more articles per capita in the English one. (I do not like when anecdotal statements. In fact, I think it would be best if every statement in the Wikipedia could eventually be referenced, on a seperate page if needed for readability.) Filur 13:32, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
One consideration: I'm Dutch and I've done loads of editing in the English Wikipedia and virtually none in the Dutch Wikipedia. It may very well be that, like me, there will be many more Dutch editors who reckon that the English Wikipedia reaches a much wider audience and therefore more worth the effort. It is also by far the biggest Wikipedia, possibly in part because others think like this. So I sort of regard it as a basis that, when 'complete' (...) can be translated into other languages (via Esperanto perhaps) after the articles in other languages have been incorporated into it. But that's for a distant future. DirkvdM 10:21, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
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