Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countering systemic bias

Please read the associated WikiProject Page before posting here. If you notify the project, please be prepared to show how any potential bias could be resulting in a lack of balanced coverage, or some other omission, as described on the WikiProject Page.

American judges

Shouldn't all members of Category:American women judges also be members of the parent category, Category:American judges (since that parent does not diffuse by gender)? If so, it currently isn't the case. czar 08:57, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes. And add the non-diffusing tag for those who are confused Montanabw^(talk) 03:32, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Nomination of List of fulfilled prophecies for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article List of fulfilled prophecies is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fulfilled prophecies until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PaleoNeonate (talk • contribs) 04:31, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikimedia's nonprofit status

One thing I've wondered is, does Wikimedia's nonprofit status encourage Wikipedia to be biased, or unbiased? I think it could cut both ways. Suppose you've won the lottery, and now are financially independent. You can now publicly say whatever you want without fear of too much reprisal. You can openly praise or denounce any company or any individual (as long as you don't defame them).

So, for example, if you wanted to give a balanced appraisal of the company you used to work for before you won the lottery, you can do that. On the other hand, you can also give a negative appraisal of them, while simultaneously praising their competitor! So being financially independent doesn't mean you have an incentive to be neutral. Looking at the world of nonprofits, a lot of them are biased. For example, Greenpeace is a nonprofit, but it definitely has an agenda about environmental issues. Likewise, at the universities, a lot of the tenured professors express fringe opinions, because they are free to do so.

On the other hand, to the extent that Wikimedia seeks to cater to its donors' sensibilities in order to attract donations, that makes it susceptible to being influenced by those donors' biases. (Is it coincidental how many of WMF's board members have ties to Google?) But to the extent that Wikimedia lets Wikipedia be run by its community of editors, that makes it susceptible to being influenced by the Wikipedia editors' biases. These biases become self-perpetuating as a biased project tends to attract people who share similar biases, and repel (or, in some cases, expel) those who don't.

It's the same problem politicians run into when, say, they're trying to create a nonpartisan commission for redistricting. Where are they going to find the politically neutral arbiters? They can get retired judges to do it, but every one of those judges was originally nominated and confirmed by partisan politicians, often as a reward for political favors (e.g. helping with a campaign). Wikipedia elects its arbitrators, so we see the same problems there that we'd see in any other situation where judges are elected.

Perhaps Wikipedia is more biased than the for-profit Britannica, World Book, etc. were. Those encyclopedias had to cater to the sensibilities of the masses, so if anything, the problem may have been that they were too milquetoast or populist at times. They couldn't say anything that might offend readers.

One difference is that most revenue models for a for-profit free online encyclopedia would involve advertising, rather than user fees (as was the case with Britannica). A lot of proprietors of for-profit websites say that they feel like they have to watch what they say, so they don't lose advertisers (since the advertisers' customers might demand that they pull ads). But a donor-supported nonprofit, unless it lives entirely off an endowment from past donations, also has to pay attention to which side its bread is buttered on. (If it does live entirely off an endowment, and is insulated from outside influence by being governed by a self-appointed board, that still leaves it open to being influenced by the board members' biases.)

I question sometimes whether we achieved any additional neutrality from going the nonprofit route, that's enough to outweigh the disadvantages in terms of efficiency. A nonprofit has to devote a lot of resources to begging for money, rather than getting investors to put in that money (which, in the tech world, is often with little expectation of profit). And if the nonprofit is poorly managed, there is no way that a big outside investor can buy the organization out so he can revamp it. (Although this same problem arises in the tech world, where people like Zuckerberg have supervoting shares.)

Wikipedia tries to overcome all those problems by saying, "We'll just limit the articles to containing information from reliable sources." Most of those reliable sources are for-profit media outlets like The Washington Post, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, etc., though. So whatever biases those for-profits have, Wikipedia will tend to mirror. On the other hand, as these media outlets become increasingly unprofitable, they end up getting taken over by billionaires who use them as their personal Pravdas to push various agendas.

What about clinical studies; aren't those scientific, and therefore neutral? They could be, if funding were given out for studies in a neutral manner, and if all studies were published, regardless of whether the results fit the funder's agenda. That's not the case, though. N I H I L I S T I C (talk) 14:47, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Regarding medical studies, I recommend reading through the discussions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine, which have frequently discussed publication bias issues.

As for the rest of your comment, I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Wikipedia was initially part of Nupedia, which was part of a for-profit business. It was spun off into the not-for-profit Wikimedia Foundation as Wales and Sanger thought it would be more financially sustainable be garnering revenue via charity. The popularity of wikipedia may have grown due in part to this choice, but the choice wasn't made to induce editors or articles, it was made to ensure financial stability (that is, to get make more money). This choice has been financially wildly successful, and is often discussed at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-11-04/News and notes.

Your comment seems to suggest that wikipedia/wikimedia is a monolith. I think it is better to think of it in terms of its editors, each of which has their own interests. CSB recognizes that demographically, internet users in general and wikipedia editors in particular are not perfectly representative of the Earth's population. As the readership of wikipedia grows, it will diversify; the encyclopedia's coverage should diversify to reflect that. Further, lack of diversity hampers the growth and usefulness of wikipedia, even among current editors and readers. With this in mind, your question, "does Wikimedia's nonprofit status encourage Wikipedia to be biased, or unbiased?" seems difficult to answer. I'd say that wikimedia's nonprofit status might encourage more editors who like non-profits, while editors more interested in for-profit content creation might be more interested in writing elsewhere. I could see this introducing a bias, as people willing to volunteer for a non-profit might be less likely to be extremely poor and more likely to have free time (be retired, not have children, etc.) On the other hand, nonprofit status and a stance which frowns upon paid editing (see: Wikipedia:Paid editing (essay)) may increase the number of editors whose life intersects less with high-visibility companies (as you said, it could cut both ways). But perhaps you could clarify. Best, Smmurphy^(Talk) 17:04, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Getting rid of the paid editors is another problem. Even forcing them to identify themselves as paid is a problem. Any time an editor has to shed some of his anonymity, and explicitly reveal what his agenda is, it tends to subject him to being targeted and possibly banned. (Notice how many ArbCom-sanctioned users are people who outed themselves at some point.)

There's not really any way to get away from the fact that Wikipedia will be influenced by people who get paid to put forth a certain point of view. Suppose the Washington Post is owned by a left-leaning billionaire who hires editors who will push his agenda. Those editors have their reporters investigate and write stories that will further that agenda, and they tell them not to pursue stories that would tend to work against that agenda. Then an unpaid user on Wikipedia cites the Washington Post as a reliable source. Does the process have integrity and neutrality because at the final step of this process (adding the content to Wikipedia), the person doing the work was unpaid? The only difference is, we can blame the bias on the Washington Post, but it was still Wikipedia that deemed them a reliable source.

Now, one might argue, we also deem the Wall Street Journal a reliable source, and that's owned by a right-leaning billionaire, so it balances out. In that case, why wouldn't the left-leaning paid Wikipedia users tend to balance out the right-leaning paid Wikipedia users also? Unless, of course, one side has a tendency to have more volunteers, and other side more paid users, than the other. In that case, maybe by banning paid users, all we do is reverse the bias, without achieving neutrality. N I H I L I S T I C (talk) 15:40, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

You are conflating two things that don't overlap much. Paid editors are mostly an issue re people and organisations trying to use Wikipedia for advertising. Political partisans exist in abundance on both sides of many issues, but apart from a few staffers editing their bosses bios, the contentious political editing is probably done by non-neutral volunteers. As for being constrained by the biases of the donors, the point about soliciting large numbers of small donations from readers is that if a small proportion of donors think that their $20 entitles them to get an article skewed, they can be shown the door. ϢereSpielChequers 16:29, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

RfC to adopt a default gender neutral style for policy, guidelines and help pages

Contributors here may be interested that an RfC for a policy on gender neutral language to become a default for Wikipedia policies, help and guidelines is open for votes at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/RfC to adopt a default gender neutral style for policy, guidelines and help pages. The proposed policy is limited is scope and so excludes articles, talk pages or any discussion by individual contributors. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:49, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Expansion of article

Hey, requesting people who know about Pregnancy in art to edit this newly created page and add information about it.2.51.16.229 (talk) 15:19, 17 April 2017 (UTC)