User talk:AleatoryPonderings/Systemic bias in deletion discussions

Comments

@Pburka and ThatMontrealIP: Apologies for the intrusion. I wanted to ping because I've noticed the great work that you both have done at AfD, particularly on articles on underrepresented subjects, and I thought the topic of this essay might interest you. I wondered if you might have any comments or input, or know of anyone else who might be interested in this. Thanks very much in advance for any comments you might have. Please feel free to edit the essay directly if you like. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 18:28, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

A few thoughts. Systemic bias affects Wikipedia both directly and indirectly. Directly, editors are, I suspect, more likely to view activities dominated by white men as more important and therefore more notable, so I think certain topics are more likely to be brought up for deletion. People working in fields dominated by white men who aren't themselves white men might also be more likely to be nominated. Indirectly, and as you've noted, Wikipedia's notability guidelines (rightfully) defer to independent reliable sources to determine if a topic is notable. These sources reflect broader systemic biases in our societies, so, by our own policies, people who aren't noted by these sources (often due to systemic bias) aren't notable. I think it's worthwhile to distinguish between these two things: we introduce our own biases, and we also reproduce the biases in the sources.

What can we do about it? My approach has been to focus my effort. I only have so much time to spend on this project (and probably spend more than I should), so I've decided to focus on a fairly narrow topic area where I can increase my expertise (and therefore my effectiveness), and spend my time in a way which I think is valuable. I've chosen to focus on WP:WikiProject Women writers, especially marginalized women. I write new articles, but I spend a lot of my time watching deletion sorting categories and patrolling PROD. By focusing my effort on this topic, I can spend enough time researching to rescue a few articles every week. (When I'm patrolling PROD, I also try to add pages to appropriate projects (e.g. WP:WikiProject Women artists and WikiProject Women's sport) so that anyone watching alerts for those projects will see PRODded pages they might have missed, giving them a chance to rescue pages.)

If you'd like to get more feedback, I think WikiProject Women in Red might be a good place to start, since it was started specifically to counter systemic bias on Wikipedia. pburka (talk) 21:50, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Pburka, Thanks so much for your comments—I really appreciate it. I think your distinction between introducing bias and reproducing bias is useful and important. I'll have to think more about it. As for practical steps to counter bias, I think your advice—picking a restricted area and sticking to it—makes a lot of sense as well. Again, thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. It means a lot. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 02:28, 10 September 2020 (UTC)