Wikipedia:Systemic bias

See also: Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias

The Wikipedia project suffers systemic bias that naturally grows from its contributors' demographic groups, manifesting as imbalanced coverage of a subject, thereby discriminating against the less represented demographic groups.

The origins of bias

Population of Internet users by country (CIA figures)

Internet usage by percentage of each country's population

The average Wikipedian on the 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 majority-Christian country, (8) from a developed nation, (9) from the Northern Hemisphere, and (10) likely employed as a white-collar worker or enrolled as a student rather than employed as a labourer .

• Access to the Internet is required to contribute to Wikipedia. Most of the world's population, including most of the people in developing nations, the poor in industrialized nations, the disabled, and the elderly, do not have such access and thus their views and experience are under-represented. In most countries, minority demographic groups have disproportionately less access to information technology, schooling, and education than majority groups. This includes the First Nations of Canada, the Aborigines of Australia, and the poorer populations of India, among others.
• Despite the many contributions of Wikipedians writing in English as a non-native language, the English Wikipedia is dominated by native English-speaking editors from Anglophone countries. These Anglophone countries tend to be in the global North, thereby accentuating the encyclopedia's bias to contributions from First World countries. Countries and regions where either English is an official language (e.g. Hong Kong, India, Pakistan and other former colonies of the British Empire) and other countries where English-language schooling is common (e.g. Germany, the Netherlands, and some other European countries) participate more than countries without broad teaching of English; hence the latter remain under-represented.
• Even among their general demographic groups, Wikipedians are more technically inclined. There is a barrier represented by the "edit this page" button and the complex Wiki code that many readers either do not recognise or choose not to use (thinking "It isn't really meant for people like me"). Wikipedians' areas of interest skew towards computer science, astronomy, and popular culture, rather than agricultural science, medieval art, or historical linguistics. For articles outside the typical areas of interest, it is easier for knowledgeable narrow-minded editors to instil cultural bias and have it go unchecked.
• Wikipedia is blocked in some countries due to government censorship, and editing through open proxies, the most common method of circumventing such censorship, is prohibited by Wikipedia policy.
• The majority of the world's population lives in the Northern Hemisphere, which contributes toward a selection biased to a Northern Hemisphere perspective. This selection bias interacts with the other causes of systemic bias discussed above, which slants the selection to a pro-Northern Hemisphere perspective..
• Availability of sources is not uniform. This manifests both from the language a source is written in and the ease with which it can be accessed. Because reliable sources are required by Wikipedia policy, topics are limited in the material they can include by the sources available to editors. This is a particularly acute problem for biographies of living persons. Sources published in a medium which is both widely available and familiar to editors, such as a news website, are more likely to be utilised than those from esoteric or foreign-language publications regardless of their reliability. For example, a 2007 story on the BBC News website is more likely to be utilised than a 1967 edition of the Thai Post or Večernje novosti. Similarly, the cost of access to a source can be a barrier e.g. most research in astronomy is freely available to the public via arXiv or NASA ADS, whilst legal case law is only available via costly subscriptions.
• Wikipedians are people that have enough free time to participate in the project. The points of view of editors focused on other projects, e.g. earning a living or caring for others, will be under-represented.
• Wikipedians, as a class, tend to over-represent intellectuals from academia or members of subcultures. More university professors and computer programmers edit Wikipedia than do dental technicians, firefighters, flight attendants, plumbers, et cetera. This leads to a bias against full coverage of blue-collar subjects, employment, and practical skills, while obscure academic theories and minority subcultures are well covered.

The bias

Worldwide density of geotagged Wikipedia entries

Worldwide density of GeoNames entries

The systemic bias of Wikipedians manifests itself as a portrayal of the world through the filter of the experiences and views of the average Wikipedian. Bias is manifested in both additions to articles and deletions.

Once identified, the bias is noticeable throughout Wikipedia. It takes two major forms:

1. a dearth of articles on neglected topics, and
2. perspective bias in articles on many subjects

• A lack of articles on particular topics is the most common cultural bias. Separately, both China and India have populations greater than all native English speakers combined; by this measure, information on Chinese and Indian topics should, at least, equal Anglophone topics; yet, Anglophone topics dominate the content of Wikipedia. While the conscious efforts of WikiProject participants have vastly expanded the available information on topics such as the Second Congo War, coverage of comparable Western wars remains much more detailed.
• Since Wikipedia editors are self-selecting for social class (only a relatively small proportion of the world's population has the necessary access to computers, the Internet, and enough leisure time to edit Wikipedia articles), articles about or involving issues of interest to the so-called underclasses are unlikely to be created or, if created, are unlikely to survive a deletion review on grounds of notability.
• As of 2006, of the top 20 news sites used as references on Wikipedia, 18 were owned by large for-profit news corporations, while only 2 of the sites were non-profit news organizations
• Articles which contain a "Religious views" section frequently include Christianity, Islam and Judaism while neglecting the views of other religions. Ideally, an article describing religious views on a topic should incorporate Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist views, at a minimum, though the exact choice of religious opinions will depend upon the topic's scope (e.g. a Chinese topic might not necessitate a Christian view, but a Taoist view). Views of more prominent religions should be given more space, in accordance with the policy on NPOV.
• The size of articles is often based on the interest that English-speaking Wikipedians have in the subject (which to some extent is based on the involvement of their nations). For example, the article on the Second Congo War, the deadliest conflict in the past 60 years, is shorter than that on the Falklands War, with a death toll of under a thousand. Also, the amount of information available to researchers is disproportionately biased towards events involving more economically developed countries.
• Deaths of those in developed countries are seen as far more significant. The Al-Qaeda attacks on the US, UK and Spain, killing slightly over 3,000 people, are seen as having enormous significance. The Darfur conflict in Sudan, in which 400,000 civilians have so far been massacred, receives less attention.
• Perspective bias is internal to articles that are universal in aspect. It is not at all apparent from lunch (see tiffin) or the linguistic term continuous aspect that they exist outside of the industrialized world.
• Articles where the article name can mean several different things tend to default to subject matter more familiar to the average Wikipedian.
• Recentism: Current events (especially those occurring in developed, English-speaking nations) often attract attention from Wikipedians, and are edited out of proportion with their significance. Jennifer Wilbanks, an American woman who attracted media attention when she was presumed kidnapped, but actually ran away to avoid marrying her fiancé, has a longer article by a factor of several dozen than Bernard Makuza, who has been Prime Minister of Rwanda since 2000. Additionally, because of recentism bias, the "In the news" section on Wikipedia's front page may be limited by an unequal proportion of significant news from English-speaking nations compared to news from others.
• "National" is frequently used to define United States organisations without specifying the country. Equally, "international" is frequently used as a synonym of "foreign" to define non-United States organisations, again suggesting a US perspective rather than a worldwide one.
• Similarly, popular culture, especially television, is often covered as if only the US or only the UK exists (depending on the origin of the Wikipedian).
• Establishment of Notability: Notability is more difficult to establish in non-Anglophone topics because of a lack of English sources and no incentive among anglophone participants to find sources in the native language of the topic. A lack of native language editors of the topic only compounds the problems. The lack of sources and therefore notability causes articles to wind up going through the deletion process of Wikipedia.
• Article Deletion: The group of participants in the discussions of AFD may not include any native-language participants or participants familiar with the subject of the non-anglophone article. A single native language editor's views will not be deemed consensus because of his minority in the group of discussion members. It is very difficult for an editor with poor English to debate against a voluminous battery of abstract AFD arguments. When claims of POV, soap boxing, and in extremes, sock puppets come up the non-English editor will simply give up. Non-anglophone articles written in poor English by non-English editors are much more likely to fall into the criteria for speedy deletion by administrators, and non-English editors will be discouraged from further editing on the English Wikipedia when their articles "disappear". When a non-English editor is contacted by the English Wikipedia community, they might not have the language skills to respond or understand their error and would rather just not contribute anymore to the English Wikipedia. Policies and guidelines such as Please do not bite the newcomers and Assume good faith might not project through the language barrier to the non-English editor.
• Firstism: Things are often declared to be "the first" when they are really only the first in a limited context. The bias of "firstness" often occurs when editors are knowledgeable only about the accomplishments of their country of origin and do not think to look further in researching and writing an article. A similar problem occurs with naming conventions when it is assumed that the name or label with which one is familiar is the only correct option.
• Articles often use Northern Hemisphere temperate zone seasons as time references to describe time periods that are longer than a month and shorter than a year. Such usage can be confusing and misleading for people who live in the Southern Hemisphere and people from tropical areas that do not experience temperate-zone seasons.
• Similarly, articles frequently take the perspective of a resident of the Northern Hemisphere and ignore the Southern Hemisphere perspective. Some articles on astronomy discuss the night sky as seen from the Northern Hemisphere without covering the Southern Hemisphere to a similar extent, and sometimes "not visible from the Northern Hemisphere" is used as a synonym of "not visible at all". Generally, Northern Hemisphere astronomical topics are covered in greater depth than Southern Hemisphere astronomy. Obscure constellations in the Northern sky such as Scutum and Camelopardalis are covered in more depth than prominent Southern constellations such as Grus and Carina.
• Due to severe restrictions on the use of images that are not free content, certain groups of articles are more likely to be illustrated by associated images than others; for example, articles on American politicians often have images while articles on Nepalese politicians usually do not.
• Political activism: editors are free to insert information that has not been checked. While this does not follow the rules on editors; it exists in frequency high enough that all readers need to review all information they are reading unless there is a direct footnote to back up the information.

There is further information on biases in Geography, in Politics, in History, and in Logic. See also Countering systemic bias: Project details for an older introduction.

Why it matters and what to do

Many editors contribute to Wikipedia, because they see Wikipedia as progressing to, though not reaching, the ideal of a repository of human knowledge. The more idealistic editors may see Wikipedia as a vast discussion on what is true and what is not from a "neutral point of view" or "God's Eye View". Thus, the idea of systemic bias is more troubling than intentional vandalism; vandalism is readily identified and corrected. The existence of systemic bias means that not only are large segments of the world not participating in the discussion at hand, but that there is a deep-rooted problem in the relationship of Wikipedia and its contributor editors with the world at large.

The systemic bias of the English Wikipedia is permanent. As long as the demographic of English speaking Wikipedians is not identical to the world's demographic composition, the version of the world presented in the English Wikipedia will always be the Anglophone Wikipedian's version of the world. Thus, the only way systemic bias would disappear is if all of the world's population spoke English with the same fluency and had equal access and inclination to use the English Wikipedia. However, the effects of systemic bias might be mitigated with conscious effort; this is the goal of the Countering Systemic Bias Project.

As Michael Snow and Jimmy Wales have said in an open letter:

How can we build on our success to overcome the challenges that lie ahead? Less than a fifth of the world's population has access to the Internet. While hundreds of thousands of volunteers have contributed to Wikimedia projects today, they are not fully representative of the diversity of the world. Many choices lie ahead as we work to build a world wide movement to create and share free knowledge.

Biographies

Another problem is related to the criteria to be used to decide if a biography is to be placed in the English Wikipedia. There are many biographies of minor personalities in the English Wikipedia; for example, porn stars, soap opera actors and actresses, and minor sportsmen and women. On the other hand, it is extremely difficult to publish a biography about non-Anglophone personalities unless they are very famous. In many cases the available local sources have no correspondence in the English language, so there is no way to demonstrate the value of a proposed biography. The problem could be solved by creating a pool of trusted Wikipedians for each language and/or culture who could guarantee the value of the biography (when non-English sources are available or if the personality is not well known outside her or his country).

Interwiki language issue

Another problem is when a term in a language (and therefore an article) is related to completely different terms and concepts in another language, so to completely different articles.

See also

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Global perspective
• Wikipedia:Geographic imbalance
  • List of countries by number of Internet users
• {{systemic bias}}