Talk:Light skin

Agree with changing the lede to not mention geographic areas
Originally, the lede only mentioned Europe and East Asia as areas with light-skinned people, as the native populations of these areas are firmly established as having light skin by a myriad of scientific articles. In recent months more and more people have been adding their own specific area that they care about the most to the lede, such as West, Central, and North Asia. This has lead to some people attempting to remove or minimize the regions that they have a personal bias against. In one case, a person created a Wikipedia account (Rainbluetiful) specifically to remove or minimize one of the geographic areas with the largest body of quality sources (East Asia). If the lede is kept the way it used to be, it is likely that users motivated by a racial bias will continue to degrade the quality of this article.

The way that Dominic Mayers has written the lede is factually correct and neutral. It does not try to minimize or emphasize any particular area. Rainbluetiful has a particular insistence that East Asia be minimized while "West Asia", "Central Asia", "North Asia", and "Europe" remain the same, despite the fact that there is a huge body of research establishing that native populations of East Asia commonly have light skin, and light skin in West/Central Asia is not very common and does not have many sources to establish it. This is a clear cut violation of WP:NPOV and should not be allowed in this article.

In this article there are already images of various light-skinned people from around the world, which do a good job of showing a range of skin-tones which are considered "light" as measured by skin reflectance. Moving forward, it should be fine to allow those images to stay while keeping the verbal contents of the article free from racial bias. Biosaurt (talk) 17:49, 1 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Yep, I felt that the images where expressing a point of view and points of view cannot be affirmed by Wikipedia. Wikipedia must report what sources say in a neutral manner by providing the context, etc. Wikipedia must appear as just presenting what sources say without taking position itself. But, I decided to close my eyes and to not make a big deal about this, perhaps because I feel the point is valid and there must be sources making that point. Eventually, it will be good to find the sources that make the point illustrated by these images and have the article presents this point in a neutral manner (and other points of view if appropriate), not in its own voice (i.e. not directly with its images in this case). Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:07, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree about that as well too. This prevents users from remodifying the locations. Rainbluetiful (talk) 09:26, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
 * And we already discussed about this before it got changed. And no i am not racially biased, after discussing about the changes in the talk page for 4-5 days, I begin to know that many people parts of the world have light skin including East Asia. I also found out that West Asians can also have non-light skin too (many West Asians have light skin genes too from the sources I have found then again time many have non-light skin after checking more sources), And as you can see I havent re-edited the article and I leave it the way as it is. Pardon me for that small change from 25 may.Rainbluetiful (talk) 09:27, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Maybe best to leave it out. Probably too hard to resolve given how complex and vague the terms are, and probably not useful to try to describe the current geographic distribution. It might be more useful and more doable to describe native or historical distribution. North8000 (talk) 20:23, 1 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I saw in the images (especially the one with dresses in pink) an intention to exhibit that some Asiatic women have lighter skin than some people might assume. If I was mistaken and the point of the image is only to represent people with light skin (and why not some Asiatic women), then please ignore what I wrote, especially if it is not a point that sources discuss. The general valid point is that images must represent what is stated neutrally in the article or in the caption. They should not be used to make  a point that is not attributable to sources. Dominic Mayers (talk) 22:58, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Given that the majority of scientific articles on this subject are studying either European or East Asian populations, it makes sense for there to be representative examples of both of those populations. Those images are essentially illustrating the spectrophotometric data that can be found in numerous studies done on skin color, some of which are cited in the article. Since the point the images are making are thoroughly substantiated in the sources, I think it makes the most sense to leave them in the article. Biosaurt (talk) 23:38, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, I do not know why you say those images are essentially illustrating the spectrophotometric data. I see no evidence that they were made in that context. Given the difficulty to find open source images, I can understand that we pick images that are not specifically connected to any scientific research, which means they might have been photoshopped, etc. and have no real scientific value.  Again, I feel we can be flexible here. Dominic Mayers (talk) 01:14, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
 * You're right in that none of the images in the article came from a peer reviewed paper, but I meant more that the images that are currently in the article illustrate what would commonly be considered "light skin". There are a range of skin colors that are considered "light", and there might be some ambiguity depending on the cultural context of the observer as to what is considered "light skin". With the images that are currently in the article, the reader is given several concrete examples of what "light skin" looks like. Ideally, we would use images that come directly from a scientific journal, but as you state, those kinds of images are scarce and many Wikipedia articles, such as this one, have to resort to using open source images. Biosaurt (talk) 01:30, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree with your stance but in the 2 skin tone articles dark skin and olive skin geographical locations are mentioned too. What do you think? Rainbluetiful (talk) 09:49, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Some folks are describing rules for images in wikipedia that do not exist. This is more of decision by normal editor decisionmaking processes. North8000 (talk) 16:40, 2 June 2024 (UTC)


 * We should strive to respect the general principles of neutral point of view and no original research with our choices of images. For example, having a clear intent to present an image as if it had a scientific value, when it is not the case, is doing a kind of original research, because the scientific value of the image is our own personal claim. Even if no one can enforce the rules except the editors themselves and, in that sense, it is a decision of the editors, it does not mean we should not strive to respect the rules. But, yes, as explained by North8000,  it is a normal decision of the editors and we all assume that the best decision has been taken.   Dominic Mayers (talk) 00:48, 5 June 2024 (UTC)