Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-10-01/WikiProject report

This week, the Signpost went down to the farm to have a look at the work of WikiProject Agriculture, which has been in existence since 2007 and has a scope covering crop production, livestock management, aquaculture, dairy farming and forest management. The project also covers related areas, including both governmental and NGO regulatory agencies, agribusiness, support agencies such as 4-H, agricultural products including fertilizers and herbicides, pest management, veterinary medicine and farming equipment and facilities. That's a lot of areas, much more broad than a lot of projects, and with around 50 members it certainly seems to be doing OK. We haven't spoken to them before, although an early report produced a profile back in 2007. This year, however, the members were definitely not reserved in having a chat to reveal the secrets of working with this outdoor project, and we spoke to, , and.

'''What motivated you to join WikiProject Agriculture? Do you have life experience in this area? Have you contributed to any of the project's Good or Featured Articles?'''
 * Montanabw: Yes, I have an interest in livestock, farming and ranching. I spent my childhood on a diversified wheat and cattle operation in Montana, continue to live in a rural area in Montana, where I am a small landowner and keep some horses. I have been a major contributor to a number of GA and FA class articles related to horses.
 * SMcCandlish: As an anthropologist by training, I have a strong interest in agriculture (including horticulture, and animal domestication and husbandry) from pre-historical, historical and cultural perspectives. As a classic liberal (non-socialist) progressive activist, I have an further interest in the field as it relates to ecology, globalism, sustainability and related topics. My interest in domestic animal breeds also overlaps with that of livestock breeding more generally. I come from a ranching family and grew up in a semi-rural environment, with horses out back and various other livestock, including chickens, ducks and rabbits, but have never been a professional farmer or rancher. GA/FA: No idea. I don't keep track of such things, and generally don't notice unless someone leaves me a notice about article promotion on my talk page. To me, making ten terrible stubs into acceptable articles is a better use of my time than making one acceptable article fantastic, and they both take about the same effort.
 * Redddbaron: I was researching ways to integrate animal husbandry into my organic vegetable production experimental project. When I came across Holistic management I was curious. There seemed to be a potential way to integrate it into my trials. So of course the first thing I did was wiki Holistic management. I found the information on the page was woefully inadequate at that time. It was a very poor page currently under deletion notice. So I went ahead and did the research the hard way, but saved the links I had found. I figured that maybe I could make it better for the next guy by rewriting the page after it got deleted. So I joined Wikipedia. Once here and editing to improve several pages, I decided to join WikiProject Agriculture since it appeared that there was an acknowledgement there was improvement needed on many more agricultural pages.
 * Jytdog: I was a sleepy editor until about two and a half years, ago, when I walked by a protest about Monsanto and wondered what was up with it. I went to the internet and discovered the article here on Monsanto, which was a complete piece of ideological crap. Likewise, pages on genetically modified crops and food. This led me to other ag-related articles where I discovered that ideology about animal rights, environmentalism, and chemophobia – a huge bias against conventional agriculture – pretty much dominated many ag articles, and there was little content about the realities of farming in the world today, and really terrible sourcing. And just a huge, "don't know what they don't know" level of ignorance about farming and what farmers are actually like: savvy, hard working business people who are trying to make a living. Far too often farmers' perspectives are ignored altogether, and when farmers are discussed they are treated as dupes or some kind of victims. Its been interesting.

'''Are there any significant gaps in the coverage of Agriculture on the English Wikipedia? Are some regions or methods better represented than others? What can be done to fill the gaps?'''
 * Montanabw: I think the quality gap is more of a problem than the quantity gap, mostly due to lack of users with actual knowledge, but also some problems with POV-pushing, some of which may be by people who could be paid editors with an interest in agribusiness. I have noticed particular problems with articles on organic foods and farming, but also in articles on cattle raising techniques.
 * SMcCandlish: Ditto what Montanabw said, plus concerns about others with a COI, such as breeders. It seems to me that important articles have already been created, but many are poorly sourced and advance questionable views. Another frequent issue is lack of non-Western cultural perspectives, as well as historical views (many agricultural topics are covered only from a modern, Western agribusiness perspective. The very article Agriculture is a problem case in point, as Traditional farming redirects there, but should be its own article and is hardly covered at that article at all.
 * Redddbaron: 100% agree with Montana and McCandlish. The POV pushing is so bad in fact that there are articles that are perilously close to being complete falsehoods. But well referenced falsehoods.
 * Jytdog: Lots of work to do! Articles that really need help are Intensive farming and Intensive animal farming and all their sub-articles, which are still dominated by ideological concerns.

'''How difficult is it to obtain images for agriculture articles? Are there any specific pictures that the project is searching for?'''
 * Montanabw: I find that I often have to take photos of things in articles I want to illustrate. Farm equipment (other than tractors) has been hard to find, other than historic images; I believe I contributed the only photo of a hay stacker for instance.
 * SMcCandlish: I don't have a general answer to this, but for animal breeds, it's often difficult to get free, correct, and truly illustrative photographs; we're at the mercy of owners/breeders of extant stock to take encyclopedic-quality photos, and this isn't happening frequently for many rare breeds.

'''There are 38 agriculture-related articles on Wikipedia's list of vital articles, yet around 70% of these are only Start or C class. Have there been any concerted efforts to improve these articles? Why do some vital articles receive greater attention than others?'''


 * Montanabw: I think it is the same problem; finding dedicated editors with actual knowledge and enough time and interest.
 * SMcCandlish: I'd echo that, and add that some topics are "sexy", and naturally attract multiple editors' sustained interest, while others do not. This is true across all general topic areas, from language to physics to TV shows. The reasons often have more to do with what's in the news lately than how truly important the subject is. I can't think of anything agriculture-specific about this, other than, again, a general Western, modern, industrial-agriculture WP:Systemic bias.
 * Redddbaron: I have made improvements on several of those pages. I have put considerable effort into it. Some of my efforts were well taken, but on some pages it almost became an edit war, so I stopped trying to improve them, for now. I'll try again when I have more time.

How does your Project manage Portal:Agriculture and Agronomy?
 * SMcCandlish: Beats me; I'm unconvinced that people make much use of portals, and am concerned that their maintenance sucks up editorial time that could be spent on more important work.

'''What are the project's most pressing needs? How can a new contributor help today?'''
 * Montanabw: More editors! Taking a stub article, finding some sources, and expanding it to at least start or C- class. Or, taking an article where there are active knowledgeable, but too-busy editors and letting us help guide a new contributor to bring it up to GA status.
 * SMcCandlish: Agreed with Montanabw. Also, I think combing articles for bias and poor sourcing is especially pressing, more so in most cases than creating new articles. Fortunately, this winnowing process is a factor in both improving stubs and C-class articles, as I mostly do, and promoting B- and A-class ones to GA and FA.

Anything else you'd like to add?
 * SMcCandlish: It seems unfortunate to me that so many "micro-wikiprojects" keep forming, instead of taskforces/workgroups of the main project. It just bleeds editorial attention away from ensuring that coverage throughout the larger project's scope is adequate. Speaking about the trend generally, not just with regard to agriculture: We have far too many insular wikiprojects, some simply acting as fiefdoms with only half a dozen active editors. They're a fertile ground for POV-pushing on an broad scale. The smaller the project, the more likely it is to act as a WP:FACTION.
 * Redddbaron: The issue of using carefully crafted use of wikirules to corrupt an article to say exactly the opposite of the truth occurs, then there needs to be way remedy this. Good example. Lets say I post a review of 6 scientific studies on a certain type of agriculture. In that review, it states that there is no evidence of "A". A person writes a paragraph on a wikipage stating "There is no evidence of 'A'.", using that as a reference. Yet there may be 100s if not 1000s of peer reviewed, very good scientific studies of "A". They simply were not in the review cited. If I try to edit the page to say there is evidence, I can't use those scientific studies because they are primary studies? So the "no evidence" paragraph stands and the wiki page quality is poor because of this. What good is wiki as a reference when good science is eliminated and then because those references are not allowed, a POV pusher then can claim there is no evidence? This is a reference? In my mind it is an abuse of the rules. I have seen MEDRS abused in this way as well.
 * Jytdog: Would love to get more people with experience farming who are also able and willing to take the time to learn how Wikipedia works. Very difficult to find such folks.
 * Montanabw: This area is surprisingly contentious; I recently did a bit of work trying to play a neutral role in a dispute over a series of articles about a religion topic. Those folks were all singing Kumbayah in perfect harmony compared to some dustups I've seen over things here like organic farming or whether to use the UK or US English name for a cattle guard.

Next week, we'll find a few minutes to talk to WikiProject Time. For the time being, why not spend a while in the archive?