Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Archive 11

disambiguation
I have frequently encountered a related problem, which has several variations: often disambiguation would help; but is absent. Sometimes, it's there; but, not linked from the article. Sometimes, it's linked; but, w/ various "bugs".

Then, there are there are those that are inaccurate. There are those that are accurate in an extremely narrowly specific sense; though w/ typos, &/or incomplete.

Then, some may be accurate & complete, w/ very few typos, or even, no specific mistakes; but, so crowded & confusingly headed, that they are difficult to wade through.

Then, there are the disambig. pages where the above issues are corrected; but, the linked pages are deleted.

Then, something different than disambig. are the searches. There are searches that bring-up references for exactly the page that I'm looking for, where the excerpt is perfect, or nearly perfect; but, the actual page is deleted.

Conversely, there are pages that I know exist; but, do not arise in the search.

There are searches that have results based on incorrect excerpts, incorrect summaries; therefore correct quotes result in not getting that page.

There are, as well, redirects that lead to "page deleted".

Oy vey.

Hopiakuta 04:32, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

&, I do prefer Adam's option:

"...I think that we should make only one assumption - someone is coming to Wikipedia to find information on a topic they know little or nothing about, so why not give them all the options? That would be the best systemic bias. Adam 1212 04:16, 25 July 2006 (UTC)"

When there is any dispute, send everyone to disambiguation.

&, as well, encourage all users to submit

--spelling-variations--, as well.

Thank You.

Hopiakuta 04:42, 25 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Why not give them all the options? Because then they have to read through them, find what I want, and click it, which is annoying.  They have all the options: in the minority of cases where they don't want the target of the redirect, they can click to get to the disambiguation page. And by the way, could you consider writing a little more compactly, with fewer paragraph breaks?  It makes your posts kind of hard to read. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 17:56, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there should be any doubt about Philadelphia, Boston, or London; or Moscow (Russia, not Idaho), or Lima (Peru, not Ohio); I would say that Syracuse should be a disambig; Toledo probably should be Spain but I don't think it is so bad to have it be a disambig, since the Ohio city is not small; Parma probably Italy; Miami certainly Florida, not Ohio. Sorry, Ohio. Berlin certainly Germany, not Connecticut. Rome certainly Italy, not New York. - Jmabel | Talk 19:34, 29 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I should report that the two users who I had this nationalism edit war with, User:Kramden4700 and User:Wrath of Roth, as well as User:Adam 1212, have been identified as sockpuppets of User:Spotteddogsdotorg, based on contributions. Thus they have been blocked indefinitely (by User:Splash).


 * In light of this, apart from the comments of Adam1212, there seems to be little controversy on place name redirects in which there is naturally a strong single target, in the guise of nationalistic bias. I concur with Simetrical's analysis of page loads for English articles, on the basis of the English Wikipedia's intent for English-speaking readers. (Ways of making Wikipedia more efficient will cut down on unnecessary resources and allows money&mdash;donated by users&mdash;to go to other areas.)


 * Intrinsically, any article that has a primary topic disambiguation has a systemic bias, but the bias is (ideally) toward to more than half of all searchers searching for the primary article. This is livable compared to systemic bias within articles, which is of much greater concern. Plus, the number of items on a disambiguation page is not as important as the strength of association and importance that a consensus of people place on each item.


 * Perhaps the notice for a disambig page on the primary topic should be clearer or more prominent. Perhaps there should be a Wikiproject (or other mechanism) that tracks the fairness of primary topic disambiguation, redirects, and general disambiguation. This would not be limited to place names&mdash;the focus of this post&mdash;but also people, who may actually be more susceptible to nationalistic bias. These would be talked about on Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation most likely, and may as well return to this page. But systemic bias within articles, not searches or redirects or disambiguation, is of much greater concern to the WP community, and I think that is the aim of this Wikiproject. And the claim of nationalistic bias on this topic has been unpersuasive thus far. Tinlinkin 06:34, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Interview with Asha Haji Elmi
Mr Wales will be interviewing Asha Haji Elmi tomorrow. Part of the interview's goals is to produce source material which may be cited for expanding the Wikipedia article about Ms Elmi. We need help developing questions whose answers can be useful for the article. The questions are being developed at Wikinews as the interview will be published (and permanently archived) there. - Amgine 00:14, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Anthropocentrism
This is a form of systematic bias that is quite widespread in Wikipedia, as is to be expected. Many articles assume a human perspective without need or justification. For example, sleep and arthritis, rather than explaining what sleep and arthritis are in the most open terms, start from the human perspective and the articles limit themselves to human sleep and human arthritis. I would say this is the wrong way around (and I suggest Summary style would agree here). The articles should describe what sleep and arthritis are, common to most animals, with major sections describing the differing characteristics of mammals, reptiles (including or excluding birds), etc. The mammal section could then have a subsection detailing the characteristics of human arthritis/sleep with a link to human sleep and human arthritis respectively. We don't assume to write the article galaxy completely about the Milky Way because the only people who will ever read Wikipedia will be in the Milky Way. We don't write the article planet entirely about Earth for the same reason. Would anyone be interested in working on a Wikipedia namespace page about this problem? If you oppose this position, could you tell me what's wrong with it? --Oldak Quill 02:24, 31 July 2006 (UTC)


 * sleep most certainly does not "start from the human perspective" nor "limit (itself) to human sleep". It starts from a generic perspective and discusses both human and non-human sleep.  Powers 15:01, 31 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I disagree. Many sections are primarily about human sleep and others, which should be general, only discuss human sleep without reason. Whether the particular article sleep is anthropocentric or not isn't really relevant to this discussion, I simply gave a couple of examples (one of which may be bad). --Oldak Quill 03:07, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * To be honest, my big issue with your edit is not so much that I'm pro-anthropocentrism (I'm rather neutral, but whatever), as that it's a very separate problem from those addressed by this WikiProject. As I see it, this WikiProject is about two perceived problems:


 * The poor coverage of topics that aren't relevant to (e.g.) the English-speaking world. As a matter of principle, people should be able to come to Wikipedia and get as much information about (e.g.) China as about the U.S. (Well, maybe not "as much information," but certainly the disparity shouldn't be as great as it is now.) This element of the WikiProject is not backed by any particular policy, but regardless isn't controversial: if you're not interested in articles about China, well, you won't mind if they exist and are full-length. You might prefer that Wikipedians spend their time on things that you deem more important, but you can't really object to constructive editing that strives to address this perceived problem.
 * The poor representation of viewpoints that are more common among humans in general than among (e.g.) English-speaking humans in particular. This reflects one consequence of the NPOV policy.


 * Anthropocentrism is fundamentally different. I suppose you could complain that there aren't as many articles about penguins as about humans, but who cares? Further, I suppose you could complain that animals' viewpoints aren't represented in articles about topics on which they might have viewpoints, but since no editor can actually — verifiably — know an animal's viewpoints, there's no solution to that problem.


 * So, I don't object to de-anthropocentrizing articles, but I don't think that falls under the purview of this WikiProject.


 * Ruakh 04:05, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with Ruakh here, this doesn't seem to fall under WP:CSB. This is why this project (as Robert McHenry pointed out) probably should be renamed to Countering Systemic Imbalance. &mdash; mark ✎ 07:50, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Agree with Ruakh. - FrancisTyers · 09:24, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I would disagree it falls outside "Countering systematic bias" (the issue of a systematic underrepresention of animal disease, &c. is to do with the bias we have as humans). I do accept that this WikiProject doesn't feel it appropriate to extend itself to these issues and I will try to set up another project (perhaps a subproject of CSB?).


 * I do quickly want to respond to a few points. I was not trying to change the aim of this project or divert its efforts. I feel the work being done by this project is incredibly important and productive, and I strongly believe in it. It seemed logical to me that CSB would extend to anthropocentricism and it is for this reason that I added the template. Secondly, my wish is not to represent non-human animal viewpoints as such (it is impossible to do so anyway), my wish is to make certain articles which are common to more than one species, species-neutral. Such an article should concern itself with the commonalities between the species with major sections on the differences between the species. If arthritis were made species-neutral, it would not represent non-human animal "viewpoints", it would convey the characteristics of arthritis common to all species, and also the differing characteristics between birds and mammals (for example). I'll try to keep this WikiProject informed about this issue as I feel we share alot of common ground and are ultimately striving for a similar goal (that is, neutral, unbiased coverage). --Oldak Quill 12:18, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree that there is a lack of information on other species (I was trying to find some in our reproduction articles just a few days ago) and that this could come under systemic bias. It isn't what this project has previously focused on (though there have been articles listed under WikiProject Countering systemic bias open tasks for some time.) I have no particular problem with it being included. WP:CSB has always been fairly broad and people tend to focus on just a few areas that interest them anyway. --Cherry blossom tree 12:42, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Death is not a barometer for importance of events
A lot of examples of comparative important uses the amount of deaths to say that it should receive more attention then a comparative article with a lot fewer deaths thats a lot longer...

I know this is not a politically correct thing to say, but while sentimentally it might be nice to think, the amount of death an event causes is not the main barometer for its importance. While undeniably as a death toll rises its importance also rises, its hardly been a reliable way to gauge how it affects the world. The September 11 attacks really only had a moderate amount of casualities, but ultimately has resulted in current Iraq war, (no I'm not saying that Iraq was involved in 9/11, rather that because of the events of 9/11 set forth a series of events that have resulted/majorly influenced the war in Iraq) Along with a myriad amount of other things. This is true for a lot of events that happen in the "Western World," and its important to seperate true systemic bias from trying deny the reality that certain events (and hence certain people, and yes certain countries) are more important in sense of an encyclopedia. In short Wikipedia should reflect the world as it is - not as we'd like to see it.

Thats not to say that there shouldn't be more information on signicant events for countries that do not receive much attention. (Madrone 04:27, 2 August 2006 (UTC))


 * This argument risks being circular though, with the importance of events measured by their influence on other events of importance. So massacres in Central Africa (to take one example) also set off wars, which to the people there are way more important than the Iraq War, but which themselves get less coverage...  Some kind of "how many people did this affect" measure may be the best crude measure of significance available, despite its drawbacks. -- Danny Yee 06:09, 12 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Agreed, and agreed. I'm going to modify the particlar statement about 9/11 to say that the 3,000 WTC deaths are treated as more significant rather than more "world-changing" which is what I think that section is really getting at.  Unless someone can develop a measure of world-change I think it would be best to avoid any statements about the relative significance of changes wrought by different events.  BTW, I can't tell if this counts as a policy page you're supposed to discuss before changing, so if that's the case revert and let's discuss. 12.46.32.10 20:09, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Conflicts of interest
Systematic bias also results from people who are paid to edit wikipedia. Please see Conflicts of interest created by User:Eloquence 10 August 2006 in this regard. WAS 4.250 21:30, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Discworld
I believe fans of Discworld cause systematic bias on Wikipedia. I have been reading Wikipedia for years, and have been continually annoyed to reach the bottom of an article and see "also, [so-and-so] is mentioned in Terry Pratchett's wondrous Discworld!" I am tired of seeing Discworld mentioned on every other disambiguation page. There is nothing that can possibly be so important about Discworld as to justify its mention on 1238 pages (according to search). I used to consider myself an inclusionist, but along the way, somewhere, something must have gone terribly wrong. I know you are all worried about things like the leaders of countries and widespread torture across Africa being less well-covered than television show contestants, but this epidemic must be stopped. &mdash; vivacissamamente 00:22, 12 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, you are absolutely right. We need a subwikiproject to address this imbalance; what about mentions in Simpsons, ro Family Guy? What all this focus on a bloody novel series? --Rhwawn (talk to Rhwawn) 00:50, 12 August 2006 (UTC)


 * If I come across them, I tend to remove such references simply because we are not the encyclopedia of pop culture. &mdash; mark ✎ 09:48, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

City names and disambiguation dabs
We are having an interesting discussion at Talk:Valencia (city). Feel free to join in or we could start a parallel discussion here. I nominated the page move myself but realised that User:Bolivian Unicyclist has made an important point there. Nonetheless, this does not only refers to Valencia but there are many other cases too. Regards, E    Asterion  u talking to me? 07:23, 27 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Here's another one: Naruto (see Talk:Naruto). Jun-Dai 06:57, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Obesity
References to people's weight are routinely removed from Wikipedia on the basis that they are unencylopaedic or irrelevant. Attempts to set up categories and list of obese people are denied. Meanwhile, there are categories and lists of short and tall men and women. Category:Human height exists yet Category:Human weight does not. Napoleon's height may be discussed but the obesity of a government official in charge of a country's obesity policy is taboo. I believe this is due to systemic bias of Wikipedia editors who have been brought up not to comment on people's weight. I'd imagine that many editors here have characteristsics that correlate with obesity (sedentary, American, etc). The level of detail in the articles about obscure fast food chains is indicative. Fatipedia. Curtains99 13:12, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Interesting point. I think the Human height example does cut off any objection.--BMF81 13:39, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I disagree. Height fluctuates slightly, but is relatively constant once adulthood is reached.  Weight, on the other hand, can vary widely within short spans of time.  A hypothetical category or list of people by weight could be argued as unmaintainable.  Powers T 15:40, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Systematic bias towards USA names
I would like to draw people's attention towards the discussion currently at Talk:Popsicle.

There is a form of systematic bias which I have not seen discussed here before: that of preference of choice towards the North American names for things, above other countries in the English-speaking world.

This is en.wikipedia.org. It is not usa.wikipedia.org. That means it's an international website, for the English-speaking world.

I'm not dwelling on minor points like spelling differences here. Okay, so colour/color is spelled differently across the Atlantic. Not a big deal.. and WP:MOS says that these spelling differences should be respected, and not be the cause for edit wars - a policy with which I wholeheartedly agree.

However, when it comes to some naming issues, there is a real problem. It does seem like the rest of the English-speaking world is being forced to bow down to the USA, just because there are more Americans with internet access than there are any other single nationality of native English speakers. In the above example, "Popsicle" is a brand name sold in North America. It is not sold in Europe (at least, I have never seen it here). Indeed, the word is not recognised outside North America, unless someone has happened to remember it from a film. But... lo and behold, the title of the article about iced lollipops remains "Popsicle"... simply because of the Americans who think that the number of Google hits gives them the right to steam-roller their own opinions over the rest of the English-speaking world.

This is systematic bias at its very worst, and is the kind of thing which - seriously - makes me want to quit Wikipedia, because I feel that it is so USA-centric, with little room for international compromise.

Opinions, anyone? EuroSong talk 19:26, 5 September 2006 (UTC)


 * You might want to take a look at the essay WP:COOL and the policy WP:AGF. "Popsicle" is the only word Americans use for this concept; I wouldn't have a clue what "ice lolly" or "ice lollipop" meant (though my first guess wouldn't be too far off). The presence of "popsicle" on the Web (3.8 MGhits, even ignoring common mispellings like "popcicle" (70 kGhits) and "popscicle" (16 kGhits)) is so much higher than those of "ice lolly" (130 kGhits) and "ice lollipop" (1.2 kGhits) that a neutral party might well think "popsicle" were the universal term. You feel that "popsicle" is a specifically American term, while "ice lollipop" is an international term, but I'm not convinced that's true — and while I've no plans to get involved in the debate at Talk:Popsicle, some of the people there aren't convinced, either. Don't take it as a personal — or national — affront, but as a difference of opinion. Sometimes rational, well-meaning people disagree. Ruakh 19:56, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Heh... thanks, but don't worry :) I do stay cool, and I do always assume good faith. I am not taking this personally, or as a national affront. I do realise that the majority of the American people here are simply acting as they see proper, with no bad intentions. But still, that does not mean there is not an issue. The fact is this is systematic bias, and it does make the rest of the world feel like they're being squeezed out. The issue needs to be addressed, at some level. And I'm not just talking about this "Popsicle" debate: that's just one article. I am talking about the wider picture, and trying to get people to recognise that there is an issue here. EuroSong talk 00:17, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Most of the articles I see on wikipedia try to have a country neutral naming scheme, but inevitably there are instances when there is no neutral name for something, unless you do something like "Cyndrical flavored Ice around a elegonated handle" IMO for instances like this the article should be the most common and popular name for it. (Madrone 02:13, 6 September 2006 (UTC))


 * I'm from Sweden, and I always thought popsicle was the "internationally recognized" word for the thing. That doesn't mean I disagree about the points you make about US-centric articles though. My favorite is paratrooper. It brings up a lot of US Airforce (?) training manual content which is largely irrelevant, but doesn't really spend alot of time talking about paratroopers in general. And an article about stealth listed one example of a stealth ship, a US project that had been abandoned, making no mention of the several succesful designs currently being evaluated or having entered service with other navies.

I'd like to see some kind of policy or guideline that encourages all editors to seek out information on the topic at hand in order to, to the best extent possible, reflect some sort of world wide view, instead of their own view, so that attention is brought to this issue. Now, as you might guess since I'm not registered, I'm not a frequent editor, and thus, I don't know a lot about how all this stuff about policies works. Does anyone else think that some policy/guideline along this line would be a good thing, and would it be possible to implement (or does it contradict some other policy already in place)? 85.224.198.251 23:56, 26 April 2007 (UTC)


 * This is covered in the WP:MOS, under National varieties of English. It has come up time and again under WP:RM and usually the suggeted renaming of an article is dealt with using this MOS section as a guidline. Here are four examples:
 * Gasoline See Talk:Gasoline/Archive 2 This was a long heated debate!
 * Utility knife called a "Boxcutter" in some parts of the States (and was called that during 9/11 by CNN which is headquarters in such an area) and a "Stanley knife" in the commonwealth. It was under Boxcutter but was moved to Utility knife, See Talk:Utility knife --Philip Baird Shearer 10:11, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Orange (colour) See Talk:Orange (colour)Talk:Orange (colour)/Archived move request October 2005,Talk:Orange (colour)
 * Tram See Talk:Tram
 * --Philip Baird Shearer 10:11, 27 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Also Trousers is of course an article which does not demonstrate a systematic bias towards USA names --Philip Baird Shearer 10:15, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Systematic bias towards UK names
I would like to draw people's attention towards the article Candy.

There is a form of systematic bias which I have not seen discussed here before: that of preference of choice towards the UK names for things, above other countries in the English-speaking world.

This is en.wikipedia.org. It is not UK.wikipedia.org. That means it's an international website, for the English-speaking world.

I'm not dwelling on minor points like spelling differences here. Okay, so colour/color is spelled differently across the Atlantic. Not a big deal.. and WP:MOS says that these spelling differences should be respected, and not be the cause for edit wars - a policy with which I wholeheartedly agree.

However, when it comes to some naming issues, there is a real problem. It does seem like the rest of the English-speaking world is being forced to bow down to the UK, just because there are more people with UK heritage with internet access than there are any other single nationality of English speakers.

This is systematic bias at its very worst. WAS 4.250 04:30, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * As a pre-emptive comment before anyone says anything. This does not fall within WP:POINT so don't accuse WAS of it. JoshuaZ 04:47, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * No, but it skates pretty close to violating Don't be a dick. Though I do mostly agree with him. Some articles are going to have to fall on one side of the fence or the other, and in some cases, as in "popsicle", there is simply no alternative recognizable in American English, which, nationalism aside, has more native speakers than any other dialect. --Cúchullain t/ c 05:12, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Do we have a particular rule about being a pointy dick? - Jmabel | Talk 05:46, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
 * "...there is simply no alternative recognizable in American English, which, nationalism aside, has more native speakers than any other dialect." Oh dear! Are you really advocating bias towards the majority?
 * Hehe, very funny. But, my dear WAS 4.250, there are two problems: The population of North America (299,102,661; current Wikipedia figure) is larger than the combined populations of the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (136,579,697) - so your copying and changing of my words is no longer factually accurate; and the "Candy" article is actually very internationally neutral, clearly explaining the usage in different countries, and providing the proper American term ("confectionery"), which is definitely a word in AmE. I would, however, agree with you if we could find an article whose title was exclusive UK usage, which the rest of the world did not understand at all - and I would also support its renaming to a more internationally acceptable title. Can we find such an article, I wonder? EuroSong talk 14:13, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I realize you're trying to make a joke, but according to the article at least, candy is a principally American term, and from my own knowledge I can say that it's certainly the best-known American term for the topic. Ruakh 17:00, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if you were trying to make a point altogether too subtle for me, but the article you've chosen seems to directly contradict your argument - the word candy is never used in the UK, as the article states. --Cherry blossom tree 22:42, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Candy is indeed used in the UK: just, not to mean all confectionery (which we also call "sweets"). The word candy is used specifically to describe the hard boiled sugar which is moulded into a walking-stick shape – known as a candy cane, like this one. EuroSong talk 00:16, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Johnbod 18:56, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
 * This clearly isn't a joke, because jokes are the funny ones. The article uses the US term for what the UK calls sweets, but dares to include some explanation near the top of what other English-speaking regions call them.

Reverse systemic bias
Has anyone studied this phenomenon - people voting to keep unreferenced articles about non-notable people because they want to avoid being "biased" ? Tintin (talk) 04:45, 7 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I'll bet not, because I'm sure most people have better things to do than study obscure Wikipedia articles. At any rate, I'm sure we have enough articles about Pokemon, Dr. Who, minor league hockey and other First World ephemera to more than make up for it.--Cúchullain t/ c 06:26, 7 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I do it. Well, not so much vote to keep as not be so quick to put stuff up for deletion. But I don't do this for obvious non-notables.


 * The real problem is that it is harder to tell from Google if someone from a country with low web-presence is notable. And it's similarly hard to reference the article in the first place: leading to a situation where articles about the Less Connected World are a) less likely to be written, b) more likely to be deleted for lack of refs, and c) more important relatively than articles with good web-representation elsewhere.


 * So I'm prepared to tolerate some suspected dross from the Less Connected World when I wouldn't from the Highly Connected World (if you claim to be famous in the US and can only produce 10 Ghits of reviews you wrote yourself, that pretty much proves you're not: if you claim to be famous in Zimbabwe can produce even one Ghit, you might well be.) JackyR | Talk 20:50, 11 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, I exhibit this reverse bias. When I see poor article that is from a less-connected area, I generally try to improve the syntax and grammar on the assumption that the originator may not be fully fleunt in english, and I do not nominate for deletion. (Of course I rarely nominate for deletion anyway.) -Arch dude 21:12, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Hideyoshi's invasions of Korea
I would like to request help to the users at this project to resolve recent series of conflicts in the article Hideyoshi's invasions of Korea.

Originally called Seven Year War, the war was changed to Imjin War on the basis that Seven Year War was less common & that the title was confused with the French and Indian War.

As it turned out, one of the users had used sock puppets to promote Imjin War.

Following this, the JPOV editors pushed along the tide and flipped the table over, changing the article's name to the current one.

That is not only it. Please read the introduction.

"Hideyoshi's Invasions of Korea refers to the 1592–1598 Japanese-Korean war masterminded by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, which originally had the professed aim of conquering China."

I think this issue is relevant to the project because the JPOV editors claim that "Hideyoshi's invasions of Korea" is more prevalent (which was proven false under my Google searches) and that high school text books use such phrases.

But I think this is systemic bias because more Americans are likely to study Japanese history than Korean history, and, thus, share viewpoints with Japanese.

Thereby, even if I conceded that "Hideyoshi's invasions of Korea" was more common, we should still vote on Imjin War on basis of the sytemic bias of the American public.

Thanks. (Wikimachine 22:39, 7 September 2006 (UTC))

P.S. I have suspicion that user:Komdori is a strawman for another user. (Wikimachine 22:41, 7 September 2006 (UTC))
 * You should file a requested move and take it from there. E    Asterion  u talking to me? 10:10, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Additionally, this issue seems more fit for Wikipedia:Neutrality Project. &mdash; mark ✎ 10:43, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot. (Wikimachine 04:56, 27 September 2006 (UTC))

Countering systemic bias inside WP:CSD?
I just noticed that Wikiproject:Morocco and Wikiproject:Western Sahara have been placed under the category Wikiproject:Middle East, using the G8 expanded definition for Greater Middle East. I do not think this is appropriate at all. Your thoughts? -- E   Asterion  u talking to me? 10:06, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


 * You may want to raise such issues at WP:WNP. &mdash; mark ✎ 10:42, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Anglocentricism
I think it would be helpful to have a template for Anglocentrism. This would be useful in articles concerning the British Isles, or the UK, where there is a bias towards England. --MacRusgail 11:02, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Indian town deletion nom
Can someone please check this deletion nom and comment? - Ganeshk  ( talk ) 01:50, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Historical information
I would like to call your attention to WikiProject Historical information, which aims to better the quantity and quality of historical information in articles not about history. (E.g., to have "invention of the wheel" and "wheel through the centuries" sections in wheel.) Anyone who is interested is invited to join!&mdash;msh210 ℠ 16:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Is iabolish.com a reliable source?
http://www.iabolish.com/slavery_today/index.html

I know it's a partisan website, but then again, I can't imagine a pro-slavery website, and it does link to other sources.

It talks about slave raids in the Darfur conflict, which interests me because our article currently only talks about the killing.

— Armedblowfish (talk|mail|contribs) 16:19, 1 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think this is the right place to ask the question, but I'll answer as best I can. It's a borderline case. In theory there's no problem in citing it where it's reporting on incidents, rather than giving opinions based upon them, but you should be careful that they are reporting accurately. Ideally the incidents in question should have been reported in the mainstream media and would be cited to there, if not then I think you'd have to make the possible bias in the source clear in the text. --Cherry blossom tree 23:36, 3 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your input. : ) Armedblowfish (talk|mail|contribs) 18:22, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Images
I don't know if this has been discussed extensivelly before, but I think one of the most pressing forms of bias is in the images in articles. Far too many articles are dominated by pictures of white folks, usually young and attractive; for example, fairly important articles like human leg, arm, vagina, pregnancy, human back, hand, face, and others. I think we should start trying to change this; perhaps we could get a list of affected articles going to get an idea of what needs improvement, and try to look through pictures we have available to get better representation among the pictures.--Cúchullain t/ c 05:52, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

One that has always bothered me is Woman, where there has been an ongoing debate over which picture to use in the intro, a nude photograph of a European woman, or the line drawing from the Pioneer spacecraft, which was designed to be as ethnically indistinguishable as possible. Discussion on this particular topic usually devolves into a censorship debate; apparently some think the article "needs" a picture of a real naked woman more than it needs to be internationally relevant. (I don't mean for that to be as harsh as it sounds, but human starts with the Pioneer picture as well, and the images there are much better balanced.)--Cúchullain t/ c 05:56, 3 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd tend to agree, but I'm not sure what could be done. I've flicked through some non-european Wikipedias and they all seem to use the same pictures as us. We could ask them if they could provide alternates, I suppose. There are possibly pictures on Flickr etc we could use but I'm not too familiar with those sites. Not too helpful, I'm afraid. --Cherry blossom tree 23:46, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

DYK
The DYK section featured on the main page is always looking for interesting new and recently expanded stubs from different parts of the world. Please make a suggestion.--Peta 02:17, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Use of diacritics
I get the impression there is a number of editors in wikipedia with a systemic aversion towards the use of diacritics in personal and geographical names, generally arguing that those characters are not part of the English alphabet. Has anyone else experienced and/or noticed this? Regards, -- Asterion talk 10:42, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Maybe, but I think bias against diacritics is among the least serious biases affecting Wikipedia.--Cúchullain t/ c 07:58, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
 * And, in any case, they are simply wrong. I haven't seen much active argument about this; it's just that articles that predate our switch over to Unicode sources couldn't have diacritics in titles. - Jmabel | Talk 22:28, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, Jmabel. I am aware of that. I am mainly talking about this user's actions: . I understand there were problems before switching to unicode but this is no longer the case, AFAIK. Thanks,  Asterion talk 22:48, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I encounterd a technical bias against diacritics. I added links back to project gutenberg for many authors. Authors whose article titles include diacritics were harder to link correctly, and were noticably disproportionately represented in the "missing links." I worked around it and got them all linked. The problem here is purely technical: when confronted with a huge list of improvements, it's easy to pick the low-hanging fruit and rationalize that other editors with more expertise can deal with the hard ones. In my case, I essentially never need diacritics in normal life, so I must re-learn how to type them when I need them. -Arch dude 21:27, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

An area suffering from systemic bias
Most of the articles on 'Christian metal' and its constituent bands are extremely biased in the following ways:
 * They subtextually try to legitimise the genre (which is not regarded very well within the real metal community)
 * The articles are all written in a fashion which presupposes the reader is either a believer in Christianity, or at least acknowledges the existence of a deity (a bias which is all over the place here)
 * The articles sometimes have an evangelical tone, and also suggest that evangelisation is morally good ,something with which many do not agree, but it is surely not necessary to find citations for things like that in an article on a heavy metal band.
 * The general flavour is just too preachy, upbeat, and familiar to be encyclopedic. They read like reviews in a bad magazine.
 * When I attempted to fix it, I was accused of being biased, and reported to the 'requests for investigation' section to try to get me banned. While I admit that I do not think highly of the subject, it strikes me that the prevailing - and badly informed - opinion is that I am 'biased' just because I don't like it, whereas as dedicated and fanatical fans who support the music are not biased.

Any suggestions, feedback etc. would be helpful. The Crying Orc 15:19, 19 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Possilbly in bad-faith. Please see WP:RFI.  --Lim e tom 17:34, 19 October 2006 (UTC)


 * This editor (Limetom) is one of the people who have been marginalising dissenting voices aggressively. In this one's case, it involves following me around and reverting changes I have made. Or commenting in places that I have, like here.  I have warned him about assuming good faith, so I hope he will stop accusing me of acting in bad faith.  The Crying Orc 18:02, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Project directory
Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 13:34, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Vote at Talk:Passing
This pending vote to move the article that discusses the practice of "passing" -- for white or for some other ethnicity to avoid race-based social or psychological consequences -- plans to re-locate that article to a less visible or downright obscure name. Moving Passing to Passing (sociology) is intended to make way for a DAM page that makes it easier to find the article on "overtaking" (i.e. "passing") other vehicles on the road, and other uses of the verb "pass". The concept of passing is being treated as obscure and outdated -- if not downright phoney (there are suggestions to delete it altogether). In fact, there is a huge debate going on now among people of color and within multiculturalism about racial classification, and whether people like Homer Plessy, W.E.B. Du Bois, Walter Francis White, Oona King, Michael Manley, and Barack Obama should be re-classified ethnically. This article provides crucial background on the stigma associated with some racial heritages, how it has been coped with, and how it is still being coped with by some individuals. Historically, talking about "passing" has been taboo, since it threatened to expose minority-group "passers" to hostile or disdainful treatment on the one hand, and it stigmatized individuals and families belonging to the dominant group on the other. Today, the concept and its history are part of a growing, painful but important debate about ethnic solidarity vs individual identity. Regardless of how you feel about that issue, passing is integral to that cultural discussion and needs to be highlighted, not hidden away. Please, go to the talk page and vote. And add to the article too, if you can. Lethiere 06:50, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Issue resolved. While it appears the DAP will go through, I will try to participate to assure that the article and re-direct are not rendered too obscure. When it became clear that the chief proponent of the move proposal had become a transgendered editor for whom it is important that the Passing article give equal prominence to passing as a gender-modification phenomenon, I withdrew my opposition. I hate it when minorities fight over crumbs! Lethiere 00:04, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Java - Island vs Programming Language
An interesting and now frequently repeated suggestion to move the article on Java in Indonesia with a population of 120 million, a history over 1500 years old (last 500 with European influences) an the most populas Island in the world as it isn't sufficiently notiable compared to the Java programing language that was originally developed between 1991 - 1995 as Oak and released under the name Java in 1995. The suggestion is that Java should be moved to Java (Island) not even identifing that its part of Indonesia. Then the page Java be redirected to the disambiguation page. The reasons being argued is notibility, that Americans associate Java with the programming language or the coffee (incidentally from Java) rather then the place. Gnangarra 07:26, 29 October 2006 (UTC)


 * It's not that its the first time either - this is probably the third time that this has occurred. It really reflects a very limited understanding of world geography  SatuSuro 13:40, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Origins of Bias do not include Northern Hemisphere bias
From "The Origins of Bias":


 * The average Wikipedian on English Wikipedia (1) is male, (2) is technically-inclined, (3) is formally educated, (4) speaks English to an extent, (5) is White, (6) is aged 15-49, (7) is from a predominantly Christian country, (8) is from an industrialized nation, and (9) is more likely to be employed in intellectual pursuits than in practical skills or physical labor.

This description is missing something very obvious. The average English-language Wikipedian also resides in the Northern Hemisphere. This is most obvious when reading various articles on military history, where such ambiguous phrases as "winter of 1944" appear fairly often as a way of expressing the time. Seasons are not a clear way of stating the time! It's not correct to state that just because a particular battle or war occured in the Northern Hemisphere, that it is okay to use Northern Hemisphere seasons in such cases. It simply does not work in a global context.

One example is this quotation from the Pacific War article: "By 1943 the Silent Service had learned how to use its 150 subs to maximum effect. The faulty torpedoes were fixed that fall." Considering the Pacific War included battles in the Southern Hemisphere (the Darwin bombing being one example), there is no sound reason why this can't be reworded to remove the seasonal reference. Is "fall" here intending to mean March, April, May, June, September, October, November, December, a less specific time in the second quarter of the year, a less specific time in the last quarter of the year or none of the above? This time reference is so confusing. --B.d.mills 02:11, 1 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I have modified 'The Origins of Bias' to include a statement about the average Wikipedian being from the Northern Hemisphere. Anyone who disputes the need for such a statement is invited to view the following articles in Wikipedia from the perspective of a resident in the Southern Hemisphere:
 * Operation_Ten-Go By spring 1945 ... the once formidable Imperial Japanese Navy's Combined Fleet was reduced to just a handful of operational warships and a few remaining aircraft and aircrew. Spring 1945? I thought the war ended before September 1945. As a resident of the Southern Hemisphere, I interpret the chronologically ambiguous phrase "By spring 1945" as "By September 1945". As proof of the lack of awareness of the needs for Southern Hemisphere residents, this article included this quotation on the day it was a featured article.
 * Foucault pendulum: The red line shows the precession with respect to the Earth of a Foucault pendulum located anywhere on the northern hemisphere. Little description of the behaviour of such pendulums in the Southern Hemisphere appears in this article.
 * Pacific War: By 1943 the Silent Service had learned how to use its 150 subs to maximum effect. The faulty torpedoes were fixed that fall. The Pacific War included the involvement of nations in both hemispheres. To use Northern Hemisphere seasons as time references is not acceptable for an encyclopedia with a global audience.
 * It is not hard to find additional examples. --B.d.mills 02:56, 3 November 2006 (UTC)


 * There was also a "citation needed" mark after the quote that went something like "those with strong opinions tend to edit more than..." and I wonder if this is necessary.  Any comments? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.91.215.185 (talk • contribs) 19 November 2006.
 * I removed it. This is not in w: space. - Jmabel | Talk 22:16, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

scientism
Since scientism, economism and militarism are well known sources of bias, these three definitions should be considered. Views of energy are particularly subject to all three, so a project just about that should be considered. If anything what's there isn't anthropocentric enough.

Many articles on scientific topics use language that suggests that the current scientific thinking is "true" or unchallengeable; Some even smack of scientism - claiming to find objective moral truth in empirical facts. In climate change and evolution and even particle physics there is some challenge to this, but in other subject areas bald statements that claim much more than scientific method would advise, continue to exist in otherwise good articles. This is probably because there are so many students who write for Wikipedia, and perhaps more young people, who forget (or never knew) that theories change. Realize that in 1904, before general relativity, it was believed that "F=MA" was simply "true" without any need to qualify this at all. This is bad science, and it's a bad Wikipedia article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 142.177.97.236 (talk • contribs) 6 November 2006.
 * Science.


 * You can write an article about how science works and what is the problem with models. Any view on how the world works is a model with more or less inaccuracy while serving the purpose of helping us to understand our environment. Modern science is just about trying to find a way to explain things better. Wandalstouring 16:55, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

economism
Probably the worst example of overclaiming what the status quo of experts really says about things is in economics. Many articles use definitions straight from neoclassical economics with not enough challenge from other theories, though there has been work on this, it never seems to end. The article capitalism is not bad at balancing major theories and what they have to say but less-argued articles tend to be far less balanced and not give all major economic theories enough space. Where possible the claims of the economists who invent terms and metrics should be used, not the claims of those who promote them as silver bullets. Since every political party has its own theory of economics, and promotes its own policies as if they were such silver bullets, the dominant theories in rich countries have far too much space - see also Developed World bias above —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 142.177.97.236 (talk • contribs) 6 November 2006.
 * Economics

militarism
Likewise, a lot of definitions straight from military texts are used too. Often for terms that are used mostly or only in the military like command and control warfare, but also often for terms that are much more general like just command and control. This bias may be due to the fact that many U.S. military documents are in the public domain and easily turned into long boring articles that don't challenge the view of the US military at all. Heavily scrutinized articles like collateral damage or terrorism tend to be all right, but some like weapons of mass destruction must be watched constantly to make sure they remain complete and contain all the various possible definitions used by various kinds of institutions, not just militaries and governments. A related issue is that wars might well be always documented from the point of view of the winners. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 142.177.97.236 (talk • contribs) 6 November 2006.
 * Militarism

Liberalism
I see that neither the main page nor this page addresses the pervasive liberal/leftist/socialist bias throughout wikipedia. Rather a large blindspot for people who claim they're trying to correct blindspots...


 * Probably because we feel it is counterbalenced by the authoriterian/rightist/fashist bias.Geni 00:40, 14 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Where I live - and I suspect in most of the world - liberalism is right-wing. But yes, Wikipedia probably does have a rightist/liberal/libertarian bias... -- Danny Yee 06:09, 14 November 2006 (UTC)


 * In the USA "liberal" and "left-wing" are very nearly synonymous terms.


 * http://www.bartleby.com/61/32/L0103200.html
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics
 * http://wordpress.com/tag/liberal-and-left-wing-political-blogs/
 * http://www.fast-times.com/dictionaryl.html


 * -- Writtenonsand 10:59, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

All of which simply goes to show that almost everyone thinks Wikipedia's political bias runs counter to their own, whatever it might be. That's probably because most people usually read primarily media that agrees with their own politics, so when they encounter something broader, they notice the points of disagreement more than those of agreement. - Jmabel | Talk 04:33, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

"The average Wikipedian..."
I tagged "The average Wikipedian..." passage with. It is presented as fact, but may not be. I tend to agree with some of the points presented, and I cannot imagine many would disagree. But common knowledge is not fact. Verification is the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia, not fact [or common knowledge]. Yes, I know that this is not the article namespace, and so it does not necessarily have to follow the Verification policies. Because it does, however, organize people to work direclty with the article namespace, and it presents this information as fact, I think that verification is necessary. Please consider this before deleting the tag. --Iamunknown 00:54, 20 November 2006 (UTC)


 * This discussion has surfaced before; see here and here for two fairly recent examples. The gist of the argument for not having the verification tag is indeed that this is not article space; and additionally, that a glance on userpages broadly confirms the statements. As there is currently no demographic data available, we are not going to able to source it with reliable sources. Since many editors do recognize the trends (just like you) I personally think that it is fine to keep the statement. &mdash; mark ✎ 07:56, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Also, I don't understand your last argument. Yes, this project merely organizes people to work on neglected topics in the article namespace. However I don't see how the existence of an unsourced passage in the project's mission statement would affect the work of these people in article namespace. WP:CSB does not, after all, instruct people to compromise important guidelines like WP:V and WP:CITE or something like that; in fact, many CSB regulars are editors who attach great importance to reliable sources. &mdash; mark ✎ 08:19, 20 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I also don't follow your second argument. The verification policy is specifically applicable to articles only, as you say. I don't see how you make the leap that since this project organises people to work on articles it also needs to be verifiable. If you're going to start applying policies to it then the whole page is original research. Deliberately so. But then so is most of the rest of the Wikipedia: namespace, and most of it also affects the way people work on articles. --Cherry blossom tree 12:46, 20 November 2006 (UTC)


 * The tagger has a point, but this issue can be mitigated through careful rewording. Instead of saying "The average Wikipedian is", one could rewrite this to say "The average Wikipedian is likely to be" or "The average Wikipedian is believed to be". The verification issue would still be valid here, but with such rewording the statement would be more accurate and less misleading. --B.d.mills 00:43, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Of course, actual verification of these statements would be welcome. The passage is basically a manifesto, not an attempt at encyclopedic neutrality; in this case, I think that is perfectly acceptable. - Jmabel | Talk 22:21, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

One source of our bias is motivational: that we bother to write mostly on subjects about which we're excited. So we tend to describe them enthusiastically, unless the subject is widely known (or we're extremist 'flamers'). I perceived that bias in reading about Paolo Soleri; the article was quite a glowing description of him, leaving possible criticisms unmentioned. Well, who takes the time to contribute here, about a more obscure subject, like Paolo Soleri? Probably mostly people who are enthusiastic about him.

Northern Hemisphere bias
I recently added the following to the description of the average Wikipedian: "is from the Northern Hemisphere". I would like to expand on this by providing a more detailed explanation, but I am reluctant to do this without prior discussion.

There can be no doubt that the bias exists. Many general Wikipedia articles are written by residents of the Northern Hemisphere for residents of the Northern Hemisphere, and in many cases this leads to wording that is confusing and potentially misleading to residents of the Southern Hemisphere. My user page has some examples of this bias, including a few from Wikipedia.

Here is a choice example from a Wikipedia article on Comet Hale-Bopp (which I have since corrected) that shows how misleading such a bias can be:


 * "The comet was much less impressive to Southern Hemisphere observers than it had been in the Northern Hemisphere, but southerners were able to see the comet gradually fade from view during the summer and autumn of 1997."

The above is misleading because it described the comet's visibility from the Southern Hemisphere using Northern Hemisphere seasons.

The bias occurs in other places as well. For example, articles on battles and other historical events are full of such wording. Not all such use is inappropriate, such as referring to a campaign as a "winter campaign" if that is the historically-correct name. However, such expressions as "the faulty torpedoes were fixed by autumn" is imprecise and misleading.

The usual manifestation of the bias is the user of northern hemisphere seasons as general time descriptors to indicate a period of time that is shorter than a year and longer than a month. In many such cases, more accurate descriptions can be substituted such as month names, ranges of months and so forth. The substitution of more precise dates from primary references also has the side benefit of improving the accuracy of Wikipedia as a whole.

Not all use of seasonal references is inappropriate. These are all OK because they cannot cause confusion:
 * Football is played as a winter sport in many countries
 * The winter campaign caused the Germans to lose many troops to the cold
 * Bears and squirrels hibernate in the winter

These are not because they are ambiguous:
 * Orion is a constellation visible in the evening in winter
 * World War II started in the summer of 1939
 * Southerners were able to see the comet gradually fade from view during the summer and autumn of 1997
 * The faulty torpedoes were fixed by autumn

I hope I have made the difference fairly clear - the inappropriate examples are time references that can be made more precise by substituting nonseasonal time descriptors.


 * Orion is a constellation visible in the evening from November to April
 * World War II started in September, 1939
 * Southerners were able to see the comet gradually fade from view during the second half of 1997
 * The faulty torpedoes were fixed by October.

Northern Hemisphere bias also manifests itself as a selection effect on Northern Hemisphere topics, but these are not as common.

What we need is a more concise description of Northern Hemisphere bias so the Systemic Bias article can include it.

The archives have a previous discussion on this topic that I started previously. --B.d.mills 01:45, 22 November 2006 (UTC)


 * The majority of the world's land surface is in the northern hemisphere, and this includes most of Asia, a good chunk of Africa, the Caribbean, and Central America. I think a northern hemisphere bias is inevitable for that reason. --MacRusgail 15:12, 29 January 2007 (UTC)


 * All the more reason to work on countering it. The northern-hemisphere systemic bias often interacts with other forms of systemic bias, which gives many encyclopedia articles a northern-hemisphere, temperate-zone, North-American/European slant to many articles. Thus, the presence of a northern-hemisphere bias in an article can be a sign that the article is slanted in other ways as well. --B.d.mills 23:31, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * As a Kiwi, this is an issue I often spot. One problem is when we have direct quotes and release dates. In this case, assuming that a month/month-range was never provided it's best to provide clarification in brackets IMHO Nil Einne 16:53, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Featured article vote on Indian Standard Time
Hi in Featured article candidates/Indian Standard Time, I've accidentally noted similarity in names of different users participating in the vote & so I guessed that they might be from the same nationality -India. And 6/7 at the time were Indians.

I think that this is an "internal" systemic bias, since Indian articles are written mostly and only by Indian users & they're mostly likely to be the only voters on featured article nominations on India-related articles & in result, making Indian articles attaining featured article status inevitable.

(I want to note that Indians are a special exception from other nationalities in Wikipedia because most of them can speak and write fluent English & thus can participate more in English Wikipedia while other foreigners can't & thus limit their participation in fields related to their nationality/culture & making participation of other third parties more likely.)

And I would like members of this project to come participate in the vote & read what I've written & what they've replied with & see the article & voice your opinions. Thanks a lot! (Wikimachine 17:00, 23 November 2006 (UTC))

Policy Proposal to fight regional bias
I think one way to fight systemic bias would be to have a policy on articles that look at regional developments ignoring other regions. It seems there are quite a few articles that are named XXX (say woodcut) but you open them and they say something like "This is the story of XXX as it is in YYY (say Europe). For the story of worldwide XXX see ..."

I recently initiated a round of discussion on this issue: Village pump (policy)/Archive. The focal article in that debate, History of Western Typography came around, but now I see it again in woodcut vs woodblock printing; the former article has recently been tagged saying it is only about Europe.

I would like to know if we can move a WP:policy that any article with a title XXX has to cover all relevant global knowledge on XXX. The policy might say:
 * If an article wishes to focus on developments in XXX only in region YYY, it should be titled XXX in region YYY.

The policy may also suggest that preferably such a page (XXX in YYY) should be done only after there already is an article on just XXX - but this of course can be just a suggestion.

I think this may apply to many articles we are tackling here.

I have no idea how to go for WP policies etc, but I thought discussing it here may help. It would surely be easier having such a policy rather than fighting each case with a precedent. mukerjee (talk) 16:04, 26 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I know very little about Woodcuts, but assuming that woodcut is the same thing as woodblock printing, rather than just being similar then it would seem best to merge them. I'd advise you to propose a merge. If there is enough information to go round then it can have its various child articles (eg ukiyo-e.)


 * I'm not keen on your second proposal. It seems entirely logical that we shouldn't have subarticles without a main article. Most Wikipedia articles are not yet comprehensive - I don't see any need to alter the titles of them to reflect exactly what is there at the moment rather than what the ideal article would cover. --Cherry blossom tree 16:32, 26 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Please take a look at the Featured_article_candidates/Indian_Standard_Time. I raised a concern there about regional or internal systemic bias.
 * I checked national identity of the 7 Wikipedians (besides me) who participate in this featured article promotion.
 * 6/7 Wikipedians are Indians.
 * 3/7 Wikipedians here edited the article.
 * Absolutely Oppose.
 * Conspiracy.
 * Unless you bring in more third party voters, I'm reporting this to a higher branch in Wikipedia, such as the Arbitration Committee. (Wikimachine 03:42, 22 November 2006 (UTC))
 * And then the voters took what I wrote as an insult & gave me some frightening comments, from which I had to defend.
 * Foreigners as people who aren't English-speaking Europeans.
 * In my invitation for various WikiProjects, I've posted this: "I want to note that Indians are a special exception from other nationalities in Wikipedia because most of them can speak and write fluent English & thus can participate more in English Wikipedia while other foreigners can't & thus limit their participation in fields related to their nationality/culture & making participation of other third parties more likely.", thus clarifying my cooperative stance with Indians yet focusing on the internal systemic bias.
 * As for Americans/British/etc. editing English leading to POVness/systemic bias, see Wikipedia:WikiProject countering systemic bias. Furthermore, I think that users of other nationalities have different incentives from those of Americans/British/Canadians/Australians/etc. in editing the English Wikipedia. The first being the expansion & promotion of articles related to their culture/history/country, as a means of resisting the systemic bias of the majority, not only in Wikipedia but also in society. And English Wikipedia, written under the international language, is the best and most productive means of achieving this goal. The majority in the English Wikipedia are mostly English-speaking people, and therefore do not have any incentive to do so.
 * Blacksun, I'm sorry that you were offended (and others too), but I did not do the classification myself. I looked at user pages of each of the voters in the fac earlier.

(Wikimachine 16:40, 26 November 2006 (UTC))


 * I am not sure how the previous points relate - responding to CherryBlossomTree below!!
 * I too am not very keen on the second proposal. Let's drop it.
 * The articles Woodcut and woodblock printing are about the same printing technology. However, my objection is not based on this aspect at all. My objection is to the woodcut article saying "This is about Europe, go to WBP for other parts of the world".  If this line is removed, I would have no objection - then if the author wants to show how WC and WBP are diffrerent, wikipedia (and epistemology in general) deals with these problems all the time.
 * At the same time, I just discovered, while trying to fix the CSB-marked article medical assistant, that there is a tag, which I applied on woodcut... But a tag still doesn't have the imprimatur of policy. mukerjee (talk) 17:02, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I see no difference between woodblock and woodcutting printings. The two articles should merge, and there is no reason why European woodblock printing should be prioritized over the other. (Wikimachine 22:34, 26 November 2006 (UTC)) Comment: China invented the world's first wooden movable type printing and Korea invented the world's first metal movable type printing. (Wikimachine 22:35, 26 November 2006 (UTC))


 * As the author of most of the current versions of both woodcut and woodblock printing, I would make the following points:


 * Mukerjee's initial description of the article is flat inaccurate. As you can readily see from the history, the versions he is complaining about began:
 * "For the origins of the technique in Asia see Woodblock printing ,for the related technique used mostly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries see wood engraving

Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining ....."


 * - It does not say this article is only about Europe, nor was the article. The article woodcut is a technical one about an artistic medium, not a historic one. The techniques are essentially similar, and the technical part of the article referred to Europe & Asia about equally, & was non-specific. There was a brief historic section, which also referred to several cultures & begins with references to the main historic articles, which are old master print for Europe and ukiyo-e for Asia. Incidentally, old master print did not exist until a month ago, whilst ukiyo-e has been there a long time.


 * - the sentence Mukerjee objects to predates my work, & the article referred to - woodblock printing has been recently expanded, which includes coverage of the Eygptian origins that are about contemporary with the Chinese ones, so the reference to Asia is now inappropriate (ie origins weren't just in Asia) & I have removed the reference to Asia.


 * -there was a proposal in the summer to merge the two articles, which as far as i can remember no-one supporteed & many opposed.


 * -there is a systemic problem in this area, but that lies in the much weaker articles on specific artists, schools & techniques in the Asian tradition compared to the Western one. Japan is a partial exception to this. I have discussed this at length on the talk page at the article. I would have put more into the article on Asia if I could have found the material.

Johnbod 04:02, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
 * - I note that Mukerjee's talk page contributions to these two articles are about twenty times longer than his contributions to the articles themselves. If he actually researched & wrote on these topics, initially on the specific Asian pages that are weak, it would be easier to maintain balance in overview articles.

LSD: Legal status in various places
Anybody interested in legal issues re LSD? The section on "Legal status" in that article is currently about 80% USA-centric. Thanks. -- 201.51.221.66 12:23, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

"Gods Eye View"
The concept of God is showing a bias. Perhaps the article on bias should not be biased. Yeah, I know - General meaning. Maybe it should change to more of a world and gender neutral view of things.


 * The context in which the expression occurs (The more idealistic 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") makes clear that this project itself does not necessarily approve this view. Additionally, the language of this edition of Wikipedia is English, and 'God's eye view' is a perfectly fine English expression so I have reverted your removal of it. &mdash; mark ✎ 18:53, 28 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Also, the use of the term takes no position on whether or not a a god exists. It merely uses the concept of an all knowing entity to illustrate a point. --Cherry blossom tree 23:08, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

North Korea working group
Hello,

Just thought I'd drop by and mention that a DPRK working group has been created as part of WikiProject Korea. Might be of interest to members of this project, since our DPRK coverage has long been very weak outside of a few high-profile controversies. Please feel free to drop by and kibitz, or even join. Cheers, -- Visviva 03:47, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Law
Not only the lead article, law, itself, but also many of the sub-pages in this category take on a specific UK/US bias. This is often to the extent that the articles will quote legal cases and precedents without bothering to indicate which country they took place in. Several legal experts need to put concerted effort into CSB on these pages. It may even require a seperate WikiProject. Andeggs 09:24, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Project Directory
As many of you might know, there is a Project Directory which tries to list all the WikiProjects in some sort of organizational framework. I am the person who generally takes on the duties of adding the projects to the directory. I am having some difficulty trying to figure out exactly how and where to list this project. Right now, it is listed under WikiProject Council/Directory/Wikipedia, because its scope is such that it doesn't fit comfortably into any of the other sections. I am personally less than convinced that this listing does justice to the project. Unfortunately, I honestly can't think of where else to add it. If any of your members can, or if you are thinking about creating subprojects which could comfortably fit into some of the other sections of the directory, please let me know. Thank you. Badbilltucker 20:57, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

African and Asian people
These two articles of quite recent creation Asian (people) was created in June 25 2006 and African people in December 6 2006 seem to be in themselves very US-centric. The very concept of an Asian people (excluding West Asia!) is totally anomalous, as Asia is really big and diverse and Chinese has so much to do with Indians as Congolese with Nez Perces. African people could maybe make a little more sense from the viewpoint of Black people, but there's already an article with that name and another one on Sub-Saharan Africa.

The first one only makes sense form the POV of the racialist categorization of US census and the second one... I really have no idea but it also seems US-centric (in an Afroamerican sense probably).

I'm pondering to list both for deletion but I'd like more opinions. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sugaar (talk • contribs) 21:06, 9 December 2006 (UTC).


 * We could legitimately have an article on a U.S. census category, and possibly a racial categorization as it is understood in a U.S. context, but then it should be on precisely that, not slide off into being an article that discusses a non-U.S. context. - Jmabel | Talk 01:20, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Sure we could have Asian (US census concept) or something like that but as it is it looks like an ethnic article. Most likely it sould be just a section in the US census article or some of the material, specially images, could be merged to Asia (article on the continent).
 * Anyhow, I'd like to know if other people here agrees with removing the WikiProject template. It's just plainly inappropiate in my opinion. --Sugaar 13:16, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The article should probably be merged and/or redirected to Asian American, which has been around quite a while longer. — BrianSmithson 22:20, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Other countries have a concept of an "Asian race" as well; the article points some of them out. Redirecting it to the US version of the concept would only make matters worse, in terms of bias. I think the best thing would be to trim down the US section to the appropriate length and add sections on the concept in other places, for instance Latin America and the rest of Europe. It would also be appropriate to point out that other societies do not have the same concept of an Asian people as they do in the West (I think the concepts of "black" and "white" races do occur elsewhere; it would be a different matter for those articles.)
 * I think it makes sense to keep the Asian people article as a counterpoint to white people and black people. Clearly there is very much diversity within the "race", but the same is true of the others (Berbers, Turks, Irish, and Slavs are all "white" by the US census definition). Probably much of the Americacentric stuff could be merged into Asian American, but the overall concept of an "Asian race" clearly exists, and it exists outside of the US. The African people article seems redundant with several already existing articles, however.--Cúchullain t/ c 22:32, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, I did propose White people to become a disambiguation page. I have not intervened in Black people. But anyhow, while White and Black and East Asian are more or less standard pseudo-racial categories, Asian as dealt with in Asian people are not any homogeneous race or anything but just a catch-all race category of Anglo-Saxon countries.
 * For me and many South Asians are either white (i.e. Caucasoid) or simply South Asians and have so much relation with Koreans as Norwegians have with Ethiopians. The concept of "Asian race" only exists in Anglo-Saxon countries, elsewhere the different regions are treated differently and nobody in his/her senses thinks that a Punjabi and a Japanse are of the same "race".
 * In any case it's not an Asian concept but an Anglo-Saxon one, specially oriented to classify immigrants in those countries. --Sugaar 10:28, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


 * If by Anglo-Saxon you mean English speaking (or Western; I know the terminology is used in Latin America as well), then what you say is correct. But I think the point of all the race articles is not to determine who belongs in what category, since they are arbitrary and scientifically baseless, but merely to describe how they are defined in different places. The article does not make it out to seem like Punjabis and Koreans really are part of the same "race", but it points out that both groups are classified as "Asians" by some systems, and defines who uses those systems. If there were a similarly arbitrary but prolific series of classifications for "races", ethnicities, or nationalities in China or India, we should have articles on that too.--Cúchullain t/ c 20:46, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Jamaicans are not "Anglo-Saxon" but they are English-speaking. It fits better with what Wikipedia describes as the Anglosphere - but excluding South Africa actually. So it's more like "white English-speaking" countries: UK, Canada, USA, Australia and New Zealand. I don't think Ireland fits in either. The concept, as you admit has a wide global acceptance (Europe + Latin America at least) in any case
 * In any case the article is strongly biased to that White Anglo conceptualization. It's not an Asian article as it should be, much less a global one.
 * Notice that it was myself who added the "disclaimer" atop. Before the article looked at first sight as an article on Asian peoples. It even had an infobox like all ethnic groups have.
 * I'm a little frustrated by your reply, I must admit. I thought this was a serious WikiProject that aimed to globalize the English Wikipedia, reducing the systematic White Anglo bias in favor of multicural perceptions. --Sugaar 17:25, 15 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't know why you're frustrated with my reply. I agreed that views from outside the currently included spectrum need to be included in the article. But it is not to goal of this project to remove articles that happen to relate specifically to the countries Wikipedia is biased towards, but to improve Wikipedia's coverage to better reflect the rest of the world. Asian (people) doesn't need to be an Asia-specific article; it is about the concept of an Asian race in the places that concept exists. Remember that there are plenty of "Asians" in what you call the "Anglo Saxon world". As I said, if China has a similarly prolific system of grouping people, we should have articles about that too.
 * Again I'm confused as to what you mean by the "White Anglo" or "Anglo Saxon" world you keep referring to. As I pointed out, and you admitted, the concept exists in Latin America, which is neither Anglo Saxon nor English speaking.--Cúchullain t/ c 20:49, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

(unindent) It is the goal of this project that entries such as Asian people or African people have a global veiwepoint. It makes no sense to create an article of "Asian people" according to a minority viewpoint of a small fraction of World's population who precisely lives outside of Asia. It's not just a mad nonsense, it's specially unencyclopedic. It's like writing an article on American people from a Spanish or Basque viewpoint, what obviously would consider the USA only marginally and could even focus in the returning emmigrants to Latin America called often "Americans".

It is the objetive of this project to make sure (as much as possible) that articles have a gloval point of view and not narrow regional/ethnic ones.

That's why I'm very disappointed when even inside this project some people seem to defend the opposite views to its stated objectives. --Sugaar 10:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

RfC Gernika
There is a dispute concerning the title of the article on this Basque town. Please comment in Talk:Guernica (city). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sugaar (talk • contribs) --Sugaar 17:14, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Editing by the unemployed
Can we not all agree that those with the most time to edit are unemployed? This skews the content of the encyclopedia towards the opinions of those that come from unemployed people. For instance, it might skew POV toward the favoring of a welfare state. Or, since there are probably a lot of retirees editing who are living off of social security, it would skew POV toward favoring social programs like social security. Or, there are people who live at home who are taken care of by parents, and husbands or wives. These people may have sense of entitlement to be taken care of by others, which skews the POV on Wikipedia. I would thinks that Wikipedia is actually dominated by the unemployed. They sit around all day editing and guarding material, etc. The POV is going to be skewed toward those that have the most time to edit is it not? Who has more time to edit than the unemployed? On Wikipedia, the unemployed rule. Improper Bostonian 19:41, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * This project primarily deals with expanding coverage in areas that are currently lacking, rather than ensuring neutrality throughout the whole encyclopaedia. I'm not sure how more editors being unemployed (if it is true at all, but I don't see how discussing that is relevant here) affects this. --Cherry blossom tree 12:32, 16 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I think this project deals with balancing the Anglo-centric (and some other large/rich nations centered) bias that en.Wikipedia has by default. You may have a point in that the unemployed, students and other people with suficient resources (i.e. internet access + time) may have more time to edit Wikipedia than the active workers but most unemployed/underemployed live in the vast stretches of the World that have little or no access to Internet at all.
 * So I'd say that your POV is clearly Ango/Eurocentric. And these regions only have about 20% of the global population. There's still an 80% of the World that is basically lacking of attention, either for lack of access to Internet or for lack of knowledge of English language.
 * Our work here is to make sure (as much as we can) that the viewpoints of these people are not just

flatly ignored.
 * In comparison your request seems vanity. And the fact that you have edited/vandalized the project page twice POV-pushing that idea actually doesn't help to your cause, I'd say.
 * Personally, I find useful that some unemployed help building up this site. And that's probably useful for them as well, as they may get a little of the satisfaction of well done productive work that they may find hard to realize in RL (they don't get a single euro, though)--Sugaar 13:19, 16 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Before I address your points, why are you calling my edits "vandalism"? Why would my edits be vandalism and yours not? If you want to have civil dealings with me then you ought to retract that claim. Improper Bostonian 17:11, 16 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I have not called your edits vandalism. Will you address my point? I don't think you were vandalising, but making the retraction of certain claims (even if they were wrong) a precondition for your entering into a discussion will not help you. --Cherry blossom tree 23:34, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
 * It certainly will help me to not engage in discussion with someone that calls my edits "vandalism." It tells me he's coming from a bad faith perspective, so there is no point having discussions with him. Since you haven't accused me of vandalism I'll certainly discuss this with you. You say that "this project deals with expanding coverage in areas that are currently lacking, rather than ensuring neutrality throughout the whole encyclopaedia." The article says it's about "systemic bias." The systemic bias article gives an example "institutional bias of a particular institution in devaluing contributions by women or ethnic minorities." Well, a significant systemic bias on Wikipedia is that the contributions of employed people are crowded out. Wikipedia is truly controlled by people with a tremendous about of time on their hands, which are the unemployed. Article after article, you can see the major controllers of articles are here 24/7. I hate to say Wikipedia is run by "losers," and I wouldnt' say that in this article, but that's basically what the situation is. The fact that the unemployed rule Wikipedia has to have some kind of effect. I can't say for certain what the nature of that bias would be, but I think if there were two Wikipedias, one written solely by habitually unemployed people and the other by employed people I think they would be much different. Why should it be noted that Wikipedia has greated input from 15-49 year olds but not be noted that it has greater input from unemployed people? Improper Bostonian 07:22, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I meant that inviting other people into discussions and then refusing to take part in these discussions yourself is not a worthwhile debating tactic. I concede, though, that it may give you personal satisfaction.
 * There are several discussions in the archives of this talk page on why 'countering systemic bias' is possibly a misleading name for this project. The systemic bias it deals with is specifically that some areas of Wikipedia have more thorough coverage than others. This is what this project does, regardless of other definitions of systemic bias. You haven't established that areas primarily of interest to employed people require more coverage, so your aims do not seem to fit this project. The fact that 15-49 year olds are over-represented on Wikipedia and that this means that articles of interest to them are of a higher quality is accepted by more or less everyone. This is why it is worth noting and worth filling in the other areas. --Cherry blossom tree 01:15, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I assume that this criticism is satire, and satire is such fun, ergo:


 * 1) Unemployed people who have sufficient Internet access to edit Wiki frequently or regularly are likely to have a much higher income than most of Wiki's hoped-for audience, which counters any skew due to unemployment with the wealthy's interest in protecting their assets
 * 2) Unemployed people educated enough in English to edit Wiki are likely to have disproportionate interest in protecting their competitive advantage by advocating restricted access to scarce resources from which they currently benefit, i.e. education and English competence, which protectionism is apt to offset any interest unemployed Wiki editors are perceived to have in promoting their economic agenda
 * 3) Wiki editors financially supported by others are just like every other human being: alive because somebody else cared enough about them to support them, since no human being could attain self-support without the care of those willing to support parasites (i.e. children), whether or not the caregiver ever receives any compensation therefor. Since all human beings therefore have an investment in assuring that uncompensated care is extended to human beings, no conflict of interest arises relative to input to Wiki. As for retirees and students, it is purely an assumption that more of them are editing Wiki than those who enjoy leisure due to inherited or marital wealth, or who edit Wiki during hard-earned vacations and brief lunch breaks. Sourced data to the contrary please? Lethiere 01:54, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I've been contracting and consulting the last six years. Unsurprisingly, I put more time into Wikipedia when I'm between projects. Do you think my opinions move to the right when I'm busy with paid projects and to the left when I'm not? How about college students (of whom we clearly have many among our contributors): do you think their politics are appreciably different when school is in session, or depenging on their courseload in a particular semester? And do you think that the chronically unemployed typically have access to computers for large amounts of time? Do you think this last is true even in less affluent countries? And do you think that no one at, say, Microsoft (to name a big company where quite a few of my friends work) no one ever works on Wikipedia while they are ostensibly at their jobs? In short: I simply think you are wrong. - Jmabel | Talk 02:41, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I was the one who said that IB's systematic POV-pushing edits of the main page of this wikiproject without any sort of discussion and without him bein even a member of it are vandalism. Maybe the term is inexact but the meaning is close enough to what IP did and repeated.
 * I really see no difference between adding that and the typical Vandalism that says: "pigs fly in the mornings of February 29th". --Sugaar 00:44, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Without being a member of what? Does one have to be a member of something to edit this article? I was under the assumption that this article was open for anyone to edit. Improper Bostonian 03:48, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Dealing primarily with Western world
If there is a template "'This article or section deals primarily with Muslim world and does not represent a worldwide view of the subject.'" shouldn't there be one regarding an imbalance toward the Western world, uniting countries that maintain a monopoly over media which is distributed worldwide, and creating names such as "World music" when talking about music by non-western countries? Perhaps the Wikiproject page is showing some systematic bias. Sfacets 11:24, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid you are mistaken here. There are lots of other templates like that, and Globalize/Muslim is merely one of the more recent ones. See Globalize. &mdash; mark ✎ 12:10, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


 * ...but none specifically on the West as a whole. Sfacets 12:43, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


 * That particular template simply does not exist because people doubted whether it really would be used (an argument that was also brought up against Globalize/Muslim by the way). See this past discussion as well as this one from the archives. I will say again what I said before: I think globalize works just fine for all cases. &mdash; mark ✎ 13:32, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


 * It hits the nail on the head, but it cannot be denied that the Western block formed primarily by the US, UK, and European nations form a combined effect on articles, and should be acknowledged as a unit instead of mentioning these countries separately in an article. If there are templates such as Globalize/Muslim then it would be hypocritical for the CSB project to not consider one that deals with Western bias or partiality. Sfacets 16:22, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


 * You're free to create Globalize/Western! Again, it simply doesn't exist because some people weren't sure about its usefulness vis-a-vis the broader globalize (needless to say, the same holds for Globalize/Muslim, which I don't consider necessary either &mdash; which is why I didn't create it). It's that simple, and it doesn't have anything to do with hypocrisy. I don't know why you would want to say that. The CSB project has never been immune to the systemic issues it seeks to adress, but its successes fully depend on editors like you and me. Stop holding the project responsible and do something about it. It's the only thing that will work. &mdash; mark ✎ 17:13, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I didn't mean it as a ctiticism, just want to open the debate on the best way to tag articles effectively - to tell the truth I didn't read the entirety of the archived discussions (although I did read the one you linked above) so I was not entirely sure on how the proposal had previously been received by members, especially since the template no longer exists. I wanted to talk about it first before creating something that had potentially been previously discussed, and get some peer input on my proposal. I certainly didn't wish to point fingers or shift blame... I guess the best way would be to be bold and go ahead and create the template. Sfacets 19:22, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


 * OK. Quite frankly, I have always been sceptic about the effect of employing more specific tags as opposed to the general globalize. The most important thing, to my mind, is to be specific on the talk page. Simply tagging an article and moving along doesn't work; when tagging, one should always explain where the problem lies, and if possible sketch how the problem may be solved.
 * The tags go on talk. Now, the talk page isn't a place for cleanup tags, it is primarily a place for discussion. Almost everyone ignores cleanup tags if no further information is provided. Some even remove them. Thus, the point is not so much which tags exist and which don't; the point is how we use them. &mdash; mark ✎ 07:37, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * As you may have noticed, I have since deleted a few unused daughter templates of globalize. &mdash; mark ✎ 09:53, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I think too that a particular template on "Western world bias" would be broadly useful. The "Western bias" is also a well know issue in academy, I've just added references of this for History and Family. Maybe a good solution would be to expand globalize to include a comment field.--BMF81 22:04, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Why I left Wiki
I have observed the following pattern over and over again, and I can site literally hundreds of Wiki articles that follow this pattern:
 * GIVEN: A political/philosophical/religious topic
 * GIVEN: A Biased Wiki Editor who is determined to slant the article according to his world view
 * GIVEN: After the article is slanted, the biased Wiki editor defends it as "NPOV" when it is anything but
 * GIVEN: Biased wiki editor polices the article, has help from a few friends, and keeps the slanted article from being changed
 * RESULT: A Wiki article, which is slanted, is posed as "NPOV"  This is the nature of Wiki.
 * HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?

Easily. The use of cited criticisms is the primary mechanism that wiki editors use to slant an article and claim it as "NPOV". Here is the format that a biased Wiki editor uses to slant an article and mask it as NPOV

1. Cite the topic

2. Criticize the topic immediately in the first paragraph, citing someone who criticized it.

3. Include a "Criticisms" section armed to the teeth with cited criticisms. Make sure that the criticisms section is lengthy and outweighs other material. For example, if the article is on a political candidate that the wiki editor doesn't like, the criticism section will be vast. When a user reads about the candidate, criticisms abound. Of course, all criticisms are cited, and this is how an "intellecutal" wiki editor gets away with slanting an article. He defends the slant by saying "NPOV" because all criticisms are cited, but the truth is that the sheer volume of criticisms and the manner in which they are presented makes the article completely slanted.

I saw this formula repeated countless times before the US mid term election regarding political candidates. I would look at 2 political candidates running against each other on Wiki, for example the senator Allen / Webb race. Here is how the articles looked on Wiki the day before the election.

CANDIDATE ONE FORMULA: Introduce Candidate. Cite merits. Cite positive contributions. Cite accomplishments. Cite charities. Cite stances. Cite achievements. Cite awards. No criticism section.

CANDIDATE TWO FORMULA: INtroduce candidate. Cite criticism immediately in the introduction. Cite allegations. (I.e. racism, fraud). Cite critiques of business dealings. Cite critiques of stances. Cite record. Cite history. Cite more criticisms. (the criticism section was over 50% of the entire article)

Because all criticisms are cited, the biased intellectual wiki author can get away with defending the article as NPOV. But an agenda is obvious

Wiki is plagued...corrupted to the core, with this methodology. Criticize in the introduction, and include massive amounts of criticisms (all cited) in the article. This gives it an overall slant.

THE FLAW IN THIS METHOD of course is that for any topic, if one looks, there will always be someone out there with a degree who criticizes it. I can find an "expert" criticism of anything and anyone! BUt the biased wiki author has the claim that simply citing an "expert criticism" is justification enough to include it in an article, even if the article is overwhelmed with them, as long as the criticism is cited.

The "criticism" section and use of overloading an article with cited critiques is the technique that wiki editors use to get away with bias.

This entire site is overrun by unemployed and/or internet addicted intellectuals that police wiki under the mask of "NPOV" when they are perpetrating an agenda to slant the site. People like me just don't have time to engage in a war with these hawks. Wiki has thus, a severe credibility problem —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.19.159.95 (talk) 17:57, 19 December 2006 (UTC).


 * I'm afraid that this does not really belong to the core business of WikiProject Countering Systemic Bias. It may be better in place at Wikipedia Neutrality Project. &mdash; mark ✎ 09:52, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Systematic bias, worst when about racial issues.
Please, have a look and make a follow-up of the white people article.

You will find at least 3 types of systematic bias.

1. US bias at the definition of white.

2. Anglo-Saxon bias at the definition of white.

3. Extreme White Nationalist related views and bias at the definition of white.

Articles like this should be a priority to fight bias. They compromise Wiki standards and credibility. Veritas et Severitas 22:16, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I had a quick look at the article & frankly could not see what you mean. Perhaps you could be more specific, especially on the last point you mention? Johnbod 02:57, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * LSLM, you might want to take this up with the Wikpedia Neutrality Project. WP:CSB focuses on improving neglected content, it is not the NPOV police. &mdash; mark ✎ 09:51, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Rwandan Genocide
Project members please see Article Creation and Improvement Drive for comments on the Rwandan Genocide article which looks like it needs input and improvements. --Zleitzen 00:50, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, but...
Featured prominently in "The Bias" list, at number three, is:

Articles such as uses of torture in recent times tend to dwell on the relatively few (but well documented) cases of abuse in Israel, the United Kingdom, United States, conducted during their foreign wars and incursions, and to a lesser extent those by other western democracies, while ignoring the widespread and systematic abuses which take place in countries where information about torture is not widely available to English-speaking Wikipedians.

However, there is an easy explanation: Wikipedia policies require this to be the case! Whatever relatively few cases of abuse have been subjects of media frenzy and whatnot, and therefore are easily sourced. How exactly are we supposed to describe the "widespread and systematic abuses" if there is nothing that can be considered a "reliable source" that describes said abuses? If there are no reliable sources, but the situation still clearly exists, then what? We can't ignore No original research, it's one of the very basic principles.

I also smell a vague English-centricism at Verifiability in the section regarding preference for English sources. Can someone try and tone it done a little bit? It could use some wording changes if we want Wikipedia to truly reflect a world-wide view.

I thought that creating self-contradicting legislation and/or rules was something best left for the governments. --24.150.63.168 23:51, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I would disagree about the preference for English-language sources. Apart from the difficulty the policy mentions in other editors understanding them, or trusting home-made translations, it is harder to assess their quality. I'm sure there are cases where the best sources are not in English, but in my experience extensive reference to non-English sources, ignoring ones in English, is usually a sign of POV editing. The wording of the policy mentions "assuming equal quality" (I think that's the wording) & seems fine to me. Relaxing it would greatly increase POV editing in my view. Johnbod 00:51, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * It seems to me that "English or it didn't happen" is a quite good example of bias. Of course, the problem of POV is very real... makes you wonder how realistic it is to have a bias-free Wikipedia. --24.150.63.168 02:01, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * That is not what I am saying, as would have been clear if you had read it carefully. But, at least in historical articles, there are few if any views that are not in English (somewhere), whereas much nationalistic rant does not get translated in its crudest form. Johnbod 13:40, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, in my experience there's a lot of material that is either not in English or would be difficult to find. Specially material that is published in other important international languages such as Spanish, French, German, Russian, Chinese and Arabic. It depends what theme you're working on. For a book to be translated into English, it would need to have a market in English-speaking countries and, obviously, English-speaking book buyers have not the same interests as may do those of other languages. Examples: most (non-basic) material on the Basque Country is not in English but can be found in Spanish, French, Basque and even German. The same happens with much stuff on Latin America. And I'm talking only of what I know best. It happens even in genetics, where, apparently, some important materials on East Asia are only published in Chinese or Japanese.
 * Aditionally, many non-Anglo editors like myself have libraries (private and public) that have mostly materials in languages other than English (in my case Spanish is dominant, with some Basque, some French and some English materials). Even if the English translation of some of them may exist, there's no real way I can find it (unless it's the original work, what it's not normally the case).
 * Still the English sources/translations where existent and known are preferable but that doesn't denies validity to sources in other languages. And I think that the wording of WP:VER is not bad. Another thing is wether some users in your experience may be interpreting it erroneously. Could you clarify with an example? --Sugaar 06:13, 3 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with your last two paras (see my comments above); I was not in favour of changing WP:VER. If you want to see an example of what I meant try the talk page (having noted how much longer it is than the article itself)  Talk:Juraj Dalmatinac, an ongoing example.

Johnbod 09:56, 3 January 2007 (UTC)


 * On WP:NOR, I understand that the interpretation on the quality of sources is variable (and maybe subject to dispute). Obviously a reference to the Anti-Torture Comitees (Basque case) is a reference on denounced tortures but, no matter what I may think, it doesn't prove them. References to Amnesty International for instance can be a more solid reference maybe and obviously press refering to a (probably rare) judicial sentence is even more contundent. But in all cases the wording of the article should make clear who makes those claims, in order to satisfy NPOV.
 * Again non-English sources are perfectly valid when these do not exist or do not provide the same info. --Sugaar 06:13, 3 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Notice that Johnbod is not member of this project, btw. His opinions are actually against the spirit of it. --Sugaar 10:22, 4 January 2007 (UTC)


 * As defined by you, Sugaar! Do I need to be a member to comment here? Johnbod 13:06, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Recentism
Recentism is listed as a problem, but none of the suggestions on What To Do seem to address it.

A few things that help in my own experience: Goldfritha 03:43, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
 * 1)  Do not limit reading to media sources.  Read books about historical information.
 * 2)  Read primary sources about a subject matter in an earlier era.  (In fact, I just recommend reading primary sources from other times and places; it can be an enlightening experience.)
 * 3)  Try to order information chronologically whenever reasonable.  To have the most recent information up front may give it undue weight (and may also cloud how something developed).


 * Very true - also there is no tag for this Johnbod 13:28, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, there is a tag: Template:Recentism.  OTOH, I know this only because I read the talk page for the recentism article.  Goldfritha 18:53, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I'll fix that. Goldfritha 18:58, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Please note, this template is up for deletion here Johnbod 17:12, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 18:40, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Contering systemic bias: Catholic Encyclopedia: please vote
There is an ongoing vote to delete a series of templates designed to incorporate the entire 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia into Wikipedia. Please see TfD Catholic Expand. Thank you. -- Stbalbach 02:14, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Article improvement drive
Members please vote for St. George's, Grenada at the wikipedia creation and improvement drive. This article of a capital city is a substub in a sorry state. Vote here to help improve that article--Zleitzen 15:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Signing statement having problems.
An editor has transformed Signing statement so it solely refers to the US practice, replacing the neutral description of 'statement made by the governmental executive power on signing into law a bill from the legislature' with 'written pronouncement issued by the President of the United States upon the signing of a bill into law' and even notes that foreign use of the practice is not significant. I've tried to use an example from history of an executive making a 'signing statement' on a legislature provided law, from Robespierre's deist proclamation, and a more recent example from last year of the signing statement by French president Jacques Chirac over the implementation of labour laws. He seems to believe that these are not 'notable' occurrences, and because no 'notable use' of signing statements has been 'proven', that the article should say it only really happens in the US. --Barberio 13:09, 11 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I believe I dealt with this. Nikola 00:22, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Islam
Wikipedia, regarding Islam, generally uses sources produced by Orientalists and Western Academic scholars. Most of the Islam related articles are heavily based on these sources. However the Orientalism itself has been criticized. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy writes:

"Orientalism is the branch of scholarship that uses traditional Western methods as a means of understanding and gathering knowledge pertaining to the Orient. The term was also used by Edward Said (1978) to elucidate his own challenge to the validity of such methods." "On the one hand, Orientalism has given us much of what we know about the Oriental world at large. Late nineteenth-century authors are especially worthy of consideration for their contributions to an understanding of foreign cultures and peoples. On the other hand, however, several problems arise from the attitudes and methods used in traditional Orientalist discourse, which in turn has had an impact – often negative – upon Western consciousness. This influences and distorts the framework through which the West approaches the Orient in general and Islam in particular." "The Orient encompasses a far greater area than simply that of the Arabs and the Muslim community; exotic images from India, China, Japan and Korea are conjured up in the minds of Western people when they think of the Orient. However, Orientalism has had a particular impact on the study and understanding of Islamic philosophy. Many scholars’ understanding of Islamic philosophy is, ‘that Islamic civilization as we know it would simply not have existed without the Greek heritage’ (Rosenthal 1975: 14)." . ..

Orientalism is the concept that there is something very special and different about the thought of those living in the East, which can be discovered through the methods of scholarship current in the West. It is a reflection of the relationship of imperial and intellectual domination of a West which feels it is superior to an 'inferior' East. This often results in an understanding of Islamic philosophy which sees the latter as essentially unoriginal, derivative and of only historical interest. While orientalists have produced interesting and important work, most fail to appreciate the independent status of the material which they analyse.

This is a systematic bias. --Aminz 09:48, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Prof. Edward Said writes: "I have not been able to discover any period in European or American history since the Middle Ages in which Islam was generally discussed or thought about outside a framework created by passion, prejudice and political interests."

--Aminz 09:54, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I mostly agree; however, what role do you envision for WP:CSB in countering this form of systemic bias? What do you think is the right way to treat this sort of subjects in a general purpose encyclopedia? &mdash; mark ✎ 15:51, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I tried once to address this problem by creating the Template:1913POV, which unfortunately has been deleted. It fits perfectly on Criticism of Islam since the Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is its main reference. --Raphael1 21:32, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I think the first suggestion would be avoiding sources which date back to late 19th and early 20th century on Islam. That doesn't completely solve the source problem but makes it better, since any judgment about Muhammad and Islam is bound to writer's culture and system of values.

In Medieval times, Islam was studied by Christians in West only in order to be refuted. Please have a look at. In The 19th and early 20th century scholarship of Islam was done by Christian translators and commentators such as the Christian missionary William Muir.

The next bias problem is actually with Wikipedians. My experience is that some wikipedians apply a different standard when it comes to Muhamamd and Islam. One can see the double standard problem when for example a well-sourced positive statement about Islam or Muhammad is accepted with more hesitancy and skeptism than the similar statement about Christianity or Jesus. Even then, it is later more subject to consistent vandalism or POV pushing. Watt, a key historian of islam in West, describes the historical image of Muhammad in West as follows:

"Of all the world's great men none has been so much maligned as Muhammad. We saw above how this has come about. For centuries Islam was the great enemy of Christendom, since Christendom was in direct contact with no other organized states comparable in power to the Muslims. The Byzantine empire, after losing some of its best provinces to the Arabs, was being attacked in Asia Minor, while Western Europe was threatened through Spain and Sicily. Even before the Crusades focused attention on the expulsion of the Saracens from the Holy Land, medieval Europe was building up a conception of ' the great enemy '. At one point Muhammad was transformed into Mahound, the prince of darkness. By the twelfth century the ideas about Islam and Muslims current in the crusading armies were such travesties that they had a bad effect on morale. Practical considerations thus combined with scholarly zeal to foster the study and dissemination of more accurate information abo Muhammad and his religion."

"Since that time much has been achieved, especially durin the last two centuries, but many of the old prejudices linge on. Yet in the modern world, where contacts between Christians and Muslims are closer than ever before, it is urgent that both should strive to reach an objective view of Muhammad's character. The denigration of him by European writers has too often been followed by a romantic idealization of his figure by other Europeans and by Muslim. Neither denigration nor idealization is an adequate basis for the mutual relations of nearly half the human race."

I think this bias problem can be acknowledged but has no remedy. --Aminz 21:37, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Then why are you bringing it up here? Just to vent? If you have ideas on how this project can counter this bias, speak up. Offering quotes that just affirm bias exists is no help - we wouldn't be involved in WikiProject Countering systemic bias if we weren't aware of systemic bias.--Cúchullain t/ c 23:22, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Cuchullain, please read my comments. I had a suggestion: "I think the first suggestion would be avoiding sources which date back to late 19th and early 20th century on Islam."
 * Also, I am explaining the bias and we can all discuss how we can deal with it, if it is possible. --Aminz 01:50, 19 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay, so what articles use the objectional sources, and do you have some better ones in mind? Watt seems to be pretty solid, but did you mean we should stick to primary sources where possible?--Cúchullain t/ c 20:58, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I have encountered issues such as on the Battle of Khaybar page and others where pretty much Muslim academic sources have been just blanket discarded regardles of the fact that their authors have been much more widely read and accepted in the global context as authorities and experts. The argument used has been that the sources are POV. These articles generally suffer from an "western white-tower" syndrome. I have tried to argue that NPOV requires the mention with proper attribution of all POVs. Please do visit and offer your support/ comments on how to mitigate this slant in these articles.--Tigeroo 04:59, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Bias in choosing primary topics
I've removed the recent addition:


 * "* Articles where the article name can mean several different things, tend to default to subject matter more familiar to the average Wikipedian. for example, the Manhattan article refers to the borough of New York city, rathern than a disambiguation page which may take a more global view on the uses of the word."

I think I know what the editor is trying to say - that often, where a topic has different primary meanings in various parts of the world, or different fields, we assume that the one most familiar to the majority of Wikipedians is sufficiently well-known as to not require disambiguation.

The first line needs to be rephrased; where there is a clear primary topic, it is desirable to default to subject matter more familiar to the average [reader] of Wikipedia. The Manhattan example is poorly chosen, as it is the primary topic pretty much anywhere (its homonyms are all obscure U.S. entities). A better example might be our article on Dia. Warofdreams talk 03:05, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Predominately Christian countries
I am from Scotland so presumably fit into this category - "is from a predominantly Christian country".

The only problem with this is it's BS when you look at the figures. 90% of people in Scotland do not attend church. The figure's similar in most of Europe, and no doubt Australia, Canada etc.

Most so called "Christian countries" are in fact post-Christian, not Christian. Apart from the USA, the Western world has largely abandoned Christianity. --MacRusgail 15:08, 29 January 2007 (UTC)


 * This is an USA bias ;) Church attendance is not the only or the best indicator of religious devotion. Nikola 13:00, 31 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Mac is right. In some articles I have edited, I have replaced the "predomnatly Christian" [or "Catholic"] by "traditionally Christian", which is actually more accurate for nearly all Europe and many other western countries where Christianity is clearly in heavy decline. Church attendance is a symptom but statistics show most people in said countries do not define themselves as such and/or have a very personal and unaffiliated vision of what "being Christian" might mean closer to agnosticism than to anything else.
 * Insisting in defining such countries religion as "Christian" is what shows a clear US (or in general pro-Christian bias). --Sugaar 12:51, 3 April 2007 (UTC)


 * There's no American bias here. The US is hardly the only country where a significant proportion of the country are religious, even in the West - take Latin America for example. Using the qualification "traditionally" instead of "predominantly" might make sense in some cases, particularly in articles on Europe, but in articles on the Western Hemisphere it makes less sense, since none of those countries have been around long enough to have a "traditional" religion (and in many cases, have established traditions of religious freedom). However, since most people in the Americas affiliate themselves with Christianity, it is correct to say those countries are "predominantly Christian".--Cúchullain t/ c 04:53, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

relevant category discussions (Asian American scientists, etc)
Category discussion of Asian American scientists, African American scientists, LGBT scientists ... see Categories for discussion/Log/2007 February 1. --lquilter 00:23, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Article needs references
As a long-time contributor (though not one who maintains much of any community presence), my sense is that Wikipedia really does have a systemic bias. It also seems to me that this would be a good article within which references should be cited. I've just marked a few examples of where references would be particularly useful.

It seems to me that Wikipedia has a high enough profile (made most widely evident by its increasing press coverage and references in certain kinds of pop culture), that it should be possible to find references that corroborate items mentioned in the article that are not self-evident. I realize that most of the articles in the Wikipedia "namespace" are simply the sense (or consensus) of the community, but it would be useful for that community to have a more objective assessment of its biases. Citing legitimate references in this article would contribute to a more objective community self-assessment.

66.167.253.201 22:25, 3 February 2007 (UTC).


 * You are entitled to your opinion, however I would request you don't post on this page or edit the project page again. Thanks, Addhoc 01:12, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I reverted your reversion because reverted without explanation. If you still feel a reversion is required, please accompany it with an explanation.  Thanks.  66.167.253.32 03:32, 4 February 2007 (UTC).


 * Could I again request, you don't post on this page or edit the project page in future. Thanks, Addhoc 10:09, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I have no problem with you posting on this talk page or project page, but you should be aware that the issue of citations has been discussed and rejected here on several occasions. Reintroducing it now is probably not a productive use of time. Thanks. --Cherry blossom tree 12:03, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Could some policies inadvertently lead to systemic bias?
As a young Singaporean, I fight systemic bias by contributing to articles on Singaporean topics.

During the year I have spent editing Wikipedia, I have noticed that some policies may inadvertently lead to systemic bias. Examples include:


 * Verifiability: External systemic bias results in a lack of available referenced information on Singaporean topics. This was one of the main reasons for the failure of I Not Stupid's GA nomination.
 * Notability: Singaporean topics are judged as less notable than American topics. The articles on mr brown (Singapore's second-most prominent blogger, after Xiaxue) and Suntec City Mall (a Singaporean shopping mall which houses the world's largest fountain) were recently AFDed, and the article on Chen Liping (Singapore's third-most famous actress) was speedied. Would articles of equally-notable American bloggers, malls or actresses be AFDed or speedied? I doubt it.
 * Prohibition of semi-free media. The American government has released a lot of material into the public domain, and the free software movement is American. Hence, in less developed countries, it is harder to find free media, and semi-free media is more widely available.

I need to sleep now. I'll continue participating in this discussion tomorrow.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 15:12, 16 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Verifiabilty: Looking at recent changes I have noticed that some people seem to kick out foreign language sources as a rule. Verifiability is not very clear about this issue. The paragraph starts out by saying primary sources should be given, but then it says that a published translation should be pointed to. All in all, on talk pages people seem to understand this policy as 'No foreign language sources allowed'. Wikipedia could have an advantage over other encyclopedias because of the wealth of languages spoken by its users.
 * Notability: at least the articles survived VfD. As for the one that was speedied - could it be undeleted? Is there a place to request a formal VfD at least?--Grace E. Dougle 16:34, 16 February 2007 (UTC)


 * While I agree with the thrust of JLWS's argument, I don't think that those examples are good ones.
 * Notability: The article on Chen Liping was speedily deleted because it was a copyright violation - nobody questioned her notability, and it'd be good if someone wrote a proper article on her. The other two articles you mention were put through AFD, but every single comment supported their inclusion, so it looks like that process is working correctly in this case.  In the case of mr brown, even the proposer didn't call for its deletion.  We have a longstanding policy that less evidence of notability is required for articles in fields for which there is less written, but I think there's no way around requiring each fact in an article to be verifiable in some manner.
 * Verifiabilitiy: Grace makes a good point about the verifiability policy; while it expressly permits the citation of sources in languages other than English, the wording isn't as clear as it should be, particularly given this section may be of particular interest to users whose first language is not English. Warofdreams talk 17:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

There is a poll on closing down Venda Wikipedia
at Meta: Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Venda Wikipedia --Grace E. Dougle 15:11, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

User Friendliness
Even though the average Wikipedian is educated, the use of words such as "is more likely to be employed in intellectual pursuits than in practical skills" makes this page less acessible to newbees. Can't the page be written in plain old English? [Edit - forgot username] Arodfan 22:55, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Isn't that plain English? English is not a first language for me yet I understand what it means perfectly. How would you suggest to write that sentence?
 * Anyhow, this is an encyclopedia, so slang (maybe what you call "plain old English" is not normally recommended but rather standard English (though there can be different concepts on what this actually means). --Sugaar 12:59, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia policy colluding with censorship in China
The Wikipedia policy to ban open proxies means that one fifth of the world's population, or an Internet community larger than in the United States, is banned from Wikipedia. Due to government censorship, for most users in China the only way to read and edit Wikipedia articles is through an open proxy. By banning open proxies, Wikipedia colludes with the blocking effort of the Chinese government and exacerbates the systemic bias of Wikipedia. That policy should change and users from China should be helped to use and participate in this wonderful project. —Babelfisch 06:00, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The page you link to explains how users in China can use open proxies to edit Wikipedia. --Cherry blossom tree 12:25, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Still, a link to Advice to users using Tor to bypass the Great Firewall (or the Chinese language equivalent) should be placed on the main page of Zh-Wiki, En-Wiki, and Simple En-Wiki to make it easier to find; new Wikipedians may find digging through the policy pages to find this info intimidating/confusing/waste of time. Wl219 09:54, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
 * This isn't the place to propose this. I'm fairly confident it won't be added to the en.wp main page wherever you propose it, simply because it's irrelevant to the vast majority of readers. If you want to try then check Talk:Main Page. --Cherry blossom tree 10:47, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I disagree that it's irrelevant. It's not just China that uses massive firewalls, Iran, Cuba, and other countries do too. And "irrelevant to the vast majority of readers" is precisely the kind of systemic bias we're trying to counter here. In fact, I suggest the TOR info be linked on the main page of every language wiki because net censorship is a global concern. Wl219 10:51, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I object to your attempt to link opposition to cluttering up the main page to systemic bias. I've considered this more and the most useful place to include the link would be at MediaWiki talk:Blockedtext and possibly MediaWiki:Autoblockedtext - the messages shown to a blocked user when they attempt to edit. This is where it would be seen by the people who need to see it and not seen by those who don't. Neither of which is true of putting it on the main page. Does this sound sensible? --Cherry blossom tree 11:27, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
 * That does make sense. I will start threads on those talk pages to suggest incorporating TOR/open proxy info. Wl219 11:38, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Unbalanced articles
Many artilces contain the following formal flaw: Suppose an article is about a class of things (e.g. "Harp". Inside the article, one instance or subclass is taking all the attention (e.g. "European Concert Harp"), while others are either completely ommitted or put in a rest-group "Other Harps arround the world". The genaral pattern is: An article with topic "Class X", wich has subclasses or instances A, B, C ... contains only or mostly Material on one instance (e.g. A) and ommits others or puts them on a lower level. So the structure might be like this:


 * CLASS X
 * A

or


 * CLASS X
 * A
 * Others
 * B
 * C

To fix such an article, the elements in the others-section should be lifted one level. If the amount of material about A is very large, it shoulc be moved into another article (in the aforementioned example, an article about the European concert harp should be created and referenced from the main article. Is there an accepted name for this type of flaw in the Wikipedia community (something like "Category:Unbalanced Article"). Is there a category to mark such articles? Is there a policy about this already. I would like to create a Category to mark such articles (maybe with a template) if it does not exist already. In many instances, this problem occurs with eurocentric articles, but it is a formal mistake in the structure of the articles and might also occur in other areas. Traditional Encyclopedias all contain many instances of this flaw and Wikipedia could do much better here.Nannus 11:18, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * On remark: maybe this is not the right place for this question? If you know any noticeboard in Wikipedia where this should be discussed, just please copy it over there.Nannus 11:22, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

No, I agree this is within the scope of CSB, and the solution you suggest (lifting the others one level) is sensible. The biggest problem is probably enforcing this solution, and making other editors aware of this problem. You could establish a category for this, but note that this is bound to be ineffective unless you can find people who have a dedication to maintain it and to act upon the problem. &mdash; mark ✎ 11:36, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

How to solve disputes under systemic bias influence
In Pontic Greek Genocide the title is disputed because this event is not called so in Turkey (Turkey is a problemtic country on such matters), but it is commemorated as a national holiday in Greece. Naturally, a Turkish minority and a Greek majority clash over the title (and forget to write a real article). The problem is rather that the English sources discuss whether or not it was an organized genozide and do not give a very clear support for anyone's claim. The other issue is WWII, as far as I could find out in all other language FA's France is listed among the important allies in the infobox(if a list of important allies is available), however in the English wiki this is disputed by a predominantly US-American community (assessing the actual contribution) leading to the proposal of constructions such as linking to a separate site with a list of all allies.

The problem is that the Greeks/Turks as well as the Americans want a common opinion in their native society to be presented in an encyclopedia. It wouldn't be much of an issue if the discussion was about the article itself. The problem is the significance placed on such details and that any attempts to solve in discussion result in a unstopable flow of black letters that in effect repeatedly contain the same information (+personal attacks, accusing of POV and grouping in one corner as pro or contra my community/tribe). How do I proceed? Suggestions? Wandalstouring 17:43, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Systemic bias within a country
I'd like to see more attention paid to systematic bias within a country. With regard to my own country, I've had to edit articles that had California-centric bias in that they implicitly equated California with the entire United States or otherwise treated non-California viewpoints as inconsequential. I suspect that the same problem exists with regard to other countries. Doctor Whom 15:54, 7 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Pray tell in which articles. Wandalstouring 19:12, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll give some examples. The article Contract city, before I edited it, referred to an "American term" that apparently is actually a California-specific term.  Other examples are the articles tagged with Template:Limited geographic scope within country or Template:Generic limited geographic scope.  Doctor Whom 16:24, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh, yes. Ask any Atlantic or Western Canadian about Torontocentrism. -- Charlene 02:23, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Systematic biases within articles for and by "pseudo-religious" interest groups
I added a paragraph to the project to deal with bias in "pseudo-religious" articles. This kind of covert, cunning, and ugly bias is common in articles that deal with loaded, politically incorrect or other unpopular topics where interested institutions censor free speech to indoctrinate the faithful and to silence those they see as heretics. In especially subtle and subversive forms of this kind of bias, totalistic terms such as "terrorism", "gender" or other absurdly-defined terms are imposed throughout the articles with no distinctions to rape the language for political purposes. In other cases opposing points of view from so-called "enemy", so-called "patriarchal" or so-called "problematic" people are blatantly censored where they contradict the "party line" of the interest groups who control the articles. What happened to Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect show on ABC (post 911) is what happens here on wikipedia too. However, we all loose when one group is able to censor divergent points of view as Operation Iraqi Freedom is proving. To me this kind of bias is much harder to detect and counter than the all-too-common religious biases are. I ask that other editors glance at Orwell's Animal Farm, Patia's Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women's Studies, and Griffith's Wild: An Elemental Journey to better understand the subtle and subversive biases that I am concerned about here. For really rigorous editors, I suggest Legalizing Misandry or Spreading Misandry by Nathonson and Young because they have whole chapters that deconstruct what they call "fascist" ('gender'-as-female) feminist constructions that are so gynocentrically biased that one wonders if those PARTICULAR feminists care at all about balance much less about genuine scholarship. (tired of countering blatant biases) 128.111.95.245 02:36, 11 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Let's keep things short, which articles do contain stuff you think problematic? List them here. Naturally, there are quite a lot of opinions on certain subjects and it is often difficult to express them with due weight. Wandalstouring 19:14, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Does this passage encourage original research?
(my italics) "Don't overlook the official news outlets of a country. Certainly they will be used for propaganda, but they may provide a different way of thinking about an article. It may also help you to understand why that particular country has its opinion on a subject, for example, how Mainland China thinks about Tibet or Taiwan may allow you to understand better why they act the way they do, and perhaps to better convince people as to why someone should or should not agree with their policies toward these countries, without necessarily being biased, but perhaps by pointing out errors in logic or thinking, by any particular side of the question, either pro or con."

Perhaps I am failing to see the meaning of the above paragraph, but I think the italicized part encourages original research and spreading one's POV through Wikipedia. It is not our business to convince anybody of the acceptability or unacceptability of anything, including a country's policy, either in the article text or on the talk pages. And it is certainly not our business to do it by means of pointing out what we perceive as errors of logic or thinking. If this is merely intended as a general advice for our activities in "real life" outside of Wikipedia, then that should be stated clearly (though I don't think such advices belong here in the first place). --Anonymous44 15:31, 16 March 2007 (UTC)


 * We may present official doctrines and by sticking to the sources point out contradictions without stating that they are errors, simply to show the complexity of opinions. Usually there are some academic works on such delicate subjects which do specifically work out these 'errors', so it should be seen as an encouragement for research, not for personal opinions. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Wandalstouring (talk • contribs) 10:12, 23 March 2007 (UTC).


 * What you say is sensible, but it's not what the current text says. It states clearly that "you" (i.e. the reader, i.e. the Wiki editor) are expected to "convince" people. And while you're right that citing academic works that mention 'errors' is OK, the current text doesn't mention the use of any academic works and thus suggests that you are supposed to find the 'errors' in the official news outlets for yourself. So I propose that the part about convincing people and pointing out contradictions should be removed. --Anonymous44 20:18, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

The ubiquity of George W. Bush
Here's a topic for debate: is it biased or not that in articles of almost every world leader - regardless of nationality, sex, whether they're current or past - there's a lovely photo op with said world leader posing with Dubya? Tony Blair, Hu Jintao, Jacques Chirac, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva... I could go on. I don't understand why this has come about, and it really should be remedied in the name of impartiality. Plus, Dubya isn't going to be in power much longer :P suggest the creation of a guideline entitled Politicians posing with George W. Bush? — Jack · talk · 07:44, Friday, 23 March 2007
 * I beg to differ on the point of "current or past". If they were in office at the same time as GWB, it's rather natural to have a picture with them both. I see Clinton appear there too (Chirac). If there's any bias here, then it's towards having a section on "relation with the United States" and because images from the US federal government are more likely to appear on Wikipedia because of our copyright policies. As far as Bush goes, he's also blamed for any calamity that happens while he's alive, so it evens out. (Observe, for example how he's blamed for stuff the US federal government did in Texas while he was governor there. :-) --129.241.217.234 08:10, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree, it is natural to have Jintao and Dubya posing together, as they were in office at the same time. But I suppose then it's also natural to have Jintao and Chirac posing together, as they were in office at the same time. As were all of them and Blair. following this logic, it quickly becomes apparent any article on a politician is going to contain 300+ photos. It is clear bias that Dubya is favoured to be in all of them, when Chirac is not — Jack · talk · 08:23, Friday, 23 March 2007
 * If it was an important meeting(the meeting is mentioned in the article) when the photo was taken, Dubya can pose anyhow with anything. If it is a random photo, try to show politicians with the people they dated most often or who are mentioned in the article as important for them. (For example Tony Blair and Dubya during a conference is notable enough because they were close allies in foreign politics. Angela Merkel's barbecue party, when Dubya had a big smile because he was going to eat real roasted wild boar, is not notable enough.) Wandalstouring 10:32, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Part of the reason we have so many photos of world leaders posing with Dubya is that the U.S. government releases its official images into the public domain, and many other countries' governments do not. Therefore, world leaders' visits to the White House are one of Wikipedia's best sources for high-quality public domain images of those leaders.

I'm not sure what other countries release official photos to the public domain. We have the standardized templates PD-USGov and related templates (listed here). There don't seem to be templates for public domain images from any other countries: Australia has PD-AustraliaGov, but that covers only images more than 50 years old. There are some other governmental PD tags, but they seem mainly to apply only to seals and symbols, not to photographs. Sweden has PD-SwedGov-attribution, which I'd think was free enough but you'd have to ask the image use experts. (Some attribution-required licenses are problematic, I think.)

Anyway, if there are countries besides the US which release official photographs into the public domain, the fact should be publicized, so that editors know to check that country's photographic archives — so as to have an alternative of the obligatory pose with Dubya. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 07:01, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Some time ago, I started a discussion about how some policies, such as prohibition of semi-free media, lead to systemic bias. Thi is an example of what I meant. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 13:07, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Can it be solved by cropping the picture? // Liftarn

Sugestions
Hello,im from Venezuela,and i think this is the best and most importnt wikiproyect i've seen,im very happy i found it.I wass thinking it would be good if there wass a userbox agaisnt etnocentrism(cause its more explicit than systemic bias,and i dont know how to create them),and if there is a contest or an award for the best worlwide wiew article? --Andres rojas22 12:26, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * To the best of my knowledge, there is no userbox against ethnocentrism. Should you wish, you can find out how to make one at WP:USERBOX.  I also don't know of any contest or award specifically for the best worldwide view article.  However, all Wikipedia's featured articles should take a worldwide view, and if you are keen to bring articles up to the best possible standard, that's the best process to go through. Warofdreams talk 16:53, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

WP:ATT
I've posted a view about impact on systemic bias at Wikipedia talk:Attribution/Community discussion. Other thoughts welcome! --VSerrata 08:37, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Anti-conservative bias
I have noticed, being a conservative, huge amounts of anti-conservative bias on Wikipedia. For example, the article on Paul Wolfowitz is a disgrace. There was a HUGE list of anti-Wolfowitz books in the further reading section, many uncited defamatory claims about him, and only criticism of him and no praise, for example, of his role of stopping corruption in developing countries in his role as head of the World Bank.

Now, I am not sure, since I am new to this wikiproject, what should I do? Nominate this article for a review, or should I start a Systemic Anti-conservative Bias Wikiproject? Your thoughts would be very helpful! :) Judgesurreal777 20:23, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
 * There's been some discussion of this before, and the tendency for conservatives to see anti-conservative bias, liberals to see anti-liberal bias, socialists to see anti-socialist bias, etc. I doubt that a WikiProject aiming to address perceived bias against only one political current would be seen as a positive development.


 * In the case of the Wolfowitz article, as with any individual article which in your view shows signs of bias, I'd suggest first discussing it on the article's talk page. I see that there has already been some debate on this topic.  In addition, if there are uncited defamatory claims, as with all articles on living people, these should be removed.  It would again probably be best to raise this on the talk page afterwards, in case any editors are able to find sources for these.  Finally, if you have good sources for Wolfowitz undertaking acts you see as positive - or for anything else neglected in any article - add it to the article yourself. Warofdreams talk 02:12, 30 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Problems like these abound on Wikipedia, whose most regular editors predominantly share similar political views. It can be quite exhausting to participate on pages such as those, regardless of your own views.  My advice would be to make civil efforts to bring up the issue on the talk pages and correct specific instances of bias.  If a group of editors at the page insists on defending bias, it's a good idea to raise the issue here to attract neutral parties.  Always keep in mind Warofdream's point that everyone tends to see bias against their own point of view.  Gnixon 18:20, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Apart from "alleged partisan disputes", Wikipedia is degenerating more and more into an exhausting edit war. An help to diminish this could be to include a policy with "the right to add a referenced sentence", so you're guarantee that your contribution will not be lost even if you have not time to waste in an endlessly discussion.--BMF81 22:16, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to peer-review nominations for editorial review
I have a serious concern: a recent article I consulted had a bright blue box "An editor has expressed a concern that the subject of the article doesn't satisfy the notability guidelines...".

OK, fine. Someone with the label "editor" thinks that this article "doesn't matter". He (or she) is entitled to his (or her) opinion. But why do I have any reason to think the "editor" has any interest in this area? If I didn't care about math or physics, maybe I'd mark the article on the Lorentz transformation as "doesnt satisfy MY notability guidelines".

Back to my point: the "editor" is entitled to his/her opinion, but I question two facets of Wikipedia:


 * Why should someone with the term "editor" get to establish this bright blue box?
 * Why should the editor's name be withheld? If this editor has a passion for squelching articles on a particular topic, then his/her bias might show through, and such nominations for "doesn't matter" should be discarded summarily, or at least peer-reviewed.

Proposals:


 * Nomination for such markings should be reviewed by an editorial panel. If 5 editors on a random panel of 10 agree that an article is questionable, perhaps only then should the article be nominated for deletion, cleanup, etc...
 * When used, the legend of the box should be changed to "editor [EditorsName] has expressed...".

Thanks for your consideration.... Harasty 13:21, 30 March 2007 (UTC)


 * You can find who attached this notice to the article by looking at the article's history. The editor should ideally also have noted on the talk page of the article where their concerns lie.  If they did not do this, you could ask them on their talk page.  Wikipedia has a notability guideline which is intended to apply to all articles, and you can check their reasoning against it.  I doubt that you would find much enthusiasm for your proposal, as these sort of notices are intended to be easily added and readily debated.  Should there later be a proposal for the article to be deleted, all editors will then have a chance to support or oppose its deletion. Warofdreams talk 03:07, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Introducing point system can help counter bias
If Wikipedia/Mediawiki introduces point system (plus points for postive and lasting edits and negative ponts for reverts) and then give editors having ponts above a threshold value some powers to mediate/vote etc this way very active users from not so well represented regions can have a say and can conter/balance bias to a certain degree. As number of users from non OECD countries increases the bias start getting addressed. May be such users can vote out biased admins as well. Vjdchauhan 21:02, 30 March 2007 (UTC).
 * There have been some proposals to introduce a points system, but I am unclear as to how this would enable editors from non-OECD countries to counter bias any more effectively than at present. Wherever editors are from, some are more prolific than others, some put more work into their edits than others, and some strive harder to stick to Wikipedia policies and guidelines than others.  So wouldn't we find that the proportion of highly rated editors from non-OECD countries was similar to the proportion of editors from non-OECD countries? Warofdreams talk 03:12, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Biased titles Alexander the Great, Ashoka the Great
May be to start removing bias, rename the titles of these pages. If some kings can be great then what about founders of religions, why their page titles doesn't reflect the same. Vjdchauhan 21:08, 30 March 2007 (UTC).
 * Hmmm... these people are commonly known as such, hence the articles' titles. I don't know of anyone who says "Jesus Christ the Great", "Mohammed the Great", "Buddha the Great" or whatever. Therefore these people's articles are titled according to their common known names.
 * I really don't see your point at all. --Sugaar 13:06, 3 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, the "Christ" in "Jesus Christ" is actually a simmilar title. "Christ" meaning "Anointed One". The Wikipedia article is correcly named "Jesus". If a disambig would be needed the article could be called "Jesus of Nazareth" or something. // Liftarn

Images on Muhammad page
This is one bias which can prevent many Muslims from trusting Wikipedia on its NPOV policy and may even prevent several of them coming to Wikipedia at all (these images were not there around a year ago). May be in future we will have several parallel Wikipedias to counter this bias and which will definately be biased again but by new set of Wikipedians coming from non-OECD regions. If Wikipedian's are so particlaur about what's wrong there-in then may be a separate page can be created having all the images and a section on the main page that can point to this new page. Vjdchauhan 21:16, 30 March 2007 (UTC).
 * I see how this can be a delicate issue for some religious people but nevertheless all images in said article are of Muslim origin, obviously indicating the diferent tendencies regarding iconoclasm in Muslim culture and doctrine. None of them is disrepectful anyhow. As the article mentions, the fashion of not depicting Muhammad's face (and in some case not depicting humans at all) is a relatively late usage started only in the 16th century. The article on Islamic art mentions clearly that human depiction and even that of Muhammad was historically only restricted to such holy places as mosques and madrassas, and not applied normally to the secular arena.
 * I feel you are expressing your POV rather than serious major issue. Both western and muslim media seem have emphasized the issue of alleged Muslim iconoclasm recently but nevertheless this doesn't seem to be the historical fact, except for some sects (both Christian and Muslim).
 * Personally I feel that Muslims (understanding as such the people of the Muslim cultural region of the world, independently of their faith and opinions) may be more stroken at how the Palestinian case is mistreated by the dominance of pro-Zionist ideas, for instance, than by the presence of historical Muslim art depicting Muhammad. --Sugaar 13:24, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Regarding your statement above Muslims may be more stroken at how the Palestinian case is mistreated by the dominance of pro-Zionist ideas, than by the presence of historical Muslim art depicting Muhammad: Both (images of Prophet Muhammad and Palestine issue) could be serious issue for Muslims in Middle East but outside that area (inclding India where Muslim's population is the world's second largest), Palestine issue don't carry that much weightage, your opinion could be reflecting what is beamed on the media in your region, pls check and introspect. Vjdchauhan 23:01, 4 April 2007 (UTC).
 * I don't at all think this is just one person's POV. Obviously the depiction of Muhammed is a highly sensitive issue these days.  If the prohibition has been common since the 16th century, I hardly think that qualifies as "recent" for our purposes here---Wikipedia has only been around for a few years.  Perhaps articles on certain forms of art cannot avoid images of Muhammed, but I don't think it would be hugely damaging to keep images of him out of broader articles like his biographical entry.  I suggest raising the issue on the Muhammed talk page.  Here's one idea:  what if a warning banner was posted at the top and users could click to a parallel version with no objectionable images?  Gnixon 18:28, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Parallel page without images or having a separate page only containing images and a reference to this dedicated image page on main page makes sense (try it out, I wil be very happy if it gets through). Vjdchauhan 08:28, 10 April 2007 (UTC).


 * We don't bow to anybody's objections, only consensus of the community. If there do exist hundreds of images of Muhammad, painted by devoted Muslims, there is no reason to object the use of images showing Muhammad. We neither backed down when citizens of the world's only superpower wanted an imagefree page on the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse. Wandalstouring 10:32, 12 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Insisting militantly on the will of a majority that depends on this wiki's limited usership is exactly the attitude that this project is working against. Gnixon 12:24, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree 100%. The problem is, that only people involved in this WikiProject seem to understand those issues. What can we do about it? (Exept for admitting defeat.)--Raphael1 22:51, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Admit defeat, as only some muslims disagree with having no images of islam, and wikipedia's goal is not to make muslims feel good, but to provide encyclopedic coverage of human knowledge, including Muhammad. Judgesurreal777 23:55, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
 * It seems to me, that you don't understand the goal of WP:CSB. The problem arises, because there are "only some Muslims" editing Wikipedia, and we are trying to alleviate that by "consciously focusing on those perspectives neglected". If we are disrespecting the worries of minorities, we are enlarging the systemic bias problem instead of diminishing it.--Raphael1 10:04, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/Kelvin Kwan
The above debate about a Hong Kong pop singer was closed as "Delete" on the grounds that the article lacked English sources; most article content was supported by reference to major Chinese newspapers (e.g. Ming Pao, Sing Tao Daily, Sina.com), and the subject of the article also met WP:MUSIC criteria #1 (nationally charted hit). Granted, the article itself is fancruft, but I feel it sets a dangerous precedent that "pop culture articles lacking English sources will be deleted"; this will merely serve to introduce a bias towards American/British/Indian popstars and against those from the rest of the world. Comments appreciated on the deletion review at Deletion review/Log/2007 April 3. Thanks, cab 03:51, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Post on 4/19/2007 The following paragraph is included in the Wikipedia discussion on potential bias in articles:

"The origins of bias The average Wikipedian on English Wikipedia (1) is male, (2) is technically-inclined, (3) is formally educated, (4) speaks English to an extent, (5) is White, (6) is aged 15–49, (7) is from a predominantly Christian country, (8) is from an industrialized nation, (9) is from the Northern Hemisphere, and (10) is more likely to be employed in intellectual pursuits than in practical skills or physical labor."

My response is, "Well, who do you think runs the world? Of course a disproportionate number of entries will reflect the attitudes and "bias" of the demographic group you describe.  Get over it." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.181.12.201 (talk • contribs) 11:38, April 19, 2007
 * Wow. That was constructive. Exhibit A for Ugly American. Wl219 10:02, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The unsigned editor above is also responsible for this constructive contribution a few edits earlier: "Egg foo young also gives you AIDS." GRuban 18:54, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Systemic bias and WP:LOCAL
Per User:Francis Tyers, I am submitting the following for inclusion into the main project page as the last sentence to the intro paragraph of the "The bias" section:


 * Similarly, systemic bias may cause articles of local interest to places where few Wikipedians come from to be nominated for deletion for lack of notability because they are obscure to the majority of editors.

I don't think this is a controversial addition given the goals of the project and what JLWS originally posted above on this talk page (and the more recent Kelvin Kwan AfD, for that matter). Francis took it out and said to take it to talk, I'm putting it back unless people object. Wl219 10:07, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't see anything wrong with it myself, and am surprised it was reverted. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 11:35, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * This is one of the ways in which systemic bias manifests itself. Of course it should be included. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 01:44, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Copyright bias
I find myself contributing to a peculiar bias in favor of articles about authors: If an Author's works are available on the web, then I'm more likely to add an article about the author. In the narrowest case, this because of Project Gutenberg. This in turn contributes to a more general bias toward the era from about 1900 to 1923. A large amount of material is available for that era because the copyrights have expired. This is a generalization of the "1911 Britannica" bias. I speculate that this era is better covered than 1923-1960. -Arch dude 17:24, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I think your personal bias is helping to combat Wikipedia's systemic bias. While old but still in copyright works may be worse off, out-of-copyright works get short shrift beside currently popular works.
 * Also, works of that age give us a reasonable gauge of whether they will conform to the ten-year rule. 0:)  Goldfritha 18:36, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

CfD systemic bias
There's currently a systemic bias at WP:CfD. When categories are nominated for deletion, the category page is tagged. But no one puts categories on their watch pages, because the result is watching every page in that category, not just the category itself. Hardly anyone, I believe, puts categories on their watch pages as there is no reason to unless there was any reason to believe it might be sent over to CfD. When a category is nominated for deletion that have a main article, the main article talk page isn't even notified. So no one with any interest in the category under discussion is likely to be aware of it until and unless the bot is sent off to delete it five days later. So CfD discussions are the blind leading the blind with the sole guiding voice being that of the nominator who is the only person who WP:CARES.

Another problem is rationales that apply quite well to WP:AfD are being applied to WP:CfD in ways that don't make sense -- particularly WP:USEFUL isn't credited as a Keep reason since that's the main reason for any category -- categories are useful for browsing a group of related articles.

But the first issue at least is clearly systemic. Is this just a place to rant, or can anyone here do anything to fix this? -- Kendrick7talk 21:47, 9 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually, looking closer at the project page this might not even be the kind of "systemic" bias y'all are talking about or good at addressing. I'm going to cross post this over at WT:CfD, but if any one has any ideas, I'd be happy to hear them. -- Kendrick7talk 22:18, 9 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Struck out some of the above; I was apparently under a mistaken belief. -- Kendrick7talk 22:54, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Global perspectives task force proposal
Hi, forgive me if this is discussed somewhere in the archive or if an extant WikiProject covers my proposal, but: I'm wondering if a task force specifically concerned with making sure global perspectives are represented in key articles would be an efficient way to counter the systemic Western, 1st world bias this WikiProject lists among its concerns. As has often been noted, many articles have sections (e.g. "media response") that only describe U.S. events/reactions. I would be happy to spearhead an effort to make sure global perspectives are included where relevant. Any thoughts or advice regarding such a task force would be much appreciated. Keep up the great work! Benzocane 03:41, 10 May 2007 (UTC)


 * This seems like a valuable and necessary effort. I would be excited to join in.  I'm especially interested in expanding the use of non-U.S. media sources on controversial political topics. --Mackabean 19:40, 10 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I like the idea a whole bunch. I personally would like to help out setting up the task force and such. Lets get a few more supports and then set it up. --  Ra nd om   Say it here!  00:26, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

It looks like this project doesn't have any task forces set up yet, but there are plenty of members (240) and if a global perspectives task force is established it may lead the way towards developing other subgroups to focus on niche tasks or approaches within the parent project and could help the project mature further as a whole. Pladuk 17:52, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I like it too. I think this is definitely an area that would benefit from focused efforts, as it can be quite difficult to gather and summarize international sources with fair representation. Good idea!


 * I too am interested. On a fairly regular basis the contributions I make to biographical articles on captives the USA has taken in the war on terror get challenged over "notability".  IMO these challenges often reflect inbuilt bias on the part of the wikipedians who mount the challenges.


 * IMO some of those who mount the challenges I mentioned above are reasonable people, who will rethink their stand, if you ask them a question like: "And what if the subject of this abuse was an American citizen, who was being held by a foreign country?"  But other challengers, in my experience, have an agenda.  Their challenges over "notability" are part of an effort to limit or suppress material that they think reflects pporly on the USA, without regard to whether that material fully complied with WP:NPOV, WP:VER, and WP:NOR.


 * I am pretty sure those of you who have responded, os far, are interested in addressing challenges of the first type I mentioned. Are the rest of you interested in addressing the second type of challengers -- POV pushers who window-dress their POV pushing by defining material they want to suppress as "not-notable"?


 * So, how is this going to work? What is the next step?


 * Cheers! Geo Swan 18:02, 11 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Once we get a couple of more interested editors, the next step might be setting up a task force page and then tagging articles we feel are in need of global perspective improvement. Then we can begin work in earnest! Benzocane 18:12, 11 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I was asked to check out this topic here. I think wikiprojects on specific regions, nations, territories, etc.. eventually work well. This wikiproject idea, though, may not be specific enough to get enough help. It may work better though as a separate wikiproject than as a subsection of WikiProject Countering systemic bias. --Timeshifter 01:18, 12 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi Timeshifter, thanks for your thoughts. I understand your point about specificity, but I think the guiding idea for a global perspectives task force is precisely the need to ensure a balance between specific viewpoints. So the notion of a global approach is less to emphasize generality than inclusiveness. Since the hemispheric and national bias of the encyclopedia is prominently noted in the CSB project, I thought a taskforce devoted to that particular concern might be useful...Benzocane 17:35, 12 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with the goals of this task force. I hope it gets support. I think that balance also occurs when there are specific wiki projects that counterbalance other wiki projects. Plus more and more people like me are posting across various wiki projects, and so balance is occurring that way too. Wikipedia is WP:NPOV. Maybe this wiki project can help moderate across wiki projects.--Timeshifter 05:24, 13 May 2007 (UTC)


 * For discussion: Would this project focus more on improving whole articles or specific sections? -- Tewy  22:10, 13 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Also for discussion: Would this project aim to add or remove content to balance the level of bias? -- Tewy  22:16, 13 May 2007 (UTC)


 * This looks like a worthwhile idea. It would be helpful to review all of the sources of systemic bias. Some sources of bias are so deeply ingrained that people do not consider them as sources of bias. One specific example with which I have been involved is the strong northern-hemisphere bias evident in many articles. When I have tagged articles as needing a southern-hemisphere perspective, some people have not understood the need for balance in this respect or have claimed that the southern hemisphere perspective is not needed. See Talk:Saffron for an example. Other sources of systemic bias may pose similar problems. --B.d.mills 23:49, 13 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm interested in taking part. I'd especially be interested in efforts to diversify the range of sources that are used, to branch out beyond American media.  I'll keep an eye on things, and am happy to pitch in once our agenda firms up. SlipperyN 12:32, 14 May 2007 (UTC)


 * It looks like there is plenty of interest here. I'm willing to work on setting up the task force subpage(s). Once we have the main task force page up then we can use its talk page to discuss all the questions that have been raised here. I'll try to get a first draft up sometime tonight, and will welcome help to refine it from there. Pladuk 18:52, 14 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Great, Pladuk! There is certainly plenty of interest and I'm excited about getting to work. Once you have a basic subpage up, we can dig in--perhaps by tagging some articles in need of edits and/or additions relating to global perspectives. And of course I'm eager to start making those edits...Benzocane 00:44, 15 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I've posted a first draft of the Global perspectives task force page. It needs some additional work, and is not yet tied in with the parent project, but it's a start, and its talk page gives us a place to continue the various discussions that have begun here regarding article selection, editing approach, etc. I added Benzocane and myself to the memberlist. Others who want to join, please take a look at the page and add yourselves! Pladuk 17:09, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

linguistic bias
It would be a good idea to add examples in other languages to each general linguistics article, just ask the translators and foreign contributors
 * Indeed. We even have a page for that: WP:LPOV. Feel free to help out! &mdash; mark ✎ 10:10, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Bias inherent in removal of spoiler tags
There's a currently a large scale campaign to remove or at least severely curtail spoiler warnings on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia talk:Spoiler warning and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Policies/Wikipedia:Spoiler warning. I'm concerned that some of the examples given as 'obvious' (and therefore unworthy of a spoiler) display Wikipedia's inherent bias. For example, it is asserted that the ending of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is common knowledge, even though to the vast majority of the world's population, it is not.-- Nydas (Talk) 23:16, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Central Standard Time - geobias?
There is discussion as to whether Central Standard Time should be a dedicated redirect to the North American Central Time Zone although there are also Australian and European Central time zones. See Talk:Central Standard Time (disambiguation). Dl2000 23:54, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

A (Major) Template Boo Boo - not systemic bias though . . . simple stupidity
First, my sincerest apologies. In my zeal to modify your site's 'task template' for inclusion at WikiProject Central banking, I inadvertently altered it. Because I'd copied the template's 'html' and incorporated it on the Central banking site, I didn't realize I was reformatting the original table. Can anyone advise me how to undo the mess I've made? I'm so sorry. -- gospelnous 03:24, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I've fixed it. You saved your modification of the template (Template:WikiProjectCSBTasks), instead of copy & pasting it into your new template. All it takes is a simple revert. &mdash; ዮም  |  (Yom)  |  Talk  • contribs • Ethiopia 04:43, 10 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the help. I was able to make the modification I'd intended and include the 'task template' on the 'project' site.  Now, I'll need to figure out how the 'other tasks' and 'open tasks' links work.  Thanks again. -- gospelnous 15:18, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Please comment at Xiaxue's AFD.
On 8 June 2007, Can't sleep, clown will eat me speedy deleted Xiaxue. Six days later, Vague Rant undeleted the article per my request on IRC. The article was subsequently nominated for deletion.

Xiaxue is clearly notable; she has won several prestigious blogging awards and is often mentioned in the Singaporean press. In the interests of countering systemic bias, please participate in the deletion discussion.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 07:40, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Systematic bias in categories
I've been perceiving what I consider a bias in categories created or put up for deletion and entered in articles. The specific issues that caught my eye concerns the Israel-Palestine dispute, but I suspect that this is an example of something broader and other conflicts where the Anglophone West favours one side will be similarly treated. So, please consider my example and discussion below as an illustration and not a demand to take a side in the specific debate.

In this case various categories such as East Jerusalem have been deleted and some Palestinian related cases are up for deletion. Because of the sytemic bias within the English language wikipedia, there is a preponderance towards a pro-Israeli perspective. Presumably the Arabic wikipedia has the opposite problem (but I don't speak Arabic so can't know for certain). Similarly Jerusalem is categorised as a capital (despite the UN not recognising it as such and the vast majority of embassies to Israel being in Tel Aviv and none in Jerusalem itself) and as an Israeli city but not as a West Bank or a disputed one. WP:NPOV focuses more on how the text of an article is presented and not on the subtext of the category system, but do others agree that the countering of systemic bias should extend to the category system? --Peter cohen 15:56, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Article of interest.
Folks may want to check out Articles for deletion/Margita Bangová and weigh in. Murderbike 21:01, 25 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I am new to the Countering Systemic Bias group & just saw this post. Unfortunately, the discussion was closed and a decision to keep was made before I had a chance to make a comment about this horrendous article. I just looked at the 18 references which are relied on heavily throughout the article. Of the 18, only 4 are legitimate, and one of those four does not even discuss material from the article it cites. Of the remaining 14 references, 6 claim to be linked to articles from the Toronto Sun, but are not. 1 reference is accessible for a fee of $12. 3 are linked to opinion/editorial works. 2 claim to be linked to the Toronto Sun, but are actually linked to a blog site. The final 2 are links to foreign, untranslated text, presumably Chezc. Are there any suggestions for next steps? I think I'm going to go ahead & remove the bogus sources and the related content since the article is disputed, but would appreciate it  if you guys could place the article on your watch page ... in case things get ugly. Thanks.  --Chicaneo 17:47, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Yavapai people
I've started writing this article in my sandbox, and wanted to open up to advice from folks here. I'm not Yavapai, and was raised by US public education, but am trying to be aware of slips in terminology that can make an article bad. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Murderbike 21:15, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Red Herring
It is a systemic part of life to have a point of view. Fortunately, that point of view is usually relevant to the needs of the viewer. If you succeed in eliminating the systemic viewpoint biases of Wikipedia (english language or otherwise) you will also succeed in eliminating most relevance. Please back off and delete this "over the top" project and let the NPOV people resume business as usual. Also, please remove the tag that someone has put on the aviation "brown-out" article. Bob 17:19, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't see how what you say relates to this project. It also seems that a general article which devotes three quarters to the USA merits the tag that has been placed on it. --Cherry blossom tree 18:04, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Women's Aid‎
Please note edits at Women's Aid‎, displaying clearly chauvinist pov of equating feminism with extremism, etc.. --Soman 16:00, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Battle of Washita River
This article is seeing some serious hijacking by someone with an incredible bias towards Custer's racist accounts of the battle. The article goes so far as to refer to indian actions as "depredations" and the gov't actions as "military campaigns". If folks could lend a hand to rein in the POV pushing, it would be great. Murderbike 18:12, 29 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I've been fighting this battle for a couple of days; thanks for taking notice. I'm glad to know this page exists. Custerwest began jumping in and wholesale rewriting the article, against consensus, a couple of days ago. I wasn't even involved until one of the concerned parties made a complaint on the talk page of a completely different article.  Here's some of the history:
 * Talk:Native Americans in the United States
 * Battle of Washita River | Talk: Battle of Washita River
 * WP:ANI#Problems between HanzoHattori and Custerwest
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America
 * Note also that Custerwest has several times removed the totallydisputed tag from this page, & we keep on having to replace it.
 * Though Custerwest is the worst of the POV-pushers, in my view there appears to be a problem of both the major discussants (Custerwest and HanzoHattori) currently holding forth on the article's talk page. I'm currently writing a fairly long post pointing out the ways in which sources are being cherrypicked by both sides to push POVs, & how the article could hopefully be improved to include the full spectrum of views without any one particular POV dominating (which is now the case in the article as written, with Custerwest's POV dominating). I'm about to set out on a one-week vacation, which means that I'll have limited ability to follow through on my own suggestions to improve the article myself, depending on how often I can get online while I'm away.  I hope others may be able to follow up on it, & also to weight in on the article's talk page to help develop a more realistic & non-POV-pushy concensus. Regards. --Yksin 19:22, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Note also that Custerwest has several times removed the totallydisputed tag from this page, & we keep on having to replace it.
 * Though Custerwest is the worst of the POV-pushers, in my view there appears to be a problem of both the major discussants (Custerwest and HanzoHattori) currently holding forth on the article's talk page. I'm currently writing a fairly long post pointing out the ways in which sources are being cherrypicked by both sides to push POVs, & how the article could hopefully be improved to include the full spectrum of views without any one particular POV dominating (which is now the case in the article as written, with Custerwest's POV dominating). I'm about to set out on a one-week vacation, which means that I'll have limited ability to follow through on my own suggestions to improve the article myself, depending on how often I can get online while I'm away.  I hope others may be able to follow up on it, & also to weight in on the article's talk page to help develop a more realistic & non-POV-pushy concensus. Regards. --Yksin 19:22, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Policy against open proxies
Yesterday, I added a point to the origins of bias, about the policy against open proxies. Other people keep removing it without trying to discuss or reword it. Some admin blocked me for violating the "three-revert rule" and told me to discuss here.So, can you read the point I added? Can we discuss it here, and reword it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.189.59.29 (talk • contribs) 01:01, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * You say Some governments may prevent or restrict access to Wikipedia. By prohibiting open proxies, Wikipedia indirectly helps such censorship. What do you mean by that? Your intention is to relate wikipedia w/ something which has nothing to do with, neither directly nor indirectly. There is nothing to reword at your addition. Have you read WP:NOP? Open proxies are prohibited for security, vandalism and sockpuppeting purposes. Any other attempt to link it to a political bias is original research and POV. -- FayssalF  - Wiki me up®  13:39, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * In China and other countries with such censorship, open proxies are the only way to read and edit Wikipedia. Prohibiting open proxies, whatever the reason, makes them unable to read or edit Wikipedia using open proxies, meaning they cannot read or edit at all. So prohibiting open proxies has a lot to do with systemic bias - it locks out over one billion people from reading or editing Wikipedia, and this has a huge effect on Wikipedia's demographics.
 * ...and therefore we have to blame Wikipedia for that! Is that what you mean? -- FayssalF  - Wiki me up®  14:07, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Not 100%. But it is a reason for systemic bias. Perhaps we could scrap or change the policy?
 * Open proxies are not prevented from reading Wikipedia, as WP:NOP explains. It seems your edits only serve to complain about the Wikipedia policy, when you should be complaining to the governments involved. There are other forums to complain about Wikipedia policy (try WP:VP). I happen to agree that there is some systematic bias caused by the open proxy issue (more precisely caused by the governments involved), but this does not mean that Wikipedia supports such governments (or any other). This is not the complaints department. -- zzuuzz (talk) 14:14, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree. WP:VP seems the most appropriate place to discuss that. Village pump (policy) if you want to change or create a policy. Village pump (proposals) if you got some proposals. -- FayssalF  - Wiki me up®  14:18, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * This project is about finding out why there's systemic bias, and what we can do about it. If government censors block Wikipedia, we should not respond by banning open proxies. Oops, my mistake, it's OK to use open proxies to read Wikipedia.
 * ;) -- FayssalF  - Wiki me up®  14:55, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

So nobody is interested in discussing tbis anymore?

Bias in this page
May I humbly suggest that this very WikiProject page displays systemic bias? I quote:

"Read websites of newspapers in English, from other countries than your own when examining a topical or recent event or editing an existing article related to a particular subject. There are excellent newspapers in South Africa, China, Hong Kong and India, who run websites in English. The Washington Post, CNN, and The New York Times are not the only major English newspapers or media covering a story. The Toronto Globe and Mail, The Times, and the BBC World Service may provide new and different insights on a story that an American media outlet might not have. And they will cover stories American media will not cover because it's considered of low interest to Americans."

It's demeaning. Better would be to give a neutral list of news sources considered 'good' from the English-speaking world.

Njál 19:49, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Good point. Very important. -- FayssalF  - Wiki me up®  23:37, 9 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I noticed this too. Nikola 00:38, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

New template?
I am thinking about a new template, similar to fact. It could be called where and add something like this:


 * The five-second rule is a popular old wives' tale, and common rule among many people today[ where?], regarding the eating of food that has been dropped on the ground.

It would be useful in cases where there is a concrete statement that should be of limited scope, but article as a whole doesn't warrant one of globalize templates. What do you think? Nikola 00:38, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Lists & article nominated for AfD - categories nominated for merge/upmerge or deletion
FYI - The following lists & article have been nominated for AfD and the following categories nominated for discussion ....

LISTS:

List of Irish American writers (deletion discussion) List of Iranian women (deletion discussion) The result was No consensus - Keep. Non admin closure. Jorvik 20:38, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

ARTICLES: Quechua Wikipedia (deletion discussion) The result was delete. Jaranda wat's sup 02:45, 18 July 2007 (UTC) Battle of Abu Ghraib (deletion discussion)

CATEGORIES:

Category:Irish-American singers (upmerge discussion) The result of the debate was rename/merge as nominated --Kbdank71 17:29, 18 July 2007 (UTC) Category:Jewish American singers (upmerge discussion) Category:Mexican American singers (upmerge discussion) Category:Italian-American journalists(upmerge discussion) The result of the debate was upmerge as nominated --Kbdank71 18:25, 16 July 2007 (UTC) Category:Irish-American journalists(upmerge discussion) The result of the debate was upmerge as nominated --Kbdank71 18:25, 16 July 2007 (UTC) Category:African-American journalists(upmerge discussion) The result of the debate was upmerge as nominated --Kbdank71 18:25, 16 July 2007 (UTC) Category:Asian American journalists(upmerge discussion) The result of the debate was upmerge as nominated --Kbdank71 18:25, 16 July 2007 (UTC) Category:Jewish American journalists(upmerge discussion) The result of the debate was upmerge as nominated --Kbdank71 18:25, 16 July 2007 (UTC) Category:Arab-American journalists (upmerge discussion) The result of the debate was upmerge as nominated --Kbdank71 18:25, 16 July 2007 (UTC) Category:African American radio-TV personalities(upmerge discussion) The result of the debate was rename/merge as nominated --Kbdank71 20:41, 16 July 2007 (UTC) Category:African-American television anchors(upmerge discussion) The result of the debate was rename/merge as nominated --Kbdank71 20:41, 16 July 2007 (UTC) Category:Ethnic Newspapers published in Canada (merge discussion) The result of the debate was close per work done by Bearcat --Kbdank71 18:12, 16 July 2007 (UTC) Category:Jewish American comedians (deletion discussion) The result of the debate was merge. Yes, "Jewish comedians" is a meaningful intersection. However, sub-dividing that by nationality does not seem necessary. >Radiant< 10:46, 18 July 2007 (UTC) Category:Roman Catholic composers (deletion discussion)

.... in case anybody is interested. --Chicaneo 19:09, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Criticism
If I may, I would like to respectfully request that this project - which I think is a very good idea - be a bit more conservative in the application of its templates. While it is fully understandable why it is a good idea to fight bias about American only viewpoints in worldwide issues, I have been noticing the tag being added in places where it is not necessary. The only one I have changed, at this point, was Multiline Optical Character Reader. Considering that the tag was added almost a year ago and had no follow up, as well as the fact that this is just a description of a piece of machinery with a description of how it is used by the USPS, I did not think that the justification that there is a single line mentioning that it is used in Canada as well requires a complete overhaul to state how the machine may be used in every country around the world.

As a compromise, perhaps this tag could be used in the same way that the tag is suggested to be used: if a user adds it, that user should then take the responsibility to follow-up on it himself/herself after a reasonable amount of time.

This is just my opinion, and I always try to keep an open mind. Please feel free to contact me if there is a desire for further discussion. Thank you for the consideration.  Maijstral  01:44, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Countering Systemic Bias barnstar?
Shortly after I Not Stupid's GA nomination passed, Haemo (who helped me copy-edit the article) gave me an Original Barnstar, with the following comment: "There's no "countering systemic bias" barnstar, so this will have to do. Good work!"

His comment inspired me to suggest a "Countering Systemic Bias" barnstar, to be awarded to Wikipedians who go the extra mile to counter systemic bias, whether by writing a dozen GAs about typically under-represented topics, significantly changing the demographic of Wikipedia or repeatedly protesting against policies which discriminate against the Chinese.

I failed Art, so please don't ask me to design the barnstar. However, since I excel in Literature, I'd be happy to provide ideas for the design. Due to my interest in fighting systemic bias, I'm considering joining this WikiProject.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 13:10, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Foreign language voice cast of The Simpsons up for deletion
This seems a worthy article, and it's worrying from a worldwide perspective that it's been nominated for deletion. On a broader note, perhaps there should be some fiction-specific examples on the project page? For example, Princess Mononoke has extensive information about the English translation, whilst Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope has nothing about translations into foreign languages.-- Nydas (Talk) 12:20, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
 * If anything, it should be renamed "non-English voice cast", being that there is no wiki country to be foreign of. Murderbike 04:20, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Inconsistencies in including criticism in articles
I have noticed examples of inconsistencies in how criticisms are handled in particular articles which could be an example of a systemic bias. For example, George W. Bush has an allegation from Michael Moore which is considered acceptable while in the George Soros article there is resistance about including an allegation from Bill O'Reilly which has led to a locked article and "strong consensus" is needed to include it. However, there is basically a stalemate in the debate. Both Moore and O'Reilly are controversial people so any input from them should carry equal weight. This appears as a double standard to me. Why include one example and refuse to include another example? I'm not here to say wikipedia is pro/anti liberal or conservative or any other political persuasion because that is not the issue I am trying to address. I believe that guidelines should be established on how to handle criticism that supplements core policies and provides a consistent way to handle criticisms and hopefully reduce edit warring to some degree. Does this sound like a good idea? MrMurph101 03:54, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Is it a wikipedia policy?
I discussed with other wikipedians on the Talk:Punctuation. I think that the article Punctuation violates the principle of worldwide prespective becuase while the article introduce puntuation in general but English puntuation is specially treated and separated from other languages. (I stated the reason at the talk page.) But other wikipedians replied me that "This is the English language edition of Wikipedia, which more or less justifies any bias toward that particular language." I don't think it is a justified reason to be bias towards one of the languages. I want to know whether this kind of bias is allowed officially? Any policy on wikipedia regarding this issue? Salt 17:49, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Your influence
Here's how your project influences some specific articles:

I'm a much better copyeditor than an author, but I have written a little in stock market articles because it's my job. I see complaints that the articles aren't international enough. But I haven't written about the Chinese stock market (for instance) for the same reasons I haven't written about kumquats: for one thing, it would often be wrong. Nobody is discouraging Chinese authors; in most articles there just aren't any. Complaining doesn't make writers suddenly know about distant lands; it makes them feel less like writing at all. Anyway, if someone wanted to read about the Chinese stock market he would be more likely to speak Chinese and use Chinese Wikipedia.

On the Main Page, complaints about US-centrism appear more often than science articles get complaints from creationists. As a result, the Main Page often says things like "the U.S. state of Kentucky" but never "Liberia, Africa". Art LaPella 04:27, 27 July 2007 (UTC)


 * The tags are intended to bring attention to the bias so that someone who knows the subject can correct it, not to cajole people who don't know about the subject into writing about it. I'm afraid I don't understand your second point at all, why would an article say "Liberia, Africa?" Liberia is a country, not a state or province.--Cúchullain t/ c 08:16, 27 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia has few Chinese editors because the policy against open proxies discriminates against the Chinese, who must use open proxies to circumvent government censorship of Wikipedia. Besides encouraging those familiar to the subject to improve the article, the tag also alerts readers of the systemic bias (lest they think the information in the article applies worldwide, when it may only apply to the USA). --J.L.W.S. The Special One 09:26, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

An article would say "Liberia, Africa" because if English Wikipedia readers don't know where Kentucky is, they are unlikely to know where Liberia is, regardless of the bureaucratic distinction between a state and a country. Open proxies are a good point (although your link describes why they aren't allowed), except that I chose China only for definiteness - it could have been any country. I don't object to labeling U.S. stock market information as being U.S. - I think that's already been done. Will the tags attract foreign authors? Oh, maybe. Not yet. Art LaPella 15:06, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * "An article would say "Liberia, Africa" because if English Wikipedia readers don't know where Kentucky is, they are unlikely to know where Liberia is, regardless of the bureaucratic distinction between a state and a country." - what about, eg, a Liberian? English is the official language there. But I doubt many Liberians know much about Kentucky. ArzelaAscoli 13:55, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Maybe, somebody will want to correct the issue, and do the research on Chinese stock markets. I write on stuff that I'm not an expert in all the time. I go to the library, and FIND the info. It works quite well. Murderbike 19:17, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
 * To research on Chinese stock markets at the library, you'd need to be fairly proficient in Chinese (although Wikipedia's policy on Chinese-language sources is ambiguous). --J.L.W.S. The Special One 00:25, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

If they do, I hope they start with the much more financially significant Japanese stock market, a major omission from Wikipedia, which I might trade someday if understanding its details were as simple as a trip to the library - before they attempt a more politically correct writeup of the smaller, unpredictable Chinese stock market. Art LaPella 21:26, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Personally speaking, I know where Liberia is, but I'd struggle to locate Kentucky on a map. If we start tailoring our content for who we think readers of the English Wikipedia are, it will open the door for more bias. Would it just be African countries or would we have things like "Puerto Rico, North America" or "Estonia, Europe"?-- Nydas (Talk) 12:13, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Kentucky gets more Google hits than Liberia, but not nearly as many more as I was expecting. The only door I wanted to open was basic honesty, and I think I've made my point. Art LaPella 21:02, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Recent Washington Post article and African humanitarian workers
I don't know if any of you saw the recent Washington Post article by Uzodinma Iweala Stop trying to 'Save' Africa, but in it, its asked, "Why do Angelina Jolie and Bono receive overwhelming attention for their work in Africa while Nwankwo Kanu or Dikembe Mutombo, Africans both, are hardly ever mentioned?" I thought this was a good question for WP:CSB. Mutombo's work is discussed a bit, but Kanu's not at all. Any soccer fans want to help out? Best, Smmurphy(Talk) 16:15, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Big problem
There is a big problem growing in the area of "logic" and "mathematical logic." The problem extends to perhaps many dozens of articles, and more every day. There is a group of people in the very organized WikiProject Mathematics who are of the strong opinion that "mathematical logic" is not "logic." This has lead to numerous territory issues in the creation of WikiProject Logic, which is intended as an interdisciplinary subject connected to philosophy, and perhaps linguistics, computer science, etc.

Well these guys don't have to share anything if they don't want to, and they don't want to. They have as many people babysitting the wikipedia as they need to A) keep anti-logicist propaganda in the articles, B) have split project areas for logic stubs/math-logic stubs C) remove all the mathematical logicians from the logicians category D) remove several categories out from under the logic category (including mathematical logic) E) disintegrate numerous articles into conceptx (logic), and conceptx (mathematics) which are the same concept. The issues go on and on. It is a serious issue to the intellectual integrity of the wikipedia. I am not sure that this discussion page is where to go, but perhaps someone can suggest a way to address this. I have started an account for myself on meta wikipedia, but it is not clear when to go in there either. Please advise. Gregbard 22:02, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

added a blurb on left-wing bias
I added a (very necessary) blurb on left wing bias here at Wikipedia. --Rotten 07:36, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
 * reverted. the next bullet point mentions the potential for political bias. Ripe 15:07, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Mass nomination of articles about Singaporean hotels for deletion
After a bitter dispute on Singapore Airlines, Russavia (who appears to have a vendetta against the Little Red Dot) nominated many articles about Singaporean hotels for deletion. I have previously mentioned here that when articles on non-American topics are nominated for deletion (or speedied) by editors unfamiliar with the topic, they are worsening Wikipedia's systemic bias. In the interests of fighting systemic bias, please comment at the deletion discussions. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:36, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

The only "systemic bias" I see here is by those who've mistaken Wikipedia for a travel directory -- or did I miss the part where you demonstrated the huge imbalance of lists of hotels in other cities? --Calton | Talk 14:45, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Requests for Comment re: Battle of Washita River
Requests for Comments have been filed regarding two users who have been seriously disrupting the Battle of Washita River (now blocked from editting), and it's talk page. If folks could weigh in, that would be great. Requests for comment/Custerwest, Requests for comment/HanzoHattori. Murderbike 20:04, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * A related article RfC has been initiated at Talk:Battle of Washita River. This article is about Custer's November 27, 2007 attack on the Washita River camp of Cheyenne chief Black Kettle -- a major event in the Indian Wars that played a major role in pushing Southern Plains tribes, esp. Southern Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, and Kiowa-Apache, onto reservations. The article has been under full protection since 1 July 2007 -- over a month now -- in a heavily POV & mainly anti-Indian form, and we are having a great deal of difficulty in getting any movement to make it possible to improve the article. We could really really use some help in the way of comments, statements, etc. from people outside the dispute. Please help! Thanks. --Yksin 02:49, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Worldwide view?
Hey, it's your own fault for discriminating non-English countries, it's always bla bla this is not relevant to the English speaking people and a million references of "oh this is popular in the U.S." and "this is popular in the UK" throughout the site, isn't Russia bigger than the US? What if I went into every one of these articles and added "this is popular in the U.S. and Portugal" (if true), yeah, probably get deleted because the American/Canadian public doesn't give anything what the Portuguese think. LOST and 24 DVDs are sold all over the world, of course LOST only mentions US and UK releases which is logical since English-speaking countries are expected to have the higher audience, just don't come complaining about "Worldwide View" in Women when you obviously could care less about cultural relativity. --AnY FOUR! 03:45, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Speedy deletion tags
I created 2 articles (OAG (band) and Malaysia national field hockey team) where someone placed speedy deletion tags on it (db-band and db-bio). Both due to notability issues. The tags have since been removed as i have justified their existence in compliance with wiki guidelines. I find this quite annoying. Wouldnt you? I believe this is due to systemic bias. Is there a way to make the placing of deletion tags more difficult? Suggesting an article in AfD would not be so bad. Ppl should do a bit of research first (wiki guidelines + google, etc) before requesting speedy deletion. kawaputra hello! 14:27, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I completely agree; in fact, I have raised similar issues before. Before nominating an article for deletion on the grounds of non-notability, it is advisable to do a quick check on Google and consult relevant WikiProjects. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 15:06, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes. I think a failure to assert the importance of a band (for example) should not be a criteria for speedy deletion. Maybe the article is still new and is still in the development stage. The template Notability can be used instead. Using the same example, the criteria for speedy deletion in WP:CSD should be expanded to match WP:BAND. Alternatively, maybe limit power to place tags to administrators. My 2 cents. kawaputra torque 16:46, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Bias in different type of sources
Dealing with historical religous issues, we are faced with sources written by historians and by religous communities. I feel there is a bias against religous views/texts and in favor of what historians produce. But each has their own problems: In academic view, actions of people are aimed to be explained based on "economic", "political-social" parameters and less on spritual grounds. But as a matter of fact, we really do a lot of things for spritual reasons. The religous sources on the other hand usually avoid textual criticisms and apply a supernatural model to their knowledge. Both have drawbacks, and both can useful depending on the questions reader has in his/her mind. But based on my experience, Wikipedia seems to have a bias towards the academic view. --Aminz 21:49, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
 * This is probably because Wikipedia requires reliable sources, whereas, by their very nature, the veracity of religious texts are usually hotly disputed. This does not mean that religious views/texts should not be discussed, but that academic sources which attempt to examine those texts dispassionately are far more appropriate sources than the original documents, for the purposes of constructing an encyclopaedia. Warofdreams talk 01:15, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

A typical example of systematic bias
Compare: en:Kim Holland nl:Kim Holland  Mel sa  ran  16:25, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
 * What exactly is the bias? I don't really see that there's bias in there being two different Kim Hollands. Murderbike 18:00, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The "bias" is that the Dutch-language Wikipedia has an article on a Dutch person and the English-language Wikipedia on an American person. This is, of course, caused by the fact that most contributors to the Dutch-language Wikipedia are Dutch, and many contributors to the English-language Wikipedia are American. A typical example of "The Wikipedia project has a systemic bias that grows naturally out of the demographic of its contributors and manifests itself as an imbalance in coverage".  Mel sa  ran  18:32, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree that this is a good example of systemic (not "systematic") bias. As one individual of this name is far better known in the Netherlands, and another is far better known in the United States, it suggests that both editions of Wikipedia would probably benefit from a disambiguation page. Warofdreams talk 01:17, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Help wanted re views of Mother Teresa in India
Hi, We are discussing reworking some material over at Talk:Mother Teresa and have realised we don't know how she was/is viewed by the India press and people (or indeed the Third World press in general). Anyone here able to contribute from a position of knowledge? We know about her state funeral and government honours in India and have seen but that is a hostile source and therefore might not properly reflect what Indian reportage on her is really like. (Posting this at both WP:Bias and WP:India--Peter cohen 09:45, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

bias
Hi I'm an spanish wikiuser and there is a lot of bias in some of your projects. For example, in the grat WikiprojecteMissing aeticles, section notable books. They only consider anglosaxon prizes appart from the Nobel prize. They dont consider as notable books awarded with prestigious French, German or Spanish prizes, as Goncourt, Cervantes or the National Critics. And i don't talk about other litteratures! You should talk with that wikiproejct and make them aware of the situation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.175.86.207 (talk) 18:45, August 28, 2007 (UTC)

Talk:Parodies of Harry Potter
Could someone have a glance at the discussion here? I'm running into arguments which smell of Anglocentric bias: that a translation of book titles should be viewed as suspect because most Wikipedians can't read Russian, and that a book series is not worth including because it's never likely to be translated into English. Gordonofcartoon 13:08, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
 * OK: resolved. Gordonofcartoon 18:29, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Non-English album reviews
I wonder what you folks think of "As the number of reviews should be limited, and as languages other than English are not understood by a large number of readers, reviews in languages other than English should generally not be included unless the language is especially relevant to the album in question." which has recently been added to WP:ALBUM. It's at WikiProject_Albums atm. Kappa 12:01, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * With the qualifiers "generally", and "unless the language is especially relevant" added in there, it doesn't seem like a too bad of a policy/guideline to me. Murderbike 17:36, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Personally I would rather hear opinions from a variety of sources. Why should the only opinions I hear about a Turkish-language album be in English or Turkish? Why never Chinese or Spanish, if it's being discussed in these languages? Kappa 11:20, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I would agree, but the rules seem a bit muggy on the issue in regards to sources, so perhaps there's a good enough reason for this guideline. I think the main point is that others have an easier time verifying that what is written is indeed what was said, rather than taking a proported translator's word of it. Certainly common sense should be used, in that if something is particularly popular elsewhere, etc... ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 11:35, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

race terms
Edits to the Jena 6 article made me wonder if there was some sort of wiki standard for defining people's races. Are white/black acceptable compared to caucasian/african american or whatever? Murderbike 03:33, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Request for Comment
An RfC has been posted at Talk:Legal status of Hawaii regarding WP:WEIGHT issues. If folks could take a look and throw in their two cents, it'd be great. Murderbike 05:22, 22 September 2007 (UTC)