Jump to content

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2018-04-26/Community view

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


← Back to Community view

Discuss this story

  • Thank you for your thoughtful article. You made me think. Best Regards, Barbara ✐  ✉ 12:36, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Your article is very interesting. It's not only that gaps are many, it's also how we deal with them. There is a lot to do. B25es (talk) 17:24, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Africa, a continent dominated by languages other than English, doesn't attract attention from our mostly-male, mostly-Western, mostly-white editor demographic. That's because editors don't write about topics that have some perceived merit for coverage. Editors write what they want to read and have others read. That's why we experience systemic bias, edit warring, and CoI editing; Wikipedia is a platform for self-indulgence, not knowledge. It is the Africans that have to care about writing articles about Africa. And while we're on the subject, from what source material shall our editors draw? How well-documented are the people, places, and events of Africa? How much of that is written in English, found online, and from a reliable source? Perhaps Africa suffers because their intelligentsia (the journalists and academics) haven't penetrated the Western world. The comparison to WiR is apt. I would caution you that if you start a sentence with "While Wikipedia isn't supposed to be the place to right great wrongs...", you're already headed in the wrong direction. Encouraging a subset of editors to write with a bias simply to balance out other bias is not praiseworthy. "Maybe it's sacrificing principle for expediency..." Yes, it is. Chris Troutman (talk) 02:24, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Chris troutman: "Wikipedia is a platform for self-indulgence, not knowledge". There's more truth to that statement than we would like to admit.
I don't intend to encourage editors to "write with a bias simply to balance out other bias" [emphasis added]. As one can see with the Art + Feminism editathons, many women and other participants participate with an inspiration of advocacy. This doesn't mean their end products are all full of promotionalism and pro-female/anti-male bias. WiR has produced many articles that meet NPOV, even the responsible editors felt they were enacting some form of social justice in the process. As this South African writes in his op-ed, Infiltrating Wikipedia, Black Panther Style, "At the end of the day, it’s partly our fault as Africans. Where we can have a voice, we aren’t taking our opportunity. I don’t mean to say we should flood Wikipedia with biased articles about how amazing and beautiful our country is. In fact, if we remain unbiased and factual, we will see a great deal more fruit." Clearly he's talking about a form of advocacy while still adhering to NPOV. So in summary I'm saying the advocacy mindset can still be used to encourage the creation of content while not further harming Wikipedia with prejudiced material.
Also, I can affirm that reliable sources absolutely do exist. Decolonization resulted in a wealth of material about newly independent states in English. Of course, much of that material was propagandist garbage and/or is currently out of print, but a significant portion of that literature, mostly what was published by university presses or research institutions, remains. I have six such books lying right next to me at this moment. The BBC World Service, Associated Press, and Reuters also regularly cover the affairs of the non-Western World. Jeune Afrique and the Agence France-Presse provide great material for Africa (in French, though). Things are well documented in the larger countries if one is simply willing to look. I've found plenty through Google books. Is it as comprehensive as coverage of Western topics? No, but we can still do a whole lot more with what we have. -Indy beetle (talk) 22:28, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speaking of "systemic bias", it would be a good idea to move all these lists of TV episodes to somewhere on Wikia or another MediaWiki-based wikifarm, and delete all articles about individual episodes. I think there are too many episode-related articles on enwiki, and not enough articles about other stuff. Lojbanist remove cattle from stage 02:40, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Earth's City Lights, 1994-1995
@Jim.henderson: I assume that has much to do with the penetration of the internet overall, or at least population concentration. -Indy beetle (talk) 22:28, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Money makes political power and electric light. Money makes geography and other knowledge. Money makes Internet. Places without people, or people without money, are in the dark.
@Ser Amantio di Nicolao: Well, at least there's two of us. Frankly I haven't got many more ideas. Contests and award incentives, I suppose? I advocated for a restructuring of WikiProject Africa (the "appeal to discuss the project's direction in February" which "garnered responses from only three users") but it fell flat. I'm most certain that a highly organized working group would go far in making improvements, but that requires a bare minimum level of interest that I believe we haven't yet acquired. If you've got anything better I'm all ears. -Indy beetle (talk) 22:28, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Indy beetle: Contests will help, I think, if they're properly presented. I've also mulled over a couple of outreach ideas I'd like to see implemented, though they're currently in the embryonic stage. For one thing, I think we might be able to open discussions with embassies and embassy staff - I'm sure there are people there who would have access to sources and knowledge that many of us wouldn't be able to find. I also think it might be interesting to try and work with immigrant populations to develop editing practices. A lot of the libraries in my county in Virginia, for instance, list on their website the languages their volunteers speak. I'd love to see about developing some kind of editing workshop using that information, targeting local populations with classes on editing provided at the local library or community center. I don't know what kind of fruit it might bear, but it's worth trying.
I also think that bad publicity helps drive editing: Women in Red didn't really take off until the problem of Wikipedia's gender gap became fodder for the mainstream press. That ultimately inspired people to take a hard look at the issue and begin working to correct it. That might end up being the case here, as well.
What about building a library of free sources to work with? I know of a couple that could be useful for Central Asian topics, for instance. Bolivia, too - I think there's a greater dearth of representation of South American topics than people realize. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 05:26, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think until WMF reviews how it identifies and handles harassment + bullying behavior (like other tech platforms and industries are moving to do), recruitment and retention in these areas will remain a challenge. Hmlarson (talk) 19:18, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Hmlarson: Bullying based on gender is well documented on the internet and and there many anecdotes about it occurring on Wikipedia. I wonder if there's any reliable data on racist behavior or activity that otherwise targets non-native English speakers or persons of certain nationalities on the encyclopedia, and whether that forms part of a larger "culture". -Indy beetle (talk) 22:28, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • No brainwashing consciousness-raising exercise will make everyone the same. Art LaPella (talk) 03:49, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • As you seem to be comparing progress on Women in Red with the lack of interest in covering Africa, I should perhaps mention that last November's Women in Red World Contest inspired editors to write a considerable number of new articles on women in all the countries of Africa. Perhaps you should call on the WMF to support Dr. Blofeld in organizing future contests on the people and countries of Africa.--Ipigott (talk) 10:23, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Ipigott: Not going to happen when that editor retired over allegations of copyvio dating back to years before and the same editor shows a lack of basic geography awareness (e.g. thinking American Samoa and Guam are in North America while Mexico and Caribbean countries were left out.) So I don't expect much support from this editor. OhanaUnitedTalk page 04:52, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Dr. Blofeld retired for personal reasons that have not been discussed on-wiki, and I know that he would be more than willing to act as a contest coordinator (though would require financial support to do so, which so far has not been forthcoming). And no need to be a jerk about something that likely was an accident/oversight-- Dr. Blofeld was historically one of en.wiki's best geography editors, and has plenty of geography knowledge. Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:47, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm going to repeat myself about one problem with systemic bias that needs repeating: our coverage of some subjects suck because it is difficult to get the needed materials to improve them. For years I wrote articles about Ethiopia, but ended up getting burned out because it was hard to get the information I needed. Specifically, I could not create biographies of any of the Ministers or most of the Regional presidents of Ethiopia because the information is not to be found. (Maybe if I had access to a research library that specialized on Ethiopian topics that would not be the case, but I happen to live in a large US city without a large African-American population.) Right now I'm working on articles about ancient Rome, & I'm unable to write articles on many of the women because they are absent from the primary sources: ancient misogyny is a hard barrier to overcome. And even when there are women worth writing articles about, our own notability standards may block us. Specifically, I have a list of 28 women from the reign of Domitian for whom we have some information, but it is frustratingly limited to "X is the daughter of Y (an important Roman official) who married Z (an important Roman official) & had A, B & C as children (all important Roman officials)". If I write articles on any of those women, I fully expect to see them obliterated at AfD. Speaking from the coal face, it's very frustrating to try to deal with these issues, especially when there is so little support to address these short-comings. -- llywrch (talk) 21:51, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
llwyrch@ You're not wrong...though I think the sourcing issue has improved considerably over the past couple of decades. (Years, even - I've found amazing, wonderful online sources in the past year that I'm convinced would have been inaccessible to me in years past.) Talking of outreach...I have some thoughts, actually (see my comments above) that might be worth pursuing. I live just outside of DC, which has the largest Ethiopian community in the US; I'm sure there are numerous community organizations here that would be interested in helping. Shoot me an e-mail sometime, and we can brainstorm. :-)
As for AFD, I take your point, but I think things are slowly moving in a more inclusive direction there. I wouldn't let fear of deletion hold you back - if you think the articles are worth creating, then by all means do so. I'll back you, and I'm sure there are others that will, too. :-) --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 15:34, 3 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Ser Amantio di Nicolao: Agreed. Sourcing has gotten quite a bit better, and online translators have made things much easier. Most countries have at least one online newsite or paper of reasonable quality that covers national topics (Digital Congo or Le Phare for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or lefaso.net for Burkina Faso, for example). Building a library or bibliography of these sources is a great idea and would be of great help to our users, the one for WikiProject Africa is not very useful in its current form. Perhaps we should discuss this further. -Indy beetle (talk) 22:54, 3 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Indy beetle: I'm game. Shall we take it off-wiki, or at least off-comment-thread? --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 02:52, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
If you're willing, I'd love a ping wherever you land, Ser Amantio di Nicolao; would be very interested in this project. (For my two cents, I would love for it to be on wiki in hopes we may organically gather momentum!) Innisfree987 (talk) 23:14, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, @Ser Amantio di Nicolao:, for your kind offer. However, I moved away from working on Ethiopian topics several years ago, so if I were to return to writing & improving articles, it would take me close to 6 months to ramp up again. I mentioned Ethiopia as an example, not as what I'm working on right now. Although I did get a pleasantly surprised response not too long ago when I encountered two different women from Ethiopia, & proved to each that, yes, I had heard of the town they came from.

Think of the issue with sourcing this way: imagine a Wikipedian living in Kansas who wants to write articles on women artists of the 19th century. Said Wikipedia struggles with what resources they can find online (which is always hit-or-miss; as Indy beetle suggests, we need to create a shared collection of online resources so one Wikipedian isn't searching for resources another is familiar with), at the local public library (which may be out of date -- depressingly likely, if you know the situation with public services in that state), & from what books they can buy (I've found Amazon does not always have a given book, & if they do it may have a price tag well over $100). Then this Wikipedian discovers that there is a rich collection of the materials needed -- at a research library in Massachusetts. Or, even more frustrating but just as likely, in France. The Foundation currently offers no easy way for our imaginary Kansas Wikipedian to access that hypothetical collection. As I write this, it occurs to me that one important task the GLAM people could take on is to hold a series of workshops for Wikipedians explaining how to approach these research libraries & institutions & convince them to provide access. (Fun fact: in order to be able to use the collection at the British Library, one needs a letter of introduction from someone like a professor or a minister. I wonder how many Wikipedians would even be aware that many research libraries have requirements like that. And how many, when they learn of these requirements, might be discouraged because they don't know someone who would vouch for them.) -- llywrch (talk) 23:53, 3 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Llywrch: I hear ya. Even this close to DC there are a lot of things I can't get easily in libraries. (On Ethiopia: I take your point. For myself, all I can say is that the hot dog vendor in front of my old office was Oromo, and I think I blew her away when I asked her to teach me "thank you" in Oromo. It remains one of two words I know in the language. :-) )
  • Ah the decade-old story of bias: A 2013 study estimated that women only accounted for 16.1 percent of Wikipedia’s total editor base. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales believes that number has not changed much since then, despite several organized efforts. So despite energy being put into fixing this, not much is there to show up. And everybody is still pointing fingers. I wonder how much more featured content could have been gotten instead of naively throwing so much at this problem and hoping something sticks. The guilt expressed above by so many editors shows how much a disservice this whole shaming process has been for the entire Wikipedia project. Nergaal (talk) 19:07, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you so much for this commentary Indy beetle.
In addition to appealing to editors' geographic backgrounds (as a way to attract not only interest but additionally, I would add, expertise), I would like to appeal to the segment of the editoriat that sometimes says all the truly "encyclopedic" topics already have entries and all that's left is to improve them. The enormity of the geographic content gap offers a vertiginous number of opportunities for indisputably encyclopedic new entries. For instance, in trying to read about the recent events in Nicaragua, I was stunned to find how many of the country's basic government agencies and major, long-standing civic groups have no English Wikipedia entry. Not a poor entry: no entry. I am now the creator of a very wanting stub on Nicaragua's social security agency (please, please help me!); the United States' Social Security Administration has had a page since 2003. Even if one is strictly anglophone, many if not most public libraries and certainly every university library will have at least a couple English-language books called Modern History of [Country/Region Underdescribed on English Wikipedia] (pre-modern, I'll have to leave to someone else's expertise). Just getting a basic sketch of the significant bodies of governance in the world's 195 countries would be a huge improvement to the encyclopedia. Beginning entries, even if stubs, on clearly notable topics also allows subject-matter experts who may not be experienced Wikipedia contributors to come along and add details much more easily than if they had to learn how to create a new entry themselves. There is so much here for Wikipedians of a broad array of motivations for participation, language backgrounds and reference access to contribute. Innisfree987 (talk) 23:08, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Excellent article!
One likely cause of the low participation in editing by women and people from underrepresented parts of the world is that the Wikipedia subculture -- especially the conduct of some experienced editors -- can be intimidating. Not everyone is deterred -- some people have thick skins and enjoy the lively debates on talk pages (I do), even when some of the comments are condescending and arrogant. Most women I know would not enjoy this. They might decide, "Look, I often enough have to deal with jerk behavior by men in my daily life, I don't need to add to it." Or someone from Africa, Asia, or Latin America might decide, "Dealing with arrogant Americans who are ignorant of my part of the world is a stressful challenge, and I don't need more of that in my life." More generally, Wikipedia has a high attrition rate -- new editors who drop out, whose accounts becomes inactive. I should say that in my own experience, some veteran editors have been extremely helpful and supportive. But others, not so much -- they immediately revert an edit or dismiss without response some concern I expressed on a talk page, citing an alphabet-soup of WP acronyms which, if you go to those articles, seem to have little relevance. Shortly after I started editing, an administrator falsely informed me (citing WP:MEDRS) that I should not use sources that are more than 10 years old. When an editor does something like that and you go to his (my guess is that it's usually "his," not "her") user page, you find it festooned with barnstars and ribbons like a general's chest. In most cases that's probably not intended to intimidate the newcomer, but that's what it does.
There might be some simple measures that Wikipedia could take -- in addition to the numerous policies, guidelines, and admonitions to editors not to behave badly that already exist -- to reduce the attrition among newcomers and especially among women, underrepresented minorities, and people from underrepresented geographical regions. For example, whenever an experienced editor (more than 1000 edits) is responding to a newcomer (fewer than 100 edits) a template could come up reminding the experienced editor of the key points of such policies as WP:BITE and WP:BRD-NOT. It might also be possible to tag a new article about a person (or institution, place, etc.) from Asia/Africa/Latin America or about a woman (or women's group, women's rights campaign, etc.) and impose certain restrictions (similar to discretionary sanctions or to the restrictions on BLP-editing). Another possibility would be to empower newcomers to give opinions on the helpfulness or unhelpfulness of individual experienced editors (in the first week after opening my account I didn't even realize how easy it is to thank someone for their edit). This would require special effort, since most newcomers don't feel very empowered.NightHeron (talk) 20:22, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Let me offer a suggestion for regular contributors who (though they may be from Western nations) are interested in expansion of articles about the developing world. Go to your public library and seek out one non-fiction book, one documentary, and one album from a certain part of the world (let's say Africa, which of course has a vast array of places, people, subjects, and so on about which to study and write). Pick a deadline for yourself (let's say Dec. 31, 2018) and commit to watching the documentary, listening to the album, and reading the book. Then, with book in hand, go to the WP articles covered in the book, and see if there are enhancements to content, citations, linking, etc. that you can make based on your reading. Do the same with the material from your documentary, and review the pages for the musicians and/or genre from your album. This will of course not solve all of our problems of gaps in content, but it is a doable set of tasks that will take WP a few steps closer to good coverage on subject matter related to the developing world. Please let me know your thoughts. KConWiki (talk) 00:43, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Some good ideas from KConWiki and others. Encouraging to hear that online sources for Africa are improving. Some years back I was working on Swaziland and got discouraged by the lack of information from reliable sources. Language and unfamiliar names of people and places don't help either. ––Derek Andrews (talk) 22:35, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I really appreciate this article, since I think it is important for the Wikipedia community to begin developing greater awareness of the scope and depth of systemic bias. "Systemic bias" is not just coded language for "gender gap" or other demographic disparities, even though such instances are what most seem to discuss; systemic bias is an artifact of how social systems, structures, and orders prefer and privilege. However, that preferencing and privileging does not simply describe those systems, structures, and orders; it defines, conditions, and supports them as well.
    For example, this systemic bias in geographic coverage is not simply about how individual editors prefer and privilege certain coverage based on their interests, but also about how those actions and interests socially determine what qualifies as legitimate and worthwhile to cover and, consequently, what is given priority. This in turn strengthens the hegemony of the perspectives which inform those actions and interests and—thus—of the systems, structures, and orders they support. The latter proceed to condition a new generation of individual editors to repeat the process, which sustains the bias.
    Systemic bias extends beyond gender and geography, though, and inevitably affects all domains. Moreover, this bias is not just total in scope, but also total in depth: the very politics and philosophy upon which Wikipedia is based, and those of its every participant, informs this bias and has since the project was first jimmied out of its shell. This can be seen in the coverage within politics and philosophy in particular, but also in Wikipedia content more generally, where mainstream views are mainstreamed and heterodox views are marginalized. In fact, it is from those perspectives that we developed the very foundations upon which rests neutrality, notability, noteworthiness, reliability, and so many of the other principles that constitute the pillars of this project. From this perspective, what we consider fringe has less to do with its relationship to the mainstream and more with our relationship to both. This is not a favoring of the fringe, nor a vindication of some vanguard, but it is a recognition of the inevitable biases that inform our every action and interest and their relations to the systemic biases that pervade the Wikipedia project.
    With that said, to talk about how to "address" or "alleviate" the "problem of systemic bias" seems to assume that it is a problem whose solution is defined by its absence and not its difference, as if we could free our subjectivity from its subjectivity and bring objectivism to our objectives. It is from that assumption that I believe the notion of "sacrificing principle for expediency" here even makes sense. If our principles are themselves biased, and necessarily so, then what exactly are we sacrificing when we encourage editors interested in that which our biases have marginalized to contribute in ways that are biased in favor of covering that which is marginalized? The principles themselves or the present biases therein? If the latter, then is that a sacrifice at all? Or is it just a difference of opinion? And if it is the former, then on what basis should a system with such basic flaws not be replaced? If we indeed must sacrifice principle for expediency, and that which we are expediting is believed to be the greater good that furthers the goals our principles are intended to serve, then it sounds to me that the problem is with the principles themselves and, thus, the system itself. Such a conclusion is perhaps a more damning indictment of Wikipedia's failure, and in a much more profound sense, than even the denial of its neutrality and the project's capacity to achieve it.
    Thanks for the article, Indy beetle. I agree with the sentiments you expressed in it and value your efforts at combatting some of the systemic biases found in this project. One of the most important steps in the pursuit of neutrality, even as a useful fiction, is cognizance of not just one's own biases but also those of the systems in which one operates. Whether that pursuit logically concludes in its annihilation, however, is beyond the scope and depth of this biased account. ―Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 03:28, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-04-26/Community_view&oldid=1136283968"