Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
WikiProject Countering systemic bias
WP:CSB
CategoryWikiProject Countering systemic bias
Project banner template{{WikiProject Countering systemic bias}}
Userbox{{User CSB}}

The

Systemic bias on Wikipedia may take the form of gender, geographical, racial, ideological
and other forms of bias.

See § Further reading for studies, statistics, and more information that demonstrate contributor or subject imbalances.

Goals

  1. Eliminate the gaps caused by the systemic bias in editors' cultural perspective, consciously focusing upon subjects and points of view neglected by the encyclopedia as a whole.
  2. Improve the editing community's understanding of the systemic bias in Wikipedia by reviewing existing scholarship and ensuring that recent studies about Wikipedia's systemic bias are included as sources in various articles about Wikipedia itself. Ensure that sections about systemic bias in these articles are clear, complete, and concise.

Scope

The first goal is extremely broad, as under-represented POVs may affect almost any article. It may be effective to prioritise WP:Featured articles, WP:Good articles, and WP:Vital articles. The second goal is limited to articles about Wikipedia itself.

Systemic bias in coverage and selection of articles

Research consistently finds systemic bias in Wikipedia's selection of articles in its various language editions.[2][1] This bias leads, without necessarily any conscious intention, to the propagation of various prejudices and omission of important information. Wikipedia's increasing influence on the way people comprehend the world makes this bias a potentially serious threat.

Selection based on gender bias

Wikipedia has a longstanding controversy concerning gender bias and sexism.

misogynists".[4]

Selection based on racial bias

A challenge for editors trying to add Black history articles to Wikipedia is the requirement that potential article topics, such as historical individuals or events, meet Wikipedia's "notability" criteria. Sara Boboltz of HuffPost wrote that the Wikipedia notability criteria "is a troubling problem for those fighting for more content about women and minorities", because "there's simply less [published] documentation on many accomplished women and minorities throughout history – they were often ignored, after all, or forced to make their contributions as someone else's assistant."[9]

Maher stated that one issue is that "content on Wikipedia has to be backed up by secondary sources, sources that she says throughout history have contained a bias toward white men;" "people of color have not been represented in mainstream knowledge creation or inclusion in that knowledge," as "encyclopedias of old were mostly written by European men."[10]

Although these assume bias, the presence of white nationalists and other far-right extremists on Wikipedia is an ongoing problem that is unlikely to go away in the near future given the rightward political shift in countries where the majority of the site’s users live." The SPLC cited the article Race and intelligence as an example of the alt-right influence on Wikipedia, stating that at that time the article presented a "false balance" between fringe racialist views and the "mainstream perspective in psychology."[11]

Task forces

Some task forces that focus on particular aspects of systemic bias are linked below:

Defunct task forces

Talk pages for the following task forces have not been edited in over two years

Tasks

This gallery of images from education implies that Africans and Asians don't have advanced education system while Westerners do. A way to solve this disparity is to add images of university students in Africa and Asia.

There are many things you may do, listed roughly from least to most intensive:

  • Sign up as a
    talk page
    , and participate in discussions there.
  • Read news articles and other sources from political view points you wouldn't normally read or in other languages. If you're multilingual, translate articles from other languages.
  • Consciously edit topics that are systemically under-represented, such as geographic places in Africa. Changing one out of every twenty of your edits to something outside your "comfort zone" would be substantial.
  • Create articles for underrepresented groups and topics. Women in Red keeps a list of potentially notable women that do not have articles on the English Wikipedia.
  • Be careful not to worsen the bias with your deletion nominations. If you are not familiar with a subject area, discuss your concerns on appropriate forums before making an
    AfD
    nomination.
  • Review articles being discussed for deletion. Advocate to keep suitable articles about under-represented topics. Improve articles that are being considered for deletion. For example, use WikiProject delete sorting to review deletion nominations of biographies about women
    WP:DS/WOMEN
  • Change the demographic of Wikipedia. Encourage friends and acquaintances that you know have interests that are not well-represented on Wikipedia to edit. If you are at high school or university, contact a professor in minority, women's, or critical studies, explain the problem, and ask if they would be willing to encourage students to write for Wikipedia.

Related WikiProjects and regional noticeboards

There are several

WikiProjects and regional notice boards
that have potential to help out in our efforts. We may also eventually want to create new WikiProjects as part of this effort.

See also:

Africa

Latin America or the Caribbean

  • Argentina-related regional notice board
  • WikiProject Mexican-Americans
  • Caribbean Wikipedians' notice board
  • WikiProject Echo
    , which translates pages from other WikiProjects

Asia


Also

  • Middle East, under Category:WikiProject Middle East
  • Notice board for Pakistan-related topics
  • Notice board for India-related topics
  • Indonesia-related topics notice board|topics notice board
  • Thailand-related topics notice board

Europe

Other projects

Related cleanup templates

The template {{globalize}} may be placed to produce

The template {{

toofewopinions}} may be placed to produce

The template {{

secondary sources that critically analyze them. Please help improve this article. (Learn how and when to remove this template message
)

The template {{recentism}} may be placed to produce

When these templates are used they should be accompanied by a brief note on the talk page to outline what exactly you feel needs to be addressed.

Members

Please add your name to the members page.

We of course encourage all members of WikiProject Countering systemic bias, to also promote their membership to other Wikipedians, by adding the Userbox template to their personal user page. This is fast and easy to do. You only need to add this line at your user page: {{User WikiProject Countering systemic bias}}, and then you will find this wonderful blue userbox displayed:

This user is a participant in
WikiProject Countering systemic bias.

If you have specific interests relating to countering systemic bias, feel free to briefly describe them there or on this Wikiproject's talk page so we can get a sense of the strengths of the project.

References

  1. ^ .
  2. .
  3. ^ a b Cassell, Justine (February 4, 2011). "Editing Wars Behind the Scenes". New York Times.
  4. ^ a b Noam Cohen, "Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia's Contributor List," The New York Times. Found at The New York Times, January 31, 2011.
  5. ^ "Wikipedia's Women Problem". Nybooks.com. 2013-04-29. Retrieved 2013-11-19.
  6. ^ Wikipedia's Sexism Toward Women Novelists
  7. ^ Dunn, Gaby (2013-05-01). "Does Sexism Lurk?". Dailydot.com. Retrieved 2013-11-19.
  8. ^ Zandt, Deanna. "Yes, Wikipedia is Sexist". Forbes.com. Retrieved 2013-11-19.
  9. ^ Boboltz, Sara (April 15, 2015). "Editors Are Trying To Fix Wikipedia's Gender And Racial Bias Problem". HuffPost. Retrieved June 16, 2023.
  10. wired.com
    . Retrieved June 16, 2023.
  11. ^ Ward, Justin (March 12, 2018). "Wikipedia wars: inside the fight against far-right editors, vandals and sock puppets". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved June 16, 2023.

See also

Further reading

External links