Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias

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See also: Wikipedia:Systemic bias
People icon.svgThis is a WikiProject, a collaboration area and open group of editors dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of a particular topic, or to organizing some internal Wikipedia process.
Please see the Guide to WikiProjects and the Directory of WikiProjects for more information.

The Wikipedia project suffers systemic bias that naturally grows from its contributors' demographic groups, manifesting an imbalanced coverage of a subject, thereby discriminating against the less represented demographic groups. See an explanation of systematic bias on Wikipedia for how this may impact articles and content. This project aims to control and (possibly) eliminate the cultural perspective gaps made by the systemic bias, consciously focusing upon subjects and points of view neglected by the encyclopedia as a whole. A list of articles needing attention is in the CSB Open Tasks list.

Generally, this project concentrates upon remedying omissions (entire topics, or particular sub-topics in extant articles) rather than on either (1) protesting inappropriate inclusions, or (2) trying to remedy issues of how material is presented. Thus, the first question is "What haven't we covered yet?", rather than "how should we change the existing coverage?"

Contents

[edit] Tasks

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

  • Sign up as a participant and mention any interests you may have related to "Countering systemic bias" (CSB).
  • Add the Open Tasks box ({{WikiProjectCSBTasks}}) to your User or User talk page to let other people know about the issue.
  • Read news articles in as many languages as you know, from as many news sources as you can find, from as many political view points as you can find (especially those that you would normally not read) when examining a topical or recent event or editing an existing article related to a particular subject.
  • Don't overlook the official news outlets of a country. Certainly they will be more one sided than wikipedians may like, but they may provide a different way of thinking about an article. They may also be useful as a primary source of information about why the government of that particular country has its opinion on a subject and why it acts the way it does. The readers of Wikipedia could benefit from this, regardless of whether they agree with that view or not (if they don't, they may use it to find errors in its logic or thinking). For example, official news outlets may be useful indicators of how Mainland China thinks about Tibet or Taiwan. Secondly, they may provide relevant non-controversial information about the country or its leaders which could help in improving the article on that topic, for instance, date and place of birth, occupation of leaders, cultural heritage of, links to and other tidbits which may not be available elsewhere.
  • See if there are web pages on a particular subject which were written by people from other countries or cultures. It may provide you other places to look or other points of view to consider.
  • Be more conscious of your own biases in the course of normal editing. Look at the articles you work on usually and think about whether they are written from an international perspective. If not, you might be able to learn a lot about a subject you thought you knew by adding content with a different perspective.
  • Occasionally edit a subject that is systemically biased against the pages of your natural interests. The net effect of consciously changing one out of every twenty of your edits to something outside your "comfort zone" would be substantial.
  • Create or edit one of the articles listed on the CSB template.
  • If you don't particularly like any of the subjects on the template, our open tasks list has a wide array of articles in need of attention.
  • Add to the open tasks list. No one person can fix a system-wide problem, so be sure to tell people when you find needy articles.
  • Rotate articles from the open tasks list to the template, and other helpful tidying tasks.
  • Give feedback on this WikiProject on the talk page.
  • If you're multilingual, add information from Wikipedia articles in other languages to their English Wikipedia counterparts.
  • Contribute to articles on under-represented topics that you are familiar with.
  • Be careful not to worsen the bias with your deletion nominations. If you are not familiar with a subject area, or it has meaning outside your experience base, discuss your concerns on the talk page or another appropriate forum before making an AfD nomination.
  • 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 a 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. Contact minority or immigrant groups in your area to see if they would be interested in encouraging their members to contribute. The worst they could say is, "No". But keep in mind that immigrant groups may well have a different point of view than the majority of people in the countries they emigrated from (they may, for example, be members of a minority group themselves or may have emigrated because of a disagreement with the government not shared by the majority of the population), which introduces its own systemic bias.


[edit] 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.

[edit] Africa

[edit] Latin America

[edit] Asia

[edit] Other projects

[edit] Related cleanup templates

The template {{globalize}} may be placed to produce
Globe icon.The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page.

The template {{globalize/Northern}} may be placed to produce
Globe icon.The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the northern hemisphere and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page.

The template {{globalize/UK}} may be placed to produce
Globe icon.The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United Kingdom and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page.

The template {{globalize/USA}} may be placed to produce
Globe icon.The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page.

The template {{globalize/Canada}} may be placed to produce
Globe icon.The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with Canada and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page.

The template {{globalize/North America}} may be placed to produce
Globe icon.The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with North America and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page.

The template {{overcoverage}} may be placed to produce
Globe icon
The examples and perspective in this article or section might have an extensive bias or disproportional coverage towards one or more specific regions. Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page.

The template {{toofewopinions}} may be placed to produce
The examples and perspective in this article may not include all significant viewpoints. Please improve the article or discuss the issue.

The template {{recentism}} may be placed to produce
Recentism.svg
This article or section may be slanted towards recent events. Please try to keep recent events in historical perspective.

The template {{religion primary}} may be placed to produce
This article or section uncritically uses the texts and opinions from within a religion, without referring to primary or secondary sources that critically analyse them.
Please help improve this article by adding details from reliable primary and secondary sources.
Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page.

See Template:Globalize for a list of region- and bias-specific sub-templates similar to {{globalize/UK}} and {{globalize/USA}}.

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.

[edit] Members

Please add your name. If you have specific interests relating to CSB, feel free to briefly describe them so we can get a sense of the strengths of the project.

Further information: /members

[edit] See also


WikiProject Countering systemic bias open tasks
This project creates new articles and improves neglected ones.

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