Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countering systemic bias

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[edit] 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—donated by users—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—the focus of this post—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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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 Wikipedia: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. — 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 Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias open tasks#Nature (biology, chemistry, physics and related) 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] Wikipedia:Conflicts of interest

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

[edit] 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. — 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. — mark ✎ 09:48, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] City names and disambiguation dabs

We are having an interesting discussion at Talk:Valencia (city)#Survey. 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#Move_to_Naruto_(manga_and_anime)). Jun-Dai 06:57, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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))

[edit] 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 meta: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)
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)
  • 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.

Johnbod 18:56, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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. — mark ✎ 10:43, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks a lot. (Wikimachine 04:56, 27 September 2006 (UTC))

[edit] 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. — mark ✎ 10:42, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] Indian town deletion nom

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

[edit] 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!—msh210℠ 16:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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, --Asteriontalk 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: [1][2][3][4]. I understand there were problems before switching to unicode but this is no longer the case, AFAIK. Thanks, Asteriontalk 22:48, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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. --Limetom 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)

[edit] Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia: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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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.


[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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)

[edit] "The average Wikipedian..."

I tagged "The average Wikipedian..." passage with {{Verify source}}. 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. — 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. — 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] Featured article vote on Indian Standard Time

Hi in Wikipedia: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))

[edit] 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: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive#Because it is in English, is Wikipedia supposed to be Euro-centric?. 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 Wikipedia: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, {{globalize/YYY}} 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.
  • - 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.

Johnbod 04:02, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] "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. — 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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 Wikipedia: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)

[edit] 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 categorizatoin 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)
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