Jump to content

Wikipedia:WikiProject Anarchism/Systemic bias report February 2023

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Introduction

[edit]

For the purposes of countering systemic bias on Wikipedia, I’m undertaking a quantitative report on WikiProject Anarchism.

As this is a quantitative report, based largely on data and numbers, it is limited by the data available to me. If a possibly-related article wasn’t tagged as covered by the WikiProject in its talk page, or if the relevant entries in Wikidata are not filled in, this will unfortunately not be covered by this report. As such, my first recommendation is that people reading this make sure any missed articles are tagged for WikiProject coverage and Wikidata entries are updated with the required information.

This is also not a qualitative report. Such a report may be more relevant to specific individual articles than a broad overview of coverage by a WikiProject, as taking a qualitative review of thousands of articles collectively presents a vast challenge. For such future qualitative reports on systemic bias, I recommend that reviewers focus on article length and content, as well as the quality and distribution of its cited sources.

Methodological notes

[edit]

On 14 February 2023, I pulled the list of all 2,975 pages covered by the WikiProject Anarchism. From these, as I wanted to focus on articles in the main space, I removed all categories, templates, redirects, disambiguations, lists, etc. This brought it down to 2,242 articles that this WikiProject covers in the main space.

I then ran these 2,242 articles through PAC’s wikilinks inspector, which cross-references them with data points on Wikidata to find information about them, including gender and country of citizenship for biographies, and countries for other articles (about organisations, movements, etc.). The reliance on Wikidata provided some hurdles, as not every Wikidata entry has countries or gender listed, so there should be some accounting for a margin of error here. As a result of the data points used, this bias report will not be looking into other areas of potential systemic bias, e.g. the number of black and indigenous anarchists represented in our articles about anarchists in the United States.

From these articles, there are a total of 1,188 biographies and 1,054 non-biographical articles. With the former, there were cases of overlap in citizenship due to changing states (e.g. the Russian Empire dissolving and being replaced by the Soviet Union) or immigration (e.g. Italians moving to the United States). I also ran into a data issue with the latter, as only 426 of them are covered here. This may be due to a variety of factors, including that many articles are not limited by a specific geographic region, or that Wikidata entries are incomplete. I have noted instances of both of these.

I also took a quantitative review of our 500 most popular pages (for January 2023), as this would give us some insight not just into the systemic biases that we uphold in editing but also those that pass onto our readership; a review of the project’s 76 vital articles, which more or less represent the main targets of the WikiProject’s improvement goals, as they form some of what Wikipedia as a whole considered its most important articles; and a review of our recognised content, which broadly shows which articles have had the most active attention put into them.

Report: gender gap

[edit]

Of our 1,188 biographies, there is a clear androcentric bias towards biographies about men, with approximately 82.8% of our articles being about male subjects, while only 17.1% of our biographies are about women. Furthermore, our coverage of trans, non-binary and intersex people is rather sparse, sitting at about 0.6% altogether.

The gender gap is even starker in our 48 vital biographies, of which 85.4% are about men and only 14.6% are about women, and in our 185 most popular biographies, of which 84.4% are about men and only 15.1% are about women. The gap is only marginally less pronounced in our 80 recognised biographies, of which 81.2% are about men and 18.8% are about women.

On average, men outnumber women in the Project’s coverage by more than 4-to-1. It should be noted that WikiProject Anarchism’s coverage of women is worse in every metric than the Wikipedia average of 19.5%, which should be cause for concern. Even assuming the number of biographies about men stays the same from here on (which, of course, it won’t), we would need to create at least 35 new biographies about women just to bring it up to the WP-wide average. To bring it up to parity, we would need to create at least 781 new biographies – a massive undertaking just to think about.

This under-representation may be due to a number of factors that reflect systemic bias on multiple levels. In terms of sourcing, the contributions of men are weighed more heavily than the contributions of women. Classical anarchist history often emphasises the roles of anarchism’s “founding fathers”, while at the same time neglecting, side-lining and ignoring the role of women in the subject’s development. Even when sources do cover the contribution of women to the field, there is a tendency to focus on a few more notable individuals. Feminist historian Judy Greenway described this tendency as the “Emma Goldman short-circuit”, due to the large of amount of attention paid to this anarchist “founding mother”, again to the detriment of others.

It is worth noting that of all the women covered by the WikiProject, Emma Goldman is the only one whose biography is a level-4 vital article and also the only one that has been reviewed to featured article status. Of the project’s 9 featured articles: 2 are biographies about male subjects; 2 are about books written by men; and 1 is about a fictional male character. There are left 3 historical events: women are entirely absent from the articles on the Tottenham Outrage and the Siege of Sidney Street; while for the Assassination of William McKinley, the only 3 women mentioned are McKinley’s wife Ida, McKinley’s biographer Margaret Leech and… Emma Goldman, who defended McKinley’s assassin. This implies a tendency to not just overlook women, but also to reference them largely in their relation to men. However, a more qualitative review of this is required in order to establish the extent of this issue.

As for the issue of representation for trans and non-binary people, this too requires some work, as it appears that they are under-represented among our articles. This is an issue that is particularly pronounced with trans men, the sole example of which accounts for only 0.1% of our total biographies on men. (In contrast to a 1.5% proportion for trans women) Non-binary people too account for only 0.17% of our biographies.

This too may be an issue with biases in sources, which often entirely neglect to represent LGBTIQA+ individuals and their contributions. There also may be a recency bias at play here, as trans and non-binary people are generally more represented in the contemporary era than they have been in the past, due in part to changing societal attitudes, shifting foci in scholarship and the self-organisation of marginalised folk to represent themselves and improve their conditions. As such, finding historical examples of trans and non-binary people related to anarchism may be more difficult – either because they weren’t “out” or because mainstream historiography glossed over that aspect of them.

Unlike the massive gender gap for women in this project, this one requires less new articles to close, going by general statistics for trans and non-binary population numbers. Even a few new biographies about trans and non-binary people would go a long way.

Report: geographic gap

[edit]

The geographic gap was also quite stark in WikiProject Anarchism, which displays a clear western-centric bias towards countries of the so-called “Western World” or “Global North”. Frequently the top 20% of countries will account for 80% of our articles, while the bottom 80% of countries account for only 20% of our articles.

Together, countries from Western Europe, North America and Oceania account for 75.7% of our biographies and 71.2% of our non-biographical articles. If one stretches the definition of the “western world” to include Eastern Europe and Latin America, which together account for 18.1% of biographies and 20.4% of non-biographical articles, the remainder left over is quite small. Africa and Asia together account for only 6.2% of our biographies and 8.4% of our non-biographical articles. The lack of focus on Africa and Asia is particularly pronounced in our most popular pages, recognised content and vital articles, in which they often go entirely unrepresented.

On average, Africa and Asia are out-numbered more than 9-to-1 by other regions. Even taken together with Latin America and Eastern Europe, they are still out-numbered by Western Europe and North America by about 3-to-1. Even Western Europe alone accounts for more than half of the entire WikiProject’s coverage.

Assuming the number of biographies about people from the “western world” remains the same (which, again, it won’t), at least 900 biographies about people from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America would need to be created to bring this up to parity. In order to bring non-biographical articles up to parity, at least 180 articles would need to be created. Even if one were to set the task of getting Western Europe alone below the 50% mark, we would need to create an additional 224 biographies and 32 new non-biographical articles. It’s clear that countering Western-centrism within the WikiProject will be no easy feat.

This representational problem is again down to a number of factors. Western-centrism in anarchist historiography has gone largely unexamined until relatively recently, when certain scholars began to make an active effort to highlight anarchist histories in a more global context.

When looking at Sub-Saharan Africa, the only countries that have received any substantial focus in anarchist historiography (and thus in our own articles) are Nigeria and South Africa, where scholars such as Sam Mbah and Lucien van der Walt have respectively highlighted their own country’s anarchist history. Other countries in the region either haven’t developed a notable anarchist movement until relatively recently (e.g. Ethiopia and Uganda), or their anarchist histories were tied inextricably with colonialism (e.g. Angola and Mozambique). Additionally, the global decay of anarchism in the mid-20th century meant that anarchism was not in the position to become part of the de-colonial and post-colonial histories of these countries. That our “Anarchism in Africa” article largely exists to collect pieces of information that wouldn’t be enough to fill out articles on specific countries is indicative of the scale of the problem.

Anarchist historiography of Southwestern Asia and North Africa (SWANA) is generally more developed than those south of the Sahara, but also suffer from the same problems of Western-centrism. Generally anarchist histories of North Africa are very closely tied with those of southern Europe, focusing almost exclusively on the actions of French and Italian anarchists in the region. As before, the remission of anarchism that prevented its connection with de-/post-colonial movements affected this region too. The explosion of a coherent native anarchist movement in this region has largely been tied to the Arab Spring, when these ideas caught traction with young revolutionaries (e.g. Egypt, Syria, Tunisia). To my knowledge, I could only name a single historical North African anarchist covered by the project, that being Sail Mohamed. On the other hand, I know of several notable modern anarchists from SWANA, but as far as I know, none of them have biographies on Wikipedia.

Anarchist historiography of South Asia is also a troubled subject, as while there has been cases of anarchists and anarchisms popping up throughout the region, a coherent anarchist movement as such is still in its infancy. For example, the term “anarchist” was often thrown around by the British Empire to refer to basically anyone in modern-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Iran that had a tendency to rebel (e.g. Babists, NCM, Samiti). Additionally, there were some notable figures that incorporated anarchism into their own theory and practice (e.g. Gandhi, Ghose, Singh and Tagore) but aren’t usually explicitly identified as “anarchists” in most sources.

Research into anarchist history of Southeast Asia is also rather sparse, both as the scholarly interest in this area is relatively new and as the modern anarchist movements in the region are quite young. The historical anarchist movements in the region were very closely tied to developments in China or the countries’ former colonisers, so it’s difficult to find sources that are specifically about anarchism in the region.

In contrast, the relative under-representation of Eastern Europe, Latin America and East Asia are less easy to explain away, as there are copious amounts of sources on anarchist individuals and movements in these regions of the world. While the other regions mentioned above require some more keen and dedicated research, we have many of the resources we need already available to us here. Expanding our coverage of these areas will thus be more easily manageable, even if it is less urgently needed than other regions of Asia and those in Africa.

Conclusions

[edit]

I’ll conclude with my recommendations to counter the systemic bias present in the project.

First off, we need to expand our lists of sources and our bibliographies to collect texts that focus on anarchist women and anarchists from post-colonial regions of the world. Inquiries into Google Scholar, Google Books, JSTOR and WorldCat may aid us in this.

We then need to go about creating and improving our articles, whether biographies or otherwise, that can help us close the gender and geographic gaps in our WikiProject. On an individual level, see how long you can go without creating or expanding an article about the life or work of male anarchists from Western Europe or North America, in order to force a shift in your focus for some amount of time. It may also be prudent for us to hold an edit-a-thon or some kind of collective drive that focuses specifically on coverage of these areas.

We also need to think about how we can more equitably cover these areas in our recognised content and our vital articles. The former should be less of an issue, as it just means improving and submitting more articles from this area for GA, FA and DYK reviews. The latter is trickier, as most vital article sections are already filled up. (To be honest, the Vital articles WikiProject itself might need a quantitative systemic bias review) Additionally we should consider how we can ensure these parts of the project are more easily findable and better sign-posted, in order to provide these articles more regular reader traction and hopefully get more of them into our most popular pages.

Forging closer links with other relevant WikiProjects would also be vital in closing the gender and geographic gaps that exist in our own project. Working together with the Women in Red and Women in Green projects, as well as the gender gap task force, would help us towards closing the gender gap. We could also reach out to the Africa and Asia projects to see if they have any recommendations or advice in expanding our coverage for these regions.

Additionally, our sister projects on other language Wikipedias could be of some assistance. In particular, our sister projects on the Spanish and Portuguese Wikipedias could be helpful in expanding our coverage of Latin America, ditto with the Polish and Russian projects for Eastern Europe. The French project may even have some recommendations for where to look for sources on Africa and Southwestern Asia, although this seems less likely.

We also ought to be inviting more women, LGBTIQA+ folk and people from Africa and Asia to participate in the WikiProject, as they could help contribute not just to closing our content gaps but our contributor gaps as well. (Although gender and geographic gaps for contributors is harder to gauge, as we largely contribute on an anonymous basis and I wouldn’t want to pressure anyone into disclosing information about themselves) We could put out a call-to-action for more contributors in this area, or we could reach out to people we know on a more personal level. To anyone interested, we should offer to assist them in getting started with editing, as getting to grips with Wikipedia can be tricky for almost everyone.

Finally, I think it would be a good idea for us to get into contact with experts in these fields that may be able to provide us with sources, targets and advice for creating and expanding more articles. I can speak from experience that working with scholars on subject matter they’re familiar with can be an enlightening experience and is endlessly helpful in improving our content. In terms of who to reach out to, there are plenty of examples in bibliographies throughout our project. I hesitate to name any names here, as there would be too many to count and I worry about them receiving spam. But if there’s any areas of interest you have that you would like to look further into, I can provide you some more personalised recommendations.

To cap this off, there is clearly a lot of work ahead of us in order to counter the systemic biases of the project. It will be difficult to narrow the gender and geographic gaps, and it’ll be even more difficult to close them, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. I hope the criticisms and suggestions that I’ve provided here can help us work further towards the goal of greater equity in our coverage.

--Grnrchst (talk) 19:31, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

[edit]
  • With a report like this, I think it's difficult to get a sense of what the numbers mean without some sort of reference point. I wonder if there's some way to approximate the "target numbers", or what the breakdown would look like if an article was created for everyone in the WikiProject's scope that meets notability guidelines. Of the notable anarchists in history, how many were men? It's likely to be more than 50% given historic prejudices, but by how much? And so on for geographic data and other traits. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:44, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is a good point and not one I know how to answer to be honest, as it's kind of a hard thing to approximate. I guess my short-term target would be to bring up the percentage of women to above the Wikipedia-wide average and hopefully to bring down the dominance of Western Europe to below 50%, although the latter is more tricky than the former.
I agree that it's going to be very difficult (if not impossible) to achieve gender parity, given general notability guidelines. But I guess what I wanted to get at with this is that equity is something to work towards, rather than to set a definite X number vs Y number target. (Maybe I didn't convey that well enough in the text)
Of course, if anyone has suggestions to approximate such a target number, I'm all ears. I'm just lost on how I would do that. -- Grnrchst (talk) 21:25, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree that we shouldn't expect to get to parity, but it's also clear that Wikipedia does not offer an unbiased reading of existing sources. (So what we really have on WP is 'bias squared': a biased reading of biased sourcing!) I think a list of redlinks would be helpful.
    One place to start might be to investigate decolonial literature, which has decades of scholarship that isn't well-integrated in to WP (see here). The search term "decolonising anarchism" yields about 4,500 articles on Google Scholar, and I suspect that many of these would suggest movements, individuals, events, books, etc. that could have articles and/or could be better integrated into recognised and vital content. Thanks so much Grnrchst for taking on this study and initiating this conversation! Larataguera (talk) 12:09, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • This was great, thank you for doing this! IDK if it is helpful but we are currently working towards a MENA+ anarchist library which may be at least slightly useful in future endeavours rectifying coverage of certain regions. Another comment I make would be in the region of Iraq and Syria for example a lot of the Anarchism related content often only revolves around Apoist politics and the Rojava experiment. SP00KYtalk 01:38, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for doing this, I read it a while back and wanted to leave some comments, working with you on Talk:Gaetano Bresci/GA1 reminded me of a few issues. I'll note them down here Mujinga (talk) 17:08, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also just read this Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Women_in_Red#The_editorial_politics_of_Wikipedia Mujinga (talk) 18:11, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I said I'd drop some reflections, I suppose they are more thoughts inspired by the report that go behind the remit of WP:@ and I'm not necessarily disagreeing with anything already said. These comments are addressed to Grnrchst as interlocutor, but also to anyone else who is interested.
    Countering systemic bias is as you say a really important task on wikipedia. Usually when I've seen debates about this at GA or FA noticeboards, it sort of boils down to editors (who I do believe are mainly but not exclusively older males) saying a version of "Just write about what you like - If you miss there being articles about X on the frontpage of wikipedia, write articles about X". In a way this is a decent request, but on another view it simply evades the whole point of the question. I saw Ritchie333 saying somewhere that they wanted to write more articles about women, but it was easier to write about music or keyboards because they already had the books. And I know what they mean. I have two FAs, Olive Morris and Securitas depot robbery. My interests are varied and I write mainly on wikipedia about women and squatting. I'm currently writing "Squatting in Y" articles and I noticed you are writing "Anarchism in Z" articles (and LunaEatsTuna, who is writing "Time in Q" articles hehe). I also like to write about leftwing social movements, self-managed social centres, stone circles, prisoner support and so on ... during lockdown I developed an interest in heists, so I made a featured list and from there started working on Securitas depot robbery. I could also take several other heist articles to FA, including City bonds robbery and Northern Bank robbery, both of which I've already taken to GA. But (and this is the point) I realised that whilst it's a fun pastime for me, I actually want to see more women on the frontpage of wikipedia instead of heist exploit stories, therefore I should focus on that goal more. I might also do some more heists but it's not so much of a priority.
    Re the gender gap, we've been working together on Talk:Gaetano Bresci/GA1, about the Italian anarchist who assassinated King Umberto I of Italy - the other article where I see you recently is Alfredo Cospito, the Italian anarchist who has been on hunger strike. These are both important articles and both deserving of work, but also both are about men. I'm not saying we shouldn't work on them, I'm saying we should work on them AND on articles about women. Of relevance to WP:@ is Lucy Parsons - her article is in need of work, probably a total rewrite I would say. Maybe that could be a fertile collaboration? She or somebody like her would be cool to get on the front page as a DYK for a GA or indeed a FA. It's not the oppression Olympics but it is good to think intersectionally: she was female and black, both things that need more representation on wikipedia. She is a US figure, I'd rather work on people from the Majority World, for example I'm wanting to develop Phoolan Devi which has been languishing as a GA nom since January. If I wrote about a heist, maybe it would have been picked up already for review; certainly a heist is easier to get on the frontpage because you can get hold of all the sources easily and probably people would be faster to review it at FAC. I do notice that people, mostly men, are stockpiling FAs on football clubs, snooker tournaments, war memorials and so on. I'm not criticising them for doing so, they should indeed write about what they want BUT there is a structural issue here. They could also stretch their considerable skills in other directions. There are way more male FAs than female FAs appearing and that just should not be the case. There's the dominance of articles about men compared to other genders, we can't do much about that because of patriarchial society, but we don't have to replicate these modes. Also a culture of producing as many FAs/GAs/DYKs as possible is the wrong culture - I really dislike the WikiCup for this and the Doug Coldwell saga was instructive.
    I wrote this a few days ago and wanted to sit on it to digest. Then I had a great water cooler conversation with a colleague: for them, as a nonwikipedia editor, it was clear that wikipedia is simply reproducing white patriarchal modes of behaviour by featuring articles about wars, English police injustices, boat races and mediaeval kings. Could be worse for sure, but also could be much better. This is because they took it as a very real question about who in the world has the time, access and privilege to write on wikipedia. FAs are far from having a global focus. They suggested a quota for the frontpage - no women this month means no article that day - I love it! Of course the very idea would drive people up the wall. It's actually perhaps better to do away with the featured article concept completely - I'd quite like a random page selector on the frontpage, and if this featured article was bad at the start of the day, it wouldn't be so bad at the end! Mujinga (talk) 13:21, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks so much for offering your thoughts Mujinga! I agree with everything you've said here and appreciate you taking the time to write it. I actually didn't know you wrote the article on Olive Morris. I got a lot out of reading that one, so thanks for getting that to FA!
    To your comments about ensuring we work on articles about men and women, I have been trying my best to do so. Bresci was the fifth article I improved to GA. Of the previous four, two were about men (Nestor Makhno and Volin) and two were about women (Halyna Kuzmenko and Teresa Mañé). So I guess if I want to keep gender parity, I should take on improving another one to GA. I could probably submit my article on Maria Nikiforova, although I'm worried it's over-reliant on one source. I've also fixed the problems with my article on Maria Lacerda de Moura that resulted in the GA review being failed.
    I'll note that our articles on Fumiko Kaneko, Itō Noe, Kanno Sugako and He Zhen look like they could very well pass a GA review in their current states, or with minor improvements. Would anyone here be interested in adopting one of these articles for review? Out of them, the one I personally know the most about is Fumiko, so I'd be up to go with that one.
    As for the article on Lucy Parsons, this could well be a target for us to get to GA for the next women in green edit-a-thon, which I believe is coming up soon. The other women we have in our vital articles (Voltairine de Cleyre, Dorothy Day, Louise Michel) could also do with work. Its honestly quite a shame that our vital articles on women are so heavily skewed towards over-representing Americans. If you discount Emma Goldman, then Louise Michel is the only biography in there that isn't about an American woman.
    Your colleague's comments as a non-Wikipedian are very instructive on this. I've certainly noticed Wikipedia's love of military history and sports dominates the front page, and I say that as someone that has written a lot of military history for Wikipedia myself (and part of why I hesitate to submit any of it for GA). Who has the time, access and privilege to write for Wikipedia is a problem I've spent a lot of time thinking about and is one I'm not even sure where to begin with addressing. I'm certainly in a very privileged position that I'm able to spend so much of my time contributing, and I would love if more people were able to do this, but capitalism is very limiting of that. I often wonder how much more diverse our editorship would be if the foundation were to provide resources or even remuneration for people that would be interested in editing, but are prevented from doing so by their circumstances.
    Anyways I'm rambling at this point. Thanks again for responding and I look forward to working further with you on countering these biases. :) -- Grnrchst (talk) 14:17, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I wouldn't say I wrote Olive Morris, but I did take it through GA and FA nominations and actually everyone I engaged with was superhelpful! I wasn't pointing the finger at you Grnrchst by any means, but that's interesting to hear you don't want to focus on milhist. A useful link I read recently was Iridescent talking about how to get an existing article to FA standard and that's what made me think TNT is the best policy on Lucy Parsons. I've set up User:Mujinga/UpdateParsons and I'm currently getting hold of the books, then I plan to read them, then start to write so it's a longterm project. I don't know very much about her so looking forward to it. Also please do renominate Maria Lacerda de Moura, if the copyvio probs are sorted I'm sure it will pass with a new reviewer. Cheers! Mujinga (talk) 17:46, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I didn't say I don't want to focus on it, I'm just hesitant to submit it to GA. Military history has a lot of who, what and when, but often very little why. It's the why that I tend to be interested in with history, so I only tend to take articles to GA when I have some level of fascination with the subject. That fascination is there when talking about the Makhnovists, but not the minutiae of "and on this day X number of people went to Y where they fought Z". So I'm less interested in writing about battles than the people that fought them. (Honestly I may submit some of them for GA at some point, but it'll probably be more from a shrug and a "why not?" rather than from a genuine place of interest. Ditto with the ideology articles that have been the bane of my existence these past few months.)
    Good to see you're interested in taking on Parsons! I agree it probably needs a TNT in its current state. I'll take another look over Lacerda at some point and stick it up, will try and round out Kaneko's article too. -- Grnrchst (talk) 18:47, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    It's more than just time, I think. A lot of people get very turned off very quickly by the learning curve (of policies, formatting, etc), and while this is an issue for any editors writing on any topic, if you're here writing your first article because you've been inspired to correct some representation bias on wikipedia, when someone sends your article to draft or declines it at AfC, it's very easy to conclude "aha, the bias of wikipedia at work!" and give up. Pinging @A.S. Brown and @Sparkledriver re: Ito Noe. I noticeee that Kaneko's name is backwards, I'll fix that one right now. -- asilvering (talk) 18:17, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    It's nice to see some conversation on this topic. I agree with Mujinga that it isn't quite enough for people to say, "if you want more articles about X then write more articles about X", because this attitude fails to acknowledge the massive scale of bias on WP. As a lone editor, I could write a new article every week or every day for decades and the bias could continue to get worse in spite of my efforts. It's clear to me that hundreds of editors will have to collaborate in order to correct the bias within a reasonable timeframe. Since many of the existing editors can't be expected to do this, it follows that we'll have to grow the editing community. I also agree with Asilvering that time is not the only barrier. I have seen several new editors driven away from the project by the unwelcoming culture here.
    I've only just started exploring the GA/FA processes, so I'm not super familiar with them yet, but I've been thinking that it would be nice to feature more content on the main page representing the Majority World. I think that getting content on the main page helps me and others feel like we're achieving something even when the encyclopedia remains terribly biased, and could help with retention. I have been thinking about classes of articles that might be simple, low-hanging fruit to get through the GA/FA process. In some ways, the lack of sources and literature for underrepresented topics could be an advantage, because it keeps articles simple and should make that process easier (I assume?). Thank you all for this conversation. Larataguera (talk) 21:40, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, for sure re: lack of sources makes for easier GAs. One of the GA criteria is that the article needs to be reasonably complete - that is, that it shouldn't contain any major omissions. It's much easier to be confident that you aren't leaving out something important if there aren't that many sources to check! You might get a reviewer saying something like "this biography should have an Early Life section", but if the sources don't have it, there's only so much you can write. But even more importantly, shorter articles are less intimidating to reviewers and tend to get picked up sooner. Conversely, if the sources are mostly in non-English languages, that can keep reviewers away. You'll get through eventually, but it might take more time. -- asilvering (talk) 21:29, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you for the informative and interesting comments. My area of expertise is history, and for purposes of brevity, I'll focus on my own experiences. Whatever or not something of value This is not meant to be reverse sexist or anything of that sort, but it is very revealing that 94% of all editors are male, which does definitely impact the history articles, which tend to be andro-centric. This is a bit generalization here and there are exceptions of course, but as a general rule, men tended to be more interested in political-military history than social-cultural history. One does see that quite a bit in the history articles, which as a rule tended focus more on political and military history. Ideally, it would be wonderful if more women could persuaded to volunteer their time around here, but it is my understanding that many women are put-off by the more adversarial aspects of the culture around here. This is not intended as any kind of male-bashing, but sometimes it can be distorting the way that some articles do not even mention social and cultural history. Just as a lmost random example, look at the article History of modern Serbia which does not mention at all social, economic and cultural history with the focus being entirely upon political and military events (to say nothing of an extremely biased and dishonest account of the July crisis of 1914, which does not tell one the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia was written with the intention of having it rejected -but that is that another matter). The majority of the editors are probably acting in good faith, but this tendency to privilege military-political events is actually a form of POV-pushing. There is a viewpoint that is called the primat der aussenpolitik ("primacy of foreign policy"). That term has a two meanings. One is a style of diplomatic history that focuses upon the elites. And the other more insidious meaning of the term primat der aussenpolitik is the viewpoint is that the state is a machine for conducting foreign policy, a viewpoint that by definition privileges the views of elites over the masses, which is where my concerns come here. Just as a suggestion, I would argue that history articles should attempt do something along the lines of what French historian Fernand Braudel called historique total ("total history"), which sought together political, social, economic, cultural history, etc, etc. A lot of articles would benefit from that approach.
Another problem at least with history articles is that a lot of people like a particular version of history even it is incorrect, and one sometimes has to fight over this, which is very tiresome. To give an example, the German Ernst Nolte in a characteristically apologist remark write in 1963 that with Hitler's death in 1945 the Nazis "snapped back and returned to being cultured Central Europeans again". The Israeli Zeev Sternhell in a critique of Nolte noted that he was saying here was the Nazism entered and left the world with Hitler and with the death of der führer the commandant of a death camp went back to being the model citizen he was before falling under Hitler's influence. Most editors thankfully do not go as far as Nolte, but a number of articles do share his basic approach, namely that Nazi Germany was a freakish aberration and that in 1945 at least in western Germany everything went back to normal. This is a very popular viewpoint, but it is also a wrong one. In 1935, Hitler amended Paragraph 175 of the German legal code to declare "any expression of homosexuality" was a criminal act (up until 1935 only gay sex was illegal). So quite literally, the German authorities could (and did) punish anyone who came of the closet because under the 1935 version of Paragraph 175 merely to say that one was gay was a criminal offense. What is interesting is that the 1935 version of Paragraph 175 stayed on the statute books until 1969. And even in 1969 when the 1935 version of Paragraph 175 was repealed, all the Bundstag did was revert to the 1871 version of Paragraph 175. Likewise, Germany never paid any compensation to any of the gay survivors of the concentration camps for the very simple reason that the 1935 version of Paragraph 175 as a good law. So in other words, if you were a German homosexual, things did not "snap back" to normality in 1945. Right up to 1969, German gays were persecuted under the same law that was used against them in Nazi Germany. This is NOT OR on my part. Just read The Racial State: Germany 1933–1945 (1991) by Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippemann or Inside Nazi Germany (1987) by Detlev Peukert, which make the same points that I just made here (this is where I'm getting this from). But everything I write this, it always deleted for spurious reasons, and I always have to patiently go put back in. The problem is that a number of people like that version of history of Nazi Germany as a freakish aberration from the norms of German and Western history all caused by one madman, and do not anything that might suggest that viewpoint is wrong.
Which of course relates to another of the systemic bias around here, which is namely this idea that the West is the best. Personally, this question about the goodness or badness of Western civilization does not interest me at all. This debate means nothing to me. Where I have an issue with when people start distorting things to prove the goodness/badness of the West. Germany is by all accounts is considered to be a Western country, so for those committed to the "West-is-the-best" viewpoint, Nazi Germany does pose a problem, which is why so many people like the freakish aberration viewpoint. It is noteworthy how many editors like to personalize Nazi Germany as basically due to one man. We have an article on Adolf Hitler's rise to power, but not on the Nazi rise to power, which is a very revealing choice of subject. Likewise, there are literally thousands upon thousands of books, which offer up these bizarre psychosexual theories about Hitler (and trust me, some of these theories are so truly strange to the extent that one has to wonder about the people who wrote them). These books are pretty all worthless as history, but is revealing is that this sub-genre even exists at all. It is interesting that one gets keeps getting stressed in these books is the "abnormality" of Hitler, which certainly colors a number of articles around here, even if thankfully most of these strange books that promote even stranger psychosexual theories are not being used. What is revealing is that there is nothing comparable with dictators like Stalin or Mao. Instead, what tends to get stressed here is the "normality" of Stalin and Mao within their respective national cultures, where the Russianness of Stalin (even though he was actually a Georgian) and the Chineseness of Mao is constantly stressed. The message is implicit, but quite clear; dictators in Western nations are abnormal while dictators in Russia and China are the norm. My own suggestion here and it is not a really a good one is that this encyclopedia could use editors who are well read and are prepared to think critically. That is stating the obvious, but how one can tell do is another question.
Finally, a major systemic bias is that the way that certain things get privileged. The rules of history state if A happens, then all of the possible results of A such as B, C, D, and E should be examined. All too what happens here is that is that A happens, only B gets mentioned. The military history articles are especially bad about this where the focus is usually upon the military events, but not so the results of war. For the article on the Russian-Japanese War, a number of years I wrote a section on atrocities against the Chinese civilians in Manchuria who were caught up in a war between two empires. I included that in the middle of the article because the results of war upon civilians is just as important as the results of war being the military men. But of course, somebody off to the side as being incidental to what they thought was the really important stuff. This is a personal viewpoint, but an article should look at the results upon women just as much as men, and as such the sufferings of women in war are just important as what happens to the men who fight all the battles and campaigns. Likewise, the articles on the Eastern Front tended to treat the Holocaust as something incidental or not even mentioned to what too many editors regard as the really important stuff. This is especially egregious because the entire point of the German war against the Soviet Union was as General Walter von Reichenau put it in an order to his men "the harsh, but just punishment of Jewish subhumanity". I am simplifying things slightly, but essentially the purpose of Operation Barbarossa was to wipe the Jewish population of the Soviet Union. In this regard, there needs to be a change here so that all the results of an occurrence are examined, not just a few. I have so many ideas, but it is getting late and still I have to cook dinner. I hope have helped in my own small way and best wishes to everyone! --A.S. Brown (talk) 06:59, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
94% of all editors are male hang on, where is this stat from? I'm sure men predominate on Wikipedia but I'd really be quite shocked to find this was the actual statistic. -- asilvering (talk) 21:32, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Academic studies about Wikipedia says it's 85% male in 2017 with this source Larataguera (talk) 21:53, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, don't think I've seen that report before Mujinga (talk) 17:37, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Can't say I'm surprised it's around that level, seeing as the ratio of biographies on men and women is similar. There's almost certainly a correlation between the two, although the causation might go both ways (fewer women's biographies on Wikipedia => fewer women want to write for Wikipedia; fewer women write for Wikipedia => fewer women's biographies on Wikipedia) and thus the solution will also likely need to be two pronged (we need to write more women's biographies to attract more women to the project, just as we need more women in the project to write more women's biographies)
I wonder how we could do outreach for trying to bring more people on board. WiG/WiR edit-a-thons could be an opportunity to do some outreach, but to also onboard people in such a way that they can choose to stick around, rather than being driven away by systemic androcentric biases and male chauvinism. (Something like a buddy system for newbies maybe?) -- Grnrchst (talk) 18:58, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Growth Team has the "buddy system for newbies", kinda-sorta, in the mentoring program. But I don't know if it's actually all that helpful. They have some data that shows that new users with mentors do better (fewer reverts, etc), but I think that's an answer to the problem "new users make bad edits", not "new users driven off by systemic bias". I'm also very pessimistic about edit-a-thons for onboarding longterm editors - astoundingly few editors return after taking part in one of those. I wish I could remember where I came across that data so I could give a better account than "astoundingly few", but whatever figure you have in mind right now, drop it by a factor of 10. It's bad. I do think, though, that wikiproject-based edit-a-thons are very good for editors who are already here but not very involved with the wider community. I certainly felt much more like "a Wikipedian", whatever that means, after the GA review drive I took part in. WiR events are great for this too.
It seems very likely to me that the best way to recruit new editors that actually stick around is "recruit your friends and colleagues". I don't have a great track record at converting "friend shows interest" into "friend actually starts editing", but anecdotal evidence suggests to me that when you do successfully pull someone, they stay. -- asilvering (talk) 17:03, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I joined the mentor scheme about a month ago and so far havent had any particularly meaningful interactions with any of the forty or so new editors I've been assigned - two made contact, then nothing more. I was trying to encourage a friend's mum to be involved but after she wanted to create a page for a relative and it was rejected, she lost interest (which I can understand). I personally don't know anyone else in my IRL friends circle who edits wikipedia (or who admits to it at least haha). I am co-nomming Qilombo with a new user actually, so that might get them more involved, or it might not. I try to be supportive but yeah people have to be self-motivated and actually want to add stuff I suppose.
Definitely making wikipedia a welcoming space for newbies is a very good start, more than that I'm not sure, what has helped me the most is simply the kindess and support of editors of all genders. I'm quite resistant to the idea that female wikipedia editors write about women and the male wikipedia editors write about men, but having said that it is no doubt true that if we had gender parity amongst editors the gender gap would lessen in consequence. Mujinga (talk) 14:45, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I also signed up as a mentor, but I don't think it's a particularly helpful program. (If you look at the mentorship module questions in the recent changes feed, most of it isn't that interesting.) I have recruited a few friends to edit here and there, but I don't think any of it went anywhere much.
It seems most helpful to keep an eye out for new editors that show interest in topics that aren't well covered, (for me this means environmental justice, etc.; but it could equally be Ethiopian history or biographical articles), and then work to make sure they have a positive experience. I'm not sure there's a good way to make that more systematic. Wish there were. Larataguera (talk) 02:11, 16 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, as a mentor myself, I've found that my mentor dashboard is mostly useful for learning about ongoing edit wars on obscure articles on medieval Indian history. -- asilvering (talk) 18:49, 16 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
this comment still makes me chuckle! Mujinga (talk) 11:52, 23 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Discussions of systemic bias elsewhere

[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Anarchism/Systemic_bias_report_February_2023&oldid=1185072649"