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In the media

Women-in-science editathon gets national press; Wikipedia "shockingly biased"

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By Milowent and Montanabw

Editathon on female scientists in India

[[File:|center|300px]]

Sandhya Srikant Visweswariah, of the Indian Institute of Science, now the subject of a Wikipedia article.

The Hindu reported about an edit-a-thon on Indian women scientists held on July 16 in Bangalore. Their pre-event article noted that only about 40 women scientists from the country currently have Wikipedia entries, and many of those are incomplete or lack citations.

The paper's followup article reported that about 25 editors participated in the event, creating and updating articles on prominent women scientists in the country. Sandhya Srikant Visweswariah, chair of the Department of Molecular Reproduction, Development and Genetics at the Indian Institute of Science, was among the subjects tackled. One participant noted, however, that "lack of citations online made it hard to validate entries for many women scientists from the country". This, of course, is a persistent concern, as discussed in part in The Atlantic last month. Having content online leads to the production of more content. Creating new material from non-online content – and being able to use that content to defend Wikipedia's processes of validating content and assessing notability – is a much bigger task although also an essential one.--Milo

Not all we're Cracked up to be?

Wikipedia, a work worth criticizing, is a work in progress, hopefully

Cracked.com featured a critical piece on Wikipedia as "shockingly biased", with input from current administrator Crisco 1492. The piece falls squarely in the sweet-spot of modern criticism of any website: (1) it comes from a website that loves Wikipedia; (2) has readers who love Wikipedia and use it all the time despite its faults; and thus (3) will read any articles, which raises "shocking" concerns about Wikipedia. And though the items discussed are mostly old-hat to Wikipedia editors (not to discount their importance), such articles are usually popular. This one has already received over 350,000 views and 450 comments.

The topic areas discussed in the article include three common complaints: (1) the lack of diversity in contributors and content, such as the gender gap and systemic biases (see The Hindu edit-a-thon discussed above), and the focus of some editors on niche content areas; (2) the ever-present problem of vandalism, but particularly the feedback loop where inaccuracies are cited in the press – "like a game of telephone, only at the end of the game, the garbled nonsense gets published in a newspaper"; and (3) petty arguments among editors, though this discussion also ends in more discussion of vandalism, such as those quixotic editors who like to change heights and weights.

The article also cites the Wikipediocracy website as one "dedicated to destroying Wikipedia", though such a threat does not seem as existential when described as "less like a public service and more like a bunch of Mensa wannabes trying to high five, only to awkwardly smack each other in the nose". Lastly, the piece concludes that "Wikipedia is dying", citing statistics about declining numbers of "very active" editors and the lack of sufficient administrators.

All of these concerns have degrees of validity, and though not precisely news, the continuing focus on them is no doubt important in finding solutions. When high-profile articles stop being written about Wikipedia's flaws, that would suggest irrelevance, which is a much surer sign of decline. No one complains about the functionality or value of Myspace anymore.--Milo

In brief

Theresa May (left) and Andrea Leadsom (right) were contenders to replace David Cameron. Leadsom's Wikipedia biography was edited to remove unflattering material by an anon IP that The Guardian reported as geolocating suspiciously close to her local constituency office.
  • New notification features: The Wikipedia blog detailed the newly released updates to the notification system. Highlights include being able to monitor notifications across all wikis on which an editor is active, options to filter your notifications, and bundling of notifications ("5 people thanking you for your edit"), among other updates (July 15)--Milo
  • Apology for misuse of photo on Commons: The use of a Creative Commons licensed photo on an Italian festival poster, without proper attribution, led to a settlement with payment of legal fees when the photographer decided to stand up against the misuse of the photograph, as reported in the Wikimedia blog and elsewhere. Teaching the Internet that a "free license" is not "public domain" is not an easy task. (July 12)--Milo
  • Ten Years on Wikipedia: William Beutler (User:WWB) celebrated ten years on Wikipedia with a post compiling some of the life lessons he has learned from his time on the site. (July 12)--Milo
  • Maybe They Got the Munchies: The Daily Mail and many Australian news outlets like Byron News report that Senator-Elect Pauline Hanson's party policy on medical marijuana appeared to be lifted from Wikipedia. The unattributed copying was first noted on Reddit. (July 10–12)--Milo
  • I Wonder What That Is: HERE announced that its app now has a "Wikipedia Sights" feature which can display geolocated links to articles of interest in your vicinity. (July 8)--Milo
  • IP removing unfavorable content geolocates close to home base: The Wikipedia biography of UK MP Andrea Leadsom (pictured above with Theresa May) drew the attention of The Guardian, when unfavorable content about the energy minister and contender for Prime Minister was removed from her Wikipedia article by an anonymous IP address that geolocated to Towcester, where her constituency office is located. (July 6)--MTbw
  • Wikipedia's seven worst moments?: A Breitbart op-ed produced a "worst moments" list ranging from the removal of the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting from list of Islamist terrorist attacks (though it has reappeared on the list subsequent to the Breitbart article) to a description of the GamerGate article as "one of the most biased pages on Wikipedia". Breitbart describes Wikipedia as "... frequently embroiled in controversy surrounding political biases, corrupt mismanagement, and attempts to secretly remove factual information contrary to their narrative". (July 5)--MTbw
  • Copypasting a Wikipedia bio for a campaign handout called a "brain freeze": When Hillary Clinton spoke at Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition in Chicago, a glossy program given to attendees was copypasted directly from Wikipedia—including mentions of assorted past controversies that generally are absent from a laudatory blurb provided at a campaign event. Organizers stated, "a volunteer had a real brain freeze" when curating the content of the program and humbly explained that the inclusion of references to the Monica Lewinsky scandal was unintentional. (June 28) --MTbw



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"GamerGate article as "one of the most biased pages on Wikipedia."" THB, the article seems to do very little to distance itself from saying that Gamergate supporters are bad. Nergaal (talk) 13:34, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • The Cracked article was hardly news, a noted above, but it was nice to see this all compiled in one place. The gender gap and Wikimediocrity sections were spot on. Not so much for the "Wikipedia is dying" section. Smallbones(smalltalk) 15:36, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • One thing I'm glad to see mentioned in the Cracked article is the financial cost of researching content, something that apparently is overlooked by those who think volunteers ought not to be paid for their work in any way. (Well, unless they hack code, that is.) When I was researching content for articles on Ethiopia, I spent about $500 for books alone because the local libraries either didn't have the resources, or I could not access them. (It's hard having a family & working a full-time job to carve out time to visit during regular business hours.) And using ILL to obtain materials is not always free: besides needing to photocopy materials one can't fully use in a limited time, I've encountered more than a few cases where I had to pay fees to access materials. In short, as volunteers struggle to improve existing articles, we are going to increasingly find it expensive to do so -- despite valuable efforts such as the Wikimedia Library. -- llywrch (talk) 18:22, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Old news, click bait. The part about the count of very active editors declining is flat wrong (things have been up over previous-year numbers for something like 18 months, up so much that several years of declines have been erased.) The part about WPO being dedicated to the destruction of WP is also ridiculous. I will grant that the "MENSA wannabes" line is funny, I'll leave it for others to accept or discount since I'm by definition one of those being mocked. So everybody was baited, clicks were clicked, money was made, moving on... Carrite (talk) 18:39, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
From Robert Burns
O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:46, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
سَيْف ذُو حَدَيْن Carrite (talk) 21:06, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There's something inherently hypocritical about the way that more than 95% of people behave regarding Wikipedia. All throughout Wikipedia's existence, so many of them have so often commented at length about all the many ways in which the articles aren't good enough, and why, and yet most of Wikipedia's content sits around with countless pieces of low-hanging fruit among the possible improvement increments that no one bothers to pick for months and years on end. Not just challenging subtleties and extensive content development but also lots of low-hanging fruit that could be picked off in quick hits. All these hundreds of millions of people who use the site daily or at least weekly, and yet all these obvious things go on remaining not yet done. There's a disconnect of hypocrisy there. I agree that, as Milo said, "All of these concerns have degrees of validity, and though not precisely news, the continuing focus on them is no doubt important in finding solutions." And yet somehow it's inescapable that most of the people who elaborate the concerns are effectively hanging a sign around their neck that says "I'm obviously a hypocrite, and here's some specific evidence of that." Quercus solaris (talk) 00:35, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Carrite: As I mentioned in the comments section of the Cracked article (see the most popular comment, where I specifically note "statistics are stabilizing, editor retention is stable, and there have been efforts to make a visual editor"), and elsewhere, there were considerable nuances which were trimmed for space by the Cracked staff. This included the stabilization of "very active" editors, a bit more nuanced perspective on Wikipediocracy (for an idea of what I mean, compare the direct quotes in that section with the Cracked writer's text), and more detailed discussion of biases that I've seen. The article which ran also completely excluded some more specific examples which would have been of interest to those of us already versed in Wikipedia, such as the Four Award kerfuffle in 2013 and the trolling COMC has done since 2014. The original interview ended up at 10k words; the article as ran was less than a fifth of that. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 08:12, 30 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I disliked the Cracked article article but largely because of the sensationalistic click-bait title and its poor coverage of gender bias. Gender bias on Wikipedia has been handled horribly by the WMF, with particular blame falling on WMF's former Executive Director Sue Gardner. Instead of setting the tone of the discussion as "There's lots more to write about issues concerning women or about women" she very publicly through multiple media releases set the tone as "Wikipedia is horribly biased and sexist and I blame the editors". This attitude is now the one adopted by most journalists and a large fraction of editors. This attitude is counterproductive and I believe has literally helped drive women (and new editors in general) away from Wikipedia rather than towards it. This article takes the same tone and it does so with the same poor reasoning and examples that I have noticed pervade discussion of this topic. For example, using the length of the John Cena article compared to the length of the Eleanor Roosevelt article to "demonstrate" that a gender bias exists is so flawed as to be reprehensible. Besides the important fact that article length is not a good metric of article quality, this example demonstrates the pop culture bias we have, not the gender bias. The "eye-opening" comment about the artist in the photo is so overblown as to be absurd. And the "only 15 16.4%" statistics makes the same mistake I see time and time again in every gender bias discussion: it makes the assumption that the number proves gender bias on Wikipedia without ruling out the possibility that the number is merely exposing the gender bias in society. For instance, women have for thousands of years and for the most part of written history been relegated to background roles and this is still largely true today. Given that fact one would not expect about 50% coverage of women by our notability standards. So what is the coverage that should be expected? Maybe Wikipedians do not have a big gender bias in coverage and the 15 16.4% figure is just mirroring the accumulated bias against women throughout history, including today. Such a deeper analysis requires thought and careful consideration rather than just a knee-jerk reaction and I wish people would put more effort into studying it. Jason Quinn (talk) 09:05, 22 July 2016 (UTC) EDIT: added "the Cracked article" Jason Quinn (talk) 15:26, 22 July 2016 (UTC) EDIT2: fixed 15 to 16.4 percent so the context is clearer. Jason Quinn (talk) 16:21, 23 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • In my experience, Cracked is capable of producing some good work, and it has a large audience, but surface coverage of gender bias issues on Wikipedia is pretty common. I am not sure whether such coverage drives women editors away or not.--Milowent • hasspoken 13:10, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
15% seems low, 50% would be too high. Scaring people from a group by pointing fingers does not encourage either genders to join in as volunteers. Nergaal (talk) 14:44, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • On one hand, there is some legitimate debate over the question of whether the bad publicity drives away potential women editors, but on the other hand, I suspect the 15% figure—at least for active editors—is not that far off. Do the math on the people of reasonably clear gender identity in the photos below, I picked a sampling of group photos from English-speaking country meetups and Wikimania -- presumed to be representative of active wikipedians in general (true, one can find photos that have more women, but looking at attendance at "generic" wikipedia events not geared specifically by gender probably is apt to come out with similar proportions). Does anyone see a problem here? Montanabw(talk) 03:41, 23 July 2016 (UTC):[reply]
  • Wikimania 2015
    Wikimania 2015
  • WIkimania 2015
    WIkimania 2015
  • Mexico members at Wikimania 2015
    Mexico members at Wikimania 2015
  • Wikimania 2015
    Wikimania 2015
  • Wikimania 2015
    Wikimania 2015
  • Indic members at Wikimania 2015
    Indic members at Wikimania 2015
  • Seattle
    Seattle
  • NYC
    NYC
  • San Francisco
    San Francisco
  • Manchester
    Manchester
  • Melbourne
    Melbourne
  • Sydney
    Sydney
Hi, Montanabw. My comment was intended to be about the "only 16.4 percent of Wikipedia's biographical articles are on women" statement, not the 15% one. Sorry, confusing rounding on my part so I will edit it. I know that there's a big difference male dominance when it comes to editors. Scanning those photos shows an even less representative number of African Americans and other minorities. I would be great if woman and American minorities would edit more. Is it a "problem"? As I explained above, I do not think it is helpful to cast things in those terms. I prefer to be thankful for the people actually there rather than malign them and think the people not there as being a problem. I also don't think much progress on a "solution" could be made. Why? Because who chooses to edit is determined by sociological forces mostly outside of their control (at least for the US.... globally there may be some exceptions). So unless the WMF can literally change America in impossibly large ways, there's not much they are going to do to impact this. It's the WMF's role to make sure that editors are safe and welcome regardless of gender, race, creed, and so on. A better message for under-represented groups would be something like, "Women and minorities, you are missing out on writing Wikipedia. Get your voice heard!". Jason Quinn (talk) 16:21, 23 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the goal is to change America (and the world) in impossibly large ways, but the impossible can become possible if we go one step at a time. No one is maligning the nerdy white males (including myself) that contribute heavily to Wikipedia!--Milowent • hasspoken 19:32, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nerdy white guys have written many excellent women's biography articles. Actually, that 16.4% metric is more statistically rigorous than our 15% editor one. And the reality is that Wikipedia already skews the real-world proportions of articles in ways that reflect editor bias more than real world per capita content -- just look at the articles on, say, 21st century soccer players... Montanabw(talk) 20:52, 25 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Milowent. Our current editor base absolutely has been maligned. The Telegraph article entitled, "Happy birthday sexist Wikipedia. Why do men still control our history?" is fairly representative example of the insulting and sensationalist media coverage on this topic. Accusing or implying larges groups are "sexist" implies a lot more than saying there's biased coverage. It implies a large-scale pattern of discrimination. Perhaps in few instances discrimination has occurred but a few sporadic instances in a project this large to make blanket accusations is terrible and I don't think it captures the character of the community. @Montanabw. The 16.4% statistic may be "more statistically rigorous" in the sense of easy to calculate but what's important is the interpretation of that statistic, which is many many times harder to analysis. Jason Quinn (talk) 13:30, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, I don't think that the Telegraph article maligned the "current editor base." There's an argument that they painted with an unduly broad brush or that the headline writer was looking for clickbait, but that's a different issue. I think that most sexism is unconscious or unintended, and even some of us who are aware of the issue may still at times fall into a societal assumption or make a mistake in an area where we haven't really examined a particular issue. That said, watching the harassment endured by some of the editors here on WP who have identified themselves as young women and especially if their real-life identity has been made public on-wiki gives me pause. There is a problem here. Perhaps a majority of the documentable bias (dearth of articles, dearth of editors, etc.) is not due to ill will on the part of anyone -- it could easily be a combination of unconscious personal bias, societal systemic bias and so on. But a noticeable minority subset (and maybe it's 5% or maybe it's 50%, we have no real statistically valid way of knowing) is deliberate dismissal at best and harassment at worst. That reflects a serious problem that is inadequately addressed. Montanabw(talk) 23:51, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Meh. Go complain to those who get paid to edit. Praemonitus (talk) 21:17, 27 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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