Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countering systemic bias

WP:COMMONNAME + UE

..are often used together or seperately as harbringers of western 'systemic' bias. The conscious efforts to do so (or atleast those efforts that look as such) honestly seem irritating 192.175.63.8 (talk) 20:40, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Alright i shant hide behind a fake ip FINE this is it 👇2402:E280:3D1D:5B0:C56C:C6CB:90B4:245F irrelevant since it's anyways visible 2402:E280:3D1D:5B0:C56C:C6CB:90B4:245F (talk) 20:57, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

The policy(ies) often if not always (non-systemically/systemically) perpetuate(s) western 'SYSTEMICBIAS' since most wiki editors and readers are from the US/western world and so the policy shall "obviously" mean common AMERICAN / common LATIN/WESTERN name(s)— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2402:e280:3d1d:5b0:8992:b002:e06e:55c5 (talk) 21:46, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I would like to offer my opinion as a Japanese editor, that from experience, I have observed WP:COMMONNAME and WP:NOR to perpetuate systemic bias on an extremely regular basis. I would go as far as to say that in the context of Japanese topics, they are used more silence Japanese perspectives, viewpoints and opinions than to any valid extent. Even when a name is only used in the US and to a slight degree, western users invoke WP:COMMONNAME to insist on using it. When Japanese users point out problems with articles that are so bad that anyone who is Japanese can immediately see them, western users claim this is "original research" and demand sources, which can be difficult in some cases because sometimes western sources comes up with claims which are so plain ridiculous that no Japanese person would even think of wasting time to write something to refute them. It's frankly quite disgusting. 27.84.15.217 (talk) 06:46, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

I'd like to add that, to a lesser degree, I've seen similar use of "no primary sources" - Isn't that policy there to make sure that academic papers are used in an objective matter, just in case their content is skewed? I have seen people apply it to things like history where they insist that Japanese historical documents cannot be used and that secondary sources - western "interpretations" (clearly wrong) - are preferable. I have even seen people apply this seemingly to just harass Japanese users, like when someone linked to an official website to provide release dates for something they were attacked by other editors claiming "no primary sources allowed". Again, frankly quite disgusting. 27.84.15.217 (talk) 07:11, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Untitled

A proposal i have in mind 👇

Let's make RS guidelines country-specific (or even better, LANGUAGE-specific) (A gentle reminder, this is not simply enwiki, this is the wikipedia of a language now used as a lingua franca among almost all other language groups) 2402:E280:3D1D:5B0:8992:B002:E06E:55C5 (talk) 21:32, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

(One rather trivial reason can be - how wikipedians use almost exclusively US / Western - origin sources (like MSNBC, NYT, BBC, CNN in the news cat. foreg.) as examples, when trying to make a point about reliability in articles, thereby lending the whole RS thing (as well as 'reliability' on Wikipedia) a highly western - elitist "tone/air" ) (especially or atleast among non-western/english newbies)

As I implied above, there can be/are several far less trivial reasons than this one started above (but for Wikipedia itself, the above reason I think could have enough weight of it's own) 2402:E280:3D1D:5B0:8992:B002:E06E:55C5 (talk) 21:37, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Bride buying

For the interested, treating the #History of the practice of bride buying—nearly universal in various forms across human cultures since at least the neolithic—with a single long paragraph on Jamestown has to be some kind of apotheosis of WP:BIAS. Handy anecdote for those trying to explain the concept to others, when needed.

Here's a link to the current state of the article since I'll at least add Herodotus talking about it with the Babylonians and Illyrians. (Of course the ideal fix is to expand coverage and not just nix the navel-gazing bit in the name of WP:UNDUE.) — LlywelynII 21:15, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

why someone put the earth photo in this page?

An off-center image of Earth captured in Apollo 4 with Antarctica on top. This is the first ever color image of the Earth in medium Earth orbit. that is the above text of caption to photo. I don't have the idea for the reason why the photo appear to be related with the title of this page : WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias ? I hope someone can understand this problem about the putting image of earth into this page. 182.253.54.120 (talk) 15:48, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Do you have a suggestion for a better photo? Philomathes2357 (talk) 05:11, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Japanese topics and systemic bias

There is a lot of interest in Japanese topics, particularly related to media, on en.wikipedia. Despite this, however, I feel that there is a lot of implicit bias in many of these articles where the vast majority of sources are western ones. I understand why this happens, as English-speaking editors from Anglophone countries dominate and the language barrier means most editors do not have access to more reliable sources. However, many of the western sources being presented as reliable are of very low quality which is immediately obvious to anyone who knows about the topic, or in some cases anyone Japanese at all. Yet in many cases, because one western person wrote something down 50 years ago and all of his western friends took it as fact and wrote that he wrote it, things are taken as hard unquestionable fact even though that person was completely wrong.

In my questioning of what clearly seem to be bad sources to me - Me, in this context, being a Japanese person who is educated in the topics I edit on - I have been told "Please remember that as an editor, you cannot bring your own perspective to shape the topic and override reliable sources". I understand that this is probably Wikipedia policy to prevent subjective bias, but I am trying to combat subjective bias. Am I not allowed to bring the perspective of someone of the country and culture who actually knows about the subject to an article that is filled with sources written by people who are not and do not?

What can be done in cases like this? In some cases, sources make claims that are so ridiculous that there is no way to find a Japanese source that can refute it, because it's something so obvious nobody would think to write it down. For example, a source claimed in 2004 "this film remains obscure in Japan" and this is obviously false because there were magazine articles and books writing about the film and posters in train stations all over Tokyo, which meant that nobody in Japan bothered to write down "this film is not obscure" and therefore people might argue that because a white man said it was obscure in Japan, and nobody said it wasn't, therefore it was obscure in Japan.

I have seen similar cases happen all over Wikipedia in Japanese-related topics. Sometimes it even applies to the article's title, where a work's title is localized to some unrecognizable mess in America alone, and despite there being multiple releases or remakes all over the world an American user cites WP:COMMONNAME and insists the article use the American name despite it being niche and barely known in America.

Another common behavior I see is English-speaking editors from Anglophone countries ignorant regarding the topics they are editing pinging people they know who are also English-speaking editors from Anglophone countries for "more opinions" which they use to silence Japanese voices which are more educated on the topics. A similar idea to WP:COMMONNAME seems to permeate all aspects of Wikipedia in which many editors believe that the western perspective should be taken as objective fact and prioritized over all other perspectives. Talk:Doujinshi convention is one I noticed recently.

It's such a ridiculous situation. 27.84.15.217 (talk) 03:23, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Although I wasn't personally familiar with this problem, I sympathize with your frustration. There are many ridiculous situations on Wikipedia.

"For example, a source claimed in 2004 "this film remains obscure in Japan" and this is obviously false because there were magazine articles and books writing about the film and posters in train stations all over Tokyo, which meant that nobody in Japan bothered to write down "this film is not obscure" and therefore people might argue that because a white man said it was obscure in Japan, and nobody said it wasn't, therefore it was obscure in Japan."

What article are you referring to here?

Do you have any other specific examples of passages that you feel are suffering from this type of Western bias?

Lastly, I hope you will consider creating an account on Wikipedia. It makes it much easier for other editors to interact with you, but you will still be anonymous. If you create an account, your attempts to counter systemic bias will probably be more fruitful. Philomathes2357 (talk) 03:30, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

In this particular case I am thinking of the source "Suchenski, Richard (July 2004). "Mamoru Oshii" Senses of Cinema. No. 32" which was used on Angel's Egg but that line is not quoted in the article. However, it is being considered a reliable source by other editors despite being filled with factually wrong statements like that one, and someone could easily fill the article with such falsehoods if they wanted to, given how that source is considered reliable. In any case, my intention of bringing up that example was because it was just the latest reminder that I have seen similar cases all over Wikipedia. This is not an isolated case but rather a rampant one, a symptom of a deep-rooted problem.

I have previously edited on en.wikipedia before, sometimes with a username, and always ended up quitting after experiencing things like the above, harassment, and racial gaslighting. Speaking as a Japanese user I find that not registering a username at least lets me skip some cases of the unavoidable racial gaslighting where people with the racist preconception "Japanese people are all bad at English, therefore this person is not Japanese and just pretending" question my race since I have my IP shown. That being said, even with my IP shown, I was subjected to "this person's IP is Japanese BUT..." racial gaslighting almost immediately after I started editing on Wikipedia this time (this was on the Administrators' noticeboard, and the racist gaslighter was not even warned).

In regards to specific examples of western bias, a topic that particularly concerns me is that of Yasuke. Many Japanese people have noticed how western media is pushing fake information regarding real history and are raising their concerns of historical revisionism, but many people on Wikipedia and other places are pushing these bad western articles as fact and are completely disregarding Japanese historical documentation, and are even attacking Japanese people who raise these concerns as racist, or participating in racial gaslighting claiming they are racist white people pretending to be Japanese, as can be seen on Talk:Yasuke.

For a clear example of the kind of nonsense being pushed in the Yasuke discussion, take a look at how many English articles discussing him quote the supposed Japanese saying of "For a Samurai to be brave, he must have a bit of black blood" which simply does not exist. This is another case of the phenomenon I mentioned before, where sources make claims that are so ridiculous that there is no way to find a Japanese source that can refute it, because it's something so obvious nobody would think to write it down. There is simply no such saying. Western articles simply keep citing each other and stating it as fact.

There is a single Reddit post that looked into the saying and did some research to find that it was made up by a racist white person who was trying to say "blacks are subhuman, Japanese are blacks, therefore Japanese are also subhuman" but it is the user-generated content of a single Reddit post against that of countless "reputable" and "reliable" English language articles and papers, published in "reputable" sources, so if this quote were ostensibly to be put on Wikipedia, it seems to me that the editors here would write of it as if it were fact. Never mind that not a single person in Japan has ever heard of this supposed saying. 27.84.15.217 (talk) 05:33, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

I would like to add that a very common argument used to dismiss Japanese perspectives and opinions on Japanese topics is WP:NOR. 27.84.15.217 (talk) 06:15, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Case in point: I was told on Wikipedia:Teahouse#Reliable_sources_on_niche_non-English_topics_and_WP:BIAS "When you write 'The only perspective I am bringing here is one of a Japanese person who is familiar with the topic', that is a classic example of No original research, which is forbidden on the English Wikipedia. You are just another random person on the internet. How does anybody know that you are actually Japanese instead of a glib Ethiopian who has read a bit about Japan? How does anyone know that you are "familiar with the topic" as opposed to being a convincing bullshit artist?" which also ties in to the racial gaslighting I mentioned above. And this was from a big shot highly decorated administrator(!) at that.

And I also posted this above under the thread "WP:COMMONNAME + UE", but:

I have noticed that WP:COMMONNAME and WP:NOR to perpetuate systemic bias on an extremely regular basis. I would go as far as to say that in the context of Japanese topics, they are used more silence Japanese perspectives, viewpoints and opinions than to any valid extent. Even when a name is only used in the US and to a slight degree, western users invoke WP:COMMONNAME to insist on using it. When Japanese users point out problems with articles that are so bad that anyone who is Japanese can immediately see them, western users claim this is "original research" and demand sources, which can be difficult in some cases because sometimes western sources comes up with claims which are so plain ridiculous that no Japanese person would even think of wasting time to write something to refute them.

To a lesser degree, I've seen similar use of "no primary sources" - Isn't that policy there to make sure that academic papers are used in an objective matter, just in case their content is skewed? I have seen people apply it to things like history where they insist that Japanese historical documents cannot be used and that secondary sources - western "interpretations" (clearly wrong) - are preferable. I have even seen people apply this seemingly to just harass Japanese users, like when someone linked to an official website to provide release dates for something they were attacked by other editors claiming "no primary sources allowed".

I also looked at some old discussions on Wikipedia talk:Verifiability regarding non-English sources and was left speechless with how many of them had editors saying things like "this is en.wikipedia so only English sources matter" "if a topic has no English sources it's not important enough to be on en.wikipedia". This seems like little more than xenophobia if not open racism to me.

All of this is frankly quite disgusting. That even administrators are participating in this kind of behavior has left me with even less faith in Wikipedia than I had before, something I did not even think possible. 27.84.15.217 (talk) 10:58, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

There seems to be little to gain in being speechless at various very old individual opinions given they are not reflective of policy. As for commonname, that's the name of the subject in English. Every language Wikipedia names their article using their specific language, for the reason that they are writing in and for that language. There is also nothing gaslighty about being informed of the NOR policy. There's systematic bias on en.wiki, and likely on all language wikis, but it's not going to be solved by allowing OR. CMD (talk) 11:27, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

In cases where the topic is very thinly discussed in English literature, there really isn't an English-language WP:COMMONNAME and it may be appropriate to use the native name per WP:USENATIVE. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 05:07, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

What if there is English literature discussing the topic, but they are of low quality and filled with conjecture? Doujinshi convention had a discussion regarding the use of the word convention, and even though Comiket (which is a doujin event) has its talk page establish "Comic Market is not a convention in the American sense" the people on Talk:Doujinshi convention who frankly seem very ignorant regarding the topic reached the consensus that a factually wrong term should be used because, I quote, "English readers won't know what this is" "Not a name most people will understand" - Isn't the entire point of having an article to educate such readers on the topic? This feels to me like a celebration of anti-intellectualism, the argument that since people do not know about Japanese culture, they should not be educated about Japanese culture, and should stick to using their wrong western terms for Japanese things. 27.84.15.217 (talk) 05:41, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

I should add that what actually prompted me to ask about WP:COMMONNAME is the title of the video game The Legend of Heroes III: Song of the Ocean.

"The Legend of Heroes III: Song of the Ocean" is the American localized title of the PSP release of "The Legend of Heroes V". That was the only English release of the video game. The game was originally released on the PC and has been ported and remaked many times over. There is of course a different "The Legend of Heroes III" in Japan because the American releases changed the numbers to skip releases that were not available in the US (similar to Final Fantasy III/VI).

Furthermore, I added The Legend of Heroes V to Template:Makoto Shinkai and because his work was on the original PC release, it should explicitly be V, and not the PSP release which was changed to III in the US.

I asked about this on the article's talk page but as the title is relatively niche in the west there have been no answers. I personally believe that all the games in the series should use their native names since they have all been remade/ported many times and the US titles only apply to one version. 27.84.15.217 (talk) 05:51, 20 May 2024 (UTC)