Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Archive 24

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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)

I think one of the best lessons to be learned from editing Wikipedia is that one learns to collaborate. The more one thinks that they are right and everyone else is wrong, the more likelihood is that that person's edits will be reverted. Instead, editors should seek to build consensus by finding good candidates and collaborating with them. You don't get always what you want, but you learn how to address issues (such as bias) and how to get others to see your point of view. - kosboot (talk) 20:01, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

I definitely feel your frustration, 27.84 15.217.

Yes, @Kosboot makes a good point - Wikipedia is a place where one can learn to collaborate, and you shouldn't always assume that you are correct, in general.

However, there are also instances where you simply understand a subject better than other editors, and are therefore in a better position to assess the reliability of sources. It sounds like that may be the situation you are in.

If so, here's your problem: the other editors may, compared to you, know so little about the subject that they are unable recognize your expertise. An analogy would be: children are so much more ignorant than adults that they are unable to recognize the fact that adults know best.

Without diving into this specific subject myself (which I'm not qualified to do), my main piece of advice to you would be to try your best to educate other editors about why you take issue with their assessment of the reliability of certain sources.

That can be exhausting, I know, but it is the best way to attempt to make progress - and educating other adults in a non-condescending way is a good skill to develop generally in life.

Finally - I completely understand your hesitancy to edit with a username. I have one humble suggestion: you could create an account, but not tell anybody that you are Japanese. This would avoid the problem of racial profiling. When you edit with an IP address, it's easier for people to racially profile you - and, the comments of IP edits are often given less weight than the comments of registered users.

So, if you edit with a username, you will likely be more successful in your efforts to improve Wikipedia, and, unless you tell people that you are Japanese, it will neutralize the potential for racial bias against you. Just a thought. I hope you can find a way to contribute your knowledge to Wikipedia. Philomathes2357 (talk) 06:04, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

The issue is at the article Angel's Egg and regarding the editor questioning that Stray Dog of Anime: The Films of Mamoru Oshii, published by Palgrave Macmillan and written by an academic, is a reliable source. They say the author is wrong and cite their own experience. We as editors cannot do that, and we do not know how the writer came to their conclusion on the point of obscurity. Maybe they have access to video sales? Maybe they mean that it was not written about much after 1985? Maybe they meant "obscure" as in not mainstream? Like to throw out an example, the indie movie First Cow got written about quite a bit, and got marketed as an A24 film, but it is definitely obscure compared to everything else that came out that year or in general.

Here, there is no issue with citing Japanese-language reliable sources, and it's commendable to see content added here that transcend the barriers of language (and time, to be able to quote contemporary critics whose words are not online). When there are differences in content, WP:SOURCESDISAGREE should apply. One can quote that reliably-sourced point and cite other such points on the same matter and let the reader decide. All this has been echoed at Wikipedia:Teahouse § Reliable sources on niche non-English topics and WP:BIAS permalink. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 13:26, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Furthermore, see ongoing discussion here about the editor's removal of Ruh-related content. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 15:05, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

The IP editor seems to be over-reacting to some choice words in a 20 year old book. Brian Roh cites various magazines and sources to come to his conclusions, and he was attempting his best for 2004 without access to many online archives of older sources. He writes that the film is obscure, which he obviously means is *relatively* obscure by the standards of both Oshii and other anime films. He does not mean to imply the film had no ad campaign and wasn't known about, just that it has been somewhat forgotten compared to other big hit films that Oshii is known for (such as Ghost in the Shell). I also find it amusing at how much they're over-reacting to Brian Ruh (who is at least trying and working in an academic fashion citing high quality print sources), while the article previously cited Dani Cavallaro, whose works are low quality and cite mostly online blogs. Harizotoh9 (talk) 23:03, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Suggestion for this WikiProject

Hi folks. This is a great WikiProject with a lot of potential. However, one thing holding it back appears to be a lack of organization. I have a couple of ideas to address that

1) Place this WikiProject's template on the talk page of every article that under the purview of a WikiProject whose domain is potentially subject to systemic bias. For starters, almost every article under the purview of the WikiProjects listed on this project page should have the template added.

2) Create an assessment process, like the one found at the home page of WikiProject Philosophy and many other projects. This would make it easier to keep track of what articles are under the purview of our WikiProject, and it would help editors find things to work on. Pecopteris (talk) 19:02, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Related WikiProjects

On the "Related WikiProjects and regional noticeboards", on this WikiProject's page, can I add WP:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America and WP:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of the Americas? Yuchitown (talk) 03:35, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

That would be great, @Yuchitown! Thank you! Pecopteris (talk) 03:37, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Done, thanks! Yuchitown (talk) 03:41, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

It's great that there's at least one other person besides me who wants to work on this project! I want to see it lively and active again! There's plenty to do. Pecopteris (talk) 03:44, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

User:Bohemian Baltimore edits a wide range of topics, not just Indigenous topics, so they might be interested as well. Yuchitown (talk) 03:56, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it would be great if @Bohemian Baltimore joined this WikiProject and got involved! Looks like it would be right up their alley. Pecopteris (talk) 05:12, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

References

A new article about systemic bias on Wikipedia

Wikipedia's Indian problem: settler colonial erasure of native American knowledge and history on the world's largest encyclopedia Pecopteris (talk) 02:22, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

The paper claims "Freoh was banned from editing, and Wikipedia administrators blocked their account from contributing to Wikipedia beyond their own talk page. It is one of the best examples of editor erasure." Freoh was never banned from editing, nor from contributing beyond their own talk page. If that is one of the best examples, I am not confident in the rest of the paper. CMD (talk) 01:45, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Not that I care or know who User:Froeh is, but: https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Special:Log?page=User%3AFreoh&type=block

I'm going to move my above comment to a new section because I would like to improve editing for Indigenous editors Yuchitown (talk) 02:39, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

That link supports exactly what I stated. CMD (talk) 02:44, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

The block log says Freoh is blocked indefinitely. This seems like the opposite of "Freoh was never banned from editing." But again, I don't know this person or their situation. Yuchitown (talk) 03:06, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

The restrictions applied only to the Wikipedia namespace and the user talk space. They did and do not limit any of the actual article editing. CMD (talk) 03:25, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

What can I do to help?

I was told this is a good place to go to focus on systemic bias on Wikipedia. What can I do to get started? Chesslover96 (talk) 06:50, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

The Wikipedia:2024 Developing Countries WikiContest will be held next month, if you're interested in making content this might be a fun incentive. CMD (talk) 06:59, 11 June 2024 (UTC)