User talk:Larataguera/Bias

Interesting

Thanks for this analysis Larataguera, it makes for interesting reading. A few initial comments:

• This immediately made me think of network mapping analysis. if that's what it's called (example here). It woiuld be cool to see visualisations of the links (and lack of links). It also gave me a glimpse of a future wikipedia where things are notable because of their network links rather than relying on minority world media.
• Whilst most of the properties seem value neutral eg "participant in", "owned by", "in opposition to", I wonder if "polluted by" and "advocates for" are more subjective? To put it another way around, what sourced information would back these properties?
• I create quite a lot of articles on things related to squatting, some of which for example ZAD de Notre-Dame-des-Landes are about projects contesting development so from that angle I'm quite interested in the use of wikidata to portray relations between things. Would love to keep talking about this, cheers!

Mujinga (talk) 14:28, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi Mujinga, and thanks for reading! I do visualise these connections as a map of interlinked "nodes", much like the network mapping you described; and it would be interesting to render them that way, especially if we had a more complete map.

Any of the properties could be contested or controversial. (Even "owned by": there's an ongoing lawsuit related to Kabwe mine to partially determine Anglo American plc's ownership – they say they never owned it in order to dodge responsibility for all the pollution!) In some cases, "polluted by" would be unambiguous, like when a company lost a lawsuit or was fined for pollution (eg, Old Town paper mill and many others). In cases that are less clear, the statement would need to be attributed. If it's controversial, there is Wikidata property P1310 for "statement disputed by"; and on Wikipedia the controversy can be described. "Polluted by" doesn't exist on Wikidata. I guess editors must not bear the burden of much pollution. "Advocates for" already exists (P2650), so it has usage guidelines already.

I do think some kind of system for tracking down these missing statements is important. I'm not really sure where's the best forum to discuss it. WP:CSB doesn't really seem to get much traction. I submitted this for the Signpost, but I've no idea if it's the kind of thing they would publish (though I noticed there's another submission there about systemic bias – it takes the more common quantitative approach.) Thanks again. I'd love to hear more of your thoughts. Larataguera (talk) 00:09, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Signpost submission

JPxG, I rephrased the sentence you had raised some concern about. Let me know if there are other concerns, and I'll do my best to address them. Thanks again! Larataguera (talk) 04:24, 28 October 2023 (UTC)