Wikipedia talk:Don't be a WikiBigot

Couple issues to emphasize

While over all a pretty good summary, a few things could be fleshed out more. First is bigotry against non-establishment political, economic, social and even scientific views where editors do their best to remove any neutral explanation of the views and add only criticism. The other is the Wikimedia Gender Gap issues including a rather macho, combative culture that turns women off, some males hypersensitivity to any criticism from those they perceive as female, and the old double standard where females are supposed to be much more polite, non-assertive, etc. than males. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 01:53, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

OK, both are great points! Where would you suggest I place them or are new sections needed?

That would take greater study on my part, but encouragement helps. Will look at in next couple days. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 05:38, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

An issue elsewhere did make me take a quick look. Looking at second paragraph I think it should conform more to Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks#What_is_considered_to_be_a_personal_attack.3F: Racial, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ageist, religious, political, ethnic, national, sexual, or other epithets (such as against people with disabilities) directed against another contributor, or against a group of contributors. Disagreement over what constitutes a religion, race, sexual orientation, or ethnicity is not a legitimate excuse. I was reminded because an editor was complaining another editor kept using phrase "Conservative Cloud" to denigrate others' contributions, even though the editors did not identify themselves as conservative. "All you liberal statists" equally would be a bigoted statement. The next NPA paragraph goes on to discuss how this can be misused: Using someone's affiliations as an ad hominem means of dismissing or discrediting their views—regardless of whether said affiliations are mainstream. An example could be "you're a train spotter so what would you know about fashion?" In many cases its a presumed affiliation, since often the person is just supporting policy, especially on BLPs. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 15:17, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

I think I understand your point, but I'm not sure yet how to word or integrate the idea just yet. Interestingly, it brings up a the idea that this concept can work in both directions. Meaning, that if a pair of WikiBigots square off, its likely that vitriolic debate will ensue ending (or stalemating) in an ANI or similar process. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 20:18, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Or a pair or two or three groups that are convinced that the other side(s) are bigots against subjects of some articles - and even the editors for seeming to support those subjects, even when in fact their number one issue is Wikipolicies. Been there, done that, many times. The real issue is how to keep the heat down and keep people from getting into the right great wrongs" mindset.

Need statement on questionable accusations of bigotry

We all know that they happen all the time for the most innocuous statements or edits, not to mention ones that are more controversial with partisans on both sides of an issue. So there needs to be a statement regarding hypersensitive and/or exaggerated and/or false/fabricated accusations of bigotry and a note that they are WP:Personal attacks. It seems to me there is more explicit language in other policy/guideline materials which will link to if I remember. (I know that in both the Transgender and Israel-Palestine arbitrations, for example, it was noted that false accusations of bigotry could get you sanctioned and in both cases individuals have been sanctioned.) Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 22:49, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

 Done Good idea, thank you... --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 23:06, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Undue emphasis on bigotry in article spaces

I added: "Note that creating a WP:Undue emphasis on bigotry in article spaces, even when reliable sources have alleged it, should be avoided. This would be a violation of WP:Biographies of living people or of WP:Neutral point of view in the case of deceased individuals or of organizations."

For example, there are bios out there where critics of Israel that have more charges of antisemitism than Hitler's bio does. Bios in many subject areas are written in WP:Undue fashion because of a few faux pas or immature or deliberately provactive statements. Criticism shouldn't be left out, but when criticism overwhelms the article and even becomes the only rationale for keeping the article, it's really into policy violation territory. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 15:20, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Note: The individual who just reverted this is in Arbitration because multiple editors have problems with their adding WP:Undue material and charging bigotry on flimsiest of pretext vs. other editors. So I do hope other non-involved editors will opine on whether such a statement is necessary and tweak it as seems to conform with policy. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 18:20, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Carol, please don's mischaracterize the arbitration. My concern with your edit is that it's contrary to policy. If someone, such as David Duke or Adolf Hitler, has been repeatedly accused of bigotry by RS, we can note those criticisms. Policy regarding verifiability and BLP are sufficient, if properly applied, to protect people from false charge.Steeletrap (talk) 19:06, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Folks, we're way off topic here. The point of this essay is to bring to light bigoted behavior and attitudes WITHIN the Wikipedia community, not the articles or anywhere else. What Duke or Hitler are or are not is for somewhere else. The Personal Attacks comment made sense, but lets not interpolate this into some bizarre or perverted concept. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 19:51, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

First of all, I was talking about bias against subjects of articles, per the first sentence of the essay which reads: WikiBigotry is an extreme form of bias towards a particular kind, type, or category of article, content, or user. And as discussed in "Article directed." Probably that kind of clarification and any further details belongs in that section. But obviously it is a problem since individuals with strong political/ideological/religious/national/ethnic/territorial/etc. tendencies often trash articles about others of different tendencies. (One wonders what is going with editors of various views in Ukraine/Right Sector/Russian/Crimea/Tartar-related articles right now.)

The point of this essay is to support those who see any kind of bigotry going on and to recognize that given highly partisan views on many articles editors on both sides can let their own biases color the issue.

Note that Steeletrap uses examples of notable people whose activities obviously are overwhelmingly about promoting bigotry, including through law; not the ones I was addressing. I'm thinking of broader "tendency articles" like the above or BLPs about people notable for other things who like Richard A. Falk(UN Investigator), Arun Manilal Gandhi(activist), Jenny Tonge(politician), Casey Anthony(found innocent of murder), where partisanship or, in Anthony's case negative media hype, brings some editors to the article to trash the individuals, with or without decent RS. I'll look over essay more in next few days and see if I can come up with a better proposal. Thanks. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie)

"Potential benefit" header confusing

This is a great essay, if I can suggest retitling the section now called "potential benefit"? It's just, coming under "WikiBigotry" and then "Why it matters" where we can assume the antecedent referred to by "it" is "WikiBigotry", and then "Potential benefit"... of... ? One has to parse out the content to figure out it means "Potential benefit of additional scrutiny", but that doesn't seem like a good section title either. Any suggestions? Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 15:38, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a section (and title) that I struggled with as well. In an effort to be balanced, I wanted to mention that there are "positive results that can originate from negative intentions". But I see your point. Still a work in progress...--Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 17:37, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

How about calling it 'on the bright side' or 'The silver lining' or some such then? Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 19:47, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Ah, excellent suggestions!!! --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 19:53, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Chris, Excellent article but how does banjo playin make one a cowboy? Do you have a cow in your garage that you ride around Silicon Valley? Are you a secret Urban Cowboy? 208.54.35.173 (talk) 11:55, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Check my User page... --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 18:16, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Some relevant research, other sources

This is a draft of the new Resources page for the Gender Gap Task Force. Working on a few details before it goes live, but TONS of WP:RS from mainstream publications and actual research projects, as well as lots of links to what Wikipedians are actually doing on Gender gap in particular and Diversity issues in general, as well as what some other groups doing on dealing with bigotry.

Making [the] list kept me busy for last month and [I] do want to go through this article and opine or edit, as [I] have discussed elsewhere with another editor here. So just want you to know it's still on my list. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 20:49, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

It's hard to parse your words. Could you rewrite your message in complete sentences, so that readers can understand and comment? Thanks. SPECIFICO talk 17:23, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Gender based

I just added a section for gender based Wikibigotry. It's fairly short and not terribly in depth, but its there. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (Talk) ☮ღ☺ 20:57, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

@Scalhotrod:Honestly parts of that read (almost ironically) as bigotry (no offense), for example this sentence here

"Whether based on perception or confirmation by the subject, many real world biases are present in the Wikipedia community. According to various reports and studies, the WP community is as much as eighty percent (80%) male with the balance being female or transgender.

Some of the areas where this is especially problematic are in articles about female subjects (BLP or otherwise) as well as subjects that are feminine or feminist in nature."

This can read as if men (as a group) somehow have no idea of feminine subjects (despite earlier in the lead a comment being made about not discriminating against gender identity and there can be males that identify as "feminine"), and other than that Feminism is an ideology and to claim that men (as a biological group) are somehow biased against an ideology is as stupid as claiming that non-Arabs are somehow "biased against Islam" due to belonging to different groups they were genetically prepositioned to be born in, and those groups being less likely to follow an ideology in question.

Also don't get me wrong the countermeasures are well-written and completely gender-neutral, but the opening of the supposed issue seems to be wrong, but I always assume good faith so it probably wasn't intentional and as many news sources are reporting on it as if the supposed "gender gap" (gender imbalance in both Wikipedia editors and readers) is "an issue" I can understand why the language is used that is being used, but it's still wrong to claim that men as a group have less understanding of women, if one were to write that women have less understanding of men then it would be immediately dismissed, but for some reason this sentence has stood for years, but the subject I take most offense to is the one regarding Feminism which is an ideology and a collection of movements, not something unique to women as a sex.

And lastly I need to point out that the majority of the editors of Wikipedia are male isn't "problematic", because otherwise it would be like claiming that the majority of Wikipedia's editors aren't from small rural African tribal societies so it's "problematic" that urban Eurasians write about those subjects, Wikipedia should be beyond gender, that's the most neutral point of view.

Sincerely, --86.81.201.94 (talk) 10:47, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

I added "sex" to the lead and gender-based sections, because this essay was not acknowledging sexism. Abbyjjjj96 (talk) 16:50, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Dark Matter

The mention of dark matter should be changed to the possible existence of dark matter, because, among those who do know what it is, some think that it does not exist and that the evidence for it may be alternately explained. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:19, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Ah, thank you! Is there a better subject to use as an example? I was trying to come up with something arcane and highly technical to make the point. --Scalhotrod (Talk) ☮ღ☺ 22:43, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Skinhead bigotry

Isn't showing a picture of a skinhead as an archetypal bigot on a page about bigotry itself bigotry against skinheads? If so, the page is also hypocritical. SpinningSpark 21:49, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Insulting image

I'm not sure why the naval war flag of the Kingdom of Prussia is used as a sign of "bigotry", I'm a Black African of Prussian (Rhine-Prussian) descent, and don't see why our history is suddenly associated with "bigotry", I can understand using other groups such as the Ku Klux Klan or the Nation of Islam, but using our Prussian symbolism is (almost ironically) bigotry.

P.S. I can suddenly see how naming the fact that I am of Prussian descent to take offense to the usage of archaic Prussian national symbols is in fact referring to my own ethnic markup as a means of justifying this, but I stand on the fact that to claim that someone who uses Prussian flags in the background is automatically "a bigot".

Maybe I'm misreading the image and it's meant to demonstrate that the archaic European flag is a sign of "purity", and in that case I wouldn't mind it, but I wonder if an English skinhead with the Flag of England (just the regular flag) would've received the same treatment on this article.

Sincerely, --86.81.201.94 (talk) 10:25, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Gender section

To copy directly from the body of text, here is how it looked before I edited it:

Gender based

Whether based on perception or confirmation by the subject, many real world biases are present in the Wikipedia community. According to various reports and studies, the WP community is as much as eighty percent (80%) male with the balance being female or transgender.

Some of the areas where this is especially problematic are in articles about female subjects (WP:BLP or otherwise) as well as subjects that are feminine or feminist in nature.

"Countermeasures

• First and foremost, be aware of the Fourth Pillar of the WP community guidelines that states, "Editors should treat each other with respect and civility." How or why anyone would believe consciously or subconsciously that gender should factor into this concept should not be a matter for debate.
• If you find yourself either so biased or so impassioned, in any way, because of the gender of a person that is editing an article, quite simply you should "step away" and cease to edit the article until you can gain perspective on the overall purpose of this project.
• That said, if someone is genuinely disrupting the article or the editing of others regardless of their gender, there is a means of recourse. The Administrators Noticeboards specifically serve this purpose. Furthermore, upon analysis, it may come to light that any gender bias is ancillary or tangential to the disruptive behavior.

The Noticeboards that will likely be involved are those for: Reliable sources, Biographies of living persons, Edit warring, and/or Neutral point of view. In more extreme cases it may involve Dispute resolution or General sanctions which include, but are not limited to Article ban or page bans, Topic bans, Interactive bans (between users), or Site bans. The latter are in increasing order of severity. It is HIGHLY recommended that a user utilize a method that is appropriate to the kind and level of infraction committed.

If in doubt, ask the community!"

The introduction treats as if a supposed "gender gap" in the number of editors that are male make it seem that Wikipedia has some sort of bias against females and transgendered people, the countermeasures literally contradict exactly what's stated in the lead, compare below...

"Some of the areas where this is especially problematic are in articles about female subjects (WP:BLP or otherwise) as well as subjects that are feminine or feminist in nature."

and

"First and foremost, be aware of the Fourth Pillar of the WP community guidelines that states, "Editors should treat each other with respect and civility." How or why anyone would believe consciously or subconsciously that gender should factor into this concept should not be a matter for debate."

So the introduction claims that male editors are "problematic" when it concerns subjects regarding female things or even an ideology concerned with female advocacy such as Feminism, and then immediately the countermeasure tells us that we shouldn't judge any editors based on their gender and that it's not open for debate, by this logic male editors editing articles about women and/or Feminism shouldn't be perceived as "problematic" as that in itself is WikiBigotry against male editors. I just don't see how someone can read the first part and then the second part and think that these can somehow be compatible.

Sincerely, --86.81.201.94 (talk) 17:46, 19 April 2016 (UTC)