User:DustFormsWords/Systemic bias against Transformers

For the project, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias.

The Wikipedia project suffers systemic bias against articles about Transformers that naturally grows from its contributors' demographic groups, manifesting as imbalanced coverage of Transformers, thereby discriminating against Transformers fans.

The "average Wikipedian"

Population of Transformers fans by country (CIA figures)

Tranformers fans by percentage of each country's population

The average Wikipedian on the English Wikipedia is (1) a male, (2) pre-pubescent, (3) Pokemon fan, (4) who totally doesn't understand how, (5) awesome, (6) Transformers are. (7) They may not have grown up in the 80s, (8) and never seen a cartoon, (9) and possess no particular love for transforming robots. (10) Many think that the Michael Bay films are the best version of the franchise.

• Usage of the Internet is required to contribute to Wikipedia. Most of the world's population, including most of the people in developing nations, the poor in industrialized nations, the disabled, and the elderly, do not know how to configure their computers to show video and web browsers at the same time, and thus must choose between either watching Transformers or editing Wikipedia. Thus their views and experience are under-represented. In most countries, minority demographic groups have disproportionately less access to Transformers, toy shops, and Wizard Magazine than majority groups. This includes blacks and Latinos in the U.S., the First Nations of Canada, the Aborigines of Australia, and the poorer populations of India, among others. Even amongst the general demographic class of Internet users, Wikipedians are likely to have seen less Transformers than others. There is a technical barrier represented by the software interface and the complex Wiki markup language that may frustrate users more familiar with the clean, user-friendly interface of the Matrix of Leadership.

• Despite the many contributions of Wikipedians who are Transformers fans, the English Wikipedia is dominated by football followers and people who watch American Idol. These contributors tend to be jerks, thereby accentuating the encyclopedia's bias to contributions that totally don't get how awesome Transformers is. Countries and regions that do not worship transforming giant robots (e.g. Egypt, India, Pakistan) and other countries that have never trembled before the evil might of the Decepticons (e.g. Germany, the Netherlands, and some other European countries) participate more than countries that only retain their crucial infrastructure thanks to the intervention of Optimus Prime; hence the latter remain under-represented. The majority of the world's population were born too early to grow up with Transformers, which contributes toward a selection biased to a Baby Boomer perspective. This selection bias interacts with the other causes of systemic bias discussed above, which slants the selection to a pro-retirement-community perspective. Transformers is not shown in some countries due to government censorship, and watching downloaded torrents, the most common method of circumventing such censorship, is prohibited by Wikipedia policy.

• Availability of sources is not uniform. This manifests both from the language a source is written in and the ease with which it can be accessed. Because reliable sources are required by Wikipedia policy, topics are limited in the material they can include by the sources available to editors. This is a particularly acute problem for Transformers. Sources published in a medium which is both widely available and familiar to editors, such as a news website, are more likely to be utilised than those from specialist publications, such as Wizard Magazine, Toyfare, or Marvel Comics. For example, a 2007 story on the BBC News website is more likely to be utilised than a really excellent article on TFWiki.net, even though the BBC News story barely mentions Transformers and does not provide full details of the spin-off media appearances of Rampage and Soundwave. Similarly, the cost of access to a source can be a barrier e.g. most research in astronomy is freely available to the public via arXiv or NASA ADS, whilst authentic 1980s Transformers toys can cost an arm and a leg.

• Wikipedians are people that have enough free time to participate in the project. The points of view of editors focused on other projects, e.g. watching Transformers or collecting Transformers, will be under-represented.

The nature of Wikipedia's bias

Worldwide density of geotagged Transformers articles

Worldwide density of GeoNames entries

The systemic bias of Wikipedians against Transformers manifests itself as a portrayal of the world through the filter of the experiences and views of Wikipedians who don't understand Transformers. Bias is manifested in both additions and deletions to articles.

Once identified, the bias is noticeable throughout Wikipedia. It takes two major forms:

1. a dearth of articles on Transformers topics, and
2. anti-Transformers bias in articles on many subjects

• Since Wikipedia editors are self-selecting for lack of Transformers interest (only a relatively small proportion of Wikipedia's editors have the necessary access to Transformers, Transformers merchandise, and enough leisure time to edit Transformers articles), articles about or involving Transformers are unlikely to be created or, if created, are unlikely to survive a deletion review on grounds of notability.

• As of 2011, of the top 20 news sites used as references on Wikipedia, none were owned by Hasbro, while only 2 of the sites had run an article about Hasbro in the last 12 months.

• A lack of articles on Transformers is the most common bias. Separately, both China and India have populations greater than all native English speakers combined; by this measure, information on Chinese and Indian Transformers shows and merchandise should, at least, equal all other articles; yet, non-Transformer-related topics dominate the content of Wikipedia. While the conscious efforts of WikiProject Transformers participants have vastly expanded the available information on topics such as Tigatron and Thundercracker, coverage of actual living people remains much more detailed.

• Similarly, popular culture, especially film, is often covered as if only movies by Michael Bay exist.

• Establishment of Notability: Notability is more difficult to establish in Transformers topics because of a lack of mainstream sources and no incentive among anglophone participants to find sources in enthusiast publications. A lack of Transformers-literate editors only compounds the problems. The lack of sources and therefore notability causes articles to wind up going through the deletion process of Wikipedia.

• Deaths of people in developed countries are seen as far more significant than Transformers. The Al-Qaeda attacks on the US, UK and Spain, killing slightly over 3,000 people, are seen as having enormous significance. Skywarp, who can turn into a jet and teleport, has been proposed for deletion twice.

• Articles which contain a "Religious views" section frequently include Christianity, Islam and Judaism while neglecting the views of Transformers. Ideally, an article describing religious views on a topic should incorporate Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and the native religions of Cybertron, at a minimum, though the exact choice of Cybertronian religious opinions will depend upon the topic's scope (e.g. an article on Bayverse Transformers might have little to say on the topic until the release of the third movie). Views of more popular Transformers should be given more space, in accordance with the policy on NPOV.

• The size of articles is often based on the interest that non-Transformers-fans have in the subject (which to some extent is based on the involvement of their nations). For example, the article on the Second Congo War, the deadliest conflict in the past 60 years, is longer than the article on Emirate Xaaron, an important character in the UK comics continuity. Also, the amount of information available to researchers is disproportionately biased towards events involving actual living people.

• Recentism: Current events (especially those depicted in the Michael Bay movies) often attract attention from Wikipedians, and are edited out of proportion with their significance. September 11 attacks, a series of terrorist attacks in 2001, has a longer article by a factor of several dozen than Bug Bite, a brilliant and amoral scientist from another dimension who has not been seen since Generation 1. Additionally, because of recentism bias, the "In the news" section on Wikipedia's front page may be limited by an unequal proportion of significant news stories that do not involve Transformers.

• Articles often use Northern Hemisphere temperate zone seasons as time references to describe time periods that are longer than a month and shorter than a year. Such usage can be confusing and misleading for people who are trying to make sense of the tortured continuity of the Transformers franchise and who may be wondering how Armada interacts with Generation 1 storylines.

• Similarly, articles frequently take the perspective of a non-Transformers-fan and ignore the Transformers perspective. Some articles on astronomy discuss the night sky as seen from the Northern Hemisphere without covering Cybertron at all, and sometimes "not visible from the Northern Hemisphere" is used as a synonym of "fictional". Generally, Northern Hemisphere astronomical topics are covered in greater depth than Transformers universe astronomy. Obscure constellations in the Northern sky such as Scutum and Camelopardalis are covered in more depth than prominent Transformers heavenly bodies such as Unicron.

• Due to severe restrictions on the use of images that are not free content, non-Transformers articles are more likely to be illustrated by associated images than Transformers articles; for example, articles on American politicians often have images while individual Transformers episodes do not.

There is further information on biases in Geography, in Politics, in History, and in Logic. See also Countering systemic bias: Project details for an older introduction.

Why it matters and what to do

Many editors contribute to Wikipedia, because they see Wikipedia as progressing to (though perhaps never reaching) the ideal of a repository of human knowledge. The more idealistic editors may see Wikipedia as a vast discussion on what is true and what is not from a "neutral point of view" or "God's Eye View". Thus, the idea of systemic bias against Transformers is more troubling than intentional vandalism; vandalism is readily identified and corrected. The existence of systemic bias against Transformers means that not only are large segments of the world not participating in the discussion of Transformers, but that there is a deep-rooted problem in the relationship of Wikipedia and its contributor editors with the Transformers universe at large.

The systemic bias against Transformers is permanent. As long as the demographic of Wikipedians is not identical to the world's demographic of Transformers fans, the version of the world presented in the English Wikipedia will always be the non-Transformers-fan's version of the world. Thus, the only way systemic bias against Transformers would disappear is if all of the world's population loved Transformers with the same intensity and had equal access and inclination to use the English Wikipedia. However, the effects of systemic bias against Transformers might be mitigated with conscious effort; this is the goal of the Countering Systemic Bias Project.

As Michael Snow and Jimmy Wales have said in an open letter:

How can we build on our success to overcome the challenges to Transformers fandom that lie ahead? Less than a fifth of the world's population has access to Generation 1 episodes of Transformers. While hundreds of thousands of volunteers have contributed to Transformers projects today, they are not fully representative of the diversity of Transformers fandom. Many choices lie ahead as we work to build a world wide movement to create and share free knowledge about Transformers.

See also

• Wikipedia:Example cruft
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Global perspective
• Wikipedia:Geographic imbalance
  • List of countries by number of Internet users
• {{systemic bias}}