Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-03-09/Recent research
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A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
"Let’s Work Together! Wikipedia Language Communities’ Attempts to Represent Events Worldwide"
- Reviewed by Piotr Konieczny
The paper[1] addresses the issue of systemic bias, and focuses on English, Chinese, Arabic and Spanish Wikipedias. The authors study the production of seven years of news
on these projects (from WP:ITN and its equivalents), and conclude that while there is an indication of self-focus bias, there is also strong evidence of a global representation of events
. Self-focus, here, refers to focusing on one's home region or culture, and past studies found that about a quarter of most Wikipedias are about "self-focused topics".
The authors ended up with the dataset of a total of 6730 articles... 2064 in English, 1379 in Arabic, 1527 in Chinese and 1760 in Spanish
which correspond to 2064 events, 172 in Arabic-speaking countries, 115 in Chinese-speaking areas, 114 in Spanish-speaking regions, 445 in the US, 472 in other English-speaking countries and 746 in [other] areas
. The events were also coded by topic covered, which resulted in the 192 events classified as Science & Nature, 714 in Notable Person, 337 in Sports, 299 in Politics, 231 in Man-made Incidents, and 291 as Other
categories. To compare Wikipedia's coverage to global media coverage, the author also associated their dataset with that of the GDELT Project.
Some specific findings suggest that English Wikipedia suffers from a slight under-representation of events in Arabic-speaking countries
. Arabic project on the other hand does not show much self-bias; instead it over-represents events that happen in English-speaking countries (but not the USA). The Chinese and Spanish Wikipedia, authors argue, have a stronger self-focus bias than Arabic and English projects, although still, over 90% of events covered by the news sections of these projects are about items not related to these countries. The authors also find, perhaps unsurprisingly, that larger Wikipedias will react to breaking news faster and update their news section more promptly.
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- Reviewed by ...
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- Reviewed by ....
Briefly
- See the page of the monthly Wikimedia Research Showcase for videos and slides of past presentations.
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Other recent publications
Other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue include the items listed below. Contributions, whether reviewing or summarizing newly published research, are always welcome.
- Compiled by ...
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From the abstract:
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From the abstract:
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References
- ^ Li, Ang; Farzan, Rosta; López, Claudia (2022-12-03). "Let's Work Together! Wikipedia Language Communities' Attempts to Represent Events Worldwide". Interacting with Computers: –033. doi:10.1093/iwc/iwac033. ISSN 1873-7951.
Data: https://github.com/LittleRabbitHole/WikipediaLanguageCommunity
- Supplementary references and notes:
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Discuss this story
<edits violating 500/30 policy (and others) removed>
<edits violating 500/30 policy (and others) removed>
Richard C. Lukas
It is worth noting that Richard C. Lukas' book The Forgotten Holocaust, along with another of his works, is part of the "Background Information" reading list provided on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) website.
It is described on that site as follows: An account of the systematic persecution of the Polish nation and its residents by the German forces. Features endnotes, a bibliography, appendices including lists of Poles killed for assisting Jews, primary source documents, and an index.
I respectfully disagree with the review author's opinion that a work recommended on the USHMM website should not be suitable for citation in Wikipedia. --Andreas JN466 11:52, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
For the record
Since Groceryheist's review of Grabowski and Klein's "Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the Holocaust" has been featured *despite* objections from multiple uninvolved editors (other than me), and *despite* the fact that these editors pointed out both stylistic and factual errors in the review, I do feel the need to say that
Volunteer Marek 15:44, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Google scholar discussion
I legit pity you for being unable to admit the "Jewish welcome banner" caption was shocking, upsetting, and hurtful Holocaust distortion. You must have so much hate and pride in your heart that you seem unable to spare even a drop of empathy. Levivich (talk) 16:10, 13 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]This is as I said a relatively minor point in the overall scheme of things, but I do feel compelled to point out that Zvi Gitelman's main area is the History of Jews in Russia and Soviet Union so it's not surprising that's he's not cited much in Wikipedia's articles on Holocaust in Poland. If he's undercited in the topic area Holocaust in Soviet Union then that should be raised with whoever is working on that. I have no idea why Grabowski and Klein decided to throw him in there, maybe to "inflate" the numbers or, since at least one of them is writing outside their area of expertise, due to ignorance. BTW, Gitelman's work on the Jewish Labor Bund is really good and I recommend this book he edited The Emergence Of Modern Jewish Politics: Bundism And Zionism In Eastern Europe (particularly his article) for anyone who wants to fix the under-cited-on-Wikipedia situation. Volunteer Marek 17:22, 10 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@HaeB: So can I write and publish a rebuttal or not? And don't tell me "submissions is that way". I'm not going to waste my time writing something just to have the rug pulled out from me by you (which I think under circumstances is a legitimate concern on my part). People can of course discuss and debate whatever I write but given that you just published what is basically a hit piece against strong consensus, I'd expect some leeway here. Volunteer Marek 20:06, 11 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So far as I know, there is no way to check Scholar's citation counts at a past moment. I also think this is irrelevant to the question, since the claim is that Scholar's citation counts show a problem in Wikipedia now, and to the (highly dubious) extent this is even a valid method of analysis there is no reason to not use the present counts. If the present counts don't support the hypothesis, then the hypothesis should be discarded. But I think this method of analysis is fundamentally invalid anyway.
But...it is totally impossible that Lukas' actual (as opposed to Scholar) citations jumped by more than a factor of 6 in 7 months, especially given that his most cited works are quite old. There must be another explanation. A clue can be gained from Gitelman's jump from 2367 to 3690. Looking at Gitelman's Scholar profile, we see 3693 citations but in the sidebar we see that only 115 of them were for all of 2022 and 2023. So Scholar is now saying that Gitelman's count at Aug 2022 was at least 3693-115=3578, much higher than 2367. (These numbers can change by the day.) There are multiple possible explanations: maybe the two searches were not made in exactly the same way, maybe the semantics of the search engine changed, maybe Scholar got better at identifying citations in sources, maybe Scholar got better at telling when two authors are the same person, maybe Scholar added a large number of additional sources in which to look for citations, maybe Scholar's algorithm is broken somehow. Zerotalk 08:33, 12 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Piotrus asked why G&K chose the particular scholars they did for their plot. Haeb claimed they gave a rationale: "Nechama Tec, Samuel Kassow, Doris Bergen, Deborah Dwork, or Zvi Gitelman, to name some well-known experts on Holocaust history". But that only defines the group and not the selection, so the question remains unanswered.
Looking at who was not chosen may help. Of those scholars they named approvingly in their article, Browning, Gross and Polonsky each have far more Wikipedia mentions than any of those they selected. In fact Christopher Browning, who they correctly describe as "one of the world's top Holocaust scholars", has more wiki-mentions than all of the five scholars they selected put together. Then there are other famous Holocaust scholars not named who could have been selected, such as Yehuda Bauer, David Cesarani, Efraim Zuroff and Yisrael Gutman, all of whom are mentioned in Wikipedia more times than any of those they selected. This is very strong evidence that the choice was made to fit the desired result. Bearing this in mind and reading carefully, G&K actually do give a rationale: "Wikipedia mentions Richard C. Lukas 82 times, more than it mentions ... to name some well-known experts on Holocaust history." In other words, as the numerical evidence indicates, these five people were selected because they are mentioned less than Lukas. What has the superficial appearance of a little statistical experiment is nothing of the sort. Zerotalk 15:24, 12 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Removal of comments from this talk page
@Piotrus and Volunteer Marek: Regarding your deletions of comments from this talk page here, here and [12]:
I appreciate the concern and your disagreement with these harsh criticisms of the "Distortion of the Holocaust" review (speaking as the editor of this Signpost section who supported its publication despite strenuous objections from some people). But WP:TPO sets a pretty high bar for deletion of comments and I think that as long as it doesn't reach the level of WP:NPA, we can deal with criticisms like that we are spreading "lies of Grabowski" or furthering "histeria [sic] introduced by Icewhiz and his Jewish friends", however factually wrong they may be.
And seeing that this review might be attracting considerable critical attention from a non-Wikimedian Polish audience, I would not like us/the Signpost/Wikipedia being accused of censorship, especially given that Volunteer Marek's cryptic rationale "500/30 policy" will not likely be intelligible to many. Regards, HaeB (talk) 15:51, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
{{reply to|Chess}}on reply) 21:03, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]ECP applied
Per WP:APLECP, extended confirmed protection has been applied to this page. This action as been logged at [17]. --Jayron32 16:58, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The chronology on Wikipedia suggests that a progenitor/related concern was first acknowledged through a list of arbitration committee findings in 2009 (with indicators of the source issues and concerns going back to 2005). The current arbitration "revisits" and references a prior arbitration that occurred in 2021. "I know you are but what am I" or "My facts are more correct that your facts" does not negate the process and governance concerns which remained open and thus unaddressed for 13-19 years. I think the current arbitration committee might want to look back to 2009 and prior. Flibbertigibbets (talk) 01:41, 10 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A more trivial question
I don't intend to join in the intensely substantive discussion among my more informed colleagues, but is this sentence possibly missing a word or two? "Many Poles believe elements of the distortion narrative which Poland's current government has taken legal and administrative steps (e.g., creating monuments for apocryphal Poles who rescued Jews) to popularize." Jim.henderson (talk) 00:43, 11 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Zooming out
Right, this is my point exactly. I am coming at this from knowledge of some of the parties in another subject area deemed off topic, and editing experience in this one that is limited, pre-February 2023, to School of Paris, which only slightly overlaps. Therefore I have been reading, but not debating, the finer points of Polish historiography, which others seem to know much better than I do. But. Is there doubt in anyone's mind that if he told a student that it was ok to use a source for non-controversial matters, he was tactfully saying (to a student editor) that the source was not wonderful but met the reliable sources policy? Is this in any way behavior that should be sanctioned? If an editor is correctly implementing policy and the result is not considered ideal, perhaps the policy needs refining. If so, then I submit that if we let Grabowski determine our policies, why not just knuckle under to the Kremin too? How we do things should start by determining what result *we* want, and that should be accuracy in *my* opinion at least. I very much share MVBW's concern about external vectors. Elinruby (talk) 23:41, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Narrative and admins
I don't edit that much on controversial topics. But I rather dislike the concept of wikipedia articles being criticized for being consistent with a narrative. Such criticisms feel like they give people carte blanche to censor facts and content because it isn't in line with the "correct narrative to be". I feel as if editorial policies should constrain themselves to what is due and what accurately represents the sources and be very cautious about these "narrative" arguments. It all feels like it's part of a "misinformation creep" game, which defines "does not support every aspect of the viewpoint that I would like" as misinformation. I heard people trying to describe undue emphasis as "misinformation".
I also doubt that admins can or should deal with subtle content disagreements. It feels like this vague and fruitless hope that someone if you have enough authority and make your authority good enough it can solve all problems, whereas in reality the more powerful your authority is and the more subtle the issues it deals with the more inclined it is to be captured. Some things just have to play out in a haphazard way rather than be dealt with through process. Talpedia (talk) 00:25, 19 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]