I just joined this list less than an hour ago (and I'm very new to WP too), but
I thought I'd drop in my 2cents on the msg by Mark Williamson. (Yes, I was being
UScentric; no, I'm not in the US; yes, I was being intentionally ironic.)
Really, every piece of information, every datum, every idea, everything is
biased to what we (or the authors) know. When we find that there are new
planets with intelligent life out there, we will discover that everything we
wrote is Earth-centric; when we discover new parallel universes or time-travel,
that it was universe- or time-ist. What about WP being NPOV- or truth-centric?
Doesn't the imaginary world in my head have a right to be documented to?
For these reasons, I think using this as an argument for saying that WP is
biased
is an invalid argument due to its absurdity; and misunderstands that bias is a
sliding scale, so the semantics of the word, unbiased, always imply a certain
amount of what you would call bias (in the same way that the term, biased, does
not imply that something has total bias and is meaningless as this is also
impossible). WP is IMO the least biased document that it is possible to create
because it is based on a free self-selecting meritocratic democracy.
A truly unbiased encyclopedia would be infinite (and contain totally random
content--although true randomness implies infinity and vice versa) and contain
everything thereby deeming it as useful as an empty encyclopedia; though
content is king--conciseness can be more important than sheer quantitiy. A
finite
encyclopedia (or other piece of information) can never be truly unbiased. So
what? It would be absurd (and impossible) to make it so. Mark's last post was
suggesting any changes to Wikipedia to solve the problem, because it can never
be solved really, so let's all not worry about it.
The only possible way to reduce bias is to try and increase the number and range
of editors on WP (and to some extent by increasing the content).
Also, your points about systematic bias are kind of moot, because in order to
say there is systematic bias in something due to bias in a set of individuals,
A, there must be a larger set, B, which contains A, that you are comparing A
with. That set, B, is part of a larger set, C, which means that set B is
biased wrt C, therefore when you talk about systematic bias, your idea of
systematic bias is itself biased.
Just thought I'd join in and make that point. Hopefully it makes some sense as
I've been on this machine for 13 hours and havent slept for several days (and
I don't know anything about bias or stats).
Happy wikipediaing,
Joe Ll. G. Blakesley.
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