User:Frombelow
Interests:
- Politics
- Social Movements
- Informal Settlements
- Participatory Democracy
- Other perspectives from below
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My intentions are merely to focus on topics deemed less notable by the large majority of wikipedia editors. Particularly topics that 'come from below'. 80% of South African's have no access to internet because, among other reasons, they are very poor and marginalised. They often get ignored or misreported on by the mainstream media.
Example: If there is a fire in a poor area and 10 people die with 1,000 becoming homeless (it happens), then it might make a couple articles in the back pages of the newspapers. If the same thing happens in a rich area, it will make the front page internationally, it will be deemed a national tragedy and it will be all over the internet including Wikipedia.
Therefore, the topics that are notable to poor people get ignored by the wide majority of Wikipedia editors.
My aim is to focus on those topic that are not notable to people who control the distribution of information but highly notable to those who are refused a voice (and/or point of view) in our society.
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Note on NPOV: My thinking closely follows this in the FAQ section of NPOV. I would add that Wikipedia not only has an Anglo-American focus, it also has an elitist focus. This should change.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/FAQ#Anglo-American_focus
- Anglo-American focus
- Wikipedia seems to have an Anglo-American focus. Is this contrary to the neutral point of view?
- Yes, it is, especially when dealing with articles that require an international perspective. The presence of articles written from a United States or European Anglophone perspective is simply a reflection of the fact that there are many U.S. and European Anglophone people working on the project. This is an ongoing problem that should be corrected by active collaboration between Anglo-Americans and people from other countries. But rather than introducing their own cultural bias, they should seek to improve articles by removing any examples of cultural bias that they encounter, or making readers aware of them. A special WikiProject has been set up to deal with this problem. This is not only a problem in the English Wikipedia. The French Language Wikipedia may reflect a French bias, the Japanese Wikipedia may reflect a Japanese bias, and so on.
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I support the important work of Jessica Wade in addressing bias against women scientists. Wikipedia is heavily white male focused and this needs to be address. See https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/33-year-old-made-1000-wikipedia-bios-unknown-women-scientists-rcna52476