Northern hemisphere bias
I have recently begun a low-key campaign to raise awareness of northern hemisphere bias as a specific case of systemic bias. This bias often manifests itself as a season being used interchangeably with a time period, for example "spring of 1945". This is a specific violation of the guidelines in the Wikipedia Manual of Style and many Wikipedia contributors are apparently unaware of this. I plan to post a few choice quotations here that illustrate the problem. These quotes won't necessarily be from Wikipedia.
Quotations that illustrate northern hemisphere bias
- "Just to think that it's springtime back on Earth!" — Attributed to an unnamed science fiction story, where astronauts voyaging to a distant star were getting homesick. Perhaps they had mastered the control of Earth's weather so that spring started in September all over the Earth?
- "From the frozen wastes to the north and the hellish jungles of the south come brave, even reckless warriors." — Dungeons and Dragons Player's [sic] Handbook (third edition), in the introduction to the Barbarian class. Evidently the northern hemisphere in D&D games worlds have a monopoly on barbarians. I guess the southern hemisphere in D&D is the origin of all civilising influences.
Examples from Wikipedia
- "By spring 1945, following the Solomon Islands campaign and Battles of the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf, the once imposing Imperial Japanese Navy's Combined Fleet was reduced to just a handful of operational warships and a few remaining aircraft and aircrew." — Wikipedia's page on Operation_Ten-Go, on the day it was a featured article. Evidently the war in the northern hemisphere continued for six months longer than it did in the southern, because by Spring 1945 World War II was well and truly over.
- "The comet was much less impressive to Southern Hemisphere observers than it had been in the Northern Hemisphere, but southerners were able to see the comet gradually fade from view during the summer and autumn of 1997." — Wikipedia's page on Comet Hale-Bopp before I made revisions. This was an insidious example of Northern Hemisphere bias because it described Southern hemisphere visibility using Northern hemisphere seasons. The use of such wording throughout Wikipedia does make me wonder at the quality of Wikipedia in general.
- "In the spring of 2007, it was announced that Dorothy would star in her own television show in Australia." — Wikipedia's article on The Wiggles, before I amended it. Here is another example of an article with a southern-hemisphere context having time periods described using northern-hemisphere seasons. Never do this because it is a gross breach of Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy. For this reason, whenever I find such usage in Wikipedia, I make no apology whatsoever for removing this kind of sloppy usage immediately. Here, I substituted the misleading "spring of 2007" with the unambiguous "May 2007" (note well that May is an autumn month in Australia, not a spring month).
- "The Kengir uprising was a prisoner uprising that took place in the Soviet prison labor camp Kengir in the spring of 1954." – Wikipedia's page on the Kengir uprising, on the day it was a featured article. When was this again? September? October? Oh, dammit, it's another one of those insidious seasonal references. *confused* I have since edited the article to replace the ambiguous seasonal reference to the much clearer "May and June".
- The Orion Nebula nebula article described the nebula as being visible below Orion's Belt. This is not correct when seen from the Southern Hemisphere; from there the nebula appears above the Belt, not below. Changed this to the unambiguous statement of being visible south of the Belt.
- "Flowering takes place in mid spring, and their fruit, called acorns, ripen by autumn of the same year." – Pedunculate Oak, version: Ref. This is a more subtle example of Northern Hemisphere bias. It assumes that spring precedes autumn in a calendar year, which only occurs in the Northern Hemisphere. In its native environment this is indeed the case, however when the Oak is cultivated in the Southern Hemisphere this statement is a chronological impossibility. I substituted "following autumn" here, which preserves the sense of the article but removes the calendric ambiguity.
- "After a series of pre-trial hearings, the first of the accused to be sentenced was Vlassakis, who was given four life sentences on 21 June 2001 after pleading guilty to four murders. Later that summer, Bunting, Haydon and Wagner each pleaded not guilty to 10 counts of murder." – Snowtown murders, version: Ref. In Australia, June is a winter month: this is another example of the notorious practice of describing southern-hemisphere context with northern-hemisphere seasons. The simple fix here was to change "summer" to "year".
Basic rules for seasons
The following rules are helpful:
- Seasons and dates are not interchangeable. "Spring" is not an acceptable synonym for "early in the year", and October is not necessarily a month in which spring-flowering bulbs are planted.
- Even within the same hemisphere, there is no universal agreement on which season some dates fall. Some countries count seasons from equinox to solstice, some count by whole months, and some even count the equinox or solstice as the midpoint of a season. Thus, depending on the point of view of the reader, some particular dates may be considered to lie in any of the four seasons.
- Prefer seasons to dates in articles relating to the cultivation of plants.
- Prefer dates to seasons in articles relating to history, the night sky, and the like.
- In historical articles, a seasonal reference is acceptable if the season has an impact on the protagonist of the article. For example, a cold winter may halt a military campaign. The link between the season and the events must be shown. In ambiguous cases, seek clarification.
- In historical articles, seasonal references are unacceptable if they are used as stand-ins for a date, especially if an exact date, a month name or other like substitute is available. In such cases, the season should be substituted with a less ambiguous date. Such edits clearly improve the articles, as shown by their persistence in the articles.
- In historical articles, seasonal references are acceptable as dates if no alternative is available from any primary reference. This often happens with articles about ancient history when seasonal references are all that are available in primary references. In such cases, the season should be clarified with "northern" or "southern", eg: "northern spring", "southern autumn". There is no need to do this clarification with every such reference in the article. The first such reference should be clarified in this way, but others can remain unclarified so long as the focus of the article does not shift from one hemisphere to the other. If the focus of the articles does shift in this way, such clarification may be needed for all seasonal references.
- Do not assume a relationship between seasons and the calendar. Which of two given seasons occurs first in the same calendar year is hemisphere-specific (see Pedunculate Oak above). If the seasons are not tied to the calendar, such as on articles relating to plant cultivation, reword if needed.
- Migratory birds that breed in the northern hemisphere do not spend the winter in the southern hemisphere. A bird that lives south of the equator for six months a year is by definition no more a northern-hemisphere bird than a southern-hemisphere bird. Such birds do not necessarily abandon the northern hemisphere in the northern winter, instead they generally migrate to where food is more readily available, regardless of the hemisphere. However, one must use existing terminology to describe articles on bird migration for clarity, and not use new expressions. In particular, in the context of bird migration, the use of "winter" as a verb should be used despite its boreocentric slant because no good hemisphere-neutral substitute is available.
- When describing the growth or cultivation of plants, seasonal references are appropriate. However, in this case the reverse situation can often be seen, in that dates are used instead of seasons. In this case, months should be replaced with seasonal references. Apples always blossom in spring and are ripe in autumn, but do not necessarily blossom in March-April (they blossom in September-October in the southern hemisphere).
"Hemisphere Neutral" userbox
Users who want to show on their userpage their support for the use of hemisphere-neutral language can use the following userbox:
| Code | Result | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ((Template:User Hemisphere Neutral)) |
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Usage |
