> c) On Wikipedia, America is King. The rest of the world finds itself having
> to explain why such-and-such article should be written from a NPOV rather
> than an American one. This is not deliberate, there is no organised campaign
> by Americans to corrupt the encyclopaedia, it's entirely unintentional ...
> and that's even worse.
>
The Wikipedia has problems, of course, like Parisian Pedants who have something
against good old Québecois, but I've not noticed the bias you're talking about.
Maybe you mean the english-language Wikipedia.
Cheers,
Daniel
Gallagher Mark George wrote
> a) A far greater proportion of Americans seem to show this attitude than seen in other countries today
{{fact}}!
I don't think parochialism is limited to any one group - that defies my sense of how things are around the world. How people express it: yes, but that's a different kind of cultural matter.
A thread on this is almost inevitably going to end up causing offence. There's a more interesting discussion to be had, I think, about 'founding assumptions' from 1776, 'American' thought being characteristically that you can divide the European heritage as signal+noise, and the having of the signal alone.
Charles
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On 5 Oct 2006 at 01:11, Mark Gallagher
<m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> Tell an American that he does something differently from the rest of the
> world, and it's a case of, "Gosh, the rest of the world is so weird."
That's because the rest of the world *is* so weird!
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
Speaking of dubious lists, we also have:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_criminals
The list currently contains people belonging to these categories:
1) people who were convicted for war crimes
2) people who were charged but not convicted
3) people who were never charged due to political reasons, but
the consensus is that they were involved in war crimes
4) people whose involvement in war crimes is unclear or a matter
of debate.
On the top of the list, it writes that:
"This is a list of formally charged and/or convicted war criminals"
which means 1) and 2). What about people who were formally charged,
but later found not guilty? They would be included by the current
criteria.
What about people who were convicted for "war crimes" by an unfair
mock trial in a country under a dictatorship?
Should we list them, too?
I have posted this to foundation, but for those who do not know--
Today I deleted the article [[Porchesia]], which was created on November 23,
2005, i.e., 10 months ago. The article described an island off the coast of
Lebanon with a population of over 300,000. The languages are Arabic, Greek,
and English.
I will gladly restore the article when someone finds me one source verifying
the facts of this article. You might start by finding Porchesia on a map.
Danny
On 9/28/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> My phone number and email are publicly available for media contact
> purposes. This means, of course, I get emails and calls about
> *everything*.
>
> A common call is "How do I get an article about me/my book/my
achievement?"
>
> Now. What's a helpful answer to this? Better than "You don't, someone
> else has to write one," because you *know* they'll just write a
really
> bad one themselves and it'll all end in a tearful AFD entry and
> someone hating or fearing Wikipedia henceforth.
>
> Assume that referring them to a web page or policy page is less good
> than being able to answer on the phone right there.
>
> Ideas please?
>
>
> - d.
In this regard, one-time editors at Wikipedia have the same problem as single-use sellers at eBay: they have no established reputation. Yet, building a reputation at Wikipedia can take months once you understand the system, and years to grok the politics of the Wiki world. A person who wants to contribute something noteworthy about themselves, or make a one-time contribution on another subject, does not have the time or resources to learn the procedures or establish their reputation. There is also the problem of maintenance on a good article to make sure that it isn't vandalized or dumbed down. For these needs, increasingly more people are turning to established third-party sellers and editors for their eBay and Wikipedia service requests. For a low one-time fee, companies like ZS Wikiplacement guarantee a top quality Wikipedia article and two years of 99.9% uptime maintenance. Reputation has its rewards. Next time someone calls or writes to you about positioning
themselves in Wikipedia, simply refer them to ZS WikiPlacement at 1.432.224.6991 (email: info(a)collectiveresource.com). We will determine if their desired information has a good enough chance of being considered noteworthy and verifiable. Plus, we will format the article in such a way that it is useful to the greatest amount of people (through Wiki formatting, writing the article from a neutral point of view and by placing the most noteworthy data at the top).
I hope this provides a win-win-win solution for our company, mutual customers and service personnel at Wikipedia (by reducing your workload.)
Thank you,
--Zephram
Guettarda wrote
<snip>
>More importantly, hagiography
> isn't different for the living or the dead [-] defamation is.
The dead work more miracles, AFAIK. There is also the odd thing about writers, particularly, whose reputation dies with them, which is illogical if it was based on what they wrote.
Neither of these is really the problem with [[Bananarama]], of course.
Charles
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Can anyone think how to rephrase this better? Would it actually get
through to anyone who needs to hear it?
(I eagerly await all the people saying I should read what I wrote.)
====
Cultural expectations
These are the things we do that aren't actually codified. The feel of
the project. The social structure. This stuff is process too, but if
you contradict it you'll really upset people. Breaking a rule is just
breaking a rule; but breaking a cultural expectation is breaking
people's basic assumptions about the fabric of this small world of
ours. And upset volunteers fade away.
If you think you're keeping to the fundamental rules and the sensible
processes but repeatedly upset people in the same way, your approach
is ineffective. If you are in fact right, and cultural expectations
are getting in the way of writing the encyclopedia, you've got a hard
job ahead of you changing them. But that's the trouble with vision.
====
- d.
> Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2006 23:07:53 -0500
>
> That's true, but is also misleading.
> You don't see those references in the *end product*.
Oh? Take a look at the article on "Radioactivity" in the Encyclopedia
Britannica, 11th edition.
It contains fifty-four inline references. It also mentions five
"general treatises."
And the stuff in between is credited to a known individual, "E. Ru."
with the Encyclopedia Britannica editors implicitly vouching both for
his identity and his competence. However, if I want to check his
competence for yourself, I flip to the front of volume 22, p. vii and
look up E. Ru. who happens to be some guy named "Ernest Rutherford,
F. R. S., D. Sc. LL. D., Ph. D., Langworthy Professor of Physics,
University of Manchester, Nobel Prize for Chemistry, 1908, Author of
Radio-Activity; Radio-Activity Transformations; etc."
So, depending on what you think of his character or his credentials,
I can judge whether or not to rely on the stuff that's in between
those citations.
A point that people seem to continually miss in comparing Wikipedia
to other scholarly activities is that, to the extent that our
contributors are less identifiable and less authoritative than those
of the Encyclopedia Britannica Eleventh Edition or scholarly works,
we _need_ to have _denser_ citations than these endeavors. For
example, our article on "Radioactivity" ought to have _more_ than
fifty-four inline citations.
It presently has...
... _zero_ references. No inline references, nothing like the five
"general treatises" E. Ru. provides (i.e. no "references" or
"bibliography" section). Seven "see alsos" and seven "external links."
Most recent edits are by Bovineone, KaiserbBot, FocalPoint, Peyre,
and 165.107.9.47. Not obvious who their real-world identities are,
but even assuming you take their user pages at face value, which I
do, their credentials and achievements are:
"I currently live in Austin, Texas, but I am originally from
Pasadena, California" (and has a barnstar); a bot with an emergency
shutoff button; "One more user who believes that Wikipedia is a
really really good idea;" "Wikipedia does not have a user page with
this exact name;" and no account.
For all I know, 165.107.9.47, _may_ be a Nobel Laureate, but...
should I trust the unreferenced material in this article as much as I
trust the unreferenced material in the Britannica article credited to
E. Ru.?