On Tue, 11 Apr 2006 12:17:01 -0700, Philip Welch <wikipedia(a)philwelch.net> wrote:
>They will presumably read Wikipedia in their first language. It's
>rather imperialist of us to presume that they should read the English
>language Wikipedia just because it's difficult for us to do
>translations--more imperialist, I dare say, than having [[Georgia]]
>as a disambiguation page.
Your presumption is obviously wrong. My mother toungue is Bengali and Google offers its interface in Bengali, but I use the English interface because the Bengali version is of such a low quality. Similarly, the ENglish wikipedia is far better than Wikipedias in even those languages we do have a sizable one, so people will read it in English.
Still, it's true that a large (possibly majority) portion of WIkipedia users are American. SO the question we need to ask is, is this Systemic Bias desirable? Should WIkipedia cater to the tastes of its majority of users or to the majority of its potential users? Do we seek to be usable for the global population or for the American population? It seems from previous discussions that there's no consensus on this issue.
Molu
---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Make PC-to-Phone Calls to the US (and 30+ countries) for 2¢/min or less.
Hi,
I have just written and published an article about Wikipedia on my web site (www.bogdanov.ch), more precisely about the circumstances in which I have been banned by trying to take part to the article "Bogdanov Affair".
My article is entitled "Wikipedia et l'affaire Bogdanov : "encyclopédie libre" ou dictature virtuelle ?", which means : "Wikipedia and the Bogdanov affair : "free encyclopedia" or virtual dictatorship ?". It is in french... sorry, I cannot translate it by myself !
I just hope I will not be censored by the moderators as I habe been by the Arbitrators on Wikipedia ! ;-)
Laurence67 (talk page)
---------------------------------
Faites de Yahoo! votre page d'accueil sur le web pour retrouver directement vos services préférés : vérifiez vos nouveaux mails, lancez vos recherches et suivez l'actualité en temps réel. Cliquez ici.
Jimbo -
I hate to ask this, and wouldn't if I could think of a better solution, but would you please consider an out-of-process deletion of the image
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hikari_Hayashibara_Manga.jpg
Which illustrates the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolicon
This is a Manga drawing of a female about age seven, rear view, kneeling on bed, looking back over shoulder. Underpants pulled down revealing buttocks, subject is holding a toy stuffed bear which wears sado-masochism regalia (studded leather straps) and a prominant strap-on dildo.
I know that we don't shy from including shocking or revolting images on the 'pedia, but this is just over the top, all the way to just plain evil.
I don't think this is the kind of image that you want to get hit with during an interview. I also don't think this ia good way to surprise our readers in countries where this image is illegal, and I don't think its inclusion reflects well on the 'pedia or attracts the kind of publicity and readership (and editorship) that we want. So I wanted to bring the image to your attention. If you're OK with it, or are not OK with deleting it out-of-process, that's your call.
There has been much discussion on the [[Lolicon]] talk page and recently on the Images for Deletion, with no clear consensus to delete, and the next step absent a deletion by fiat is Request for Comments. That will certainly result in much typing and probably in no consensus to delete, and I'd rather see if you will just destroy the image before going through all that.
Thanks for your attention,
Herostratus
I thought I'd let folks here on the mailing list know something I just
found out about -- there's not one but _two_ active policy proposals to
curtail wheel warring:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Proposed_wheel_warring_policyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Admin_zero-revert_rule
I'm not sure how we ended up with two redundant proposal pages, but
somehow we did. The first page, which I hadn't heard of until today,
includes polls for five alternatives, the last two of which seem to have
some support. The other page features one, more detailed and somewhat
stricter, proposal, which hasn't been put to a poll but has been
extensively discussed and seems to also enjoy some degree of consensus.
Anyway, I agree that it's probably time to turn these proposals into
actual policy. There are folks here on this list who have much more
experience with doing this than I have, so I won't try to teach grandma
to suck eggs. What I've done so far is point people to the talk page of
the former proposal page, suggestion that the issue be hashed out there,
using the consensus versions of both proposals as basis for the policy.
Anyway, your input and policymaking skills are appreciated. Let's get
this thing done.
--
Ilmari Karonen
Hi all,
Anyone else notice that Google uses DMOZ descriptions for certain
web pages? Search for [[George W Bush]] or [[Jack Thompson]] and
you'll see what I mean.
The implications are weird. Sometimes we'll be "an encyclopaedia",
other times an "open-source encyclopaedia", who knows...
Apparently they've been doing this for a while but I've never noticed
it until now (http://www.webproworld.com/archive.php/o_t__t_61217__view_previous__index.h…).
Steve
John Lee wrote:
"I've never set foot in the US and I've still seen and heard more
references to Georgia the state than Georgia the country in my entire
life. I think making [[Georgia]] a disambig is a good compromise."
I must disagree. I live in India and I've heard far more about Country Georgia than the US state. This is just like, as someone else said, disambig-ing Paris. An example of demographic bias?
---------------------------------
New Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Call regular phones from your PC and save big.
> On 4/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>> Just came across http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Georgia . It is
>> obvious beyond words to me that [[Georgia]] should be the country,
>> and
>> the US state should be at something like [[Georgia (US State)]].
>> However, an ongoing poll evenly ties between that, and keeping
>> Georgia
>> is a disambiguation page.
>>
>> I find this sad. :(
It is obvious that this particular issue is going to be
_contentious._ I don't know what proportion of Wikipedia users or
Wikipedia editors live in the United States, but it is large enough
to matter. Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, the existence of
Georgia, the SSR was almost unknown. Frankly, the only thing I knew
about it was that it was the Stalin's birthplace, and even that was
only because of a joking reference I'd heard to some politician:
("He's from Georgia? So was Stalin.).
Given that this issue is contentious, it's going to be hard to
settle. Straw polls are just one of a number of techniques for trying
to reach stability in an article. Unless it is clear that some other
technique _would_ have produced a clear, stable consensus and that
the straw poll is _preventing_ a consensus that would otherwise have
gelled, it doesn't prove polls are evil.
And since, no matter what the outcome is, anyone who types in
"Georgia" will quickly find what they are seeking, it doesn't matter
what the outcome is. Many of these article-naming debates seem to me
just to be arenas for people who enjoy trying to win arguments, and,
unlike edit wars, they are relatively harmless because the results
_do not matter_.
If Steve Bennett's argument is that polls are evil because ignorant
idiots who voted in the poll came up cast a majority of votes for
what is "obviously beyond words" the wrong answer, I don't buy it. A
majority vote for George W. Bush in a national U. S. election when it
is obvious beyond words that that is the wrong answer does not prove
that voting is evil. How's that for U.S.-centric for you? Pffpplsfft!
Our naming policy calls for the "most common" name, not the most
correct or most appropriate name. Arguments on geographic names are
always difficult to resolve because "most common among _whom_" is
somewhat undefined for Wikipedia. Unless you are going to suggest
that polls should be weighted to reflect what the outcome would be if
participation included proportional representation by every English-
speaking person in the world... that is, that Wikipedia should serve
what is ideally its potential audience rather than its real audience.
Non-rhetorical question: does the national makeup of readers differ
in proportion from the national makeup of active editors?
Nice example of an article that has gone backwards, but the main thing it needed IMHO was the deletion of one large chunk of speculation in the popular culture section. I've made that deletion and copied the material, with an accompanying note, on the talk page. I'll leave it to others to decide whether the image in that same section should be deleted. The rest of the pop culture stuff seems legit at first glance, even if it's understandably tiresome to some when serious articles drift in that direction.
The material that has gone missing from the earlier "good" version was a lot of stuff about Wittgenstein under the heading "Semantics". I think that whoever deleted it had a point. Perhaps it should be put back, but it really does seem of marginal relevance, so I have not done so at this stage. I'd have been more impressed by it if someone had found a passage where Wittgenstein specifically discusses the paradox.
It seems to me that this example does show how articles can deteriorate, at least in the short term, but there are also methods of addressing it when it happens.
Russell Blackford
www.russellblackford.com
