On 4/11/06, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
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!
My argument could better be summed up as "Polls are evil because only the immediate contributors to Wikipedia were asked".
Non-rhetorical question: does the national makeup of readers differ in proportion from the national makeup of active editors?
I would suggest for a start that there is a large number of people who are comfortable reading, but not contributing to Wikipedia. Those people are probably less likely to live in Anglophone countries, no?
I feel this way with the French Wikipedia - I rarely feel comfortable doing any kind of copyediting unless mistakes are particularly obvious. There is certainly information I could contribute, but rarely do. Thus I am contributing to the bias of French Wikipedia in favour of a French/Quebecois perspective on the world.
Could someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the Wikipedias were all supposed to reflect the same, neutral viewpoint on the world - not the cultural biases of the individual nations that speak the relative languages. That may be a bad assumption on my part.
Steve