Charlotte Webb wrote:
On 10/5/08, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org>
wrote:
Some of that could be improved by making each of
the articles themselves
provide higher-level orientation. For example, most of our articles on
German cities place them as a dot on the map of *all of Germany*, rather
than only on a map of the state they're in, letting the reader who knows
"I know it's somewhere in western Germany" quickly figure out if
they're
even in the right part of the country.
The different treatment is alll about familiarity, a.k.a. systemic
bias. Try asking a hundred Americans to name two states in Germany.
To some extent, but some also seems to be due to the various
sub-communities editing in each geographic area, which often is a single
person who happened to generate all the maps, sometimes a long time ago.
For example, I just now stumbled across [[Charleroi]], which gives me a
location map -- not within Europe, or Belgium, or even Wallonia -- but
within the province of Hainaut. Even as a fairly geographically literate
American I could not locate that for you on a map. =]
-Mark