On 4/11/06, Philip Welch wikipedia@philwelch.net wrote:
Current political status is really somewhat of an irrelevant topic. What about 20 years ago, when Georgia was simply part of the USSR? Georgia wasn't "a country" then, but it was largely the same place.
Here's the objective metrics:
Total GDP, Per-Capita GDP, Population, Foreign Trade, Land Area, No. of Wiki-Links: The US State Sovereignty, membership in int. organizations: The Nation
Now, this Wikipedia is written in English. (Arguments about African customers are irrelevant, as organizational style will change in a translation to an African language). There are 8 million people in Georgia (the state), almost all of whom speak English. There are 300 million people in the United States, likewise. Georgia (the country) is not an English-speaking country.
There are 380 million people who speak English as a first language. Some 79% of English-speakers are thus Americans. Now, assuming that British, Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders, et. al. are all more interested in the country than the state, they only make up some 21% of the English-speaking population. You're asking to inconvenience 4/5 of the potential user base for en. out of the belief that sovereignty and membership in international organizations not only outweigh all other considerations, but overwhelm it so much that the default page should not be a disambiguation page.
That's anti-Americanism.
And why, exactly, do only first-language English speakers "count"? What about the 1 billion+ second/third/etc. English language speakers? I remember reading somewhere that there are more English speakers in China than in the US.... and 300m over 1.3b is a lot less that 4/5ths.