On 4/10/06, Conrad Dunkerson conrad.dunkerson@worldnet.att.net wrote:
- Mark Gallagher wrote:
Just ask yourself: if Georgia (US state) was not, in fact, a US state, but an Australian state, or a British county, or ... whatever ... would we have had all those arguments? I suspect it would indeed have been "obvious beyond words" if the grand ol' US of A wasn't involved.
Depends. In the hypothetical are we assuming that 'Georgia Australia' would still have twice as many wiki-links to it as the country does? Double the population?
The issue of wiki-links is a bit problematic - a US state will have more Wiki-links than an Australian state of equal prominence (population, global impact, newsworthiness - assuming there was such a way to compare such a thing) because there are more US-centric editors. It's the whole systemic bias thing - not only are American editors more likely to be aware of the American state, so would Canadian editors, probably West Indian, maybe European - because of the importance of US-based news organisations. If we want a truly balanced encyclopaedia, we need to take these things into account