On 23/01/2011 05:13, Tony Sidaway wrote:
'I must be very naive not to have realised, all
this time, that the
so-called "English Wikipedia" was actually the "American Wikipedia".
Or could that nomenclature reveal a somewhat suspicious starting
point?'
I don't see a problem with that choice of words. While there are large
numbers of non-American contributors much of the English Wikipedia is
about subjects of interest to American writers and written from a
largely American point of view. I would not be surprised if this were
even more pronounced in the early days.
(Something odd about your citing here,
Tony.) Actually I think that
misrepresents the history. The early days of the English Wikipedia
featured a large proportion of non-native speakers of English contributing.
Anyway NPOV is not negotiable, as we know. There is systemic bias
towards American topics, as there is towards Anglospheric topics more
generally, but that is another issue. (It is true that American
sensibilities on 9/11 were treated with kid gloves for a while.)
Charles