On Wed, 2008-01-23 at 22:07 +0000, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 23/01/2008, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
I'd agree with charles comments above, but let me rephrase my observation.
Citizendium has, in my opinion, an infinitely larger potential for maintaining its current systemic bias, unlike wikipedia, which is constantly correcting this (see things such as User:llrwych's recent devotion to the history of Ethiopia and the like). The very nature of the cz project and its base of contributors demands a bias in the topics it gives substantial coverage to.
Start with intellectual and personal elitism, and you're going to have that bias show in your work, just like academia. Also just like academia, this bias doesn't negate the value of the work they do focus on, but you still have to acknowledge that there will always be holes in their coverage.
If I'm understanding you correctly, you're talking about the lack of English speaking experts on topics about non-English speaking countries? I'm not sure how serious an issue that is - most academics anywhere in the world speak decent English, if they look for them, I'm sure they can find suitable experts of Ethiopian history, or whatever.
Certainly, one would only have to look at specialist universities, for example my own the [[School of Oriental and African Studies]] in London.
IMHO, Wikipedia should - at some point - do a recruiting drive for academics to get more involved with specialist subjects.
Ian [[User:Poeloq]]