Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 16:11:45 -0700, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Right, so it's only geographically, temporally and ethnically biased, which makes it - er, still crap :-)
It doesn't include or exclude based on geography, time period, or ethnicity, so it's actually _un_biased on those criteria. The exclusion based on whether one plays basketball is a bit of an odd exception to that, I admit, but could be handled with that subarticle split I suggested earlier.
Yes, it is. Check out the stats on average height by country. There is a 10" difference between the lowest and the highest
The list is about tall men. Excluding short men from it hardly seems like bias. It's like complaining that a list of the world's tallest trees doesn't have any representatives from Saudi Arabia on it; it's not bias because Saudia Arabia simply doesn't have any really tall trees in it (I'm assuming for purposes of argument, anyway).
In any event, I still don't see the problem with selective lists in general as long as the criteria for selection is objectively described. This is a list of people who are taller than a specific height, a clear criteria on which to judge inclusion or exclusion. Whether the subject is "crap" or not is a separate issue.
But the "objective" value of tall is subjective, and largely based on the number of hits it gets, looking at the history.
"This is a list of notable tall men, starting at 198 cm (6 ft 6 in)." That's an objective number, and I'm not sure what you mean by it being "based on the number of hits it gets." If you think it's not short enough you could try reducing it, the entries appear to be in order of height so it should be relatively easy to start tacking more on at the end. But there has to be a cutoff somewhere or the list would eventually encompass all of humanity, so why not there? One might also ask why the list of largest asteroids cuts off at 9 Metis, but that doesn't mean keeping any sort of list of the largest asteroids is improper.
I'm really not sure I'm understanding your objection any more. What would you change about the inclusion criteria if you had carte blanche?