On 6/8/06, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
I certainly know Al Jazeera and http://www.archive.org/details/mosaic but IMHO the news reports of a media networks are far less interesting than a "public Wikiconsensus" on "generic" topics like Islam, 9/11, Terrorism, Israel, etc. Apart from being exciting, those translations whould show how culturally biased Wikipedia actually is.
Yeah, but there are so many factors that lead to the way a wikipedia article is the way it is, and cultural bias is only one of them. The expertises of the authors, controversialness of the topic, general interest in the topic, etc all have a huge part to play. You could end up comparing an article written in the spare time of two retired academics against an article bitterly fought over for months by leagues of "pro" and "anti" editors, being forced to source every edit.
The exercise would have some merit. But if you simply want to understand "The Arab world's point of view", there are better ways.
Steve