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Delirium wrote:
It may be which articles I read/edit, but I tend to
see more of an
Anglocentric POV rather than an US-centric one, which is perhaps
unsurprising since more English-speakers than non-English-speakers edit
the English Wikipedia. In particular, having way more detail on the UK
than there should be in a general article is nearly as common as having
way more detail on the US than there should be (though not *quite* as
common). This is particularly true in anything related to legal
topics---there's typically piles of text on the UK and the US legal
systems, sometimes with a separate section about how Canada has its own
take on the topic, followed by a token nod that other legal systems also
exist and might do things differently.
-Mark
People can only write about what they know about. Of course a Wikipedia
in a particular language will have a greater coverage of topics related
to countries which use that language - for example (it isn't the best
one, but it was quick to check) the dewiki article on Berlin is longer
than than enwiki article on Berlin. Just because we can't write good
articles about, say, the Russian legal system (which, in an ideal world,
we would have) doesn't mean that we should be upset that we have good
articles about, say, the English or Scottish or American or Canadian
legal systems.
A short-term solution would be to translate from other language wikis. A
machine translation (Google, Babelfish, whatever, take your pick) might
not be good enough to transfer an entire article from another language,
but it should be more than enough (at least if the person doing it is
vaguely familiar with the topic) to provide a couple of sentences to a
paragraph in an '... in the xx legal system' so that we have more than
the 'token nod that other legal systems also exist and might do things
differently' which you mention.
Cynical
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