On 4/16/07, Earle Martin wikipedia@downlode.org wrote:

It is interesting that there is nowhere in that article that states that it describes United States law (except a brief mention of the states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Utah) - even in the large series box on the right-hand side of the article. This appears to be a fine example of systemic bias[0] (or more specifically, American Cultural Assumption[1]) in action.

This sort of thing doesn't bother me that much. Look at the intro: "Under the attractive nuisance doctrine of the law of torts, a landowner may be held liable for injuries to children trespassing on the land if the injury is caused by a hazardous object or condition on the land that is likely to attract children, who are unable to appreciate the risk posed by the object or condition."

I read the contextual assumption as "If you're in a jursdiction where the phrase 'attractive nuisance doctrine' is used, then here's what it means". A specific contextualisation would be good, but presumably the authors of this article didn't know exactly where it is and isn't used. There is no implication that this doctrine exists worldwide.

What is much grubbier is when you have an article which concerns a topic which is clearly near-global in scope, but the article makes many assumptions about that topic being in the US. [[Skiing]] was a bad example for a while, and many articles about food are similar. [[Property tax]] does a good job of avoiding this.

Steve