On Tue, 11 Apr 2006 12:17:01 -0700, Philip Welch wikipedia@philwelch.net wrote:
They will presumably read Wikipedia in their first language. It's rather imperialist of us to presume that they should read the English language Wikipedia just because it's difficult for us to do translations--more imperialist, I dare say, than having [[Georgia]] as a disambiguation page.
Your presumption is obviously wrong. My mother toungue is Bengali and Google offers its interface in Bengali, but I use the English interface because the Bengali version is of such a low quality. Similarly, the ENglish wikipedia is far better than Wikipedias in even those languages we do have a sizable one, so people will read it in English.
Still, it's true that a large (possibly majority) portion of WIkipedia users are American. SO the question we need to ask is, is this Systemic Bias desirable? Should WIkipedia cater to the tastes of its majority of users or to the majority of its potential users? Do we seek to be usable for the global population or for the American population? It seems from previous discussions that there's no consensus on this issue.
Molu
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On 4/12/06, Molu Bosu Palit loom91@yahoo.com wrote:
Still, it's true that a large (possibly majority) portion of WIkipedia users are American. SO the question we need to ask is, is this Systemic Bias desirable? Should WIkipedia cater to the tastes of its majority of users or to the majority of its potential users? Do we seek to be usable for the global population or for the American population? It seems from previous discussions that there's no consensus on this issue.
To continue to be a complete pain in the arse, I would have to ask what you mean by "consensus on this issue". Who was asked? If you asked a group of Australians whether Wikipedia should be biased towards Australia or be unbiased, I'm not sure we would come up with "consensus" either.
Steve
On 4/12/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
To continue to be a complete pain in the arse, I would have to ask what you mean by "consensus on this issue". Who was asked? If you asked a group of Australians whether Wikipedia should be biased towards Australia or be unbiased, I'm not sure we would come up with "consensus" either.
While I see your point, I'm not sure if 'consensus' as you specify it here is possible to achieve or even possible to know. I'm also not sure if it has much practical purpose.
In effect, you're wondering if consensus should be defined as the consensus of humanity as a whole, rather than interested Wikipedians. (am I right?)
Unfortunately, you don't have humanity as a whole chiming in. We work with what we have, which is Wikipedians plus our insights into the needs of our users, such as they are.
-Matt
On Apr 11, 2006, at 11:31 PM, Molu Bosu Palit wrote:
Still, it's true that a large (possibly majority) portion of WIkipedia users are American. SO the question we need to ask is, is this Systemic Bias desirable? Should WIkipedia cater to the tastes of its majority of users or to the majority of its potential users?
Systematic bias is not at issue here. Systematic bias is the tendency to fail at NPOV or comprehensiveness due to the knowledge set of our contributors. This is not a content issue--this is an organizational issue. Issue should be organized for the greatest convenience for the greatest number of consumers.
On 4/12/06, Philip Welch wikipedia@philwelch.net wrote:
Systematic bias is not at issue here. Systematic bias is the tendency to fail at NPOV or comprehensiveness due to the knowledge set of our contributors. This is not a content issue--this is an organizational issue. Content should be organized for the greatest convenience for the greatest number of consumers.
Would you brook any exception to that? Would you go as far as putting an entry under a misspelling if most consumers thought that was the correct spelling?
Steve
* Steve Bennett wrote:
Would you brook any exception to that? Would you go as far as putting an entry under a misspelling if most consumers thought that was the correct spelling?
Heh. If most consumers thought it was the correct spelling... then it would be. That's how languages evolve.
On Apr 12, 2006, at 3:09 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
Systematic bias is not at issue here. Systematic bias is the tendency to fail at NPOV or comprehensiveness due to the knowledge set of our contributors. This is not a content issue--this is an organizational issue. Content should be organized for the greatest convenience for the greatest number of consumers.
Would you brook any exception to that? Would you go as far as putting an entry under a misspelling if most consumers thought that was the correct spelling?
If one spelling is preferred over another by a vast number of people, then that spelling is by definition correct according to a descriptivist theory of language.
If there's significant dispute over how a word is spelled, then the most common use should be under that spelling while the other spellings would be redirects. Actually, misspellings themselves are valid redirects.
I would say that even the name that an entry is under is an issue of organization, not content. The article on The Rock is located at [[The Rock (entertainer)]] but starts "Dwayne Douglas Johnson (born May 2, 1972 in Hayward, California), better known by his stage name The Rock..." Clearly "The Rock" is the better known name, while Dwayne Douglas Johnson is his actual name and the name that's bolded at the beginning of the article.