David Richfield, 27/07/2011 09:35:
One of the most frequent complaints about Wikipedia, which I have seen in contexts such as the Wikipedia overview of World History and on websites that are critical of Wikipedia, is that it has an endemic bias towards Western, English-language information. As long as Wikipedia is completely reliant on paper sources, this is unlikely to change. The Oral Citations project is a brave attempt to light a candle instead of just cursing the darkness.
And a point I'd like to add is that this applies also to Europe... For instance the whole it.wikisource WikiProject about Italian folk music http://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Progetto:CantaStoria and Italian proverbs on it.wikiquote; both have more or less written guidelines and practices which (despite difficulties) allow oral sources because otherwise the work would sometimes be impossible. And we've had decades of studies in these fields...
Nemo