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