Delirium wrote:
What are the chances, for example, that the Greek Wikipedia (assuming it ever gets off the ground) will have a history of the Greek-Turkish (or Greek-FYROM) conflict with NPOV standards similar to the descriptions of those conflicts in the English Wikipedia?
I don't really know anything about the Greeks, but I would imagine that the difficulty of approaching NPOV is inversely related to the diversity of the population, as you surmise.
It is true that English is spoken by people from many countries, but it is also true that even within the United States, there is remarkable diversity of opinion. I would imagine that Germany has a similarly wide diversity of opinion, even within Germany itself.
Japan might be a good example, in that (it if often said) Japanese culture is more homogenous than that of most other "large" countries.
So I guess my question is: do people think it is likely that Wikipedias in languages that are spoken almost exclusively by people of one particular national background can ever hope to achieve anything even remotely resembling the NPOV on the Wikipedias in languages that are spoken by a wide range of people? Is having contributors from a wide range of backgrounds a necessary prerequisite for NPOV (as I suggest)?
I think you're certainly onto something here, but I'd also say that if the "people of one particular national background" have significant internal diversity, that's enough.
I mean, I think that the United States has plenty of people ready to be sharply critical of the U.S. government, even though they live here.
--Jimbo