On Tue, 20 Mar 2007, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
US Wikipedians will probably all be working on the English language Wikipedia. It means that all the skills and experience associated with small communities, working on an encyclopaedia that does not cover all subject matter. Working on languages where the community it is done for does not know what Wikipedia is, it is that experience that will be missing. In that way it will hardly cover the breadth of Wikipedia.
He doesn't claim to be attempting to cover the breadth of Wikipedia. Implicit in the post is that it concerns Wikipedia usage in the United States.
I find it is common for people to mistake limits placed on a study with a bias in the study. Let me give another example that might make this clearer. If a study concerns left handed people (one of the most commonly studied groups) then failing to include non-left handed people is not a bias in the study, it is a function of the limits of a study. Similarly if a study wanted only left handed US residents then the study would be about left handed US residents. This does not imply any bias in the study. Any study worthy of the name will go in to great detail when it comes to methodology of subject selection and any subsequent testing that is done.
It will be great when smaller WP communities are studied too but this study clearly isn't doing that.
Cheers,
Rob