[Foundation-l] Remedying systemic bias (was On curiosity, cats and scapegoats)

[Achal Prabhala]

On Monday 12 September 2011 02:01 PM, David Gerard wrote:
> [subject changed]
>
>
> On 12 September 2011 08:46, Yaroslav M. Blanter<putevod at mccme.ru>  wrote:
>
>> Right, but we do have this systemic bias already in place: in ALL our
>> projects, the articles on localities in Sweden are longer and better
>> written (and better illustrated) than the articles on localities in Burkina
>> Faso. We could indeed initiate smth like an effort to improve articles on
>> localities in Burkina Faso (which may be combined with the outreach effort
>> in the global South or whatever keywords are currently used), but it is
>> clear to me that the overlap between users participating in WLM and users
>> capable of writing articles on Burkina Faso is close to zero if it at all
>> exists.
>
> Basically, we need to recruit more editors. The work on how to do
> usably reliable sourcing other than English-language printed works may
> help too.

One interesting thing regarding "oral" sources (beyond just the scope of 
the oral citations project: 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Oral_Citations) is that we have 
the opportunity to take audio-visual culture (especially audio-visual 
culture produced on the internet) seriously. I live in South India, and 
South Indian cooking, for instance, is far more likely to end up on 
Youtube than in a printed book. At the same time, it's likely that a 
young kid growing up in the US, who has always had the internet, might 
find that it's easier to cite social media on a place like Quora. In 
both cases (for the person living in a rich economy with a huge 
publishing industry, and a person in a poorer economy, without a major 
publishing industry), the knowledge ecosystem is different to the one 
that we typically recognise and allow, and that's something we can 
potentially take advantage of.

>
> - d.
>
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