[WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

[Sam Korn]

Forgive me for reordering this!

On 4/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> I did not raise this issue to bash Americans. Nor would I have a
> complaint if a state in the US were disambig'ed with a terristory in
> Pakistan. But for a mere state in the US to be considered somehow
> "equal" in importance, interest, searchability as a *country* just
> seems wrong. I'm really having trouble putting into words exactly why
> I feel that way, so I'll leave it for a bit and come back to it.

Note that I am actually of the opinion that the country is of more
prominence (how often have I heard Georgia-the-state on the UK news? 
Not since November 2004, and not a great deal then).  But I recognise
that others disagree, so I think the disambiguation is a good and
satisfactory compromise.

Note though that I think having the country first is more useful, not
less biased.

> On 4/11/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 4/11/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Yes, this IS english-speaker-centric, but the very fact of writing an
> > > encylopedia in English is already deciding to do that.
> >
> > Thank you.  This is a beautiful way of expressing something I've been
> > thinking about for some while.
>
> Can you elaborate? Perhaps we should decide if we really want this
> bias, or not? [[WP:CSB]] thinks we don't.

I don't think the naming of an article can itself make said
article/Wikipedia as a whole biased.  It's the content and the
*existance* (or non-existance) of the articles that causes the bias. 
That to me is what CSB is about.  In the English encyclopaedia, we
should look to what most English speakers will expect, because they
are our primary audience and, in a very real sense, our customers.

> Question: To use Jimbo's well-worn poor African once again, what does
> he expect? Georgia the country, or Georgia the state? Does he care
> that most Wikipedians are American, British, Canadian, etc? Should he
> just grateful for whatever information he can get, regardless of whose
> biases, interests and prejudices it reflects? Should he not be
> concerned if, when he looks up Zaire, he comes up with a suburb in
> Arizona?

I'm not quite sure what you mean by that last statement, given that
Zaire is about the African country...  Anyway, yes, we should take
into account our poor African.  We also take into account Australians,
Indians, Texans and penguins by using disambiguation notices at the
top of articles.

--
Sam