[WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

[Fastfission]

On 4/11/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>
> Now, this Wikipedia is written in English. (Arguments about African
> customers are irrelevant, as organizational style will change in a
> translation to an African language). There are 8 million people in
> Georgia (the state), almost all of whom speak English. There are 300
> million people in the United States, likewise. Georgia (the country)
> is not an English-speaking country.
>

And not to get on Georgia (the country's) bad side, but the state of Georgia
actually has almost twice as many people living in it as the country does.

Which means that if someone says "My grandmother was born in Georgia", in
English, and without any other context, you probably are correct in assuming
they mean the U.S. state and not the country, just based on the numbers
alone.

If one does a Google search for "Georgia", it is not until one finds the CIA
World Factbook page, the seventh down on the page, that one sees anything
about the country. It is not until the fourth page of results that one finds
another page relating to the country -- the Wikipedia article on it. I know
Google is not the most reliable indicator for these sorts of things, but it
seems pretty clear what the English term most often refers to on these here
internets.

FF