[WikiEN-l] Are these userbox templates NPOV?

Prasad J prasad59 at gmail.com
Thu May 11 15:36:10 UTC 2006


I noticed that there exists a userbox template {{User America fan}}-
to indicate that the concerned user supports the U.S. However, there
is no such userbox template indicate that the concerned user supports
any of the other 180-odd countries that make up this Earth, eg. ther
is no {{User Australia fan}} or {{User Japan fan}}. To indicate that a
user supports any country other than the U.S, he/she has to create a
userbox-there is no ready-made template. Why is this (apparent)
favouritsm being shown toward the U.S. Aren't the other 188 countries
worthy of having supporters? Also there is another 9/11,memoriam
userbox template, however there is no Nazi Holocaust Memorial
template. While we all realise that most Wikipedians (especially the
powers-that-be) are Americans, this sort of bias is hurtful to us
non-American Wikipedians. I would have taken this user-template matter
up with someone on Wikipedia, but when I tried to enquire about a
possible course of action on IRC, a user asked me (on the basis that I
was questioning the {{User America fan}} template) whether I was an
Islamofascist. Needless to say this made me a bit apprehensive, so I'm
posing this question on the mailing list. Any comments/views would be
appreciated. Thanks.

PS-No offence intended to American Wikipedians.



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