[WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Wikimedia Announcements] Public Policy Initiative

[Charles Matthews]

Steve Bennett wrote:
> On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 8:46 AM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
>   
>> lobbying groups. A look through the articles in this category (if
>> accurately placed there) may help UK readers of this mailing list to
>> see what "public policy" means:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_policy_in_the_United_Kingdom
>>
>> I haven't a clue what it is called in other countries.
>>     
>
> The term seems familiar to me (Australia). It's actually
> self-explanatory, no? Policy that affects the public...
>
>
>   
>> My view? This seems rather a US-centric project.
>>     
>
> Yeah. I for one find it very frustrating that you can read the entire
> announcement talking about a certain number of "schools" etc and they
> don't even mention what country it's taking place in, or whether it's
> international. Fair enough that the money is spent only in US
> universities. But they could say so explicitly. Ho hum.
>
>   
My first reaction, too, was that US-slanted systemic bias would be a 
problem with the project as framed. I then looked around a bit, and 
found that public policy as a masters-level course is certainly taught 
in the UK, that "European public policy" is something recognised, and 
comparative public policy is also an area with an academic basis. So all 
is not hopeless: we've all heard the arguments "In Sweden they ...", and 
it is not hard to see that there is a WP-style job there in documenting 
such international comparisons.

I would read this initiative, perhaps too narrowly, as a reaction to the 
US healthcare debate, and the fact that enWP articles on those public 
policy issues have been closely scrutinised. See for example 
http://www.universalhealthcare101.com/ . Basically NPOV and V applied to 
contentious debates are what you'd want; and WP's "bland survey" model 
is so different from others (talking heads, op-ed pieces) as to look 
like a potentially serious contribution.

Charles