[Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for community engagement

Nathan nawrich at gmail.com
Tue Aug 6 18:03:34 UTC 2013


You argued that a North American bias, or differences between American
culture and that of Europe and elsewhere, might be part of the problem
in why the VE is getting a backlash on projects for European
languages.

I'll take on faith that anti-Americanism doesn't explain why you jump
to this conclusion when there are many that make more sense, but how
do you explain then the fact that the English Wikipedia (which,
presumably, has a similar North American bias) is having a very
similar reaction as the Dutch?

I just think this resort to "it must be cultural differences between
Americans and those of us from the Continent" is an intellectual cop
out, a way of blaming without finding actual root causes or
contributing to a constructive solution. Systemic biases do exist, and
culture clashes do occur, but we should not jump to them as an
explanation without exploring other factors.



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