[Wikimedia-l] Global East

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Every Wikipedia has its own point of view. They are all not neutral if only
by omission. Do consider the amount of effort that has gone in the creation
of articles relating to the United States of America,. Compare this with
the coverage of the Ottoman Empire, given that the English Wikipedia is
used all over the world, its coverage should be of a higher standard. The
Ottoman Empire represents one of the more relevant civilisations, now
consider all the countries who are considered to be less relevant...
Thanks,
      GerardM


On 14 October 2013 14:57, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:

> A nationalist point of view is not neutral point of view. I can imagine
> what the dictator of Kazakstan considers a suitable article.
>
> Fred
>
> > Yesterday Yuri, ED of WMUA (and my college in FDC) was interviewed in
> > the main morning program on Swedish Radio re the ua.wp contra ru:wp in
> > Ukraine and of Kazak WIkipedia
> >
> > The 8 minutes report is half in Swedish and half in English so a bit
> > hard to listen to [1]
> >
> > The most interesting parts are
> > *The Kazak dictator is making all academics in this country to update
> > the Kazan version of Wikipedia, perhaps to get it POV but mostly so they
> > will not be dependent of ru:wp, ie he sees it as a must to have a decent
> > Wikipedia version in order to be independent of the culture from Russia
> > *In Ukraine the former education minister (pro eu and pro Ukrainian
> > language) actively promoted the ua:wp so not be dependent on ru:wp. The
> > current minister have the opposite idea and has made Russian  an
> > official second language in the eastern part of Ukraine
> > *It seems the university students make it as almost a political choice
> > if to use ua:wp or ru:wp, and then in western Ukraine choose ua:wp
> >
> > The central role of Wikipedia in theses vital political issues I have
> > not heard of from our ordinary "western" chapters/language versions (or
> > is catalonian/Amical an example)
> >
> > And reflecting on this, I also think, even if independent,  of the
> > dramatic increase of use of arabic and indonesian wikipedia [2] . Also
> > of Vietnamese wikipedia which has a tremendous increase in number of
> > article  by intellegent use of bots. Also of the very interesting
> > development in India, with their many different language versions.
> >
> > We here very little (nothing?) from these interesting developments,
> > where we all probably can have a lot to learn
> >
> > Asaf talks of the problem of getting Global South started as there are
> > very weak/missing wp communities. But are we as a movement doing enough
> > to support the active communities and developments in the Global East?
> > (I can not help also think of Sues words re elections within the
> > movement. Do these processes conserve our existing dominance in Board
> > and groups of representatives coming from western world?)
> >
> > Anders
> >
> >
> > [1]
> >
> http://sverigesradio.se/api/radio/radio.aspx?type=db&id=4725418&codingformat=.m4a&metafile=asx
> > [2] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthlyCombined.htmtic
> > increase of use of arabic wikipedia
> >
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