[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Day 4 Fund Drive Report (updated)

[Delirium]

Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> We are creating a resource in English, French and name all the other 
> languages. These resources are culturally biased. When people want to 
> create their own wikipedia, a wikipedia in their own language, we 
> should support that. If there is one thing, we have time and money to 
> work on our projects. We can make them as NPOV as our community allows 
> us to be.
>
> When a new project is started, it has to get momentum but when you 
> watch the subjects that THEY choose to write about, you know that it 
> is significantly different from what the emphasis is on the en fr nl 
> projects. African wikipedia do not start writing about America, France 
> the Netherlands. They write about their country, their language, their 
> government, their issues. Even with all the good intentions that we 
> have, we cannot write a proper encyclopedia that is relevant in 
> another culture. What we can do is enable people to write an 
> encyclopedia in their own language.

I would argue those would be *much more* biased than the en: Wikipedia, 
and therefore worse resources.  It's true that the en Wikipedia has 
cultural bias, but it's rapidly being averaged out due to the wide 
diversity of contributors.  The articles on Hong Kong, for example, are 
largely written by people from Hong Kong.  A Wikipedia in a language 
spoken only in Africa will not have this benefit, as few people in Hong 
Kong speak any African languages.

Even as a Greek person, would I go to the Greek Wikipedia for neutral 
information on the Greek-Turkey conflict?  Probably not.

-Mark