[Wikipedia-l] Look Who's Using Wikipedia ... gerardm

[Frederick Noronha]

Let's have a race war then :-) BTW, despite my name (or because of
it), I'm Indian/South Asian.

Now, to shift to a more serious subject. I think the good side of the
Wikipedia is that it is relatively more open to all compared to any
other form of knowledge production and agglomeration that we have
known till this point in history. Tell me if I'm wrong.

What however needs to be taken into account, following up on Walter
van Kalken, is that people in the global South/Third
World/"developing" countries simply aren't contributing as much. So
that diversity isn't getting reflected here. This happens because of
various reasons. Lack of access, stronger tradition in oral cultures
rather than written ones, lack of peer groups to encourage this,
difficulties in keying-in non-Romanised texts (specially Asian
languages) via computers.. whatever.

It would help if Wikipedia took on efforts to spur such contributions.
Once they start, I have no doubt that the trickle will turn into a
mighty river. Till that time, hold on to your faith.-- FN in
Goa/India.

On 07/03/07, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> The problem is with the current rules on en.wikipedia which are totally
> geared towards western style relevance and references ,and the bias
> amongst editors,  it is difficult to get the same debt for Africa, Asia
> and South America. Something has got to give. And the rules will never
> be changed because of the western pov of most of our editors. So we will
> have to accept that we will be weak in these areas forever. Or somehow
> with a miracle an exception clause has to be made for topics regarding
> this area.

-- 
FN M: 0091 9822122436 P: +91-832-240-9490 (after 1300IST please)
http://fn.goa-india.org  http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com
What bloggers are saying about Goa: http://planet.goa-india.org/