[Wikipedia-l] Looking to interview Wikipedians

[Robert Brockway]

On Tue, 20 Mar 2007, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> US Wikipedians will probably all be working on the English language
> Wikipedia. It means that all the skills and experience associated with
> small communities, working on an encyclopaedia that does not cover all
> subject matter. Working on languages where the community it is done for
> does not know what Wikipedia is, it is that experience that will be
> missing. In that way it will hardly cover the breadth of Wikipedia.

He doesn't claim to be attempting to cover the breadth of Wikipedia. 
Implicit in the post is that it concerns Wikipedia usage in the United 
States.

I find it is common for people to mistake limits placed on a study with a 
bias in the study.  Let me give another example that might make this 
clearer.  If a study concerns left handed people (one of the most commonly 
studied groups) then failing to include non-left handed people is not a 
bias in the study, it is a function of the limits of a study.  Similarly 
if a study wanted only left handed US residents then the study would be 
about left handed US residents.  This does not imply any bias in the 
study.  Any study worthy of the name will go in to great detail when it 
comes to methodology of subject selection and any subsequent testing that 
is done.

It will be great when smaller WP communities are studied too but this 
study clearly isn't doing that.

Cheers,

Rob

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Robert Brockway B.Sc.        Phone:          +1-905-821-2327
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