[WikiEN-l] Re: minor issue, but still a npov warning

Sat Jan 15 20:40:44 UTC 2005

Stan Shebs a écrit:

> And you corrected them on this, right? This is absolutely nothing
> to do with NPOV, 

Then we just do not have the same perception of what is neutral, this is 
all. For me, naming things (like a polish city) may have to do with 
neutrality of report.

> and it's unfair to hardworking editors to say
> that they're biased and not doing anything about it. 

This is an unfair comment, as I mentionned that the articles were great.
What I report rather tends to fit in systemic bias of Wikipedia.

There is a bias of the en wikipedia to have anglo success appears bigger 
than they may appear to african people for example, just as there is 
definitly a bias on the french wikipedia which makes France appear more 
important that other french speaking countries.

We are all biaised, and little can be done about this.

What you
> report fits exactly into the worst stereotypes of the French;
> sneering at other people's work, but not taking any responsibility
> for having let this perceived problem go unmentioned for years.

Hu ? Well, I let you responsability for saying this.

In any cases, since it seems it is bad to let it unmentionned for years, 
I will take responsability for having this problem be mentionned.

> You said these scientists "know Wikipedia"; did you ask them why
> they didn't do anything about it themselves?

Some already ponctually corrected a couple of things.
But generally, they do not believe in Wikipedia neutrality though they 
see the efforts to try to be neutral.
You may not expect french people who really write a bad english to go 
correct all what is biaised in the english wikipedia.

This is a good question : why did not they fix it ?

It took me three months to dare edit the english wikipedia after I met 
it. I feared criticism of my english like hell; And still fear it very 
much, as there are regularly unpleasant comments made about it.
Recently, I had to block 2 times an editor who was being extremely rude 
with non english people on meta. A place where international people ARE 
welcome. When editors rudely handle non english in a place such as meta, 
you might guess how nice these editors can be on the english wikipedia 
itself.

Amongst french people, I am generally considered quite good in english. 
Still, editing in good english is difficult for me and takes a lot of 
time. Arguments which start on talk page and last dozens and dozens of 
screens put me off. It takes too much time to read it all and try to 
understand it all.

Many french scientists read english, because nearly all science is in 
english, so of course, it is their main source of information. But most 
french scientists do not manage english well enough to become editors.

It needs courage you may not realise. It needs efforts, and it needs to 
overcome the comment of some people who do not think we belong there.

So, they look at the article, they may correct a typo, but do not go any 
further.

> I also note for instance that (as of several hours ago) the
> French wikipedia had a single article with Huygens as the second
> half. Are we supposed to take that to mean the Europeans are
> biased against themselves?

No, mostly there were no french editors motivated to edit this page. At 
least, these pages are poorly referenced by google.

Now, what upset me deeply in this comment you made, is that when I 
comment on a point of the english wikipedia, you THROW ME IN THE FACE 
how bad the french people are themselves and how bad the french article is.

Has it cross your mind that I really care about the english wikipedia 
because it is the best one, and yesterday it was a major source for 
ANYONE looking on the net for that topic, because it was one of the four 
sources coming up ?

Has it cross your mind that I could care about a part of the whole 
project which I am supposed to represent right now, and would not wish 
to be just lowered only to my nationality and language project ?

> There are enough real problems making WP unbiased and neutral;
> by taking a trivial point of organization never before discussed
> anywhere,

It is not because something has never been discussed before that it does 
not exist.

and holding it up as something that matters, you're
> undercutting all the editors who put in real research and real
> discussion time on the issues that are genuinely important. Why
> should I bother spending two hours in the library to research
> a substantive question, when you're telling the world that WP
> is biased because some frontpage article doesn't cater enough to
> nationalistic pride?

This is a good question. I do not think I told the whole world, this is 
just our personal ml.
I do not think that I ever said such a thing in any of the public 
presentation of Wikipedia I made in the past 6 months.

But yes, why would I even neglect my whole family and personal job as 
well as personal health by lack of sleep to try to take care of a 
project, and try to make it the best possible and the least biased 
possible, when you are telling me that my opinion has no importance 
whatsoever, is fantasm and only nationalistic pride ?

> The whole attitude really troubles me. I've put in a lot of WP
> time over the past two years, and now it feels like it doesn't
> matter.
> 
> Sta
> n

You own attitude really troubles me as well.
I have probably put as much work on wikipedia as you did for now three 
years, and it now feels like it does not matter either.

I understand you guys can be upset because I report a little bias to 
you, which is likely to appear shocking to some of the world population.
However, I did not criticized the job done, on the contrary I mentionned 
it was a very good article, I only pointed out to a problem.

I can understand that some of you just do not see where the problem is 
and think I am just nut. That is okay, you can consider I am nut and 
that there is no bias here. I can accept that.

This is exactly where the problems stand when we come to lack of 
neutrality. One editor considers one point of view and another will not 
necessarily see the same point of view at all. And this is exactly why 
we have edit wars, because the second will just not recognise the 
validity of the first one view and will just refuse that the other one 
could have a piece of truth in his hands.

That is fine.

What is not fine is to resort to personal comments on those having a 
perception that you do not share, and try to lower the possible validity 
of what they say by resorting of calling her "French".

I feel quite upset by your comment. If you wish to close your eyes to 
internal comments, or to attack those of us who try to point out to what 
is not perfect, do not be suprised when there is criticism from public 
audience.

I apologize to those who participated to the article if they feel I 
criticized their work. I did not.