[WikiEN-l] Why voting is evil

Mon Apr 10 18:49:43 UTC 2006

On 4/10/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ohh, come on, there's a huge difference between Georgia the Country
> and Georgia the State. Georgia is a WHOLE country. Like, bigass, we
> got troups, "why don't we take this outside, former Soviet
> country-style", international trade, country.
>
> Disambigging those two would be like disambigging "Paris" to separate
> "Paris, Texas" and "Paris, France". This is the worst kind of
> US-centrism.

(English) Wikipedia does not decide such things by a taxonomic
classification of importance.

It decides it by the purely practical matter of seeing if one usage so
outweighs other usages that it deserves the primary topic.  Among
users of the English language, the US State is referred to at least as
often as the nation.

Probably, in fact, more so, but that's not important.  What matters
from the point of view of primary topic disambiguation is whether one
use of a word OVERWHELMS other uses.  In the case of 'Georgia', this
test is failed both ways.  Neither the state nor the nation so
overwhelms the word that either should have the primary topic.

A quick look at the Wikipedia articles tells us that Georgia the state
has a significantly greater population than Georgia the nation,
besides ... which just shows the futility of basing this on
'importance', because in many cases it will be impossible to reach
agreement.

-Matt

[WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

[WikiEN-l] Why voting is evil