[WikiEN-l] How does this prove voting is evil?

Tue Apr 11 18:00:59 UTC 2006

On 4/11/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/11/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> > Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, the existence of
> > Georgia, the SSR was almost unknown.
>
> Oh what nonsense.  Stalin himself was a Georgian and this was common
> knowledge in the Soviet era.

Common knowledge to whom? You are making assumptions, that everyone
knows what you knew. As an American, I know somewhere in the back of
my head that Georgia is a country, but mostly to me it is a state that
grows peaches and established as a colony for debtors.

Please do NOT go all ignorant American on me. It's a matter of
perspective. It does not make me "ignorant." The name "Salem" to me
denotes "Salem, Massachusetts," not the capital of Oregon, which could
be argued to be more prominent (also prominent: it being a common
town/city name meaning "city on a hill", a common place name in the
Middle East (which I, as an American, must know nothing about)). This
isn't because of the media or movies and "witchcraft." It is because I
live very close to Salem, and have never heard "Salem" used to refer
to Oregon. This doesn't mean I am ignorant to its existence, it's just
not what comes to mind.

Similarly, Georgia the state is much closer to me than the country,
and as such, it is more important to my own life. I can't speak for
the American media because I don't watch the news, but Georgia
(country) has not been mentioned in my life. Does that make all of the
US ignorant plebes? No, we just are concerned with different things.
Is it wrong to assume that many people on English Wikipedia could
possibly be from the US? No, approximately 298,000,000 people live in
the US, 97% of whom speak English very well, and "74.9% of Americans
living in households with a fixed line phone have home access to the
Internet. This amounts to 204.307 million Americans out of the
projected 272.81 million who are at least two years old."

It's very possible that these 204.307 million people access Wikipedia.
Especially since the schools I've attended reccommend it. So the
"common" name could very well be the American idea of it. Shrug.