[WikiEN-l] Why voting is evil

Tue Apr 11 18:52:02 UTC 2006

On 4/11/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> Current political status is really somewhat of an irrelevant topic.
> What about 20 years ago, when Georgia was simply part of the USSR?
> Georgia wasn't "a country" then, but it was largely the same place.
>
> Here's the objective metrics:
>
> Total GDP, Per-Capita GDP, Population, Foreign Trade, Land Area, No.
> of Wiki-Links: The US State
> Sovereignty, membership in int. organizations: The Nation
>
> Now, this Wikipedia is written in English. (Arguments about African
> customers are irrelevant, as organizational style will change in a
> translation to an African language). There are 8 million people in
> Georgia (the state), almost all of whom speak English. There are 300
> million people in the United States, likewise. Georgia (the country)
> is not an English-speaking country.
>
> There are 380 million people who speak English as a first language.
> Some 79% of English-speakers are thus Americans. Now, assuming that
> British, Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders, et. al. are all more
> interested in the country than the state, they only make up some 21%
> of the English-speaking population. You're asking to inconvenience
> 4/5 of the potential user base for en. out of the belief that
> sovereignty and membership in international organizations not only
> outweigh all other considerations, but overwhelm it so much that the
> default page should not be a disambiguation page.
>
> That's anti-Americanism.

And why, exactly, do only first-language English speakers "count"?
What about the 1 billion+ second/third/etc. English language speakers?
I remember reading somewhere that there are more English speakers in
China than in the US.... and 300m over 1.3b is a lot less that 4/5ths.

[WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

[WikiEN-l] Why voting is evil