[WikiEN-l] Why voting is evil

Tue Apr 11 14:36:45 UTC 2006

On 4/10/06, Conrad Dunkerson <conrad.dunkerson at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> * Mark Gallagher wrote:
>
> > Just ask yourself: if Georgia (US state) was not, in fact, a US state,
> > but an Australian state, or a British county, or ... whatever ... would
> > we have had all those arguments?  I suspect it would indeed have been
> > "obvious beyond words" if the grand ol' US of A wasn't involved.
>
> Depends. In the hypothetical are we assuming that 'Georgia Australia'
> would still have twice as many wiki-links to it as the country does?
> Double the population?

The issue of wiki-links is a bit problematic - a US state will have more
Wiki-links than an Australian state of equal prominence (population, global
impact, newsworthiness - assuming there was such a way to compare such a
thing) because there are more US-centric editors.  It's the whole systemic
bias thing - not only are American editors more likely to be aware of the
American state, so would Canadian editors, probably West Indian, maybe
European - because of the importance of US-based news organisations.  If we
want a truly balanced encyclopaedia, we need to take these things into
account

[WikiEN-l] Why voting *is* evil

[WikiEN-l] Why voting is evil