Steve Bennett wrote:
On 6/8/06, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org>
wrote:
population. For example, which do you think is
more likely to cover the
Bosnian war neutrally: the English-language Wikipedia, or the
Serbian-language Wikipedia? The English Wikipedia has Serbs, Bosniaks,
Croats, and many neutral people; the Serb Wikipedia does not benefit
from nearly the same diverse population.
There are probably comparable blind spots in the en Wikipedia, where
English speakers are insufficiently critical of themselves, or
insufficiently informed on topics that don't interest them.
There are blind spots to be sure, but I certainly don't think they're
"comparable", simply by virtue of the fact that English speakers don't
comprise only members of one ethnicity or nationality. If it were an
encyclopedia edited solely by Americans you might have a point, but it
isn't. We have, in addition to people from all the English-speaking
countries in the world, substantial numbers of speakers of English as a
second language who contribute regularly.
Which isn't to say it's perfect, but as far as the potential to be a
global, neutral, thorough encyclopedia, I think en.wikipedia is the
structurally best placed by far, simply because so many people from such
diverse cultures speak English.
I think that's basically a historical accident, but I'll take it. For
my part as an American, I'm quite glad that the U.S. doesn't speak its
own separate language and have its own separate Wikipedia, because it
would almost certainly be worse.
-Mark