Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-06-26/Serendipity

Latest comment: 1 year ago by InsaneHacker in topic Discuss this story

Discuss this story

  • A great one, thanks for writing.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:32, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
  • I'm afraid I can't help with any information about her, but thanks for linking to the category listing her photos by country—the ones she captured of 1930s Estonia are amazing! ― biggins (talk) 16:48, 28 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
  • I have to really disagree with the idea that different language editions should be tailored to the interests of speakers of that language. I often come across that idea with regard to other Wikipedias, but I think that one of the strengths of English Wikipedia is that it at least aspires to be (≠ succeeds at being) a truly global encyclopedia that provides encyclopedic information weighted in proportion to reliable sources (in all languages) without yielding to the cultural, geographic, or linguistic biases of any particular audience. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 21:59, 3 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
    • I concur with Sdlb's eloquent defense of wikipedia in English aspiring to be a global source of knowledge and not just tailored to native English speakers; and so should other language articles be. otherwise, good Signpost article and thank you for the photographic archival research. Al83tito (talk) 18:49, 5 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
    • @Skdb: While I agree with you that the English Wikipedia, given that it is less tied to a particular country, might be less country or language-centric, there are certain areas where a bias is still shown. For example, most articles on newer artistic works from the anglosphere will generally only refer to English-language reviews in their "Reception"-section despite, e.g., video games and movies being released internationally and being reviewed there as well. Pragmatically, I can see that there's an issue with requiring adequate coverage of all international reviews, but it's a noticable example.
Another example is en-wp's coverage of law. Many articles on legal concepts which exist in both common law and civil law systems will be slanted toward their definition within the common law, with most sources being U.S. or U.K. cases or legal scholarship. Ideally, an overview article would take a comparative law perspective, with specific sections or even separate articles for how a concept is used within a particular system.
These are of course just examples, and I'm sure that other areas such as the natural sciences suffer much less from this problem, but they've definitely jumped out at me when reading and editing en-wp. InsaneHacker (💬) 17:32, 25 July 2022 (UTC)Reply