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Talk:Examples of Bias in Wikipedia (view source)
Revision as of 14:48, March 12, 2007
, 14:48, March 12, 2007→Item 12
::: Out of curiosity, how is American English "more economical"? Also, have all the presidents really been British decendents? Are you sure no one's been of a German, French, etc line? And thirdly, I keep seeing people talk about how most wikipedia users are American, do you have proof of this or is it an assumption. I would imagine there are more users/speakers of the Queen's English in the world than the American version. [[User:Jrssr5|Jrssr5]] 10:29, 12 March 2007 (EDT)
::: Out of curiosity, how is American English "more economical"? Also, have all the presidents really been British decendents? Are you sure no one's been of a German, French, etc line? And thirdly, I keep seeing people talk about how most wikipedia users are American, do you have proof of this or is it an assumption. I would imagine there are more users/speakers of the Queen's English in the world than the American version. [[User:Jrssr5|Jrssr5]] 10:29, 12 March 2007 (EDT)
::::...who says most users are Americans? The site is frequented by users from the entire world. If you trust [http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=wikipedia.org/ Alexa], 21.3% of its users are from the US, but 54% of all users go to en.wikipedia. That means that less than half the people on the English Wikipedia are from the US.
::::Of course, there are a few weak points with this argument (and with yours). We both currently assume that every visitor/editor contributes an equal share to Wikipedia, and we both assume that Alexa is halfway accurate to measure site statistics (which I personally doubt, but I accept it as the best approximation we can get). Then there is the question what kind of English is taught in the other countries (and what the individual editor ends up using - for example, I learned English in school, but later basically switched to American), but there is no practical way to answer this question on a site like Wikipedia - it's simply too large.
::::As such, I'd just go with the most intuitive explanation: Editors use what they are used to, and often enough, it's not American. It's not about being anti-American or bashing the US. It's just what they personally find intuitive. --[[User:Sid 3050|Sid 3050]] 10:48, 12 March 2007 (EDT)
==Additional problems with Wikipedia==
==Additional problems with Wikipedia==