User:Andjam/Musings

November 2006

 * Australia at the Winter Olympics is rated low-importance in Wikiproject Australia, whereas Australia at the Winter Paralympics is rated high-importance. There must be a systematic bias against able-bodied sport in wikipedia. Andjam 11:59, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Fixed by Cyberjunkie. Andjam 06:18, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

January 2007

 * Nick Carr complains that semiprotection spells the end of "the encyclopedia anyone can edit]. I read through the comments, and planned to note that, at worst, you have to register and wait four days. I reached the end of the post, and was told that I needed to sign in for typekey. Which I couldn't be bothered doing. Oh, the irony! Andjam 06:18, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

April 2007
The Hebrew wikipedia was one of the first to have a featured article for Adolf Hitler. If Hebrew-speaking wikipedians can write a NPOV article on him, then we should be able to write a NPOV article on just about anything or anyone. Andjam 03:23, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not appear until the third page in a yahoo search for "pet food recall", and does not appear in the first 20 pages in a google search, as of today. Strange ... Andjam 15:58, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I was half-tempted to write an article on this Jimbo in Wales, but I'm not sure if it's a notable goat, and don't know who to ask. We don't have a wikiproject for goats, or even a wikiproject for pets. Andjam 03:22, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

A look at some citizendium articles:


 * Australia - my criticisms made earlier on the Australian noticeboard still stand.
 * Charles Darwin is almost entirely from wikipedia, as can be seen in this edit history
 * Ray Bradbury - Edit summary mentions it is derived from wikipedia's article.
 * September 11, 2001 attacks - derived from wikipedia
 * No article on Osama bin Laden
 * Chess - derived from wikipedia
 * Citizendium - fairly self-promotional, stubbish. I agree with Sanger saying "This article really needs work."
 * Islam - a paragraph plus one sentence.
 * John Doherty (fiddler) - Larry Sanger added a link to his geocities web page on him.
 * The Satanic Verses (novel) - derived from wikipedia

Let's not get overconfident, though... Andjam 05:08, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

May 2008
Female circumcision: How wikipedia can go wrong

Female circumcision has articles in 18 European languages, but only in one language associated with female circumcision (Farsi), and two other languages: Japanese, and Hebrew.

Some other language wikis mention female circumcision. For example, the Arabic wikipedia and the Indonesian wikipedia have articles on circumcision that cover male and female circumcision together, and the Kurdish wikipedia mentions it in the article on Clitoris.

This could be explained by the fact that the Indonesian, Arabic, and Kurdish wikipedias are smaller than the European-language wikipedias.

In the Indonesian wikipedia (25th largest), there currently isn't an article on female circumcision. It has two very short paragraphs covering it. By contrast, other clitoris-related articles on wikipedia include comparitively trivial articles on sex (orgasm, foreplay, Deep Throat), anatomy (Realdo Colombo, who "discovered" it in the 16th century, urethra, human anatomy, list of -ectomies), and June 2007.

Can't wikipedia do better at delivering useful information in the right languages?

List of languages:


 * English (1st)
 * Deutsch (2nd)
 * Français (3rd)
 * Polski (4th)
 * Japanese (5th) - non-European language
 * Italiano (6th)
 * Nederlands (7th)
 * Português (8th)
 * Español 9th
 * Svenska (10th)
 * Русский (11th)
 * Norsk (bokmål) (13th)
 * Suomi (14th)
 * Catalan (16th)
 * Czech (21st)
 * Slovenščina (23rd)
 * Dansk (24th)
 * Hebrew (26th) - non-European language (female circumcision is/was done by Jews in Ethiopia, but presumably they don't speak Hebrew)
 * Hrvatski (34th)
 * Norsk (nynorsk) (38th)
 * Farsi (39th) - Spoken in Iran, where some female circumcision occurs