Wikipedia:Americocentrism

Americocentrism in an article means that it is affected by American perspectives, common sense, mentality, ideology, logic, prejudices, knowledge and ignorance, tolerance and intolerance. Similarly other "centrisms" occur. Since the English Wikipedia is international and not just American (not even only for anglo-saxon countries, but for all people who understand English) these "centrisms" are considered undesirable and contributors are encouraged to try to avoid them.

A simple example is an article explaining a law without mentioning in which country the law applies. If it is a US law and one forgets to mention this, this is Americocentrism. On the English Wikipedia this is more likely to happen than if a law of, say, France is discussed.

Americocentrism is the dominating kind of "centrism" in Wikipedia. This is caused by the fact that Americans are quite numerous here, and the project itself was created and defined from an American perspective. Even the so-called neutral point of view is not free of Americocentrism. Therefore avoiding Americocentrism needs special attention.

Of course any article can be "unbalanced" due to the fact that contributors have more knowledge of, or are more interested in, particular aspects of a subject than in other aspects. This is not "wrong", but making such an article more balanced is encouraged. For example, suppose there is an article about highways that is mostly about the US. A German who encounters this should not complain about Americocentrism, but add info on German highways.

See Also

• Wikipedia:Pages needing attention
• Wikipedia:NPOV dispute
• Wikipedia:List of controversial issues
• Metrication

Articles tainted by Americocentrism

• Conservation :-)
• Popular music and related articles, Fails to give a broad-view of popular music in Asia, Africa etc. (Yes there is pop, rock, jazz, rap (even electronic) music there, not only traditional music, be surprised)