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I suppose this is actually representing the most famous people in the -western world's lens- rather than the most famous people to each country respectively. Fo
by ehnto 4y ago
I suppose this is actually representing the most famous people in the -western world's lens- rather than the most famous people to each country respectively. For example, Haruki Murakami is a Japanese author, very famous in the west because their books have been translated into English. But would they be the most famous person from Kyoto to people in Japan?
That's something that's always fascinated me about the internet, it's essentially delineated by language and not country. If you google things in Spanish, you get the spanish web. If you google things in Japanese, you get the Japanese web. For a subtle example of this, there's very little crossover between Japanese memes and English memes, it's a whole different web. Japanese web design is also famously different to western web design, it's formed it's own set of UX expectations and principles.
- poulpy123 4y agoit's representing the most famous people in wikepedia and wikidata for 7 languages. The detail are here https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01369-4#Sec1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01369-4#Sec1
- 9dev 4y agoWhile it’s good to have the appropriate facts, that is only tangential to OPs point…
- horsawlarway 4y agoeh - I vaguely disagree. I think most of the people in the US are also off (or at least historically "dated"). Even without looking, I could pretty immediately tell that this was wikipedia data, since most of the names are "textbook famous". So really - we're both saying that the word "famous" was probably the wrong pick. Should have just said "Map of wikipedia's most known people from every city" and then the skew is clear.
- influxmoment 4y agoIt's very much western lense. It's what would a foreigner know in this part of Asia
- horsawlarway 4y agoYes, and for much of the US it's also "What would a foreigner know in this part of the US". Ex: Atlanta is "Martin Luther King Jr". It's a great pick if you're going for "internationally recognized". But it's not a great pick for "famous" (at least in my opinion). Just off the top of my head, more valid alternatives might have been: - Kanye West - Spike Lee - Jeff Foxworthy - Pat Conroy - Julia Roberts
- TigeriusKirk 4y agoKanye West does show up for Atlanta if you pick the culture filter. And Julia Roberts wasn't born in Atlanta; she shows up in the Atlanta suburb of Smyrna, where she was born. Besides that, though, MLK is certainly more famous than anyone you listed. Not even close.
- horsawlarway 4y agoAren't you agreeing with me here? You're saying that we should be defining famous as "known far and wide" - which is fine, but that makes "what would a foreigner recognize" a great fit for the pick. I'm rebutting the idea that this is limited to non-western countries - It's not. If you want a pick who people from a location would identify with more as a local... this data isn't that: every person on my list is in my news much more often than MLK jr.
- Cd00d 4y agoLet me know when I can celebrate the federal holiday Jeff Foxworthy day and go down to my locality's Kanye West Boulevard
- whimsicalism 4y agoI agree with what you are saying but you might have picked the single worst example for your point I could imagine. MLK less famous than Spike Lee? C'mon.
- duckmysick 4y agoOk, how about this: scrape Wikipedia in multiple languages, combine the notability data, and assign weights to appropriate locations. For example notability in Japanese Wikipedia would have more weight in locations where they speak Japanese. Yes, I realize location != language and it would get tricky in locations with multiple languages like Switzerland or countries with big diasporas. The dataset would still be biased as not all languages have Wikipedia. It would be a small step into the right direction.
- whimsicalism 4y agoWhat? It seems directly related to me.
- jericho_jones 4y agoMore likely a search or wiki index. Eg. Phil Collins isn't shown in favour of a cricketer from the early 20th century? Sometimes things are imperfect, not racist.
- ehnto 4y agoI didn't mean to imply it was racist, the western world contains many races.
- mmmpop 4y agoI don't see anything in your post dealing with race, so not sure what that poster is on about.
- Macha 4y agoYeah, similarly Dorothea Jordan, 17th century actress, is ranked above John O'Shea, premiership footballer, or Thomas Francis Meagher, originator of the Irish flag, leader of the 1848 young irelanders rebellion against British rule, and later US general in the american civil war. If you're going by contemporary sources, I'd expect O'Shea to be on top, if we're including historical sources, I'd expect Meagher to be on top, unless Dorothea has some significant fame elsewhere than her city of birth
- onpensionsterm 4y agoThe word 'racist' didn't appear until your post. It's a shame we can't discuss obvious language bias without you becoming defensive about imagined sleights.
- kleer001 4y ago> It's a shame we can't discuss obvious language bias without you becoming defensive about imagined sleights. Just wait a few years, I feel like this nearly-satanic-panic level of sensitivity will pass. Maybe a decade or so.
- 4y ago
- chmod775 4y agoThis is also what it felt like to me. I came back here to write pretty much this comment.
- newyankee 4y agoSalman Rushdie is the most popular person in Mumbai by this standard, a good bet for Indians would be Sachin Tendulkar born in Mumbai
- mynameishere 4y agoI had no idea who this was but I guessed cricketer. I guessed right. Seems like Westerners have better taste in Mumbai-ites than Indians do. I mean--noted author vs. guy who excels at weird ball 'n stick game.
- danielvaughn 4y agoAs soon as I saw Leonardo DaVinci and Picasso for Italy and France, I knew this was going to be the western lens, haha. Would be interesting to select the country as a point of reference.
- trompetenaccoun 4y agoFrance and Italy are "Western" countries.
- InitialLastName 4y agoDo you think people from Asia would have a different perspective on who the most famous Italian and/or French people are?
- danielvaughn 4y agoI've never been to Asia, but if I had to make a bet on it, I'd say yes, they probably do have a different perspective on it.
- InitialLastName 4y agoWhich Italians do you think are likely to be more famous in Asia than Leonardo DaVinci?
- danielvaughn 4y agoI have no idea, I'm simply stating that in the absence of certainty, it's presumptuous to assume that people across the world have the same perspective that I would.
- tremendo 4y agoPicasso was from Spain, so is it then the most famous from? or in? a Country
- 4y ago
- TremendousJudge 4y agoOn the language internet point, it's pretty amazing, yeah. For example, all the English youtube niches have Spanish language equivalents, and watchers of one are totally unaware that they are sitting right next to watchers of another. Like some sort of shadowverse.
- mgdlbp 4y agoA pity that so much language-agnostic material we'll never see because search engines and algorithms are so effective at this segregation. Translation is good enough for browsing in completely unknown languages for internet exploration fun, but only one at a time -- still waiting for a practical multilingual search engine.
- eurasiantiger 4y agoThis site is promoting a rather selective set of ”famous scientists”. For example, in countries bordering Russia, science nobel laureates are missing, but racist pseudoscientists and UFO theorists are listed.
- hk__2 4y ago> For example, in countries bordering Russia, science nobel laureates are missing, but racist pseudoscientists and UFO theorists are listed. Maybe those pseudoscientists and UFO theorists are more "well known" than the Nobel laureates? Also, these are not opposites: there are various examples of Nobel laureates that later became pseudoscientists (see Luc Montagnier [1]). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier#Controversies
- trompetenaccoun 4y ago"Pseudoscientist" in those cases just means they came to disagree with the current dogma. See also people like Kary Mullis or John Ioannidis. You can't have done real science at one point and then retroactively be declared a non-scientist by people who in many cases couldn't solve a simple equation, let alone conduct the research those people did. Mullis' case is especially ironic, I've heard him called a "conspiracy theorist" by people who use his invention on a daily basis.
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- d883kd8 4y agoDo you not know the gender of Haruki Murakami, or are you just misgendering a man?
- ehnto 4y agoI didn't specify a gender at all, not out of some intentionality, that was just the most natural way for me to write that sentence. So I'm not sure what you're talking about frankly.
- Cd00d 4y agoThere's a lot of discussion here of the 'western lens' as you bring up, but I'm not sure that's fair criticism. The creator(s) aggregated data and built something very interesting. To complain that the data they used isn't universal doesn't seem fair. I think Wikipedia is a reasonable starting place, but yes, Wikipedia skews geographically. All datasets have bias. It's okay to acknowledge that and still find insights in the data. Honestly curious: what highly accessible dataset that allows for the simple creations of 'fame metrics' would be better? I'm not aware of any.
- ehnto 4y agoIt wasn't a criticism, of course something like this is limited by the data available and that's no the fault of the author. I was just musing on what might be a side effect of using what's available. There wouldn't be a 'total complete and true set' of data for this task, since not all countries use wiki's to the same extent, and languages don't actually delineate between country (eg: Spanish wikipedia is not exclusively the view of people from Spain, nor is English wikipedia exclusively the views of people from England).
- Cd00d 4y agoSorry, I wasn't complaining about your post specifically, just a general tenor that kind of shits on this work because of an unsolvable problem: as you say there's actually no comprehensive dataset that would make it possible. Your original comment was valid and insightful. I replied to it because it triggered a lot of secondary criticism about sample bias, and those are the comments I was most trying to respond to.
- ehnto 4y agoAh I see, thanks for the clarification. It's a fair defense, this is still definitely an awesome project!