[Foundation-l] problem page on the ar: wikipedia

[David Monniaux]

The Foundation has received a complaint about the page on homosexuality 
on the Wikipedia in Arabic. According to the person who complained, as 
well as to people who ran the article through translators, the article 
contains heavily jugmental assertions.

This is not the first time that we received complaints about such kind 
of judgmental content based on cultural or religious norms ; I think we 
also got similar complaints about the Yiddish Wikipedia.

In these cases, there are common traits :
* The bias expressed arises from the dominant culture of the people who 
speak the language and thus get on the wiki. (Arabic tends to be spoken 
in Muslim countries ; Yiddish tends to be spoken in Orthodox Askhenazi 
Jew communities ; both of these religions condemn homosexuality.)
* The wiki communities are small.
* Very few people, or even none, at the Foundation or on OTRS (the email 
processing system) read the said languages.

We also seem to have similar issues with e.g. regional languages or 
languages from small countries with strong nationalism issue.

Your suggestions? It's hard to fix an article whose language we don't speak.

-- DM


The URL is:
 http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%85%D8%AB%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A9
 
 The article, or parts of the article clearly mentions that homosexuality
 causes AIDS, and causes many more medical problems.
 It also mentions that psychologists in the "Western World" found a cure
 homosexuality, which I take as hint to homosexuality being a disease.
 
 The article goes even further as to mention what Islam's view on
 homosexuality is and mentions that Homosexuals should be killed 
according to
 the Islam Prophet.
 The rest of the article is full of wrong definitions and incorrect
 information but on a more acceptable level.