Please, have a look at http://www.wikipedia.org
There is a whole world aside from the english project. The japanese wikipedia has over 300 000 articles. We are working in over 200 languages. English is only part of it.
But let me explain why it is an issue.
In a very short time (hopefully, ahum), a new feature will be unable on the project. The Single Login.
The Single Login will make it so, that one person is registed on all projects and all languages, with only one account. Right now, the account system is such that one person has one account for each project and for each language as it is now.
So, right now, if an english user, called in real life William Sommerfield, has created an account [[user:William]] on the english wikipedia, he may be [[user:WilliamSommerfield]] on the english wikibooks, and [[user:WilliamS]] on the french wikinews.
And a bilingual japanese english editor may be under a japanese user name on the japanese wikipedia, and under an english user name on the english wikipedia (thus respecting your rule of avoiding non-latin caracters).
BUT, soon, this will not be possible any more. All users will have only ONE account.
So, if a japanese person has an account on the japanese wikipedia, with non latin caracters, he should not have to be forced to change his global name to unnatural caracters, just to be able to do a couple of edits under his user name on the english wikipedia.
Similarly, an english editor should be able to edit under his latin name on the japanese wikipedia.
Do you understand the problem now ?
Now, it is reported that english editors do not like seeing non latin caracters names, because it is difficult to distinguish and may be confused with bot gibberish.
As reported on the Foundation list, Wikigod™ Brion has already addressed this; it is no longer possible to create usernames which uses several scripts. So you cannot mix Latin and Cyrillic characters, or Latin and Greek, or even Greek and Cyrillic (or Arabic or Devanagari or …), so that is no longer an issue.
There is still the issue of "recognising" names, and a guideline for that matter might be helpful. But it is not okay to force people to change their user name just to fit one wikipedia rules. And it certainly is not okay to block people from non english cultures because they refuse to comply to change their name for a westernish one. The main result it would have would be to prevent most people from asian countries to participate to the english wikipedia. Is that suitable ? I'd say it is not.
So, rather than saying the complaint is ill-advise, I rather recommand that we work together trying to set up a compromise which will be acceptable by all parties. Saying "your name is not valid because I can not read your language, so you can't edit Wikipedia" is not what I would call a compromise.
Anthere
Andrey wrote:
I find this complaint ill-advised. This is an English-language project; English language uses Latin script; ergo, non-Latin usernames are not acceptable. Naturally, I want to know the usernames of people I speak to, but I would not know how to refer to an editor who spells his name in Japanese or Armenian, since I can't read either Japanese or Armenian. There is nothing ethnocentric about that. Best, Andrey
On 12/20/06, Luna lunasantin@gmail.com wrote:
Forwarding from foundation-l, after a brief discussion between myself and the original poster. See more at: http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-December/thread.html
"English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects other communities" -- specifically, our username policy, and the practice of blocking non-Latin usernames on sight.
Seems a number of multi-wiki users have felt pushed away or chagrined by this policy. Single-login seems like it might render the whole thing a moot point -- are we ready for the implications of that? Or does anything need to be done? Do we know how single-login will affect each wiki's ability to set and enforce a username policy, and if so, should changes to the policy result?
Myself, I'm not sure of the answers to any of these questions, just yet. But it seems like we may as well discuss it.
Apologies if I just happened to miss a prior thread -- if it's already happened, I don't remember seeing it.
-Luna
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com Date: Dec 20, 2006 12:07 AM Subject: [Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects other communities To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@wikimedia.org
Hello, today a user on Japanese Wikipedia whose account is in Kana (a Japanese script) came to our Admins' noticeboard to request for chaning his username. He said he would have liked to do so because he had changed his username on English Wikipedia.
I repeat again the English Wikipedia community should reconsider how shameful and discriptive policy they has about users' identity and respect of cultural diversity, and how badly it affects other communities. I am very sorry to see such a request fullfiled to our request page.
Cheers,
KIZU Naoko Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
- Nessuna poesia prima di noi *
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