First Susan_Mason writes slanerous lies about me, then Stevetigo does the same, and now Chris Mahaon joins the RK-bashing.
Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com writes :
A slanderous innuendo? Where? I missed it? Dang...
I posted the quote in my letter, where Stevertigo explicitly accused me of promoting segregation against Chinese languages. (This is a really sick thing for someone to claim, by the way.) I am sorry that you found his wording too confusing to understand. Allow me to explain:
Susan Mason is accusing me of being racist against Chinese people, while Stevertigo slightly rephrases this, and accuses me of "Segregation" Chinese letters, thereby implying that I am bigoted against Chinese people and/or culture. Do you get it now?
Chris Mahan then writes:
The fact that he signs his posts with a hard-to-duplicate sig, one hat most likely happens to be the exact' legal ntition of his birth name, lead me to believe that in fact is his intent that his post not be confused for any one else's. Whodathunk?
That's really stupid, man. You already have been told that this system literally DOES NOT WORK on many computers. Others on this list have already told you that ENGLISH SPEAKERS do not differentiate well between multiple Kanji signatures, and that Stevertigo is attempting to get multple people to start using Kanji. And we are working specifically on an encyclopedia for English speakers, remember? What do you find so confusing about this?
Kanji being the primary element of the written language of the second largest world economy, of a technologically advanced and pionering nation where the internet is concerned, and the official writ of 140 million people, I dare say that blaming people for using it is narror-sighted at best.
Thar's insane. By that argument, we should write the entire English Wikipedia in Chinese! Do you really not understand that this is the ENGLISH Wikipedia, and that people are also working on other Wikipedias in other langauges? What about this concept do you find to hard to understand?
Also, I am disturbed by the way that subtly imply that Susan Mason and Stevertigo are correct; you imply that I a really am a bigot, simply because I want to read an English-language encyclopedia in English leters. I take great offense at what you write here.
On a more serious note, Robert, how would you feel if the Internet had been createdn by the Soviets, and the ligua franca was Russian, and the script was cyrillic, would you not want to sign your own name the way your parents meant for you to rather than with less-than perfect cyrillic approximations?
I, and most of us here, are AGAINST English Wikipeida being made unreadable by introducing Chinese, Japansese, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, Farwi and a host of other characters that most English speakers would find confusing.
I am sorry to see that Chris Mahan, Stevertigo, and Susan Mason are working so hard to make Wikipedia unreadable. I am sorry to see hat some people lie about me beliefs, and think it is acceptable to make accusations of racism towards Wikipedia contributors for the "crime" of saying that this is the English Wikipedia.
In disgust at the way I am being treated,
RK
===== "I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous". The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815]
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RK pondered: Thar's insane. By that argument, we should write the entire English Wikipedia in Chinese! Also, I am disturbed ... I take great offense at what you write here.... I, and most of us here, are AGAINST English Wikipeida being made unreadable by introducing Chinese .... characters that most English speakers would find confusing.... I am sorry to see that Chris Mahan, Stevertigo, and Susan Mason are working so hard... am sorry to see that some people lie about me beliefs, think it is acceptable to make accusations of racism... I am being treated...
Well, I for one have never stooped to calling you "anti-Sinotic" Robert. Any prejudices you have against cultures other-than-your-own speak for themselves... In your long winded comment... you essentially base your argument under 1 central assumption and 3 accusations of "anti-Robertism", (with the added implication of making the list longer at your discretion.) The accusations are just smokescreen, so Im not going go into them... I can if you like...
Your central assumption - that using non-English characters on the en:wp violates "protocol"... ("master Luke!") which is nonsense : we use umlauts, and accented spanish characters. And those nordic circle things... yadda... You seem to think that 1. using a Chinese sig in the Talk pages interferes with people understanding the Encyclopedia... and 2 that most other people cant see them - with UNICODE to read them... It wouldnt make sense for anyone to bother, if there wasnt such a thing as UNICODE gaining in prominence for its utility... Besides.. I compromised in accordance with Chris idea - bilingual sig... so... rant all you want...- DimSum:sv
Ps. Victoria - I dont know whats going on... Im sending these plain text only... ah, its the Unicode... needs html... ok...
Stevertigo wrote:
Your central assumption - that using non-English characters on the en:wp violates "protocol"... ("master Luke!")
he's right. English wikipedia, english language. BTW, I would be very grateful if a german-speaker on this list could translate this for me:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer%3ATarquin
which is nonsense : we use umlauts, and accented spanish characters.
but they are fundamentally latin letters. we know how to read them.
You seem to think that 1. using a Chinese sig in the Talk pages interferes with people understanding the Encyclopedia...
nope, but it interferes with us known who is saying what.
and 2 that most other people cant see them - with UNICODE to read them...
I can see them on my Mac (OS X) but not Win 98 SE.
Tarq: he's right. English wikipedia, english language.
Y'all are making a fuss over a sig for the talk page? -SV
T: but they are fundamentally latin letters. we know how to read them.
Ah, do we? Mitwirkender vom englischen Wikipedia. Ich kenne gerade genügend Deutsches, um Verbindungen manchmal hier zu bilden.-SV
nope, but it interferes with us known who is saying what.
Not if I do as per the agreement for bilingualismo..Even more problematic to that is the bad habit by some (128.xxx.. ) and other regular anons of not signing their entries at all, or cutting in withing saying CUTTING IN:
I can see them on my Mac (OS X) but not Win 98 SE. We all shouldnt be
using microsoft anyway, but you must be missing the unicode update... Get an update. - SV
Stevertigo wrote:
Tarq: he's right. English wikipedia, english language.
Y'all are making a fuss over a sig for the talk page? -SV
Yup. :)
T: but they are fundamentally latin letters. we know how to read them.
Ah, do we? Mitwirkender vom englischen Wikipedia. Ich kenne gerade genügend Deutsches, um Verbindungen manchmal hier zu bilden.-SV
No, not "understand" -- "read". As in "recognize individual symbols". I don't know what "Mitwirkender" means, but if a user went by that name, I can *pronounce* it (or some approximation) and form a mental label for them. Chinese characters, fascinating though they are to look at, are just squiggles to me -- I lack the knowledge to obtain meaning from them. (please, nobody jump on the racism bandwagon. Arabic characters are squiggles to the Chinese, and so on) If only one person is "squiggles", we can cope. But that's Prince. So no more squiggles please. (I saw someone using geometric symbols as a sig too)
On Sun, Mar 09, 2003 at 04:14:58PM +0000, tarquin wrote:
BTW, I would be very grateful if a german-speaker on this list could translate this for me:
It's a translation of the text you left there in Nov '02 A little bit more than just a translation: He made full sentences :-)
Regards,
jens
Jens Frank wrote:
On Sun, Mar 09, 2003 at 04:14:58PM +0000, tarquin wrote:
BTW, I would be very grateful if a german-speaker on this list could translate this for me:
It's a translation of the text you left there in Nov '02 A little bit more than just a translation: He made full sentences :-)
not what I meant .... what I wanted was for someone to translate my text *into* German -- someone beat you to that page and had already translated into german by the time you got there! :-)
Stevertigo wrote at last:
Ps. Victoria - I dont know whats going on... Im sending these plain text only... ah, its the Unicode... needs html... ok...
Unicode doesn't need HTML, it works just fine in plain text. Indeed, the whole *point* of Unicode is to work just fine in plain text. If your emailer won't send Unicode in plain text, then the problem is on that end.
[The above is a general comment on Unicode in plain text, but the below is for SV and can be replied to offlist.]
BTW, you're actually sending out both plain text *and* HTML. But the plain text isn't in Unicode, and doesn't include the Kanji! So you might want to look at that; feel free to send me test emails if you think that it may help (since I'll look at what's really sent out and not just at how it appears on a given system set up in a given way).
-- Toby
RK wrote in part:
Christopher Mahan wrote:
A slanderous innuendo? Where? I missed it? Dang...
I posted the quote in my letter, where Stevertigo explicitly accused me of promoting segregation against Chinese languages. (This is a really sick thing for someone to claim, by the way.)
I think the problem may be that some people have a hard time understanding why segregation of languages is a sick claim. It seems obvious to me that you support segregation of scripts (not *languages* as such) -- Latin script only on [[en:]]. I don't see why this is sick either; in fact, you've given good reasons.
Words like "segregation", "discrimination", and "inequality" are not dirty. This is not to say that SV isn't trying rhetorical tricks with them. But it's hard for people to judge that here on the lists. For instance, did he say that it followed that you were bigotted? ("racist", Susan Mason's word, is indefensible, I agree.)
A general principle: People should try to not offend others, and also people should try to not be offended by others. Not every offensive statement was intended to be offensive, which both readers and writers of statements should keep in mind.
(My personal opinion is that everyone should sign comments on [[en:]] with a signature whose Latin-1 portion serves to identify them uniquely. This includes anonymous users, who can at least sign "138.23.202.213". Accordingly, I add attributions to comments in talk pages that I edit. OTOH, this isn't vital to enforce, except perhaps for administrators. Thus, Stevertigo's compromise signature is OK, even with its Kanji, since only he uses ":sv" as the Latin-1 portion of his signature.)
-- Toby