>Mark, this
a perfect example of why Roma get sick and tired of non-Roma
>trying to organize their lives by thinking they finally find some exotic
>puppets to play with. They come with cut and dried ideas and they try to
>impose them irrespective of the ground reality by not listening to the
>people.
>
>
No-one is suggesting bias or bad faith, only well-intentioned
ignorance. That's what the image of the [[Ugly American]] has been all
about ever since that book was written in 1958. Most Americans who have
regularly involved themselves in Wikipedia have learned that lesson.
They have learned that people from other countries prefer to solve their
own problems without recourse to the presumption that American solutions
are necessarily the best. Regretably, some few Americans here, like
you, have never grasped this.
How do you know what Alin is or is not suggesting? Now who is being
presumtuous? Somehow I think the phrase "exotic puppet to play with"
is hinting at something a bit more malicious than simple
well-intentioned ignorance.
Why should that worry YOU? I saw no evident Roma
involvement in the
decision that there should be one English Wikipedia to unite the British
and American languages. Why shouldn't the Roma sort out their own
problems? There are more ways to have people come together than having
them unite to repel a meddler who has decided that he has better
solutions to their problems than they do themselves. If the Ursari
speakers feel that they have a problem with the rest of the Roma
community it's up to them to seek help; it's not up to a stranger to
imagine a problem and impose his own gratuitous solution.
Ursari speakers simply aren't represented here. There are 2 Roma here
only as far as I know, and it seems awfully strange to assume that
their solution is endorsed by all Roma people.
If a problem doesn't exist yet but will probably exist in the future,
it's easier to sort it out while it's still easy to do than when
things have already become complicated and it's a real problem in the
present.
Mark