Mark Williamson wrote:
Is it considered acceptable to have spearate Wikipedias for different cultures and peoples rather than languages?
No it isn't. I agree with what Jimmy, Anthere, and others have already written in reply to this.
Robin Patterson has asserted on mi: that rather than a Wikipedia in the Maori language, it's intended as a Wikipedia for the Maori people, and thus extensive usage of the English language is OK or even good
Where has he said this? The top of http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_Portal states very clearly that every article should be written in Māori.
Yes, yet he states at http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:24.251.198.251 (and various places on sm:) that since "English is the first language of at least 80% of people of Maori descent", that English content should and will be kept.
Guaka wrote:
When applying for Bambara Wikipedia administratorship I explicitely mentioned that I'll drop my administratorship as soon as there are some native speaking folks active as administrator. I think that should be a general policy for administrators who have only a very small knowledge of a language.
I think that's fine. I see no need to prevent people from being admins because they don't speak the language when there are no active users that do speak the language.
Mark Williamson wrote:
I have now been blocked by Robin Patterson for removing English-language content.
Really? The block log claims he blocked you for removing Māori content.
Obviously, all block reasons are always truthful and make complete sense... The first time he threatened to ban me was at http://mi.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%C5%8Ctepoti&diff=7200&old..., where I removed the single link "Whakanui!" because the image can already be enlarged by clicking on it and thus an external image link to en.wikipedia is not nessecary. He labelled this as "removing maori-language content", and rather than assuming good faith, told me that I would be banned if I did it again.
The diff for which I was banned is http://mi.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hau_K%C4%81inga&diff=7217&... .
You can see that primarily what I removed was the "If your first language is English...", being at the top of the page.
I did also remove the list of "sample articles", but gave a good reason in an earlier edit summary: They take up space, and many (even most) of them can already be accessed by using the table of contents below.
I had left him a message a few days ago, and he never answered it.
Perhaps you could have waited a bit longer for a reply before contining to revert the main page.
I left him a message on the 9th, the revert for which he banned me was on the 11th. Since he had to be logged in to block me, he had to have seen the orange "new messages" notice.
I do not think that somebody like this should be trusted with admin privelages, especially since according to him his fluency level is only mi-1.
I disagree. Since this is the only case I am aware of where there has been any suggestion of a problem, desysopping seems too extreme a reaction.
1) His fluency level is mi-1. 2) His behaviour at sm: indicates that his attitudes re use of English on non-English Wikipedias are not in line with what the local population is likely to think (many Maori speakers would be upset or at least disgusted that an encyclopedia that is supposed to be in Maori is largely in English) 3) In the past, and even in the present, he has used mi.wiki to promote a site he is affiliated with, "Zeal". Most recently it was as an external link from [[Aotearoa]]. His site is 1) in English, and 2) basically just like DMOZ, except less widely known and with less links. 4) I have a Maori friend (native speaker) whom I encouraged to edit the Maori Wikipedia a while back. He made a couple of changes but said that he didn't really want to edit because it seemed more like a mix of Maori and English. When I told this to Robin Patterson, he just told me that he was removing English content (the site notice still features very prominent English text, in fact it is larger than the Maori parts of the site notice) to make it more inviting, yet I can't find any evidence of that. The mi.wikipedia page on the 20th century was once at "20th century". I moved it, if I recall correctly, to the proper Maori title. Many of the other pages he creates are fully or partially in English.
Heiko Evermann wrote:
I have had a look at Robin's edits. I think that he is doing a great job.
I agree. He has also made efforts to attract a wider community of Māori speakers to the wiki.
Yes, but the reason none of them have contributed, despite his numerous efforts (even placing an ad in a newspaper), is the high volume of English-language content. He knows this very well yet he is not willing to do anything about it.
Similarly, he tried to add English-language content to the Samoan Wikipedia.
Mark