[Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects other communities

[Jon Harald Søby]

On 12/20/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
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> No such policy exists, far as I know. If some vigilante group is trying
> to enforce it, they need to be told that Wikipedia and Wikimedia have no
> such restriction.
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> Of course people are free to change their usernames if they wish.
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> - -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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Actually, it does; from [[WP:U#Inappropriate usernames]]:

"Names with non-Latin characters: Unfortunately, most of your fellow
editors will be unable to read a name written in Cyrillic, Chinese,
Japanese, Korean, or other scripts. Many of them will also be
additionally burdened, as such names may be displayed for them only as
question marks ("??? ??"), squares ("□□□ □□"), replacement characters
("??? ??") or worse, nonsense or mojibake ("Ã!%ôs*"). If your name is
usually written in a non-Latin script, please consider transliterating
it to avoid confusion, and allow easier access to your talk page by
typing your name in the search field or URL bar."

I can understand the rationale for this policy, but it _is_
ethnocentric, and it counters the problem from the wrong side, if you
know what I mean. Instead of trying to fix the problem, they try to
remove it.

-- 
Best regards,
Jon Harald Søby

Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/
Wikipedia - http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Jhs
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