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

Walter van Kalken walter at vankalken.net
Wed Dec 20 21:41:40 UTC 2006


What his honourable Anglo-saxon refuses to portray is that he was just 
as abusive himself.

Actually as I mentioned in private conversation to someone on IRC, this 
is my reason this pisses me of so much:



	<waerth> 	as a non native english speaker it sometimes gets a bit 
disgusting

	<waerth> 	just because you are not from en: us: or oz: you seem to be 
from a third world country

	<waerth> 	I experience that in daily life

	<waerth> 	and the average brit and american expatriates over here in 
Thailand consider everyone who doesn;t speak english to be some kind of 
idiot

	<waerth> 	the way they look down on the local people here because the 
average Thai simply doesn't speak english is disgusting

	<waerth> 	and the worst thing is

	<waerth> 	even Dutch people act like that who are here in Thailand

	<waerth> 	and all of them do not even try to learn Thai

	<waerth> 	something I am doing my best to master

	<waerth> 	all that they do is looking down in disdain on the locals here

	<waerth> 	because they do not speak english

	<waerth> 	and then I read it has actually spilled over to wikimedia

	<waerth> 	it hurts me

	<waerth> 	I am almost starting to refuse to speak english anymore



>On 20/12/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Um. I think a policy of expecting people to have usernames readable in the
>>primary character set of the Wikipedia is perfectly reasonable, whatever the
>>language, and nothing to flip out about.
>>Maybe you should reconsider your outrage.
>>    
>>
>
>
>He was ranting similarly abusively on IRC just now, confessing he was
>extremely drunk. Let's assume good faith and assume he posts better
>sober.
>
>
>- d.
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>  
>




More information about the foundation-l mailing list