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

[James Hare]

Brion, I will redirect my $100 donation to Wikimedia straight to you if you
get SUL up by January.

On 12/20/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> George Herbert schreef:
> > On 12/20/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> >
> >> The Cunctator wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> On 12/20/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> Hello,
> >>>> today a user on Japanese Wikipedia whose account is in Kana (a
> >>>> Japanese script) came to our Admins' noticeboard to request for
> >>>> chaning his username. He said he would have liked to do so because he
> >>>> had changed his username on English Wikipedia.
> >>>>
> >>>> I repeat again the English Wikipedia community should reconsider how
> >>>> shameful and discriptive policy they has about users' identity and
> >>>> respect of cultural diversity, and how badly it affects other
> >>>> communities. I am very sorry to see such a request fullfiled to our
> >>>> request page.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> Although there are strong relationships between language and culture,
> I
> >>> believe you are off the mark.
> >>>
> >>> It is not unreasonable for the English Wikipedia to have a policy of
> >>> Latin-alphabet usernames.
> >>>
> >>>
> >> Then it wouldn't be unreasonable for the Japanese wikipedia to have a
> >> policy of only Kana usernames. You bloody yanks, limeys and ozzies and
> >> other anglo saxon idiots are so fucking biased about everybody needs to
> >> speak your f*******g language and nees to understand your f*****g
> >> cultures it is disgusting. There are more peopel around speaking non
> >> english based languages then there are people speaking the lingo. Learn
> >> to adapt to that. I can only predict the whining of stupid Americans
> >> about feeling discriminated when they would be requirde to login in
> >> Chinese on the Chinese wikipedia or Thai on the Thai wikipedia.
> >>
> >> Why the f*** should everybody learn your pissant of a language if you
> >> refuse to learn others.,
> >>
> >> Waerth .... extremely pissed off
> >>
> >>
> >
> > It is also unacceptable for dedicated vandals to show up, register an
> > account whose visual depiction is not at all distinguishable from the
> > accountname of an existing administrator or long-time editor due to the
> use
> > of similar ISO characters, and then go on a vandalism rampage which gets
> > blamed on the normal admin.
> >
> > We had this happen a week ago with an omega character substituted for an
> O.
> >
> > I've seen it done with 1/L and 0/o.  Someone tried to impersonate me
> with
> > one letter dropped; I'm suprised they didn't do the 1/L thing instead.
> >
> > There are some very nasty, creative people out there.  If you start
> enabling
> > them to cause more trouble, you are a problem.
> >
> > I'm all for multiculturalism, but this issue HAS to get looked at and
> > thought about.  That does not mean that en.wikipedia may not end up just
> > having to abandon that policy in the end, but if we do that there's
> going to
> > be an opening for vandals to impersonate us.
> >
> > We might have to do something like go from (username) to (username, ID#)
> > tuples to ultimately get around this, which is terribly ugly.
> Hoi,
> With Single User Login, this scheme will not be possible anymore .. a
> user is THAT user and no one else can impersonate him by having the same
> user. So the basic argument here is incorrect. It will no longer be
> possible and, this whole ugly affair demonstrates admirably that we need
> SUL as soon as possible ..
>
> PLEASE BRION .. get this over and done with.
>
> Thanks,
>     Gerard
>
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