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

[Sam Korn]

On 12/22/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Do you want to reply to this?
> >
> You cannot remember all known good editors as it is (see the reply of
> Andre Engels). It is therefore a non-issue.

No, perhaps not.  But you can remember a good proportion.  The
"whitelist" doesn't have to be permanent.  It only has to persist as
long as one session of editing.  I can remember which users need to be
looked out for and which users are making good edits at the time I'm
doing RC patrol.  That is quite comfortably manageable.

> > And users who aren't admins who want to do this kind of work?  I
> > started anti-vandalism work within a couple of months of joining
> > en.wikipedia.  I didn't become an admin for seven months.  I would
> > probably not have bothered if I'd had to search out my XP disk and
> > install fonts, when I was far less computer savvy than I am now.
> >
> If this is what it takes to do the job.. it this is what you find it
> necessary to do.. You will.

I don't understand what you mean.  If you're saying that you intend
that everyone who wants to occasionally HELP OUT the wiki by doing RC
patrol should install all these fonts for languages they don't
understand, you're living in a world completely disconnected from
reality.  We don't make huge demands of our users before we allow them
to fight vandalism.  Indeed, all they need to do is provide a user
name and a password.

What about the non-tech-savvy people?  What about those who edit from
public computers?  Do you intend to discriminate against them?

> > But to all intents and purposes, they are anonymous, in that few
> > admins will a) be able to read and b) be able to remember and
> > understand usernames __even if they install the fonts__.  That is the
> > issue that you haven't grasped.
> Andre Engels answered this better than I have.. There are so many known
> good editors that it is impossible to remember them all. There are too
> many. So as it is already not possible to do this for Latin, the issue
> is not made worse.

So, in other words, ?????? is just as good as ผู้ใช้:ธวัชชัย.  So
people needn't bother installing fonts, because no-one can remember
people's names.

Of course, there is absolutely no difference at all between
recognising a name in Latin and Thai, for example.  It's equally easy.
 And hey, even if it isn't, we might as well not bother trying to make
things easier for people.

-- 
Sam