[Foundation-l] Sigh, problems with non-Latin usernames again

[Matt R]

--- Anders Wegge Jakobsen <wegge at wegge.dk> wrote:
> Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> writes:
> What I am saying is that editors who enter
> > into non-trivial interactions on the English Wikipedia should be
> > obliged to have a handle that can be grokked by speakers of the
> > English language.
> 
>  The problem is that "speakers of the english language" seem to
> gravitate towards the lowest common denominator. We are writing an
> encyclopedia for Petes sake! Editors are supposedly in command of a
> skillset that's beyond burger flipping 101. If not, they have no place
> writing an encyclopedia anyway.

Yes...but what skillset are you thinking editors should have? No editor has the
ability to be able to easily recognise and distinguish every script a Wikipedia
editor might express a username in. 

A lot Wikipedia thinking rests on associating knowledge of users with their
name: "ah, User:Foobar, I remember working with him on an article last year; I
don't need to check the minor edit he just made" etc. Such recognition -- the
basis of community, in fact -- is made much more difficult if "User:Foobar" was
"User:?????" or
User:<something_that_looks_remarkably_like_a_squiggle_to_the_uninitiated>.

>  Will the next demand be that interwiki targets must only be named
> with latin-1 characters?

Come on, that's a one of them strawman thingybobs: nobody's demanding this, and
there's no reason to thing anyone would. There are few Wikipedia interactions
that are affected by the ability to read non-Latin-1 interwiki targets. 

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com


	
	
		
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