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

[Anthere]

Please, have a look at http://www.wikipedia.org

There is a whole world aside from the english project. The japanese 
wikipedia has over 300 000 articles. We are working in over 200 
languages. English is only part of it.

But let me explain why it is an issue.

In a very short time (hopefully, ahum), a new feature will be unable on 
the project. The Single Login.

The Single Login will make it so, that one person is registed on all 
projects and all languages, with only one account. Right now, the 
account system is such that one person has one account for each project 
and for each language as it is now.

So, right now, if an english user, called in real life William 
Sommerfield, has created an account [[user:William]] on the english 
wikipedia, he may be [[user:WilliamSommerfield]] on the english 
wikibooks, and [[user:WilliamS]] on the french wikinews.

And a bilingual japanese english editor may be under a japanese user 
name on the japanese wikipedia, and under an english user name on the 
english wikipedia (thus respecting your rule of avoiding non-latin 
caracters).

BUT, soon, this will not be possible any more. All users will have only 
ONE account.

So, if a japanese person has an account on the japanese wikipedia, with 
non latin caracters, he should not have to be forced to change his 
global name to unnatural caracters, just to be able to do a couple of 
edits under his user name on the english wikipedia.

Similarly, an english editor should be able to edit under his latin name 
on the japanese wikipedia.

Do you understand the problem now ?

Now, it is reported that english editors do not like seeing non latin 
caracters names, because it is difficult to distinguish and may be 
confused with bot gibberish.

As reported on the Foundation list, Wikigod™ Brion has already addressed 
this; it is no longer possible to create usernames which uses several 
scripts. So you cannot mix Latin and Cyrillic characters, or Latin and 
Greek, or even Greek and Cyrillic (or Arabic or Devanagari or …), so 
that is no longer an issue.

There is still the issue of "recognising" names, and a guideline for 
that matter might be helpful. But it is not okay to force people to 
change their user name just to fit one wikipedia rules. And it certainly 
is not okay to block people from non english cultures because they 
refuse to comply to change their name for a westernish one. The main 
result it would have would be to prevent most people from asian 
countries to participate to the english wikipedia. Is that suitable ? 
I'd say it is not.

So, rather than saying the complaint is ill-advise, I rather recommand 
that we work together trying to set up a compromise which will be 
acceptable by all parties. Saying "your name is not valid because I can 
not read your language, so you can't edit Wikipedia" is not what I would 
call a compromise.



Anthere





Andrey wrote:
> I find this complaint ill-advised. This is an English-language project;
> English language uses Latin script; ergo, non-Latin usernames are not
> acceptable. Naturally, I want to know the usernames of people I speak to,
> but I would not know how to refer to an editor who spells his name in
> Japanese or Armenian, since I can't read either Japanese or Armenian. There
> is nothing ethnocentric about that. Best, Andrey
> 
> On 12/20/06, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>Forwarding from foundation-l, after a brief discussion between myself and
>>the original poster. See more at:
>>http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-December/thread.html
>>
>>"English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects other communities" --
>>specifically, our username policy, and the practice of blocking non-Latin
>>usernames on sight.
>>
>>Seems a number of multi-wiki users have felt pushed away or chagrined by
>>this policy. Single-login seems like it might render the whole thing a
>>moot
>>point -- are we ready for the implications of that? Or does anything need
>>to
>>be done? Do we know how single-login will affect each wiki's ability to
>>set
>>and enforce a username policy, and if so, should changes to the policy
>>result?
>>
>>Myself, I'm not sure of the answers to any of these questions, just yet.
>>But
>>it seems like we may as well discuss it.
>>
>>Apologies if I just happened to miss a prior thread -- if it's already
>>happened, I don't remember seeing it.
>>
>>-Luna
>>
>>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>From: Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com>
>>Date: Dec 20, 2006 12:07 AM
>>Subject: [Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects
>>other
>>communities
>>To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>>
>>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.
>>
>>Cheers,
>>--
>>KIZU Naoko
>>Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
>>* Nessuna poesia prima di noi *
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