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

[David Gerard]

On 20/12/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:

> The problem is fairly simple, people who speak only English don't
> bother installing language support on their computers, even though
> (AFAIK) it is included with all operating systems these days. All they
> need to do is get their installation CD out and turn it on.


The actual problem is similar characters in usernames (which I
understand is being addressed) and distinguishing bot-gibberish from
actual plausible names.

en: gets stupendous amounts of vandalism, and it's a huge amount of
botwork and semi-botwork just coping with it.

Saying "you bad bad en: admins, stop doing this" won't make the actual
vandalism problem go away. I eagerly await hearing responses on this
thread that deal with the fact that there is an actual problem this
was put in place as a response to. If ja: says "en:, stop doing this"
without offering a solution, en: isn't going to take a whole lot of
notice as the problem affects en: rather than ja:


- d.