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

[George Herbert]

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
>

This doesn't address my point.

There is very little difference between "Georgewilliamherbert" and
"Georgewi11iamherbert" in most character displays.  This is bad enough, but
we have people aware of it and looking for it.  There are non-latin
characters which are visually indistinguishable from "o" and others
available as well.  We *HAVE SEEN* an impersonation of an experienced editor
where the impersonator used a greek omega that rendered as an "o" character.

Refusing to pay attention to this problem rises to the level of a
show-stopper for en, in my opinion.  We really really should not stomp all
over one of the en defensive mechanisms against vandals without at least
looking at the issues raised and alerting people to the impact.

The ultimate answer may well be that en.wikipedia has to remove that policy
and deal with it.  Has anyone posted any notice of this to wikien-l or the
Village Pump on en, or do you think it's reasonable and fair to just do it
without proper and fair notice and time to allow en to talk about it and
figure out how to handle it?


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com