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

[Gerard Meijssen]

David Gerard schreef:
> On 21/12/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> I will again say how much I resent this policy of the English language
>> Wikipedia, it is discrimination pure and simple. With SUL it will be
>> easy to check WHO it is that is doing the editing. The most charitable
>> way I can look on this huha is that when SUL is finally there, this
>> discussion will prove to be a storm in a tea cup.
>>     
>
>
> Your reply completely fails to address any points whatsoever of the
> text you actually quoted.
>
>
> - d.
Hoi,
It does not help that you only quote part of what I wrote. What you 
quote from is a message where I inform that the imposition of a policy 
that might force me to change my users will only make me retract from a 
project and in this particular case I would stop running the interwiki 
service that I have been running for more than a year.

The suggestion is that having users tagged in Latin script on the 
English language Wikipedia is a good thing. I counter that with the 
argument that you drive people away. People who with their non-English 
background are extremely valuable when you want to get a NPOV. On the 
conference in Belgrade the presentation that impressed me most was one 
where it was explained how the English language Wikipedia is not NPOV 
and how hard it is to get traction for a presentation of facts that is 
less POV.

This discriminatory policy is part of a problem and you mistake it as 
part of a solution. It does not really help, and it does certainly hurt.

Thanks,
   GerardM