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

[Birgitte SB]

--- Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 12/21/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > Are there any en.WP editors who believe blocking
> users
> > on sight based on their font is not a useful
> enough
> > process to be worth breaking SUL for other
> editors?
> >
> > Is there anyone outside of en.WP who believes that
> SUL
> > is not a useful enough process to be worth
> creating
> > bad blood between wikis?
> 
> Hang on now.  This is a gross oversimplification of
> the problems that
> this issue is caused by.
> 
> Firstly, SUL is a *good thing*.  It will make
> contributing to
> Wikimedia easier and more convenient.  I am certain
> that the *vast*
> majority of people agree with this and totally
> support its
> implementation.
> 
> However, there are issues that it raises.  No-one
> wants good editors
> from, say, the Arabic Wikipedia getting blocked from
> en.wikipedia
> because their usernames are incomprehensible to
> other users of the
> wiki.  But, on the other hand, there are many
> Wikipedians who can only
> read the Latin script (let's face it, this is the
> vast majority).
> Should they be expected to identify a username with
> a user when the
> username is incomprehensible to them?
> 
> I can't read Chinese, Japanese, Arabic or Thai
> scripts.  I would find
> it *extremely* difficult to tell the difference
> between a user I knew
> and a vandal if their names were in one of these
> scripts.  This is
> obviously a big problem.  You can't dismiss this in
> the manner of "oh,
> those English Wikipedians, they should get over it."
> 
> This is a serious problem, and other wikis will
> suffer from it if they
> get the same concentration of vandalism as the
> English Wikipedia.  It
> must not be dismissed.
> 
> So let's try to satisfy both the need to implement
> SUL and the
> problems that this raises.  The current en.wikipedia
> policy uses a
> sledgehammer to crack a walnut, that's true enough. 
>  But rather than
> ignoring these concerns, how about looking to make
> this policy
> unnecessary?
> 
> -- 
> Sam
>

I said above that brion had said the implementation
details of SUL was not-negotiable.  I cannot find an
email by him with the message I remember.  Perhaps
someone else made that comment, or maybe my mind has
just started making up email messages in my sleep.  I
am sorry for the misquote there.

I was going to start to answer you by quoting the
non-existant message.  :P I think a technical solution
to the issue would be great.  The question is first
which  technical solutions can be developed before SUL
is implented?  And second which of those options is
prefered?

Birgitte SB

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