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

[Birgitte SB]

--- George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 12/21/06, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > This is also a reply to David Gerard.
> >
> > George Herbert wrote:
> > > On 12/21/06, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net>
> wrote:
> > >
> > >>Hi,
> > >>
> > >>In your options below, you forgot the main
> argument GerardM has
> > >>expressed in this thread: that the problem faced
> by the English
> > >>Wikipedia upto now will nearly disappear
> *because* of SUL.
> > >
> > > SUL does not make the problem go away.  Nobody
> has posted any
> > explanation of
> > > how it would.
> >
> > Yes, one big part of the  problem goes away: that
> to find out if the user
> > is a vandal or a known user on some other wikis.
> > If I understand GerardM's explanations correctly,
> it will be possible to
> > easily find out on which wikis this user has
> edits, so you will know if
> > it is a new account or not.
> >
> 
> That is somewhat useful, but doesn't address the
> concerns we have stated
> with it.
> 
> Dedicated vandals are banking sockpuppet accounts,
> creating them constantly
> and doing "good" edits from them to get them to be
> known user IDs, getting
> past the "new user" time period and minimum edit
> counts to be taken
> seriously, etc.  The long-term vandal who's been
> placing penis pictures on
> the featured article of the day, for example, has
> been using sockpuppet
> accounts that they started accumulating well before
> they launched their
> first known attack, if I understand it correctly.
> 
> Someone could easily use any of the other wikis to
> do that with under SUL,
> and nobody would know there was a problem until the
> account showed up in
> enwiki and started getting the similar-looking user
> in trouble.
> 

I do not understand what this has to do with non-latin
usernames.  This threat is just as real for *all*
usernames.  A sockpuppet can be built up on it.WP and
do this same damage.  But en.WP does not block italian
usernames on sight.  Only non-latin usernames.  How is
a non-latin username a greater threat to be a sleeper
vandal than a latin username?  I really do not
understand the problem in this regard.

Birgitte SB

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