[Foundation-l] Cultural awareness and sensitivity

[Aphaia]

True, but it reminded me on the time English Wikipedia sanctioned
non-latin script usernames and blocked them indefinitely and forced
them to rename for months. At that time many English Wikipedia sysops
supported this idea and much more of them were indifferent. If I
recall correctly, no board member offered any complaint on that as you
stated now.

I think I can understand your frustration but still I feel it
overreaction.  I need to say unconcious Anglocentric hegemony on
Wikimedia project is sometimes irritating, not only the recent
suppression of "other language" links, and English speaking people
should be much more aware of that, rest their complaints won't be
listened to, even in case it is valid by itself, like in this case.

Cheers,


On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 8:21 AM, Michael Snow <wikipedia at verizon.net> wrote:
> To avoid further disrupting discussion of interlanguage links and
> usability, I'll address the cultural problems separately now. I must
> admit, though, that in a discussion where we seemed to have agreed
> (rightfully so) that a 1% click rate was significant enough to warrant
> serious consideration, I was disappointed that someone could then be so
> callous about the need for cultural sensitivity because it most directly
> impacts "only 0.55% of the world population" in this case. There is no
> meaningful difference in order of magnitude there.
>
> We have significant distortions in the makeup of our community that
> affect our culture. There are quite a few groups that are seriously
> underrepresented, in part because our culture comes across as unfriendly
> to them at best. I talked about African-Americans because it's what was
> applicable in that particular situation and I happen to have some
> familiarity with the issues. It could just as well have been Australian
> Aborigines or another cultural group that has issues with our community.
> I'm not as prepared to explain those concerns, but I would welcome
> people who can educate us about such problems. It's legitimate to be
> wary of things that promote American cultural hegemony, which is another
> distortion, but that's not really warranted when the concern relates to
> a minority culture in the US.
>
> Some people seem to have gotten hung up on the issue of intent. I didn't
> say there was any intent, by the community or individuals, to exclude
> certain groups or to create a hostile environment for them. I actually
> tried to be as careful as possible not to say that. The point is that
> even in the absence of intent, it's possible for our culture to appear
> hostile to such groups. We didn't have any intent to be hostile toward
> living people, either, yet we've had a long struggle to cope with the
> consequences of that impression created by our culture.
>
> Consider the principle of not "biting" newcomers, which relates to a
> similar problem. It's not about the intent of the person doing the
> "biting", it's about the impact on those who encounter it. We need to be
> more welcoming to people, and striving for more cultural awareness is
> part of that.
>
> --Michael Snow
>
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KIZU Naoko
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