On 12/20/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'm sure we would get less complaints about this issue if we were still using Latin1 on en. :) -- Abi

On 12/20/06, Kusma <kusma.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: In part because usernames that use non-Latin character sets are completely indistinguishable to someone without those fonts loaded. Hard to figure out if ??????? is the good user and ??????? is the bad one. It is also not nice of us to block people who might not be speaking That would be nice.

We talk about the English-language Wikipedia here, no? Other Wikimedia projects allow usernames in non-Latin scripts, as best I know. For instance, in Russian wikipedia, you may get a username in Cyrillic. Most complaints are from those editors who have a non-Latin username in their national wikipedia and fail to see why they can't keep it in English wikipedia. Best, Andrey On 12/20/06, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom(a)gmail.com> wrote:

[adding foundation-l back to cc] On 20/12/06, Rich Holton <richholton(a)gmail.com> wrote: Yeah. I should point out that I do think blocking non-Latin character sets is probably a bad thing, and the only reason it's now done on en: is one way of dealing with bot-vandals. This problem will need addressing sooner rather than later. Are any of the vandal fighters reading this? - d.

Anthere wrote: Yes. Thanks for that important clarification. -Rich

On 12/20/06, Anthere <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote: "BUT, soon, this will not be possible any more. All users will have only ONE account." Nothing is keeping users from creating a separate account under another name if they want to have different identities on different wikis for a legitimate reason. Mgm

Please, have a look at http://www.wikipedia.org There is a whole world aside from the english project. The japanese wikipedia has over 300 000 articles. We are working in over 200 languages. English is only part of it. But let me explain why it is an issue. In a very short time (hopefully, ahum), a new feature will be unable on the project. The Single Login. The Single Login will make it so, that one person is registed on all projects and all languages, with only one account. Right now, the account system is such that one person has one account for each project and for each language as it is now. So, right now, if an english user, called in real life William Sommerfield, has created an account [[user:William]] on the english wikipedia, he may be [[user:WilliamSommerfield]] on the english wikibooks, and [[user:WilliamS]] on the french wikinews. And a bilingual japanese english editor may be under a japanese user name on the japanese wikipedia, and under an english user name on the english wikipedia (thus respecting your rule of avoiding non-latin caracters). BUT, soon, this will not be possible any more. All users will have only ONE account. So, if a japanese person has an account on the japanese wikipedia, with non latin caracters, he should not have to be forced to change his global name to unnatural caracters, just to be able to do a couple of edits under his user name on the english wikipedia. Similarly, an english editor should be able to edit under his latin name on the japanese wikipedia. Do you understand the problem now ? Now, it is reported that english editors do not like seeing non latin caracters names, because it is difficult to distinguish and may be confused with bot gibberish. As reported on the Foundation list, Wikigod™ Brion has already addressed this; it is no longer possible to create usernames which uses several scripts. So you cannot mix Latin and Cyrillic characters, or Latin and Greek, or even Greek and Cyrillic (or Arabic or Devanagari or …), so that is no longer an issue. There is still the issue of "recognising" names, and a guideline for that matter might be helpful. But it is not okay to force people to change their user name just to fit one wikipedia rules. And it certainly is not okay to block people from non english cultures because they refuse to comply to change their name for a westernish one. The main result it would have would be to prevent most people from asian countries to participate to the english wikipedia. Is that suitable ? I'd say it is not. So, rather than saying the complaint is ill-advise, I rather recommand that we work together trying to set up a compromise which will be acceptable by all parties. Saying "your name is not valid because I can not read your language, so you can't edit Wikipedia" is not what I would call a compromise. Anthere Andrey wrote:

On Wed, Dec 20, 2006 at 02:48:48PM +0000, Thomas Dalton wrote: So ... what would you do about names like "Seabhcan" (or "Sean," for that matter) that are pronounced in ways nonintuitive to most Anglophones? -- Sean Barrett | I gazed into the abyss... the abyss gazed sean(a)epoptic.com | into me... neither of us cracked a smile.

On 12/20/06, sean(a)epoptic.com <sean(a)epoptic.com> wrote: I assign a mental pronunciation that is probably quite incorrect. The key point is that I *can* assign a pronunciation to "Seabhcan" or "Cthulhu", and I can easily tell the difference between the two. I can't do that for something like "メインページ". -- Mark [[User:Carnildo]]

Matt R wrote: The transliteration will be useful for more than en: - ru: editors are also more likely to recognize Latin transliterations of ja: . And before anybody screams about "Latin charset imperialism", note that all the nations of the world have long agreed to include Latin versions of their names on their postage stamps, in addition to any preferred native scripts (UK gets to omit name entirely, as the first to issue stamps), for the benefit of postal clerks who are not expert linguists. Stan

On Thu, 21 Dec 2006 18:44:45 +1000, "Peter Ansell" <ansell.peter(a)gmail.com> wrote: Postage stamps come in two kinds: British stamps, in sets, at the beginning of the album, and foreign ones all jumbled up at the back. Any gibbon can tell you that... (yes, it's a quote) Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote: Gibbons represents a particularly British form of monkey business. U. S. made albums put the U. S. stamps at the beginning of the album. These albums are regularly sold in Canada. When he buys such an album in looseleaf format a Canadian collector's first act will be to refile that section under the letter "U". Ec

Ray Saintonge wrote: I don't have one myself, but I imagine that Australian stamp albums have the Australian stamps at the front... -- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

Anthere schreef: If a Japanese editor cannot read or understand any word written in Latin script, I don't want him or her editing the English wikipedia. Eugene

Steve Bennett schreef: How would he know if it's the correct article to add the interwiki links to? Eugene

Steve Bennett schreef: There is no need for that; there are bots that do that equally badly as you can do it by hand. Eugene

On 12/20/06, Anthere <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote: This is in large part a question of philosophy. Is en.wikipedia (or ru.wikipedia, or fr.wikipedia, or ar.wikipedia or... you get the picture) a project in its own right or merely a section of Wikipedia, a trans-lingual project? The answer is, of course, "both". A compromise must be sought to manage both the idea of a global project and the specific needs of individual projects. No-one is actually saying this other than those who are maligning en.wikipedia. This thread was started as an en.wp-bash and it has remained that way, not looking at the issues but rather flinging dirt at a particular project. I am sorry, Anthere, that you are doing exactly the same. -- Sam