[Foundation-l] Throwing some data onto the flamefest fire (was: English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects other communities)

Fri Dec 22 15:21:47 UTC 2006

--- Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Regarding,
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/nonalphausers
> 
> On 12/21/06, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> > If you want this to be meaningful, you need to
> remove accounts with only
> > Arabic numbers. Obviously these can be recognized
> easily by English-only
> > speakers.
> 
> Some are, some are not. 863929163 is not too easily
> remembered,
> although I can type it. While 555 is a fine name for
> an English
> speaker to communicate with... Feel free to skip
> over the ones that
> seem too English compatible. With 1000 in the list
> there are plenty to
> look at.
> 
> > > Obviously it does not count users who were
> blocked before they could
> > > "contribute".
> >
> > This would be useful too, as a separate list,
> maybe.
> 
> Based on your suggestions I have created a new list
> consisting of all
> usernames which have been blocked since Dec 2005
> that contain any
> non-ascii characters.
> 
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/nonalphausers/blocked
> 
> They have been grouped based on the existence of
> edits by the users.
> 
> It would be useful if someone would go through and
> fix the places
> where a loose RTL character is making everything
> backwards (don't
> remove the RTL mark, just insert a matching LTR
> mark).  I have no idea
> how people edit mixed directional text with any
> ease, and I can't seem
> to find help on any of our metapages.
> 
> Of 3,049,903 usernames in the enwiki database
> 454,122 contain at least
> one non-ascii character. Of those, 2,016 have been
> blocked at least
> once in the last year.
> 
> Of the 454,122 accounts with non-ascii characters
> 367,501 were created
> in the last year.
> 
> I am somewhat surprised that so much fervor is being
> made of a matter
> which appears, by the numbers, to of nearly
> insignificant frequency.
> 

Of course much less would be made of this matter if it
were not for SUL.  You must also take into account the
editors who have been editing as IP accounts.  After
SUL they will no longer default to anon on entering
en.WP, but will default to their natural username; and
if that happens to be non-latin they will be blocked. 
Obviously some people believe this will be
significant.  How many good faith editors being
blocked would warrant significance in your eyes?  And
it is not just the "being blocked" that is the issue. 
It is the fact that these editors can not have the
full benefits of SUL.  They will have either have to
manage multiple accounts, contribution records, talk
pages, etc. or else not have editing privledges on all
Wikimedia wikis.  

Birgitte SB

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