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

Fri Dec 22 22:55:38 UTC 2006

On 12/22/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell schreef:
> > On 12/22/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >> The en.WP Username policy has been changed.
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Username&curid=168684&diff=95920637&oldid=95900078
> >>
> >
> > Unfortunatly, it was changed without any valid basis.
> >
> > It is not acceptable to remove longstanding policy simply because some
> > people on a mailing list decided to speculate randomly and accuse
> > enwiki of "ethnocentricism" without substantiation.
> >
> > As a result I've reverted the change and contributed some suggestions
> > to the talk page.
> >
> > I agree that the policy should be *improved* to address the real
> > concerns brought up, and to be more friendly to users who work across
> > many languages.  Simply removing the section does not, however,
> > address the very real issues which caused the creation of the policy
> > in the first place.
> Hoi,
> Some people congratulated me with the outcome of this affair. My
> reaction was that it did not feel like a victory because I feel bruised
> by the experience. Having said this, your suggestion that there has been
> no substantiation about the grievance that was put forward is seriously
> wrong.

There is no substantiation that the en.WP policy is due to ethnocentrism.

Please don't generalize from "We find that your claim of ethnocentrism
is unfounded" to "We find that your entire claim that this policy is
bad is unfounded".

> The notion that it is up to you to revert this change continues
> to make this affair even more painful. Simply reverting this change and
> thereby denying that many of the reasons why this policy was put in
> place is seriously wrong.

The only person entitled to make a unilateral policy change is Jimbo.

The policy IS policy - it's been there, agreed to, been standard, been
used to do a lot of vandal-fighting.  The policy has become
controversial due to the SUL and cross-wiki and charges that it's
insensitive to other language speakers.  But it is not resolved and
consensus agreed to that it's wrong and needs to get changed right
now.

Consensus doesn't mean "We brought up this issue, it started an
argument, we changed it while people still disagree and there's no
clear majority."  It means "Talk about it until people actually agree
on something, and THEN change it.".

> I have to say I am increasingly upset by this affair.

As am I.  What is wrong with talking it out before any changes are
made, rather than insisting on acting unilaterally without regard to
others' concerns?

The insistence that this has to be done, by fiat, RIGHT NOW, is
grossly offensive.  There is no emergency rush here.  There is nothing
at all wrong with talking about it and figuring out what the
least-painful overall solution is before anything gets changed.

-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com