[Wiktionary-l] Religious intolerance

Mon Dec 27 15:46:13 UTC 2004

Hoi,
I find it funny to be writing about this subject as I do not believe in 
any God.

I am heavily involved in Wiktionary and one of the things that is a 
constant issue is how to promote the things we think important. Not only 
would we like to have a bigger community, we would also like more 
sophisticated software to support what we do. Every now and again there 
are things that make our life easier. One of these things was the 
introduction of Commons as it allowed us to have soundfiles that can be 
used in ANY project.

The wikimedia projects have a rule that the only soundfiles allowed are 
the .ogg files. This is a handicap as many people do not have software 
to play these files. So the only way to have people GET the necessary 
software is by making these files more relevant. The next question is 
HOW do you make them relevant. Sabine of the Italian wiktioanry had this 
brilliant idea of asking people to contribute to a list she had with 
Christmass wishes. A month ago we started to ask people to contribute 
translations of *"Buon Natale e felice Anno Nuovo!" and record the 
pronunciation as well using the .ogg format. It proved to be a struggle 
to get translations and an even bigger stuggle to get soundfiles.

We have been really gratefull for the contributions that we got. In so 
many ways we were happy with the responses that we had. We had people 
explain about their Christmas, we learned that Happy Newyear is only 
said in Japan once the new year has started. We learned that the 
Armenian christmas is on another day from the Western and the Eastern 
traditions. It was really good fun. Still, it was a wiktionary project 
and religious contributions that were added were deleted from the pages 
being not relevant to a lexicological project.

On Christmas eve, I added wishes to several projects among them the 
en:wikipedia as this was the moment were we could expect a big amount of 
people to help in our effort. This was not to be. Apparantly not only is 
the American society very religious. They are also very "correct" about 
it. Some said that because the "C" word was used (christmas) it could 
not be on a wikimedia page. "Because it would have the wikimedia 
organisation endorse Christmas". I was am and am utterly amazed. My 
exhortions that it had little to do with christmas and everything to do 
with the promotion of all these wikimedia values was to no avail.. This 
was "SO WRONG".. :( So I found myself in a revert war. And was told that 
because of Christmas I was not banned).

I am still amazed about this. Another thing that happened in this 
timeframe was this "minkukel" (you can look the word up on the 
nl:wiktionary) who added a picture of a pig and some foul language on a 
template called "Islam" on the nl:wikipedia. Now THIS I knew to be 
wrong; so I deleted the references to this template  and put it up for 
deletion for this is sacrilidge. I am still amazed about our community 
that some find it necessary that we cannot, under the pretext of 
neutrality, have a project like our Italian wiktionary project because 
of the anti-religious ideas that they harbour.

I do not understand it. I do not care for these uptight attitudes. I 
hope that next time when people ask for contributions like we did for 
our **"Buon Natale e felice Anno Nuovo!" project that people will be 
less rigid and more forthcoming. I am aware that some people will be 
angry with me for saying all this. But hey, I am still reeling from this 
experience.

Thanks,
    GerardM

PS If you care to have a look at the Italian project, 
http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Buon_Natale_e_felice_Anno_Nuovo%21

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