[Wikipedia-l] This whole Lir and Americanization thing

Sat Nov 23 20:59:38 UTC 2002

Hi all --

First, I'm not actually back -- just jumping in.  I've been popping in
every couple of weeks to lurk, but even if I were inclined to rejoin the
fray on a permanent basis, I've got four courses this quarter, one
totally new, and I'm somewhat swamped.  

Second, I've been watching this whole Lir thing develop, and finally
feel I should throw in my $.04.  

Regarding banning Lir or not.  If Lir can't be bothered to speak with
Jimbo, stop behaving childishly (name-calling, whinging, and making
guerilla edits that result in non-NPOV articles), and work in a
cooperative, collegial, manner, then a ban is in order.  The community
has certain standards, and from what I've seen, Lir is as guilty as
Helga ever was of flouting them.  By the way, Helga is back, adding in
stuff about the genocide of the Heimatvertriebene, but somewhat more
neutrally.

Regarding Americanization being genocide.  First, Lir's belief in this
(more to that later) is his choice.  The argument has, however,
unfortunately gone off on a tangent and not addressed the real point --
Lir's belief is very POV.  Articles he renames or redirects in
furtherance of that belief are therefore infected with that non-neutral
POV.    Second, Lir, what is your point?  I mean this in a historical
sense.  Although I personally agree that the McDonaldsization of the
world is a tragedy, and that the ubiquity of American culture may (and
probably is) damaging to other cultures, the process is not itself
unnatural or new.  As an historian, I can't honestly name one culture
that had not been dramatically changed once it came in contact with
another, especially in cases of technology.  Moreover, without the
fusion of different cultures (for example, barbarian and Roman), many of
the things that make up distinctive European cultures would not exist --
in fact, there's a good chance we'd all be Muslims now.    

As to correct language and the evils of americanization -- bullshit,
pure and simple.  The idea that using English-language norms in and
English-language encyclopedia is in anyway related to forcing
English-speaking culture on other cultures is simply ridiculous.  While
it is deplorable that most English speakers are not bilingual, that fact
does not make it in any way sensible to change place-names, etc., to
their "original" form.  By the way, I'm not even sure what that means --
is it Strassburg, Strasbourg, or, as it was called before there was a
clear definition between French and German, Straziburgensis?  London, or
Londinium? Should Paris have a note in the title that says "pronounced
Paree, you morons"?   

Some while back, those of us most interested and most  learned in these
things worked together to come up with a nomenclature policy.  We agreed
that it made the most sense to use the most common English-language
version of a name (different forms of English notwithstanding) for the
title BUT, because we all felt it very important to let people know that
other cultures and language-speakers had different names for the same
thing, so we listed alternate names in the article itself.   This means
that English-speakers, arguably the largest audience, could search for
articles in the way most natural to them, but the articles would still
appear in searches by speakers of other languages searching in those
languages.  I can't see that Lir's political beliefs are valid reasons
to change this policy.

That's all I can think of for now.  Hope lir talks to Jimmy and gets a
clue.  Otherwise, it seems to me that normally productive members of the
community should be allowed to get on with the project and stop having
to deal with this type of nonsense.

Cheers, all!

Regards, 

Julie Hofmann Kemp 

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