[Wikipedia-l] Re: A portal page for www.wikipedia.org

Sun Jan 9 17:45:04 UTC 2005

Pete/Pcb21 a écrit:

> Firstly let me say that I wrote my comment not knowing about many of the 
> mails that had been posted in the last 24 hours on this list as I had 
> failed to refresh my newsgroup list properly. Apologies for that. (and 
> see also further down)

ya, I know, and the messages seem to be arriving in packs rather than 
one by one. Probably the servers trying to consider what is more 
important to display :-)

> But nevertheless, I was solely talking about the single page 
> http://www.wikipedia.org/ not the article pages. I am pleased that the 
> latter continue to redirect as they have done for months.

Okay

> I would hazard a guess that there as many external links going to the 
> single page www.wikipedia.org as they are links coming into specific 
> articles. As Walter points out, virtually no articles mentioning 
> Wikipedia mention en. but prefer www. (so as not surprise their readers 
> who are used to seeing www. for internet addresses, I suppose)

True. I might even mention that french press articles writing on the 
french wikipedia mostly, often use the www.wikipedia.org adress :-(

A comment most journalists I answered to in the past months make is "I 
have known about wikipedia for a long time, but I thought it was only 
english; I discovered about french only xx months ago".

They used wikipedia for their information. They typed www.wikipedia.org
They saw only english.
They discovered fr only recently, because it has only been for the past 
6 months or so that fr really started to make a difference on google 
search and they started to see french articles popping up.

So, while what you say is very true, I see www becoming a portal a real 
mean for smaller languages to develop.

Now, readers won't find a 404, they will still be on wikipedia, they 
will just marvel at the discovery there is MORE than english. Maybe it 
will be ONE MORE click (which is bad), but there will possibly be 
amazement from them.

I'd like to share with you the reason why I opposed the portal 2 years ago.
Only the english wikipedia was decent. All the other projects were 
infants. I felt it would more be detrimental to Wikipedia to show some 
so ridiculous little starting blurbs.
Now, we have great (the english), we have good (such as de of course, 
and ja, fr etc...)
And we have truely interesting next ones.
And we have the smaller languages, to amaze people over our vitality.

What was detrimental 2 years ago imho should now be very beneficial.

>>> Whether the cost of breaking those links is worth the gain of getting 
>>> a international portal is debatable.
>>
> 
>> I am ready to listen arguments in favor of keeping www.wikipedia.org 
>> the adresse for the english wikipedia. I know of no arguments for now. 
>> What are those ?
> 
> 
> I think having www.wikipedia.org go to an international portal rather 
> than the English page is at least a broken expectation if not a broken 
> link if the formal sense of a 404 that Tim explained.

Agreed. It is a broken expectation for english readers used to call 
wikipedia; You are correct.

> The other posts that I've now looked at indicate that this might be 
> mitigated quite a lot by using some funky browser settings to provide a 
> single page in lots of languages.
> 
> I know that I instinctly prefer websites that show me English pages. 
> Many portal pages look messy. It will be interesting to see how the 
> Wikipedia one develops.

Agreed. It will be interesting. I am interested because I do not want an 
ugly page. I would also support a page with content. Though this is 
technically and politically not so easy to do a multilingual one.
The other option is to do something very very simple.

I think many readers in the world like to see websites in languages they 
can understand though :-)

> I am sure we could have a poll. We've had three years-worth of polls and 
> talk. But that's all it is talk, a decision would require the backing of 
> a significant selection of { Jimbo , Angela , Anthere , Brion , Tim , 
> Mav , Erik }. 'Tis the truth :)
> 
> PEt
> e

The decision to make a poll or the decision to have this portal ?
For the decision to have this portal, well, I guess the majority if not 
all of those above agree with a portal. I think.

If you want a poll, this is fine by me.