[Wikipedia-l] Re: www portal: "The Free Encyclopedia" in Japanese?

Mon Jan 10 00:11:40 UTC 2005

But what about the Anglo-Saxon Wikipedia!?!?!!??!!!?

Anyhow, what flag should we use for French? The flag of France? That
is very discriminatory. French is the first language of Quebec, and
the only official language of plenty of countries on multiple
continents (though mostly in Africa).

What about Portuguese? Or Spanish? Or English?

What about Chinese? Taiwanese people will be very offended by the
communist flag, and displaying the nationalist flag might even get us
blocked by Chinese proxies, not to mention the fact that it is also
the official language in Singapore.

What about Hindi? The Indian flag is a bit offensive because that
implies that Hindi is *the* language of the union, which it is not. It
also excludes Fijian speakers of Hindi.

What about Dutch? The Netherlands, Belgium, Surinam, and a couple of
other places speak Dutch.

What about German? or Arabic?

Mark

On Sun, 9 Jan 2005 22:57:01 +0000, Arwel Parry
<arwel at cartref.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In message <20050109155648.GI21075 at thingy.apana.org.au>, David Gerard
> <fun-e016Bj8cE8tLBo1qDEOMRrpzq4S04n8Q at public.gmane.org> writes
> >Anthere (anthere9-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org) [050109 18:05]:
> >> Mark Williamson a écrit:
> >
> >> >One prediction I have is that somebody will suggest adding flags to
> >> >make it easier to choose languages. This is a BAD idea because there
> >> >are speakers of French in Japan, speakers of Thai in Malta, speakers
> >> >of Catalan in Greece, etc; also some languages are indigenous to more
> >> >than one country, or they don't have a corresponding flag (for
> >> >diaspora languages such as Yiddish and Ladino), or it's not
> >> >recognizable to most speakers of the language.
> >
> >> Not a prediction. It was already done. And reverted.
> >> Opinions ?
> >
> >
> >I dislike the flag idea, because it's supposed to be languages, not
> >countries. (Bosian, Croation and Srpski having separate wikis
> >notwithstanding.)
> >
> >Furthermore, you just *know* some idiot will change the UK flag to a US
> >flag. Then another will revert it. Then someone will put both on. Then
> >someone else will object to a language having *two* flags. Then soeone else
> >will use that horrible split US/UK flag I've seen on some multilingual
> >portals. Then someone will protect the page. I suspect flags will provide
> >too much material for idiocy.
> 
> Well, we /could/ use the English flag (Cross of St George)..... the only
> problem would then be that most English-speakers wouldn't recognise it!
> 
> --
> Arwel Parry
> http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/
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