[Wikipedia-l] Re: Portals, flags, chaos

Mon Jan 10 22:19:00 UTC 2005

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Hi Pete/Pcb21,

>But why would a French-speaker want to read the Japanese Wikipedia
>either?

S/he would learn to enter fr.wikipedia.org the next time (or maybe even
www.wikipedia.fr, if that exists). But if the French-speaker is actually
a German exchange student wanting to learn Japanese it would be helpful
to see the possibility. Also it makes wikipedia look like a truly
international project, which is a good thing, I'd say.

>www.wikipedia.org ends up as not particularly useful to anyone,
>and hard to make non-ugly.

I like the new proposal (without flags, but with a short intro text).

>Thus not much of a benefit, and we have
>to weigh against the "broken" links to www.wikipedia.org that have
>built up over the years.

They are not broken. As it was said repeatly, www.wikipedia.org/
Something still links to en.wikipedia.org/Something, and the mere extra
click necessary to go to "English" doesn't count as a broken link in my
eyes. (Maybe we should add a <ugly> pop-up box explaining all English
users that there are other languages, indeed; and that they should
bookmark en.wikipedia.org (or go to www.wikipedia.us) if they don't want
to see them.</ugly>).

Till

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