Walter Vermeir wrote: Sounds like an argument for becoming "wikipedia.edu" :-) Ec

On Sunday 09 January 2005 05:57, Tim Starling wrote: There is no reason to have co.uk redirect to .org because English is not the only language spoken in the United Kingdom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_Kingdom Please either create a special portal for co.uk or make it redirect to wikipedia.org -- NSK The Wikinerds Community Federation of Science Wikis Owner of the Wikinerds Portal http://portal.wikinerds.org Owner of the NerdyPC IT Wiki http://www.nerdypc.org

What's the very good reason? That it's been like that forever? That's not a reason. As long as article URLs can find their way to en.wikipedia, the .co.uk article should redirect to http://www.wikipedia.org/ . No specific country URL should redirect to a specific Wikipedia, at least when it's a URL we have control over, and even country-specific portals (ie the ch-portal) might inconvenience users whose language falls outside of the languages included in the portal. How much will it inconvenience somebody who tries to go to http://wikipedia.co.uk/ to end up at a site asking them to select their language? Mark On Sun, 09 Jan 2005 15:41:13 +1100, Tim Starling <t.starling(a)physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:

On Jan 9, 2005, at 1:45 AM, Paweł 'Ausir' Dembowski wrote: Are there countries which outlaw any speakers of *any other language*, from residing in that country? -Bop

On Jan 9, 2005, at 2:32 AM, Paweł 'Ausir' Dembowski wrote: Personally, I find the concept of "native language for a country" to be something of a broken, and archaic, concept. Languages have never been defined by rigid lines drawn on a battlefield, or defined by those who lived in a land 200 years ago. Very few countries (if any?) have had the same lines for as long as their language has been "native", in a long term sense. Can you think of any "countries" which have kept the same language for the last 4000 years, without changing their language? Another point: If an english tourist is traveling in Poland or the Ukraine, but chooses to write wikipedia articles on the road, should they be compelled to see a website that they cannot understand, before they can get to a website that they do understand? While some countries may have an official "native" language, it does not follow that all people who are writing articles from a given country prefer to (or can) speak the local language. -Bop

TW> True. But why should an english tourist traveling in Poland use TW> wikipedia.pl instead of wikipedia.co.uk (or even en.wikipedia.org) he or TW> she uses to open up wikipedia at home? TW> I thing our international domains (that is .com, even if the US doesn't TW> see it so, .org, .net and maybe an .edu) should link to the portal, and TW> all geographic top level domains (co.uk, pl, de, ...) should link to TW> either a specific portal if the political entity is strongly TW> multilingual (.ch) or to TLD.wikipedia.org. TW> I also would like to say I like Magnus proposal to highlight the browser TW> preference language in some way. Polish might link to a portal, though, as we have a minority language with a Wikipedia in Poland - Cashubian (csb.wikipedia.org), although it's not very active... -- Ausir Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia http://pl.wikipedia.org

Name me a monolingual country, and I will show you a flying pig. Mark On Sun, 9 Jan 2005 09:45:08 +0100, Paweł 'Ausir' Dembowski <fallout(a)lexx.eu.org> wrote:

I said a country, not a principality. Mark On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 04:13:33 +0200, NSK <nsk2(a)wikinerds.org> wrote:

This is sorely wrong. Among others, what about the huge Japanese community in Brazil? Mark On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 10:03:13 -0300, Alexandre Passos <alexandre.tp(a)gmail.com> wrote:

He said that there's a "very good reason" that it redirects. He stated none. As for Scots, this is something I have thought about often. I think your best bet would be to ask a developer directly because it will create a fair amount of debate although it will probably be created in the end anyways. Mark On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 03:06:12 +1100, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote: