5) There are real, concrete benefits to having a
default and preferred
interface/language;
In other words, the pros and cons of such an act should be explicitly and
clearly listed. There are many reasons that
www.google.com,
www.dmoz.org,
etc. (which all have multilanguage settings) have English as the default,
and it's not just that the servers are US-based).
It's the default, but if your browser is set up to sent a preferred language
as part of the request (German Netscape and German MSIE do so),
google.com
welcomes in the preferred language.
Once that's done, we can weigh priorities.
I personally think a better focus right now for the developers is to work on
maximum integration of the different language wikis. If the backend is
better integrated, frontend issues become easier to deal with.
A big question that we are in the process of resolving now is whether we
want to think of Wikipedia as a single project that has multiple
translations, or as a bunch of largely independent projects specific to
particular nations and language sets. I think the first conception is
healthier and more productive over the long term. We really should think
about this issue before we take broad actions that touch upon it.
Since many non-english wikipedians contribute to the english and their
native 'pedia, the projects are not independent but highly linked.
Having a common starting page would reflect this.
I agree with you that we should first decide on the future starting
page and change
www.wikipedia.org to something else as soon as we know
what exactly to do.
Regards,
JeLuF