On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 08:15:21AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote: What was wrong with my proposal to have the links divert to the language specified by cookie and/or browser setting? That still seems the best approach to me, although it might be a little more work... -- Khendon (Jason Williams) khendon(a)khendon.org.uk http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/

Khendon wrote: If someone clicks on a link to <a href=http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson>Wikipediadia: Thomas Jefferson</a> then that's what we should give them: the English language wikipedia article on Jefferson. That's what they requested, that's what they should get. We should not forward them to fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson, even if they have a cookie set to prefer French, nor even if they have a browser setting to prefer French. One of the reasons is that for many articles, the French article will have a different spelling in the name of the article. Efforts to interlink the articles will be incomplete for a very long time, and in many cases, efforts to interlink may be impossible due to different choices of where to "split" certain topics. We should follow the "Principle of Least Astonishment". Users should never be astonished, even if we think they'll be astonished in a good way. --Jimbo