[Wikipedia-l] Moving the English Wikipedia to en.wikipedia.org

[Brion VIBBER]

The Cunctator wrote:
> The primary objection is that this hasn't really been discussed.

It's been nothing _but_ discussed for months.

 > That said:
> 
> 1) There isn't a clear picture of what overall policy this fits in with;

Naming standards: every encyclopedia wiki in the project is at 
{languagecode}.wikipedia.(com|org) except the English one.

> 2) Whether whatever that overall policy is well-thought out and correct;

Well, it sounds rather reasonable to me.

> 3) What the consequences of the change from a usability perspective have not
> been delineated;

URLs are deliberately being preserved. User interface isn't any 
different. One-time cookie change requires users to push the "login" button.

Front page not yet changed; new front page may make some people want to 
change their bookmarks if they wanted the English encyclopedic front 
page specifically.

> 4) "A new intro page can later be set up at convenience" is probably not how
> we want to do this;

Oh?

> 5) There are real, concrete benefits to having a default and preferred
> interface/language;

Which are?

> 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).
> 
> 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.

If I'd just spent the 30 seconds to make the change without telling you, 
I'd have a lot more time to focus on such things. ;)

> 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.

"Translations" is an odd choice of words.

The *user interface of the program* is 'translated' from a central 
source, but the encyclopedia articles aren't. Ideally they should all 
contain the same (maximal quality, maximal amount of) information by 
cross-pollination: new material added in any one language can be taken 
over to the others. That's not a one-way street, and doesn't have to be 
achieved by "translation".

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)