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

[Jens Frank]

> 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