On Thursday 10 October 2002 04:39 pm, LDC wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
...Part of the reason why we
were getting good vibes from them on reunification is
due to our then tentative plans to move the English
Wikipedia to
en.wikipedia.org. So without this small
concession by us, I don't think there is a good chance
for them rejoining our project. The English Wikipedia
won't be harmed by being placed at
en.wikipedia.org --
this is the only fair and neutral thing to do.
Poppycock. There absolutely /no/ technical benefit
to this change, and it will cause massive problems
by changing the URL of every page indexed by every
search engine in the life of the project and increase
server load.
This isn't about technical issues -- Google will just reindex the site and all
current www links can point to en. It took Google about a month, but it
already has done this with the .org change.
If its only purpose is to placate a few
Spanish-speaking folk, then I say let them get over it.
Maybe you should actually read my entire post. I stated very clearly that
www.wikipedia.org should be the home of the foundation and a portal to all
the projects. The reunification para was only one part of my post.
We're not here to stroke their egos. We're
here to
create a product that will be useful to our users--88%
of whom speak English (estimated from server logs).
Which came first? The very prominent and large English Wikipedia or the large
English speaking user base? One of the reasons why Wikipedia is
overwhelmingly dominated by English only speakers is because we emphasize the
English Wikipedia so much. If we emphasize the non-English Wikipedias more or
less equally with the English one then the non-English Wikipedias' user-base
and article count will rise accordingly.
And so what if ~90% of our visitors are English speakers? How are they at all
harmed by having in the English Wikipedia at en.wikipedia instead of
www.wikipedia? How about minority rights? Shall we just brush them away? I'm
not at all convinced that most of those ~90% would support the status quo or
even care. Therefore we should err on the side keeping the whole Wikipedia
community happy and together.
We'll make real, substantive progress soon when we
get
the non-profit running and better integrate the new
software. Without that, no amount of symbolic fluff
will matter; with it, the Spanish-speakers will have
no reason to worry about minor little nits like domain
names.
I know from experience that when you are treated like a second class citizen
symbolism and well-intended gestures become very important (The en.wiki thing
is just the most visible part of the puzzle). Also with the current
status-quo where is the foundation's website going to be located? On the
English Wikipedia or at foundation.wikipedia.org? Either way this does carry
symbolic meaning ("foundation" is in English) that will be viewed negatively
by many non-English speakers.
Have patience, all will be well.
I'm not so sure. Perhaps some empathy is in order; What would you want to
occur if you were treated as a second class citizen?
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)