[Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and the Wikipedia family

[Jimmy Wales]

I totally agree about the flags -- I'm against them.  Flags are for
countries, not languages.

lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> I do, however, like the idea of representing languages with images
> of famous contributors in that language; this could be used in
> lots of places writing about Wikipedia.  I'd suggest Shakespeare,
> Hugo, Cervantes as the obvious English/French/Spanish ones.
> I don't know who would be appropriate for the others.

I don't like even this idea.  My reason is that I wouldn't know what
Hugo and Cervantes looked like if they were in my bathtub.  It's hard
to know what image could universally represent various languages, and
this is especially true for "smaller" languages.

What one person or image would be universally recognized as German,
for example?  (Hitler, but he's not a good choice for obvious
reasons!)

I like the idea of visual representations, but I think words are best
for this.  My mind could be changed if someone clever came up with an
obvious set of symbols that I felt would be inoffensive in every
respect and instantly recognizable.  But I think that's unlikely.

--Jimbo