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

[lcrocker at nupedia.com]

>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.

True, but you'd know your own, and I'm only suggesting that
these be used as "decorative" illustrations rather than flags
to /accompany/ plain text, not replace it.  And of course you're
right that many would be very unobvious.