[Wikipedia-l] Maybe "portal page" was a poor choice of words

[Sven Burkhart]

From: "elian" <elian at gmx.li>
>
> So we continue our current procedure to hide the other language wikipedias
> from the user. It doesn't mind that I speak five languages, I have to be
> happy with the German wikipedia because it's point one in my browser
> settings. And if my Spanish friends use my computer for surfing, they get
> German, too, even if they speak no German at all. And the Japanese student
> at the German university library computer gets German, too, even if he
> would be a lot more interested in the japanese wikipedia.

This front page could simply redirect to the preferred language. Of course,
you can still pick a certain language by entering through es.wikipeda.org or
jp.wikipedia.org which would be not any different from the current
situation. In addition, you could follow the interlink from the homepage to
the language you want. These interlinks as well as the links on the page
"Wikipedia in other languages" will also enable google&co to find all
other pedias, no matter through which language they come in.

> Sorry, I can't see any additional value from such a front page.

The advantage would be an URL easy to remember for everyone since it starts
with the common "www" instead of a the rather unusual language code. It
could also help to overcome the concerns of non-English wikipedians that the
English pedia is treated different.

Sven (Ben-Zin)