Trying to enforse the "rules" on the main page is nothing short of distruption to make a point (WP:POINT).
WP:POINT, WP:DICK, WP:FUCK are for people who can't argue, refuse to argue, or are incapable of making sound points to counteract a rather sound argument with which they disagree.
In other words, it's a cop-out.
To negate the argument. If you're going to make rules for other people to abide by, you better abide by them yourself. That's just a matter of courtesy.
Otherwise, at the macrocosmic scale, it makes your authority illegitimate and then you can be dragged out into the street and executed like Mussolini (hanged), or Ceauşescu (shot), Robespierre (beheaded) or any other historical figure or government that ruled arbitrarily with a "do as I say, not as I do" style of governance.
As to other links in print sources. Whoever wrote up marketing materials with " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page " on it should be dragged into the street and shot, or at least fired because anyone in ad copy will tell you to state shorter URLs on such materials, or your target audience won't find it or (worse) they'll ignore it. Heck, I type en.wikipedia.org each time I get to Wikipedia, but I'm not most people. Most people don't think when looking at or responding to ads, written materials, etc. Any smart marketing/adcopy person would have told you to get put together materials saying " www.wikipedia.com "
Jimbo, if that's the case, fire the marketing department.
...and switch the damn Main Page already.
A hard redirect could fix this faster than I can fix a cheap boxed brownie mix from duncan hines.
Regards, Christopher D. Thieme User:ExplorerCDT cdthieme@gmail.com
Jimbo has nothing to do with this, we're talking about the external links posted on blogs and other sites put there by readers, not some organized marketing material from the foundation because there isn't any.
On 1/14/07, Christopher Thieme cdthieme@gmail.com wrote:
Trying to enforse the "rules" on the main page is nothing short of distruption to make a point (WP:POINT).
WP:POINT, WP:DICK, WP:FUCK are for people who can't argue, refuse to argue, or are incapable of making sound points to counteract a rather sound argument with which they disagree.
In other words, it's a cop-out.
To negate the argument. If you're going to make rules for other people to abide by, you better abide by them yourself. That's just a matter of courtesy.
Otherwise, at the macrocosmic scale, it makes your authority illegitimate and then you can be dragged out into the street and executed like Mussolini (hanged), or Ceauşescu (shot), Robespierre (beheaded) or any other historical figure or government that ruled arbitrarily with a "do as I say, not as I do" style of governance.
As to other links in print sources. Whoever wrote up marketing materials with " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page " on it should be dragged into the street and shot, or at least fired because anyone in ad copy will tell you to state shorter URLs on such materials, or your target audience won't find it or (worse) they'll ignore it. Heck, I type en.wikipedia.org each time I get to Wikipedia, but I'm not most people. Most people don't think when looking at or responding to ads, written materials, etc. Any smart marketing/adcopy person would have told you to get put together materials saying " www.wikipedia.com "
Jimbo, if that's the case, fire the marketing department.
...and switch the damn Main Page already.
A hard redirect could fix this faster than I can fix a cheap boxed brownie mix from duncan hines.
Regards, Christopher D. Thieme User:ExplorerCDT cdthieme@gmail.com _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 14/01/07, Christopher Thieme cdthieme@gmail.com wrote:
As to other links in print sources. Whoever wrote up marketing materials with " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page " on it should be dragged into the street and shot, or at least fired because anyone in ad copy will tell you to state shorter URLs on such materials, or your target audience won't find it or (worse) they'll ignore it. Heck, I type en.wikipedia.org each time I get to Wikipedia, but I'm not most people. Most people don't think when looking at or responding to ads, written materials, etc. Any smart marketing/adcopy person would have told you to get put together materials saying " www.wikipedia.com "
Jimbo, if that's the case, fire the marketing department.
This isn't "the marketing department". It's the public. The one academic article I can remember offhand - in the Journal of American History - which deals with us does indeed, footnote ".../Main_Page". It's all the newspaper stories which talk about us and give the mainpage URL at the end. It's the thousands, tens of thousands, of people who link into us from the rest of the web, and dutifully - and sensibly - do so to the URL we give as our front page. We have all these things pointing to "Main_Page". None of them are going to go away. There is no pressing reason to move the page; so why do it?
There is nothing to me that seems more futile than making a vast fuss about changing something to fit into an arbitrary scheme which we ourself chose to impose. We wrote these rules. We are perfectly capable of exercising our common sense in choosing when they apply.
On 1/14/07, Christopher Thieme cdthieme@gmail.com wrote:
Any smart marketing/adcopy person would have told you to get put together materials saying " www.wikipedia.com "
We are not a .com.
but it works!
Firefoxman
On 1/14/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/14/07, Christopher Thieme cdthieme@gmail.com wrote:
Any smart marketing/adcopy person would have told you to get put together
materials
saying " www.wikipedia.com "
We are not a .com.
-- geni
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 1/14/07, Christopher Thieme cdthieme@gmail.com wrote:
As to other links in print sources. Whoever wrote up marketing materials with " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page " on it should be dragged into the street and shot, or at least fired because anyone in ad copy will tell you to state shorter URLs on such materials, or your target audience won't find it or (worse) they'll ignore it. Heck, I type en.wikipedia.org each time I get to Wikipedia, but I'm not most people. Most people don't think when looking at or responding to ads, written materials, etc. Any smart marketing/adcopy person would have told you to get put together materials saying " www.wikipedia.com "
Jimbo, if that's the case, fire the marketing department.
What marketing? When did wikipedia ever do marketing? Never! Marketing has never ever been a priority in any way since page hits are fairly irrelevant to the development of wikipedia since we're an ad-free non-profit (well, atleast not pagehits beyond a certain point needed to get contributors).
And by the way, are you seriously arguing that having the main page where it is has hurt wikipedias popularity? Are you freaking kidding me? We're in the top 10 most visited websites! Popularity is the least of our concerns.
If you think about decisions about wikipedia in terms of marketing, you're really not getting what wikipedia is.
--Oskar
On 1/15/07, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/14/07, Christopher Thieme cdthieme@gmail.com wrote:
As to other links in print sources. Whoever wrote up marketing
materials
with " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page " on it should be dragged
into
the street and shot, or at least fired because anyone in ad copy will
tell
you to state shorter URLs on such materials, or your target audience
won't
find it or (worse) they'll ignore it. Heck, I type en.wikipedia.orgeach time I get to Wikipedia, but I'm not most people. Most people don't
think
when looking at or responding to ads, written materials, etc. Any smart marketing/adcopy person would have told you to get put together
materials
saying " www.wikipedia.com "
Jimbo, if that's the case, fire the marketing department.
What marketing? When did wikipedia ever do marketing? Never! Marketing has never ever been a priority in any way since page hits are fairly irrelevant to the development of wikipedia since we're an ad-free non-profit (well, atleast not pagehits beyond a certain point needed to get contributors).
And by the way, are you seriously arguing that having the main page where it is has hurt wikipedias popularity? Are you freaking kidding me? We're in the top 10 most visited websites! Popularity is the least of our concerns.
Heh. I'm sure that Wikimedia's marketers all have nice jobs in big fancy marketing firms by now for being so good at their jobs, so *incredibly* sneaky, that none of us knew they existed -- and yet they *still* managed to turn Wikipedia into a top-10 website! Nice work, ladies and gentlemen. And we got them so cheap, too!
-- phoebe