Michael Everson wrote:
At 07:44 -0400 2008-07-25, Jimmy Wales wrote:
This sounds simple enough. The javascript already exists, right? And it works? And it will allow people with older browsers to use Wikipedia today, while also providing a sensible path forward for the future?
That sounds wonderful! How can we make that happen on my.wikipedia.org?
If you are going to allow "any" UTF-8 font to be used on my.wiki then I do not see how I can be of service to you. What I can do is help to ensure that we know what the capabilities of Unicode-5.1 compliant fonts are, and to ensure that compliant fonts are listed in a reasoned order in the CSS. What is being suggested here sounds as though it would simply perpetuate and encourage the use of non-standard fonts. I don't believe that is the right thing to do, and it will just cause more work later.
Well, let me be clearer on what I am suggesting.
If there are people who are simply unable to upgrade or able but don't know how, I think we should find a way to accomodate them while at the same time encouraging them to upgrade. Everything should be stored in a Unicode-5.1 compliant way, and then input method used for those on older systems should strictly enforce this.
This is a question of effectiveness. Is it more effective to simply switch to a system on Wikipedia that many people are unable to use at all, or is it more effective to get those people involved in writing content that will be valuable for the future while teaching and educating them (and turning them into sales people for upgrading!)?
I will say this much, though: allowing people to use an input method which "breaks" anything is absolutely something I would oppose, because that would create more work later. So I think we agree on that part.
The part where we may not agree is in the area of: what do we tell people on the site who do not have a system which can do things in the modern way?
1. Go away, you have an old computer - not welcoming 2. Go to this other site and work in the old way, make friends with a different community, do work that probably replicates work done on the real site, etc. - the worst possibility, because we will never unite the communities in the end, trust me, I know about this 3. Welcome! Here is how you can input using your old system, but really you should upgrade. Please upgrade. Here is how. Please upgrade. You can keep doing this for now but it is old-fashioned. Please upgrade.
--Jimbo