- There are real, concrete benefits to having a default and preferred
interface/language;
In other words, the pros and cons of such an act should be explicitly and clearly listed. There are many reasons that www.google.com, www.dmoz.org, etc. (which all have multilanguage settings) have English as the default, and it's not just that the servers are US-based).
It's the default, but if your browser is set up to sent a preferred language as part of the request (German Netscape and German MSIE do so), google.com welcomes in the preferred language.
Once that's done, we can weigh priorities.
I personally think a better focus right now for the developers is to work on maximum integration of the different language wikis. If the backend is better integrated, frontend issues become easier to deal with.
A big question that we are in the process of resolving now is whether we want to think of Wikipedia as a single project that has multiple translations, or as a bunch of largely independent projects specific to particular nations and language sets. I think the first conception is healthier and more productive over the long term. We really should think about this issue before we take broad actions that touch upon it.
Since many non-english wikipedians contribute to the english and their native 'pedia, the projects are not independent but highly linked. Having a common starting page would reflect this.
I agree with you that we should first decide on the future starting page and change www.wikipedia.org to something else as soon as we know what exactly to do.
Regards,
JeLuF