Gerrit Holl wrote:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Gerrit Holl wrote:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl redirects to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl. It shouldn't.
Yes it should. It's a contract.
How's that?
In the beginning (Jan 15, 2001) was the English www.wikipedia.com, and then (March 16, 2001) came deutsche.wikipedia.com. When more languages were added (summer 2001), two character language codes were applied. As far as I can see from my e-mail archive, the idea to move the English Wikipedia to a language code domain was first suggested on intlwiki-l on March 25, 2002. The oldest archive.org version of en.wikipedia.org is from November 2002.
Opposition to this move in 2002 held that existing links should not be broken. It was agreed that www.wikipedia.org (and .com) could become an international starting page, but that old article URLs, such as www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Chernobyl should not be broken, but should redirect to the new address on the English Wikipedia. This contract has been held since.
An important document should be this archived e-mail, http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-March/000361.html