On 10/24/02 1:49 PM, "Jimmy Wales" jwales@bomis.com wrote:
On 10/24/02 10:07 AM, "elian" elian@gmx.li wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
Changing the front page into something like this is a profoundly bad idea.
What are your specific objections?
See: http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-August/004031.html http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005823.html http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005919.html http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005933.html http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005934.html http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005967.html http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-October/000891.html http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-October/000901.html http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-October/000988.html http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006046.html http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006014.html
Anthere: http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006086.html
LDC: http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005922.html http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005949.html
In short: 1. A page like this is useful exactly once for any user. After that it becomes useless. 2. Such pages kill usability and participation. 3. This kind of page promotes the view that Wikipedia is a coalition of largely distinct projects, balkanized by language (and implicitly branded by nationality). I think this is very much the wrong approach.
Just because something can be done without coding doesn't mean it's a good idea.
When/if I have the time, I'll make predictions of what the consequences of such a change would be, with internecine squabbles, forks, depressed participation, arguments for the language boxes to be randomly rotated, etc.