The Cunctator <cunctator(a)kband.com> writes:
1) There doesn't seem to be any major
philosophical objection to a browser
localization redirect of "http://www.wikipedia.org/".
I have nine browsers on my computer (needed for webdesign and some other
purposes). Some don't even have a localize-option and do you think I
bother to configure the rest? So I get english all the time.
My mother doesn't even know that her browser has a localize-option and she
doesn't speak english and - yes, she thinks also that webadresses always
start with www. However, she would be a great contributor to the
German wikipedia. Have you ever watched non-computer experienced people
using their computer? Just ask how many know their browser preferences.
Esperanto is not available as language option in all of my browsers. De
facto, by depending only on browser settings, we would deprive the
Esperanto wikipedia of many possible contributors (who would be
enthusiastic discovering an esperanto encyclopedia but have no interest at
all in contributing to yet another english encyclopedia)
Next, I want to see the progress of all wikipedias at one central place
and not somewhere hidden at an obscure statistics page somewhere at the
english (Main?) wikipedia where nobody of the non-english contributors
bothers to look for regularly. The version I proposed stimulates
competition.
Lastly, I want to have a simple, not crowded page to search wikipedia
where I am not disturbed by masses of text and I have to look very sharply
to discover the small "search" field in one corner.
If we want to be an encyclopedia, we should offer people an attractive
interface for quick and easy searching wikipedia - and where could this be
better placed than on the Main Page
www.wikipedia.org? If I am somewhere
and I simply want to know something, I don't want categories,
introductions and masses of links: I want a search box, cursor already
placed in it, type in something and get my results.
I only see a secondary philosophical objection. The
objection is based on
the argument that first people should be encouraged to contribute to the
Eng-lang Wikipedia before others, not from the principle that English is
better, but from the principle that "from a strict efficiency point of
view, the goal of a comprehensive and neutral encyclopedia would benefit
from dealing with issues in only one central article with as many actors as
possible debating/working together rather than several different articles
with only a couple of persons in each place, even though they are updating
their own articles from the other wikis", as Anthere eloquently put it. (I'm
not claiming she advocates this position. She just described it well.) This
objection would be pretty much obviated with better backend integration and
interlanguage tools.
If this is the case I vote for abandoning the other language wikipedias,
but I am not sure if I understood you right: you build sentences of German
length.
Besides, I am no philosopher, my objections are not philosophical
but practical. If you like to engage in philosophical discussions I
suggest a philosophy forum, not wikipedia-mailinglist.
We have one thing in common: we both object balcanization,
however our interpretation seem to vary.
I think a wikipedia, each language on a separate URL without a centralized
- and a really centralized - main page is a bundle of balkanized
projects. If this remains like this, I prefer to stay in the nice,
peaceful, balkanized German wikipedia without having to think about the
others around - at least we have
www.wikipedia.de. Maybe the dutch, the
french, the polish and so on could also reserve .nl, .fr, .pl...
greetings,
elian
--
"Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pacman affected us as
kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills
and listening to repetitive music." ~unknown