I haven't voiced an opinion on this yet; however, I do feel strongly about it. Now, I disagree with mav often enough that I don't want to appoint him my diplomatic ambassador in perpetuity for all matters, but I do want to say that I agree entirely with what he wrote.
(I quote the post that I'm referring to in its entirety below, lest you confuse it with some other post that maybe I disagree with. But you can stop reading once you recognise it ^_^.)
-- Toby
Maveric149 wrote:
I would just like to point out that part of the frustration that the current non-English Wikipedians seem to feel is that there appears to be a hierarchy where the English Wikipedia is considered to be far more important than the non-English Wikipedias in some. This is also one of the reasons why we had a Spanish fork to begin with. Part of the reason why we were getting good vibes from them on reunification is due to our then tentative plans to move the English Wikipedia to en.wikipedia.org. So without this small concession by us, I don't think there is a good chance for them rejoining our project. The English Wikipedia won't be harmed by being placed at en.wikipedia.org -- this is the only fair and neutral thing to do. If the English Wikipedia continues to push its weight around over these types of issues then there will be other forks. How is that for Balkanizaiton?
As I stated before, the URL thing is symbolic and each Wikipedia encyclopedia in my view should be treated as siblings. Granted the English Wikipedia is the oldest and largest but it shouldn't be vaulted as /The Main/ Wikipedia with the other languages relegated to second class status in The Main Wikipedia's shadow. The Main Wikipedia is the /whole/ project which includes all languages not just one, no? I furthermore don't see a move as Balkanization when we will soon all be on the same software, all use the same Metapedia and all have interlanguage links going back and forth from all the different languages. I now will often take info from articles in other languages to update their English counterparts and I also see the reverse being done by non-English Wikipedias. www.wikipedia.org should be home for the Foundation and a portal to each of the different language sub-projects as I stated in my previous post. The English Wikipedia would be just one click away from the portal and so would all the other wikipedias. This is only fair.
--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)