At the same time of a possibel switch and the creation of the non-proffit organisation it is a good time for considering to use the domain www.wikipedia.org as the website for this non-proffit organisation en general information and promotion for all the Wikipedia's. The English Wikipedia can use en.wikipedia.org
Giskart
--- Giskart giskart@linux.be wrote:
At the same time of a possibel switch and the creation of the non-proffit organisation it is a good time for considering to use the domain www.wikipedia.org as the website for this non-proffit organisation en general information and promotion for all the Wikipedia's. The English Wikipedia can use en.wikipedia.org
The problem with that suggestion is that it would break thousands of links across the web.
Stephen G.
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On Sun, 18 Aug 2002, Stephen Gilbert wrote:
At the same time of a possibel switch and the creation of the non-proffit organisation it is a good time for considering to use the domain www.wikipedia.org as the website for this non-proffit organisation en general information and promotion for all the Wikipedia's. The English Wikipedia can use en.wikipedia.org
The problem with that suggestion is that it would break thousands of links across the web.
The longer we wait, the worse it'll get. Besides, a clever apache rewrite would fix the problem until the search engines could catch up.
-- Daniel
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
At the same time of a possibel switch and the creation of the non-proffit organisation it is a good time for considering to use the domain www.wikipedia.org as the website for this non-proffit organisation en general information and promotion for all the Wikipedia's. The English Wikipedia can use en.wikipedia.org
The problem with that suggestion is that it would break thousands of links across the web.
Are you sure ? If there can be a redirect form www.wikipedia.com/a_articel to www.wikipedia.org/a_articel like it is now done it must be no problem to point www.wikipedia.com/a_articel to en.wikipedia.org/a_articel
There are thousands of links to www.wikipedia.com but not (yet) to www.wikipedia.org . That is the reasen why it is now the time to think about this.
giskart
At 2002-08-18 23:58 +0200, Giskart wrote:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
At the same time of a possibel switch and the creation of the non-proffit organisation it is a good time for considering to use the domain www.wikipedia.org as the website for this non-proffit organisation en general information and promotion for all the Wikipedia's. The English Wikipedia can use en.wikipedia.org
The problem with that suggestion is that it would break thousands of links across the web.
Are you sure ? If there can be a redirect form www.wikipedia.com/a_articel to www.wikipedia.org/a_articel like it is now done it must be no problem to point www.wikipedia.com/a_articel to en.wikipedia.org/a_articel
There are thousands of links to www.wikipedia.com but not (yet) to www.wikipedia.org . That is the reasen why it is now the time to think about this.
I think it should be: http://www.nl.wikipedia.org/ http://www.be.wikipedia.org/ http://www.pt.wikipedia.org/ http://www.eo.wikipedia.org/ etc.
I think that the english version should have two names: http://www.en.wikipedia.org/ and http://www.wikipedia.org/
Let's face it, English is the lingua franca on the internet!
Otherwise we could make: http://www.wikipedia.org/ to be the 'portal' to the subdomains, but in which language should it be?
I think all, the *.wikipedia.com sites should jump to the appropriate *.org page, but at the same time notifying intelligent search engines etc. that the page was moved and links to it should be changed.
By the way, my own *chipdir* sites have so many non-correct links to them, that I gave up to ever get it right. Years ago when the MS-DOS/CD-ROM 8.3 filesystem names where still quite dominant I changed all the .html files to .htm files. I still UNIX-link the main .htm files to .html filenames or I would loose to many visitors (I guess).
I also wrote a PHP-script to check out links in pages (mainly for in the chipdir) and there are so many sites out there that don't return the correct page result codes (404 and such), that it's hard to ever straighten that system out! There is a test version on: http://www.ii.nl/jaap/checkurl.php Please ignore all the error message (about the script), just fill in an URL in any of the two boxes and click it's button. When you fill in http://www.wikipedia.com/ it may take 5 minutes or so, since all links will be checked...
Don't use the script too check complete sites, it's on a server hired by a friend. Email me for the source if you want it. I don't mind GPL'ing it. My local version may be improved in the mean time.
Greetings, Jaap
-- Chip Directory -- http://www.chipdir.org/ -- http://www.chipdir.nl/ -- http://www.embeddedlogic.com/chipdir/ - New in the USA -- And about 30 other mirror sites world-wide. -- -- To subscribe to a free 'chip issues, questions and answers' -- mailing list send a message to listguru@fatcity.com with -- in the body 'subscribe chipdir-L'. About 500 experts are -- willing to think with you about electronics problems etc.
Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:
I think it should be: http://www.nl.wikipedia.org/ http://www.be.wikipedia.org/ http://www.pt.wikipedia.org/ http://www.eo.wikipedia.org/ etc.
I do not. I find it not a good idea to make a url longer if there is no good reasen for it. For those users that get confused if a url does not start whit WWW there can be a redirect form http://www.nl.wikipedia.org to http://nl.wikipedia.org. That is more than enough.
I think that the english version should have two names: http://www.en.wikipedia.org/ and http://www.wikipedia.org/
www.wikipedia.com can be a redirect to en.wikipedia.org Just like nl.wikipedia.com to nl.wikipedia.org (and for the other wikipedia's also offcourse) And http://www.en.wikipedia.org redirect to http://en.wikipedia.org
Let's face it, English is the lingua franca on the internet!
Yes, but most English speaking nations are allready online. In following years many, many non-english users will com online. I think on china and so. I agree that English is more or less the lingua franca on the internet for the moment. But for how long ? Nobody knows ...
Otherwise we could make: http://www.wikipedia.org/ to be the 'portal' to the subdomains, but in which language should it be?
That is my idea, www.wikipedia.org for presentation and information about the project. The education about the GNU/FDL-license. Things like that ... The default language should be English. Only the English wikipedia has the resources to do that, the others are mutch to small at present. But whit the possiblity to change to a different if the there is a translation.
In the future, when there is need for mony, the .com domain can possibly be used for a readonly-wikipedia whit advertisment.
giskart
Regarding urls:
We have as much responsibility to usability as we do to political correctness.
The best solution would handle both.
The worst solution would hurt usability and encourage language balkanization.
What are the parameters of the situation?
1) www.wikipedia.org (and its minor variants wikipedia.org and wikipedia.com) is and will forever remain the primary url.
2) Wikipedia is currently owned by an American company; it was started in English; the English Wikipedia is orders larger than any other, English is the lingua franca of the current times and of the Internet. All these may change but are true now.
3) We desire all the language Wikipedias to be on equal footing.
Note that, for 3) to mean "equivalent in content", there would have to be some mechanism to compensate for real-world differences in the degree of participation in different languages. There will always be more English than Icelandic speakers, etc. A perfect such mechanism would be expert-quality automatic translation.
That out of the way, let me suggest that changing URLs should only be a minor component of dealing with 3, not a primary focus. More effort should be put into building the cross-link capabilities, perhaps with some automatic dictionary translations. The wikipedias should all be running the same software. There should be the option of having Recent Changes show changes from any array of the languages, so that for a French contributor fluent in English, his Recent Changes (and thus his Wikipedia, to a large degree) looks like a French-English Wikipedia.
Etc.
I really think focussing only on the URLs is making us miss the big picture.
--- The Cunctator cunctator@kband.com wrote:
That out of the way, let me suggest that changing URLs should only be a minor component of dealing with 3, not a primary focus.
I agree.
More effort should be put into building the cross-link capabilities, perhaps with some automatic dictionary translations.
I think automatic dictionary translations would be a big mess. I am continually reminded of the shortcomings of dictionary translations here in South Korea. Human-made links are by far superior to any automatic translation of words.
The wikipedias should all be running the same software.
Absolutely. As soon as the other language projects start running the Phase III software, they can start linking to each other and the English 'pedia.
There should be the option of having Recent Changes show changes from any array of the languages, so that for a French contributor fluent in English, his Recent Changes (and thus his Wikipedia, to a large degree) looks like a French-English Wikipedia.
The only problem with this suggesting is that the English Wikipedia's Recent Changes is huge when it should each and every change, rather than combining changes made on the same article. Adding the French one to that would make it useless.
Stephen G.
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On 8/19/02 6:21 PM, "Stephen Gilbert" canuck_in_korea2002@yahoo.com wrote:
There should be the option of having Recent Changes show changes from any array of the languages, so that for a French contributor fluent in English, his Recent Changes (and thus his Wikipedia, to a large degree) looks like a French-English Wikipedia.
The only problem with this suggesting is that the English Wikipedia's Recent Changes is huge when it should each and every change, rather than combining changes made on the same article. Adding the French one to that would make it useless.
Right. There are a lot of ways to make the Recent Changes page more useful. The trick is to figure out a way of doing so without allowing total balkanization.
One reform/change I'd recommend is that for non-minor edits, something must be put in the summary. That still trusts users enough not to waste their time on minor edits, but forces them to help others review their work easily.
I think it should be: http://www.nl.wikipedia.org/ http://www.be.wikipedia.org/ http://www.pt.wikipedia.org/ http://www.eo.wikipedia.org/ etc.
I think it should be www.wikipedia.nl www.wikipedia.be www.wikipedia.pt www.wikipedia.eo (uuups)
The longer we wait to get these domains, the more we will have to deal with domain grabbers. Which domains besides .com, .org and .de do we (Jimmy) already own?
Kurt
Kurt Jansson wrote:
I think it should be www.wikipedia.nl www.wikipedia.be www.wikipedia.pt www.wikipedia.eo (uuups)
At the end every wikipedia must dicide on there own(like the germans), but in general using ccTLD's can create nationalistic problems. Most if not all wikipedia's are not the wikipedia of a specific nation but from a language and that can be spread over several country's. Those left out will not be amused. And somtimes the ccTLD do not exicest. Or it is idiotic.
www.wikipedia.be -> =the ccTLD of Belgium and the Belorussian language. Trust me on this, the do not speak Belorussian in Belgium
The gTDL .org is perfect for Wikipedia i think.
The longer we wait to get these domains, the more we will have to deal with domain grabbers. Which domains besides .com, .org and .de do we (Jimmy) already own?
also .info, .net
That these are safe is not bad but to buy every possibel wikipedia.* seems a waste to me.
giskart
Giskart wrote:
Are you sure ? If there can be a redirect form www.wikipedia.com/a_articel to www.wikipedia.org/a_articel like it is now done it must be no problem to point www.wikipedia.com/a_articel to en.wikipedia.org/a_articel
There are thousands of links to www.wikipedia.com but not (yet) to www.wikipedia.org . That is the reasen why it is now the time to think about this.
Another possibility is to have: http://www.wikipedia.org/ http://www.wikipedia.com/ http://wikipedia.org/ http://wikipedia.com/ merely be a static page that links to the various languages, while: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/* http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/* http://wikipedia.com/wiki/* http://wikipedia.org/wiki/* would go to the English to preserve existing links, while the canonical urls for such would be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*
Unless you'd prefer to move the meta wiki into the www.wikipedia.org place and declare it to be multilingual. (Shudder)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion VIBBER wrote:
Another possibility is to have: http://www.wikipedia.org/ http://www.wikipedia.com/ http://wikipedia.org/ http://wikipedia.com/ merely be a static page that links to the various languages, while: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/* http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/* http://wikipedia.com/wiki/* http://wikipedia.org/wiki/* would go to the English to preserve existing links, while the canonical urls for such would be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*
Good possibility. I like it.
Unless you'd prefer to move the meta wiki into the www.wikipedia.org place and declare it to be multilingual. (Shudder)
Can still be done later. The problem is the lack of time. If you wait to long there are to many links to the new location of the english wikipedia that can not be broken. If there is no fundamental objection to put the English wikipedia at en.wikipedia.org then that must be done. What to do whit www.wikipedia.org can wait (a littel.)
giskart
Giskart wrote:
Brion VIBBER wrote:
Another possibility is to have: http://www.wikipedia.org/ http://www.wikipedia.com/ http://wikipedia.org/ http://wikipedia.com/ merely be a static page that links to the various languages, while: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/* http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/* http://wikipedia.com/wiki/* http://wikipedia.org/wiki/* would go to the English to preserve existing links, while the canonical urls for such would be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*
Good possibility. I like it.
Unless you'd prefer to move the meta wiki into the www.wikipedia.org place and declare it to be multilingual. (Shudder)
Can still be done later. The problem is the lack of time. If you wait to long there are to many links to the new location of the english wikipedia that can not be broken. If there is no fundamental objection to put the English wikipedia at en.wikipedia.org then that must be done. What to do whit www.wikipedia.org can wait (a littel.)
giskart
Google is now starting to find wikipedia at the new location www.wikipedia.org = 18 www.wikipedia.com = 1360
Time is up.
giskart
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