All right, then, let's vote:
RESOLVED: 1. That the English language wikipedia step down one level to www.wikipedia.org/en/ and 2. That www.wikipedia.org be the language-neutral front page, with links to the wikipedias of each language.
If debate is over, and the above resolutions are ready for a vote... either here, or on a Wiki page.
Ed Poor
On 10/16/02 8:44 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com wrote:
All right, then, let's vote:
RESOLVED:
- That the English language wikipedia step down one level to
www.wikipedia.org/en/ and 2. That www.wikipedia.org be the language-neutral front page, with links to the wikipedias of each language.
If debate is over, and the above resolutions are ready for a vote... either here, or on a Wiki page.
Not resolved. And votes are a poor idea.
Yeah, it's too soon for me, too. And voting bugs me too.
Maybe we should just relax about this and revisit it a couple of months from now, while everyone chews over the consequences?
It doesn't seem like a clean consensus is developing yet.
The Cunctator wrote:
On 10/16/02 8:44 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com wrote:
All right, then, let's vote:
RESOLVED:
- That the English language wikipedia step down one level to
www.wikipedia.org/en/ and 2. That www.wikipedia.org be the language-neutral front page, with links to the wikipedias of each language.
If debate is over, and the above resolutions are ready for a vote... either here, or on a Wiki page.
Not resolved. And votes are a poor idea.
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--- Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:
Yeah, it's too soon for me, too. And voting bugs me too.
Maybe we should just relax about this and revisit it a couple of months from now, while everyone chews over the consequences?
It doesn't seem like a clean consensus is developing yet.
Indeed. Cunc has convinced me that a portal page is a bad idea. I think we should be working toward a unified project composed of different languages, rather than remaining the English Wikipedia, the German Wikipedia, the Spanish Wikipedia, etc.
Stephen G.
__________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More http://faith.yahoo.com
[Note: Stephen's post wasn't sent to <intlwiki-l>.]
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
Cunc has convinced me that a portal page is a bad idea. I think we should be working toward a unified project composed of different languages, rather than remaining the English Wikipedia, the German Wikipedia, the Spanish Wikipedia, etc.
I can't imagine how people use the need for a unified project as an argument in favour of keeping www.wikipedia.org English. That's not unified -- that's English!
-- Toby
The Cunctator wrote:
Not resolved. And votes are a poor idea.
Aw crap. But yesterday you said:
Though I think this is a mistaken priority, this is definitely a step
in the right direction.
We can't even agree on a simple URL, and whenever we seem to agree, someone has to go and change their mind. It's not surprising the EL forked. and it's not surprising they don't want to come back.
JW said
It doesn't seem like a clean consensus is developing yet.
I may be wrong, but my impression is that it's only Cunc and Gareth Owen who are opposed to the URL change -- but they've between them made enough racket for a dozen.
tarquin tarquin@planetunreal.com writes:
I may be wrong, but my impression is that it's only Cunc and Gareth Owen who are opposed to the URL change -- but they've between them made enough racket for a dozen.
I think LDC has spoken out against, but its possible I'm mistaken.
On Wed, Oct 16, 2002 at 08:44:48AM -0400, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
RESOLVED:
- That the English language wikipedia step down one level to www.wikipedia.org/en/ and
- That www.wikipedia.org be the language-neutral front page, with links to the wikipedias of each language.
Concur.
On 16-10-2002, Khendon wrote thusly :
On Wed, Oct 16, 2002 at 08:44:48AM -0400, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
RESOLVED:
- That the English language wikipedia step down one level to www.wikipedia.org/en/ and
- That www.wikipedia.org be the language-neutral front page, with links to the wikipedias of each language.
Concur.
This seems to be a really good idea. Let the opposing three convince the rest that it is a bad thing to do.
Regards, Kpjas.
On Wed, 16 Oct 2002, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
On 16-10-2002, Khendon wrote thusly :
On Wed, Oct 16, 2002 at 08:44:48AM -0400, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
RESOLVED:
- That the English language wikipedia step down one level to www.wikipedia.org/en/ and
- That www.wikipedia.org be the language-neutral front page, with links to the wikipedias of each language.
Concur.
This seems to be a really good idea. Let the opposing three convince the rest that it is a bad thing to do.
I don't know if it's still the case, but a non-content front page used to be able to loose 20-40% of visitors to a site.
Imran
--- Imran Ghory imran@bits.bris.ac.uk wrote:
I don't know if it's still the case, but a non-content front page used to be able to loose 20-40% of visitors to a site.
Imran
Exactly. It's not the move to www.wikipedia.org/en/ that I'm opposed to. I'm against using www.wikipedia.org as a portal page.
Stephen G.
__________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More http://faith.yahoo.com
mattheww+wikipedia@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
- That the English language wikipedia step down one level to
www.wikipedia.org/en/ and
I think this is worse than using en.wikipedia.org. It would make it hard to run the different languages on different servers later, should we wish to do so.
-M-
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I find that a convincing argument against this proposal. More thought is needed.
Neil
Neil Harris wrote:
mattheww+wikipedia@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
- That the English language wikipedia step down one level to
www.wikipedia.org/en/ and
I think this is worse than using en.wikipedia.org. It would make it hard to run the different languages on different servers later, should we wish to do so.
I find that a convincing argument against this proposal. More thought is needed.
It was suggested in the first place because many people (including Cunctator) are begging for the abilities to:
* Have a single username and login for the encyclopedia in all languages and meta
* View things like Recentchanges for the encyclopedia in multiple languages and/or meta combined.
These demand a single server.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
--- Brion VIBBER brion@pobox.com wrote:
It was suggested in the first place because many people (including Cunctator) are begging for the abilities to:
- Have a single username and login for the
encyclopedia in all languages and meta
- View things like Recentchanges for the
encyclopedia in multiple languages and/or meta combined.
These demand a single server.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
They also demand input from the other language wikis. We'll have a lot of unhappy people if we take a vote on this list, then move the wikis to www.wikipedia.org/xx/.
The support expressed from the other wikis was to move the English Wikipedia to en.wikipedia.org, which is a different matter: the change only affects the English wiki.
Stephen G.
__________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More http://faith.yahoo.com
At 2002-10-16 18:44 -0700, Stephen Gilbert wrote:
--- Brion VIBBER brion@pobox.com wrote:
It was suggested in the first place because many people (including Cunctator) are begging for the abilities to:
- Have a single username and login for the
encyclopedia in all languages and meta
- View things like Recentchanges for the
encyclopedia in multiple languages and/or meta combined.
These demand a single server.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
They also demand input from the other language wikis. We'll have a lot of unhappy people if we take a vote on this list, then move the wikis to www.wikipedia.org/xx/.
The support expressed from the other wikis was to move the English Wikipedia to en.wikipedia.org, which is a different matter: the change only affects the English wiki.
What we are arguing about is a flaw in the design of URL's:
The basic format http://www.site.com/path0/path1 should have been: http://com/site/www/path0/path1
How it is organized server-wise doesn't matter to the user. By the way, everyone can easily see that 'www' is redundant in this notation. 'com' versus 'org' etc. also doesn't make much sense, because there is no 'ibm.org', 'ibm' is always 'ibm.com'.
But as things are now, I think 'mav'-s suggestions make a lot of sense. I think the www should be added in all cases, so you can leave 'http://' out.
As regards centralizing the whole system on one server, I have mixed feelings: On the one hand, I believe that individual language sites should be able to be independent, but who would benefit? The users or the ego's of the developers? I guess the latter. On the other hand: One big project (which has many advantages) might collapse at a certain point, whilst a decentralized approach might offer more chances of survival.
As it stands I tend to lean towards keeping it all central. Bandwidth-wise this isn't a real problem as long as the central server is inside of the USA. Most providers outside of the USA buy 50% local bandwidth and 50% bandwidth to the USA.
Keeping the stuff central also means that most things will be the same on all language variations of the site, which benefits the user. I see no reason why some of the sites would use a green color to indicate articles that don't exist yet and others still use a '?' behind the link. I'd also like to have to log-in only once for all sites.
As regards the entry-page which looses 20-40% viewers. I think, it's a valid point. I am not opposed to www.wikipedia.org being the entrance to the English version, but treating all languages the same also has it's charms.
I have been searching the Netscape site for a while earlier today, because I seemed to remember that it had some sort of solution for the language problem. I think that one could write several files like index.html.en index.html.de index.html.nl and in your browser you (as a client) could give a sequence of prefered languages and even when just asking for index.html you would get it in the language that you liked best. Of course I hate intelligent systems that make (usually wrong) decessions for me. I don't have a prefered language that I want to read everything in. When the orginal language is German and the translations are bad I prefer to read the original German text, the same goes for English and Dutch. But in case of French and Italian etc. I prefer a bad translation over the original.
Ah, and back again about the server issue: I don't see why http://www.nl.wikipedia.org/ can more easily be on a server in another country than http://www.wikipedia.org/nl/. I tend to assume that these redirection issues have already been solved.
I tend to like the second format better, but somehow I don't really feel comfortable with the language being coded into the path. I don't know why. I'll program myself to dream about this problem tonight...
Greetings, Jaap
It was suggested in the first place because many people (including Cunctator) are begging for the abilities to:
- Have a single username and login for the encyclopedia in all languages
and meta
- View things like Recentchanges for the encyclopedia in multiple
languages and/or meta combined.
These demand a single server.
umm.. not really.. you can make domain wide cookies that work accross subdomains
Lightning
At 2002-10-16 23:52 -0500, Lightning wrote:
It was suggested in the first place because many people (including Cunctator) are begging for the abilities to:
- Have a single username and login for the encyclopedia in all languages
and meta
- View things like Recentchanges for the encyclopedia in multiple
languages and/or meta combined.
These demand a single server.
umm.. not really.. you can make domain wide cookies that work accross subdomains
And anyway, this is hardly relevant. Our main goal should be to try to achieve user experience value and not developer experience value.
Greetings, Jaap
Lightning wrote:
It was suggested in the first place because many people (including Cunctator) are begging for the abilities to:
- Have a single username and login for the encyclopedia in all languages
and meta
- View things like Recentchanges for the encyclopedia in multiple
languages and/or meta combined.
These demand a single server.
umm.. not really.. you can make domain wide cookies that work accross subdomains
Cookie, schmookie. I'm talking about the backend; if a login is to work painlessly across all languages, you have to create the account in the database(s) for all languages, keep the password consistent, etc. So either these other servers are dependent on a central user account / recentchanges server, or they are on the same server and use a common database in the first place.
If the supposed benefit of having separate hostnames is that you can use separate servers, but we're doing things that mean the separate servers are dependant on a central server to function, the benefit seems rather weak indeed.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Cookie, schmookie. I'm talking about the backend; if a login is to work painlessly across all languages, you have to create the account in the database(s) for all languages, keep the password consistent, etc. So either these other servers are dependent on a central user account / recentchanges server, or they are on the same server and use a common database in the first place.
If the supposed benefit of having separate hostnames is that you can use separate servers, but we're doing things that mean the separate servers are dependant on a central server to function, the benefit seems rather weak indeed.
ahhh. yes, i get you know. I was thinking more about the universal login that universal recent changes... an idea which I find odd. i mean, if all the wiki's start getting big, you'd have to keep that page at 250 items and reload every couple of seconds to see the recent changes, its hard enough keeping up with them now.. and its only in english. Dont you guys think this is more an admin/editor function than it is something usefull to people coming to read something rather than write it?
Oh and i was kind of assuming when you meant separate servers that you meant, a server per language for spitting pages (if it ever gets that big) and maybe a couple of slave db servers for reads and a master db server for changes.. using mySQL replication. maybe i got a bit ahead of myself.. so dont mind me
Lightning
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
All right, then, let's vote:
RESOLVED:
- That the English language wikipedia step down one level to www.wikipedia.org/en/ and
- That www.wikipedia.org be the language-neutral front page, with links to the wikipedias of each language.
If debate is over, and the above resolutions are ready for a vote... either here, or on a Wiki page.
If this means that www.wikipedia.org becomes the international Wikipedia project frontpage for all member wikipedias and all the non-english wikipedias can ceep there own xx.wikipedia.org adress then this is a internall matter of the english wikipedia..
I do not find it a good idea that you use www.wikipedia.org/en/...... It do not understand that you find that more easy then en.wikipedia.org but that is a internal affair.
If the idea is to put all wikipedias there, that somthing very different and not somthing that can be done by a quick vote on wikipedia-l
Giskart
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
All right, then, let's vote: RESOLVED:
- That the English language wikipedia step down one level to
www.wikipedia.org/en/ and 2. That www.wikipedia.org be the language-neutral front page, with links to the wikipedias of each language.
I think Jimmy promised me a year ago that the old URLs would be permanently valid. Is this something that can be voted on? Would http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/William_Shakespeare still be a valid URL to the article in English on William Shakespeare?
I might have written such URLs into several thousand web pages in more or less static HTML, e.g. http://www.lysator.liu.se/runeberg/authors/shakewil.html When I discover that such links are broken, I remove the links rather than correct them, since a website that changed their URLs once is likely to do so again. I don't hate websites that change their URLs, I just don't link to them.
Wikipedia should have a written policy for URLs, just like the GFDL license. Why should I want to contribute to a project where all URLs can be changed by a vote the next month?
Lars Aronsson wrote:
I think Jimmy promised me a year ago that the old URLs would be permanently valid. Is this something that can be voted on? Would http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/William_Shakespeare still be a valid URL to the article in English on William Shakespeare?
All URL forms we have used to point to articles will be valid forever insofar as I have anything to do about it.
Wikipedia should have a written policy for URLs, just like the GFDL license. Why should I want to contribute to a project where all URLs can be changed by a vote the next month?
We use redirects to preserve old links when titles and URLs are refined, both within the wiki and without. Anyone who violates that is an enemy of this project and its purposes and should be severely walloped on the head with a Nerf ball while someone yells "404 FILE NOT FOUND!" in their ears until they learn the error of their ways.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Lars Aronsson wrote:
I think Jimmy promised me a year ago that the old URLs would be permanently valid. Is this something that can be voted on? Would http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/William_Shakespeare still be a valid URL to the article in English on William Shakespeare?
I stand by that promise. Nothing will _ever_ break those URLs if I can help it. To break URLs for any reason at all is unacceptable.
Wikipedia should have a written policy for URLs, just like the GFDL license. Why should I want to contribute to a project where all URLs can be changed by a vote the next month?
Don't worry about that. However we resolve the question of political sensitivity surrounding 'www' being 'English', we will not ever break the old URLs, even if this means that there is some lingering small disparity of treatment between the wikis.
I'm not even in favor of "redirecting" versus just "aliasing", just because it makes the browser do an extra step for no particular reason. I'm not adamant about this point, though. I would just say that it's best not to redirect.
--Jimbo
p.s. Here's what redirection means...
User: "Hi wikipedia, may I see the article about Thomas Jefferson"
Server: "I know which article you mean, but I won't give it to you until you ask me properly, like this: <new url>"
User: "Sigh, O.k., may I please see <new url>"
Server: "O.k., here you go."
Versus aliasing:
User: "Hi wikipedia, may I see the article about Thomas Jefferson"
Server: "O.k., here you go."
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I'm not even in favor of "redirecting" versus just "aliasing", just because it makes the browser do an extra step for no particular reason. I'm not adamant about this point, though. I would just say that it's best not to redirect.
I made redirects rather than aliases when going across hostnames to keep the login cookies working. Remember the old furor over "I'm not logged in when I go to http://www.wikipedia.com/ but I am when I look at other pages"? It's much like that: it harms the user experience to have their login cookie for www.wikipedia.org not work at wikipedia.com or for nl.wikipedia.org not work at nl.wikipedia.com.
Extra bonus point: you see the preferred URL form in your browser's URL bar after loading it up.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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