I'm a new user and I didn't even know the meta wikipedia was there... I was about to write my own page of 'questions about the wikepedia' to try and get some answers. As it is I hadn't done it yet and now I know it doesn't belong in the main wiki-space at all... I've also found answers to some of my questions just by browsing, so I don't feel the need to ask them anymore!
But since I didn't know about the meta-wp, the odds are that nor will any other newbie, and newbies are just the sort of people with questions and queries about the nature of the wikipedia... given the nature of the project I can see a hundred newbies coming in over a period of time and making pages entitled 'Things I want to know about the Wikipedia' or 'My Questions I want answered' etc... either that or I'm just wierd! I've never been one to lurk and wait - if I think something's a good idea I tend to jump in with both feet :)
Anyway, to get to the point, my suggestion is that there should be a clear statement on the front page of the Wikipedia directing people to the meta-wikipedia for discussions ABOUT the Wikipedia, like the link sending people back to the main page from the front page of the meta.
Karen Johnson
Karen AKA Kajikit wrote:
I'm a new user and I didn't even know the meta wikipedia was there...
We should make it more prominent, then.
Anyway, to get to the point, my suggestion is that there should be a clear statement on the front page of the Wikipedia directing people to the meta-wikipedia for discussions ABOUT the Wikipedia, like the link sending people back to the main page from the front page of the meta.
I think you're 100% right.
On lun, 2002-04-08 at 16:20, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Karen AKA Kajikit wrote:
I'm a new user and I didn't even know the meta wikipedia was there...
We should make it more prominent, then.
Okay, crazy idea time:
What if we had the ability to include multiple wikis in the RecentChanges list? e.g., English AND meta and perhaps French and Esperanto wikipedias all together in one list? It would make my life more convenient, anyway.
Yes. Yes, it's madness, I know. Besides, I'd probably be the one who had to figure out how to make it work cleanly. (ugh)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
What if we had the ability to include multiple wikis in the RecentChanges list? e.g., English AND meta and perhaps French and Esperanto wikipedias all together in one list? It would make my life more convenient, anyway.
Two (or more) languages in the same "Recent Changes" would seem confusing to me. There could be an additional "International Recent Changes", though, with user-defined settings. This would also work for the meta-wiki, but one of the original reasons to give the meta discussion its own site was to get the "flame war light" off the Wikipedia Recent Changes.
Yes. Yes, it's madness, I know. Besides, I'd probably be the one who had to figure out how to make it work cleanly. (ugh)
And fast! Just imagine the server load with everybody getting Recent CHanges from every database - the last 10.000, of course, you don't want to miss a change somewhere...
________________________________________ Zeitschriftenabos online bestellen - jetzt neu im Infoboten! http://www.epost.de
Anyway, to get to the point, my suggestion is that there should be a clear statement on the front page of the Wikipedia directing people to the meta-wikipedia for discussions ABOUT the Wikipedia, like the link sending people back to the main page from the front page of the meta.
I'd say it's time to just make a meta: namespace so that meta is better integrated back into Wikipedia as well. I tried to make the the Wikipedia links a little more obvious.
--tc
But, meta is supposed to be about the whole project, not just the English project, so incorporating it as a namespace in English privileges English unwisely. Or does it?
Anyhow, my thinking has always been that Meta is about the entire project and so it should be a separate domain name, as it is.
kband@www.llamacom.com wrote:
Anyway, to get to the point, my suggestion is that there should be a clear statement on the front page of the Wikipedia directing people to the meta-wikipedia for discussions ABOUT the Wikipedia, like the link sending people back to the main page from the front page of the meta.
I'd say it's time to just make a meta: namespace so that meta is better integrated back into Wikipedia as well. I tried to make the the Wikipedia links a little more obvious.
--tc [Wikipedia-l] To manage your subscription to this list, please go here: http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Jimmy Wales wrote:
But, meta is supposed to be about the whole project, not just the English project, so incorporating it as a namespace in English privileges English unwisely. Or does it?
Anyhow, my thinking has always been that Meta is about the entire project and so it should be a separate domain name, as it is.
kband@www.llamacom.com wrote:
So then make the same links back to it from all the other-language versions of the Wikipedia... but people cannot use it appropriately if they do not know it is there or how to get to it!
But, meta is supposed to be about the whole project, not just the English project, so incorporating it as a namespace in English privileges English unwisely. Or does it?
Anyhow, my thinking has always been that Meta is about the entire project and so it should be a separate domain name, as it is.
That certainly makes sense; one caveat would be that's just as true for nearly everything in the Wikipedia: namespace.
And everything in meta.wikipedia is in English...
I want it to be clear I don't particularly care if it's at meta.wikipedia.com or wikipedia.com/wiki/meta:. What I do care about is that people can easily organize/understand all the various content, to be able to move obviously between wikipedia: and meta and mainspace content. Right now there's getting to be a lot of unnecessary overlap and balkanization of content (through no intentional actions, just imperfect organization) in the FAQ, the Policy sections, Meta, the mailing list, etc. It's good to have all these separate interfaces to knowledge organization, but there need to be the best possible cross-connection tools as well.
Does that make any sense? I'm sure it's unnecessarily verbose.
--tc
kband@www.llamacom.com wrote:
I want it to be clear I don't particularly care if it's at meta.wikipedia.com or wikipedia.com/wiki/meta:. What I do care about is that people can easily organize/understand all the various content, to be able to move obviously between wikipedia: and meta and mainspace content. Right now there's getting to be a lot of unnecessary overlap and balkanization of content (through no intentional actions, just imperfect organization) in the FAQ, the Policy sections, Meta, the mailing list, etc. It's good to have all these separate interfaces to knowledge organization, but there need to be the best possible cross-connection tools as well.
Does that make any sense? I'm sure it's unnecessarily verbose.
I think it makes perfect sense. The verbosity merely reflects the extent of the problem. :-)
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