On Wednesday 16 October 2002 08:56 pm Stephen wrote:
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.
Ah, I see; One unified project with the most visible and widely known url going only to one language and one language alone.
Perhaps the choice of words "portal page" was a very poor one on my part. Here is what I meant by it:
A user types in www.wikipedia.org. They are greeted with a welcome page in English that has a very brief intro to the whole project and the non-profit. It mentions the total number of articles in all languages and also mentions the total number of language that have articles (we might want to set a small threshhold for inclusion in this count). Above this is a string or hyperlinks in a row. Each one is the word "welcome" in several different languages. A non-English speaker could click on his or her language's welcome page and be greeted the the text I described above translated into their language (this might also change the language.php file for that user's browser session to display that language's localized interface). Each welcome page would also have below this;
A search field with a clean, simple interface along with a link to "advanced options". This search bar could be set to search all languages at once by default.
A simple table with the words "Welcome to Wikipedia" in every language we have an active community for along with direct links to the main pages for those language communities (maybe by leading-in with a quick note saying "We are working on X articles in language Z at....").
A listing of the non-active languages with maybe a note asking viewers to contribute to an "orphan" (or whatever we call them) language.
And above all this would be Recent Changes right where you would expect it to be (or Seneste ændringer, Lastaj Ŝanĝoj or Cambinos Recientes etc.; depending on which Welcome page you last visited). But this Recent Changes would by default list the last 100 edits made by the whole project (just the encyclopedia part, not Metapedia). There would also be links to each of the individual recent changes.
Of course we can't do this now since each language is on a separate wiki with its own own separate database. But adding a language meta-tag to each article would make it possible to have truly unified project by only having one database and only one wiki. The fact that everything is in one database will not be visible to users. Only the multi-language benefits would be noticeable.
NOTE: This would still allow a language community the option to "jump-ship" if they wanted too (preserving their leverage). All that would be needed is for somebody to select all articles based on their language's language meta-tag via a My SQL query and dump this into an archive (or so I gather). There would probably a script to do this for each language on a regular basis anyway for backup purposes. Also, defaults for individual language spaces would display everthing only in that language. Users would have to set their preferences to have a combined recent changes or to override default language interfaces, etc once they are in a particular language space (that is, in either the English, German, Spanish, French .... Wikipedias).
For more read a discusion Giskart and I had about this on the bottom of: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_to_do_with_www.wikipedia.org
Another good page on this: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_language_integration
Anything else would be just extra.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Daniel Mayer wrote:
On Wednesday 16 October 2002 08:56 pm Stephen wrote:
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.
Ah, I see; One unified project with the most visible and widely known url going only to one language and one language alone.
Perhaps the choice of words "portal page" was a very poor one on my part. Here is what I meant by it:
A user types in www.wikipedia.org. They are greeted with a welcome page in English that has a very brief intro to the whole project and the non-profit. It mentions the total number of articles in all languages and also mentions the total number of language that have articles (we might want to set a small threshhold for inclusion in this count). Above this is a string or hyperlinks in a row. Each one is the word "welcome" in several different languages. A non-English speaker could click on his or her language's welcome page and be greeted the the text I described above translated into their language (this might also change the language.php file for that user's browser session to display that language's localized interface). Each welcome page would also have below this;
I disagree strongly, but only about this detail: the "front page" of any website should lead directly to content: that is to say, an encyclopedia page. There should be an as-short-as-possible welcome banner at the top, perhaps with a pull-down menu of languages, that will change the language of the "front page", banner and all, to be any of the desired languages. There should also be a link to a "portal page", as described in Mav's proposal, easily visible in the banner.
Then the front page for that given language leads directly into the content of the particular language wikipedia.
The language of the banner, and hence the rest of the page should be:
* the language specified in the URL, whether in the format en.wikipedia.org or www.wikipedia.org/en * the language in the user's login cookie, if set * the language specified by the user's browser preferences * default to English if www.wikipedia.org/com is used, and the language cannot be detected in any other way, on the basis that English is the lingua franca of the net
The layout could be something like:
* --------- <box> [[Welcome]] http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Welcome%2C_newcomers to [[Wikipedia http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia*]], a collaborative project to produce a complete [[encyclopedia]] http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia in [[every language]] http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:International_Wikipedia. This is the {{$$Language$$}} wikipedia: select your language to go to the Wikipedia in your language.
Language: {{pull down menu}} </box>
Anyone, including /you/, can edit any article right now, without even having to log in. You can copyedit, expand an article, write a little or write a lot. See the Wikipedia FAQ http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ for more background information about the project, and the help page http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help for information on how to use and contribute to Wikipedia.
{{Main page content from the main page of the localised version}} ---------
We could also be cute, and * if we can detect, for example, a user with Greek browser settings viewing the en.wikipedia.org page, add an extra bit of text to the UI saying in Greek "[[Welcome]]! [[Wikipedia]] is also available in the [[Greek language]]" with the links being to the appropriate pages in the Greek Wikipedia. * We could even add the portal prompt in random languages even when we can't guess the language, so an Urdu user browsing the English wiki with an English browser from the US will -- sooner or later -- see their language prompt.
So, think of this as a "portal header" for the front page, and a "portal prompt" added to all content.
We could also use the language guessed from the user's IP address, based on analysis of other users' logins and the fact that the public Internet does not in general route anything smaller than a /19 (a block of 8192 addresses). Of course, this is a poor way of doing things, given that language != ISP != nation != nationality, but it's better than a totally random guess: perhaps in this case we should use the guessed language for the "portal prompt" half the time, and a random one the rest.
Neil Harris wrote in part:
The "front page" of any website should lead directly to content: that is to say, an encyclopedia page.
Ah, but *which* encyclopaedia page? I suggest [[en:Separation axiom]], my personal best work so far.
The point of my sarcasm is that the front page should not be an article; it should be a welcome page. And a multilingual one.
-- Toby
--- Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday 16 October 2002 08:56 pm Stephen wrote:
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.
Ah, I see; One unified project with the most visible and widely known url going only to one language and one language alone.
I didn't say that, mav.
What I would like to see is this. All articles in all languages are in one database. When someone comes to www.wikipedia.org, the server gets the prefered language setting from the visitor's browser, and then serves a Wikipedia front page (similiar to the one we use at the English Wikipedia, but simplified somewhat) and user interface in that language, complete with a search form. At the top of the page would be other language options, just in case the browser's language setting is incorrect. People could then set their prefered language in their Wikipedia preferences.
I think the non-profit foundation should have a separate URL from the encyclopedia.
Stephen G.
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Stephen Gilbert wrote:
What I would like to see is this. All articles in all languages are in one database. When someone comes to www.wikipedia.org, the server gets the prefered language setting from the visitor's browser,
It has already been stated, and wisely so IMO, that grabbing language information from a browser's settings might not be a good idea.
[Note: Tarquin's post wasn't on <intlwiki-l>.]
Tarquin wrote:
It has already been stated, and wisely so IMO, that grabbing language information from a browser's settings might not be a good idea.
It's been pointed out that it's very annoying that Google makes a half hearted attempt to do this that isn't correct and can't be overridden by the user. But what's the argument against our doing so properly, by looking at what the browser itself says is the preferred language?
-- Toby
--- Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu wrote:
But what's the argument against our doing so properly, by looking at what the browser itself says is the preferred language?
I think this is the correct approach. The browser's language preference decides which Wikipedia's main page they get. If there is no Wikipedia in that language, or if they don't specify a preference, they get English.
This should only apply to the main page at www.wikipedia.org of course; en.wikipedia.org is always going to be English as is www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_axiom.
Axel
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Axel Boldt axelboldt@yahoo.com writes:
But what's the argument against our doing so properly, by looking at what the browser itself says is the preferred language?
I think this is the correct approach. The browser's language preference decides which Wikipedia's main page they get. If there is no Wikipedia in that language, or if they don't specify a preference, they get English.
So we continue our current procedure to hide the other language wikipedias from the user. It doesn't mind that I speak five languages, I have to be happy with the German wikipedia because it's point one in my browser settings. And if my Spanish friends use my computer for surfing, they get German, too, even if they speak no German at all. And the Japanese student at the German university library computer gets German, too, even if he would be a lot more interested in the japanese wikipedia.
Sorry, I can't see any additional value from such a front page.
greetings, elian
--- elian elian@gmx.li wrote:
Axel Boldt axelboldt@yahoo.com writes:
But what's the argument against our doing so properly, by looking at what the browser itself says is the preferred language?
I think this is the correct approach. The browser's language preference decides which Wikipedia's main page they get. If there is no Wikipedia in that language, or if they don't specify a preference, they get English.
So we continue our current procedure to hide the other language wikipedias from the user.
This is not our current procedure since the Wikipedia main pages all prominently mention the other languages.
And if my Spanish friends use my computer for surfing, they get German, too, even if they speak no German at all.
If they prefer Spanish they need to have the browser settings changed. Wikipedia will be their least problem.
Sorry, I can't see any additional value from such a front page.
I'm not proposing any front page. Just a mechanism that gives you the main page that you are most likely interested in with one click less than you need now.
Axel
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From: "elian" elian@gmx.li
So we continue our current procedure to hide the other language wikipedias from the user. It doesn't mind that I speak five languages, I have to be happy with the German wikipedia because it's point one in my browser settings. And if my Spanish friends use my computer for surfing, they get German, too, even if they speak no German at all. And the Japanese student at the German university library computer gets German, too, even if he would be a lot more interested in the japanese wikipedia.
This front page could simply redirect to the preferred language. Of course, you can still pick a certain language by entering through es.wikipeda.org or jp.wikipedia.org which would be not any different from the current situation. In addition, you could follow the interlink from the homepage to the language you want. These interlinks as well as the links on the page "Wikipedia in other languages" will also enable google&co to find all other pedias, no matter through which language they come in.
Sorry, I can't see any additional value from such a front page.
The advantage would be an URL easy to remember for everyone since it starts with the common "www" instead of a the rather unusual language code. It could also help to overcome the concerns of non-English wikipedians that the English pedia is treated different.
Sven (Ben-Zin)
--- elian elian@gmx.li wrote:
Axel Boldt axelboldt@yahoo.com writes:
But what's the argument against our doing so
properly,
by looking at what the browser itself says is
the preferred language?
I think this is the correct approach. The
browser's language preference
decides which Wikipedia's main page they get. If
there is no Wikipedia
in that language, or if they don't specify a
preference, they get
English.
So we continue our current procedure to hide the other language wikipedias from the user. It doesn't mind that I speak five languages, I have to be happy with the German wikipedia because it's point one in my browser settings. And if my Spanish friends use my computer for surfing, they get German, too, even if they speak no German at all. And the Japanese student at the German university library computer gets German, too, even if he would be a lot more interested in the japanese wikipedia.
Sorry, I can't see any additional value from such a front page.
greetings, elian
I'm thinking that you would get the German front page, but a row of links at the top would give you the option of visiting the other language options.
It would be similiar to what we have now, except you would get the front page in your prefered language rather than English.
Stephen G.
__________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More http://faith.yahoo.com
--- tarquin tarquin@planetunreal.com wrote:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
What I would like to see is this. All articles in
all
languages are in one database. When someone comes
to
www.wikipedia.org, the server gets the prefered language setting from the visitor's browser,
It has already been stated, and wisely so IMO, that grabbing language information from a browser's settings might not be a good idea.
Sorry, I missed the reasoning. Point me to a link?
Stephen G.
__________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More http://faith.yahoo.com
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