On Fri, 2002-10-25 at 16:05, elian wrote:

The Cunctator cunctator@kband.com writes:

...

1. There doesn't seem to be any major philosophical objection to a browser

localization redirect of "http://www.wikipedia.org/".

I have nine browsers on my computer (needed for webdesign and some other purposes). Some don't even have a localize-option and do you think I bother to configure the rest? So I get english all the time.

<snip> I'm not saying it would solve every problem. However, it wouldn't create any new ones. I'd rather implement changes that are invisible first. Does that seem reasonable?

Next, I want to see the progress of all wikipedias at one central place and not somewhere hidden at an obscure statistics page somewhere at the english (Main?) wikipedia where nobody of the non-english contributors bothers to look for regularly. The version I proposed stimulates competition.

I don't think competition is exactly the right approach, but I agree with your sentiment. I think the right way to do that is to consolidate the backend so that integrated Recent Changes, interlanguage linking, etc., are feasible and automatic.

Lastly, I want to have a simple, not crowded page to search wikipedia where I am not disturbed by masses of text and I have to look very sharply to discover the small "search" field in one corner.

If we want to be an encyclopedia, we should offer people an attractive interface for quick and easy searching wikipedia - and where could this be better placed than on the Main Page www.wikipedia.org? If I am somewhere and I simply want to know something, I don't want categories, introductions and masses of links: I want a search box, cursor already placed in it, type in something and get my results.

I'm not sure this is the best choice for everyone. That is what Google is for, more than Wikipedia. The best way for you to get this to happen would be to develop an incremental change of the homepage. For example, you might want to advocate changing the default Wikipedia style to something like Cologne Blue.

...

I only see a secondary philosophical objection. The objection is based on the argument that first people should be encouraged to contribute to the Eng-lang Wikipedia before others, not from the principle that English is better, but from the principle that "from a strict efficiency point of view, the goal of a comprehensive and neutral encyclopedia would benefit from dealing with issues in only one central article with as many actors as possible debating/working together rather than several different articles with only a couple of persons in each place, even though they are updating their own articles from the other wikis", as Anthere eloquently put it. (I'm not claiming she advocates this position. She just described it well.) This objection would be pretty much obviated with better backend integration and interlanguage tools.

If this is the case I vote for abandoning the other language wikipedias, but I am not sure if I understood you right: you build sentences of German length.

Again, I want to emphasize this isn't a major objection. But it's an important point.

Besides, I am no philosopher, my objections are not philosophical but practical. If you like to engage in philosophical discussions I suggest a philosophy forum, not wikipedia-mailinglist.

Decisions need to derive from basic policy. I think you understand what I mean by "philosophical".

We have one thing in common: we both object balcanization, however our interpretation seem to vary.

I think a wikipedia, each language on a separate URL without a centralized

• and a really centralized - main page is a bundle of balkanized

projects. If this remains like this, I prefer to stay in the nice, peaceful, balkanized German wikipedia without having to think about the others around - at least we have www.wikipedia.de. Maybe the dutch, the french, the polish and so on could also reserve .nl, .fr, .pl...

I do too. As I've said repeatedly, I think there are better and more important ways to reduce balkanization than to change the homepage to a portal, and that these things should be done first.

Don't worry, change will happen. Some patience is necessary.