[Wikipedia-l] test wikipedia problems

[Jimmy Wales]

Chuck Smith wrote:
> Also, I can't access an article by typing
> http://test.wikipedia.com/wiki/Esperanto for example. 

This I can fix easily.  I'll do so.

> Also, try to put a note on the homepage about when you
> plan to do the conversion so people don't get
> frustrated that wikipedia is down.  Your faithful
> addicts may not take it so well, and we don't want to
> cause any health problems...  ;-)

:-)  Right!

> Also, is cross-language linking implemented yet or is
> that still in the works?

I think it's actually still very much just in the idea stage.

As a typically pathetic monolingual American, I have a concern that
cross-language linking should be done in a way that's non-obtrusive.
It doesn't strike me that very many people will find it very useful to
have 50 links on every page to every other language wiki for which the
same article exists.

Even people who are multilingual typically speak only 2 or 3
languages.  For example, many of our Polish wikipedians speak English,
Polish, and probably in many cases 1 or possibly even 2 other European
languages.  But they might find it useless to have links to Tagalog,
Mandarin, Japanese, etc.

The cool thing would be if interlinking was fully customizable to the
end user.  People can just check off all the languages that they know,
and then those links would magically appear.

--Jimbo