[Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and the Wikipedia family

[Andre Engels]

> 
> >> When writing on Phase II, I was thinking about little flags for the
> >> different languages. We'd just need a merged GB/US flag for
> >> en.wikipedia.com...
> 
> > I don't like flags, and I guess many others also don't like them.
> > If we really need some kind picture to represent a language, then
> > please let's choose an image of a famous person who used this
> > language to produce something important/famous/extraordinary/...
> 
> I don't like the idea of a "portal" page at all, and the idea
> of using flags is even worse; flags represent /countries/, and
> the very concept of "country" is something I want nothing to do
> with.
> 
> I do, however, like the idea of representing languages with images
> of famous contributors in that language; this could be used in
> lots of places writing about Wikipedia.  I'd suggest Shakespeare,
> Hugo, Cervantes as the obvious English/French/Spanish ones.
> I don't know who would be appropriate for the others.

I don't see what's won with that - in most cases it would cost me quite some
time to recognize a person, and I would therefore consider it a waste of space.
Be that as it may, I think Goethe is the obvious choice for [de:], and
Multatuli for [nl:]. With some more doubt, I would propose Dante for [it:],
although I don't know whether there is any image of him. For [la:] I am 
doubting between Cicero and Julius Caesar, while for [eo:] Zamenhoff himself 
looks like an obvious choice. Maybe Tolstoy for [ru:]?

Andre Engels