[Wikipedia-l] Re: www.wikipedia.org design

[Daniel Mayer]

>Hello,
>
>just a quick and dirty design study for 
>www.wikipedia.org (not all links are working, 
>some text isn't translated yet and no colors 
>are defined)
>
>http://www.djini.de/Uploads/wikipedia/wikipedia.html
>
>(tested on IE (Mac), Mozilla, lynx, links, 
>iCab and Omniweb)
>
>Maybe after Cunctator could be convinced that no 
>old links will be broken we can progress a little 
>bit in this affair.
>
>Comments, critics, other drafts and so on welcome,
>greetings,
>elian

I like it, I like it a lot. IMO the logo should be
centered with the text (meaning it needs to go up
more) and I also think the search engine should have a
link to "advanced options" (so that a person could
select which languages to search and which namespaces
- the default should be to search all languages in the
article namespace -- this would exclude Metapedia).
But then, we won't be able to do this type of search
until/if we have a multilingual Phase IV wiki where
all the languages are on the same wiki (as previously
explained in some detail). A combined database would
also be needed for your Log in link to work as
expected (meaning for the whole Wikipedia). But your
proposal greatly improves upon mine in that you
devised a way to naturally have /direct/ links to each
of the different language's Recent Changes and Main
Pages -- kudos! I still think we should wait for a
multilingual Phase IV before we implement a
multilingual Welcome Page for the whole project,
however.  

One thing that was in my proposal that isn't in yours
are links to different welcome pages in several
different languages (Willkomen / Bienvenue / Welcome /
Bonvenon / Bienvenidos / Bienvenidos / Boa vinda ...
). In spite of the attitude that some Americans
exhibit, not everybody can read or even *gasp* ever
wants to be able to read English. 

I personally think it would then be neat for
www.wikipedia.org to sniff the language setting of a
visitor's browser and then automatically direct them
to their language's welcome page if it exists -- if it
doesn't then it would bring them to the English
welcome page. I don't think that matching the language
a person's browser is in with a welcome page in the
same language is going to harm the user when several
other welcome pages in different languages are just a
click away. If this sniffing is done then all the
different languages can equally use www.wikipedia.org
for promotional purposes without having to explain why
the default is in English and how to get to their
language's welcome page. It would also be neat to be
able to set your user preferences to bypass the
multilingual Welcome Page or to over-ride the language
sniffing and go directly to your language of choice
(but typing xx.wikipedia.org or clicking on a
different welcome page isn't that hard so this isn't
too important).

I will go into greater detail at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_to_do_with_www.wikipedia.org
on Friday. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)     

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