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

[The Cunctator]

On 10/24/02 1:49 PM, "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:

> 
> On 10/24/02 10:07 AM, "elian" <elian at gmx.li> wrote:
>>> http://www.djini.de/Uploads/wikipedia/wikipedia.html
> 
> The Cunctator wrote:
>> Changing the front page into something like this is a profoundly bad idea.
> 
> What are your specific objections?
See:
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-August/004031.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005823.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005919.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005933.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005934.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005967.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-October/000891.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-October/000901.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-October/000988.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006046.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006014.html

Anthere:
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006086.html

LDC:
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005922.html
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/005949.html

In short:
1. A page like this is useful exactly once for any user. After that it
becomes useless.
2. Such pages kill usability and participation.
3. This kind of page promotes the view that Wikipedia is a coalition of
largely distinct projects, balkanized by language (and implicitly branded by
nationality). I think this is very much the wrong approach.

Just because something can be done without coding doesn't mean it's a good
idea. 

When/if I have the time, I'll make predictions of what the consequences of
such a change would be, with internecine squabbles, forks, depressed
participation, arguments for the language boxes to be randomly rotated, etc.