[Wikipedia-l] Re: A portal page for www.wikipedia.org (was Re: Whywww.wikipedia.org => en.wikipedia.org ?)

[Anthere]

Jens Ropers a écrit:
> 
> On 9 Jan 2005, at 08:24, Anthere wrote:
> 
>> Now... whatever your opinion NSK, please respect Jens work. He took  
>> time to set these flags, many websites use such a mean, and it has 
>> the  merit of being visual, so easier to navigate. I wish that no 
>> flame war  begins over the topic, so choose your words more carefully.
>>
> 
> Thanks :)
> 
> And while you may disagree with my proposal, I'd still like to bolster  
> the case for flags and add that images are easier click targets. Try a  
> speed test -- from loading http://www.wikipedia.org , how long does it  
> take to click on Japanese? Then try  
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? 
> title=Www.wikipedia.org_portal&oldid=88466 , how long does it take you  
> there? (I would have offered Hebrew, but the metric's horribly biased,  
> because there's only one inline flag -- added just before the reverting  
> started.)
> 
> I still think flags/images are a generally preferable solution. Yes,  
> there would be fights over, say, Chinese and the flag of the PR of  
> China. Or over English and using a US flag. But I think the entire  
> Wikipedia concept shows that risking it, doing it anyway and letting  
> the wiki process do its magic can solve these issues -- and it's better  
> than having a dull text-only page forever.
> 
> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
>     www.ropersonline.com

I agree it is easier. But most languages are spoken in several countries.

For example, it is quite difficult to convince outsider that the 
wikipedia in french is NOT the wikipedia france, but wikipedia francophone.
I think this is relevant, because while french is spoken in France, 
while we have this academy trying to decide for us how french should be 
properly spoken, la francophonie is MUCH much bigger than just my 
country. And the countries where the language is spoken own the language 
just as we do. We are already an overbearing lot in the wikipedia, we 
should not do anything that might suggest we own this wikipedia in some way.

Look at this
http://qatarfrancophonie.free.fr/cartfranc.html

And this is true for many other languages as well. We just can't ignore 
this and take the risk to imply there is a sort of national relationship 
between our projects and countries.

This is very important Jens. We are not nations. And flags are symbols 
of nations.

Anthere