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

[Tim Starling]

Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
> 
>> I do not think there were be links broken now.
> 
> 
> It is very strange that no-one seems to have picked up on this.
> There are clearly many many more links to http://www.wikipedia.org 
> (expecting to link to an English language encyclopedia) than ever 
> before. The decision has been taken to break these links.
> 
> Whether the cost of breaking those links is worth the gain of getting a 
> international portal is debatable.
> 
> More interesting to me is how this episode shows how what really matters 
> is in getting something changed is what a tiny number of people think, 
> not what the unwashed masses (who a: can't programme a computer and b: 
> aren't on the board) think.

The links aren't broken, we've just changed the page. A link is broken 
when you get a 404, not when you get content which was intended to be 
served for that address. The fact that there used to be something 
different there is irrelevant, we don't "break links" every time we 
update a page on the wiki.

That's just rhetoric of course, the real issue is that we're not serving 
the content people expect to see. It is indeed debatable whether that is 
a good idea, but it's been debated extensively over the last two years 
and I think there's a been a pretty strong consensus for quite some 
time. Are you saying the "unwashed masses" have not contributed to this 
discussion? There was nothing stopping them from doing so. Of course the 
change itself must be performed by someone with shell access, but I was 
just following community opinion.

-- Tim Starling