Talk:The provisional portal of Wikipedia

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The actual portal is now at Www.wikipedia.org portal.

"provisional portal"?[edit]

"provisional portal"? Says who? Many people were working on Elian's proposal and nobody claimed that that was even the "provisional portal". The title of this page incorrectly leads one to think that this format is somehow an official beta for the portal (portal is a bad name BTW). And if different people keep on coming up with totally different ideas on the "portal's" layout then it is never going to happen. I personally like Elian's et al's proposal but do think that less wordiness is in order. Maybe just saying "Free Encyclopedia" in many different languages along with a note on the number of languages and total number articles for the whole project (all languages). Elian's idea also has links to the various Recent Changes which I like. --Maveric149

The page here is so poor, and the page here [1] is so good that I don't understand why wikimedia still directs people to this page and not the /portal page. If we want to make wikipedia look professional then let's just get something that looks good (I urge you to go to http://www.wikipedia.org/portal) for the mean time and we can replace it later if people come up with something better!
Tompagenet 00:56, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Anyone got any idea what page this is about? Aliter 17:40, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
"provisional portal"? Says who? I Say. This page page is not a propasal. There are already enough of them. I have made this page because there is no portal and i need one for somthing. I can not wait to see of there will come somthing from a official portal. It is provisional, to have somthing now. If you realy have problem whit this i will rename the page to somthing cryptic like temp9999 or place it somwhere else. Giskart 09:27 Nov 7, 2002 (UTC)

I think it's the "The" that is the problem.

The wikipedia farsi page is fa.wikipedia.com, seeing that it ended with .com I decided to contact the list Intlwiki-L and tell them that someone needs to convert it. Yet, I do not seem to have found anyone who I could contact Please eply on my discussion page

See your talk page Giskart 08:05 18 Mar 2003 (UTC)

How are we alphabetising the languages here? I had them alphabetised by the transliteration into Latin script, where [ja:] is "Nihongo" and [ko:] is "Hangukeo". Then these were moved to being alphabetised by English name, where [ja:] is "Japanese" and [ko:] is "Korean". Now, this makes no sense to me in the context of this page, so I'll move it back ... but it's not clear that the Latin script makes sense either, since we don't show that script on this page. Perhaps they should be placed separately from the Latin languages entirely? -- Toby 02:28 23 Mar 2003 (UTC)

The only thing that makes any sense is alphabetization by language code since many of these languages are based on alphabets that are not compatible with the English one. --Maveric149

That's a fair argument; I'll do that. -- Toby 05:50 31 Mar 2003 (UTC)

Some one has got the free ".tk" domain name, and directed http://www.wikipedia.tk to this page. -fonzy

tk is the Turkmen Wikipedia, which has been set up at [2] but does not appear active. Tuf-Kat

indeed it is, and .tk is teh domain name for Tokelau. But it should to at least http://www.wikipedia.org/. It shoudl not direct here. BTW i got wiktionary.tk and redirected it too wiktionary.org

Why should .tk point to the Engligh Wikipedia? .tk is a international used TLD form a country that has no internet. So long there is no tokalau language wikipedia, and there will never be one (no internet, population 1500) pointing to this page seems very logical. Giskart 07:53 31 Mar 2003 (UTC)

IMO, because this is only a provisional portal. Once we convince people to set such a portal up at http://www.wikipedia.org/, then we can properly redirect all other languages to it. (Your assumption that you know of 1500 people that will never access the Internet is moot, so I won't address it.) -- Toby 02:22 13 Apr 2003 (UTC)

How are these things sorted ? It doesn't seem to be very alphabetical:

Alphabetically it would be: 

Taw 14:16 10 Apr 2003 (UTC)

The reason may be found in discussion above. Basically, the idea is that to not preferring transliteration into Latin-1 (where I assume that you got your "H" and "NI") and therefore to alphabetise by language code as the only option remaining. -- Toby 02:22 13 Apr 2003 (UTC)

When we say "the free encyclopedia" I assume we mean "as opposed to restricted" rather than "cheap" which is what the Welsh greeting currently says! -- Arwel 14:18 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The Finnish greeting has the same meaning (which I will change now: the correct translation is on the Finnish Wikipedia itself).
By the way: a whole lot of editions (e.g. the Hungarian one) are missing in this list. Where could I find a full one? Fransvannes 15:11 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)


Unaesthetic repetition[edit]

Is it necessary to repeat the "x language" twice? It looks so bad for the CJK sentences, which reads, in translation:

  • Japanese language: Japanese language version exists...
  • Korean language: Korean language version exists...
  • Chinese language: Chinese language version exists...

--Menchi 17:30 30 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The history of this page; for promotion of wikipedia it can be usefull to have a list that says there is a wikipedia in that language. That became the page; There is also an English Wikipedia available. Because the talk about creating a portal for wikipedia was not going anywhere i have created this "provisional portal". It is very usefull to link to whit a label "More languages" or you like to see people a look of all the Wikipedias. Because i do not know these languages i have put something together whit words form the mainpages and the page "There is also an English Wikipedia available". This is the result. It is maybe not very good but it is the best portal there is for the moment. And is "provisional" so that it is not perfect is not a problem. It fills a need. This page is the most popular page of Meta after the mainpage. I have put the url portal.wikipedia.be on this page to make it more easy to send traffic to it. Sorry it is not the .org It is a provisional url for a provisional portal. Giskart Walter 22:58, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I don't mean we should eliminate any of the 3 CJK languages, I mean that "Japanese language" is repeated twice. In consecution! It's nagging.  :-) --Menchi 03:34, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I see your point, though it doesn't look like a big deal to me. What would be a better way to put it? "Here is also a Japanese language version you could use," maybe? 日本語：こちらから日本語版ウィキペディアもご利用頂けます Tomos 03:55, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
That sounds better. I've likewise paraphrased the Chinese line. --Menchi 22:20, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Hindi Wikipedia link says free as in beer[edit]

Isn't wikipedia supposed to be `free as in speech'? The Hindi line says wikipedia is a `free as in beer' encyclopedia. Unfortunately I can't type Hindi with my keyboard/browser/editor non-trivially and I also don't know the proper translation of `free as in speech'. Can someone change it? -- 210.214.131.161 19:09, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Provisional portal (reordered list) -Stevertigo 15:56, 13 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Each language once[edit]

I find this page not so beautifull as it should be. Languages appear 4 times in 4 different places. It would be better to have
"xx : Welcome to Wikipedia, the free enyclopedia ! The [xx language] wikipedia is here : http://xx.wikipedia.org "
once for each language. Ordering by language code would be evident if the language code appears first. See Esperanto.net which has an homepge in 57 languages which is shown in the default language you choose in your browser. That's beautiful ! -- ArnoLagrange 09:16, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)

See Talk:The_provisional_portal_of_Wikipedia# Unaesthetic repetition Yes, this page is ugly but it is the best we have and it does it now almost one year yet. Now whit the foundation and the move of WikiEN from www to en there is hope for a real portal and this will not matter anymore. But feel free to make it better. -> The provisional portal of Wikipedia/version of ArnoLagrange Giskart Walter 21:00, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
OK I did it and a second time whithout the twice link (http://xx.wikipedia.org [[http://xx.wikipedia.org the free encyclopedia]]). Please ! Just look at it ! I couldn't place some welcome in their right places (I don't know these languages enough). And I couldn't edit hebrew correctly beacause of writing direction. Please correct that. One can see very well the missing "Welcome ! An xx Wikipedia is also available. See .... the free encyclopedia". ArnoLagrange 15:47, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Just being curious - the point of centering the text is so that it does not favor the languages that is written flush-lefted? Tomos 18:16, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
The centering creates a chaos for me. I agree that there's too much text on the page, but I suggest giving up the free bit, and dropping the extra language list, like this. (Could be changed slightly: The Welcomes can't be linked, it reduces readability and they are not unique, but the languages maybe could. If people really want the free bit here, use that as the one line. Most readers will understand that something exists if there's a link to it.) All versions probably need a better head. Aliter 14:09, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It looks far to busy to me. Can we not simply have a plain page with a list of languages, and nothing more? Click on your language and it takes you to your wikipedia. You can read all about it when you get there.GrahamN 20:58, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Something like this? GrahamN 21:20, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Yes, better. I left some stuff at the head in, for the purpose of welcoming, and then still needed that text at the entries to balance that. But this larger font, on my machine, does the welcoming quite adequately. If it has that effect across browser settings, then only a small graphical header should be enough. Of course, more elaborate versions could be used if the server is able to determine the user's preferred language, but for the default system, this should be OK, for upto some 200/250 languages. I don't know what we do beyond that, though. (Does anyone know of a project to represent all languages graphically?) Aliter 13:03, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Still, we'd need that graphical head. Would a full size Wikipedia logo work there? Aliter 17:40, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Graphical representationd[edit]

If we wanted graphical representation, we could consider using national flags. Since there's no one-to-one correspondence (the majority of the world's population speaks a minority language) such flag-links would have to lead to fork-pages. Each fork-page should then list welcome-messages and links to the wikipedias of each of the languages considered native to that country. Indeed, such pages already exist for several www.wikipedia.?? domains. Aliter 17:40, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

That would probably lead to some very political issues, though. There's already a big controversy over whether Macedonian is a language. Putting a flag to it would probably make things much worse. – [[User:Mxn|Minh Nguyễn (talk, blog)]] 00:02, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

HTTP language negotiation[edit]

This is probably the wrong place to post this, or has been discussed before ad nauseam or something, but here goes. I was looking into implementing language negotiation using HTTP for a website I run, and I wondered how Wikipedia implemented it. I tried to investigate by changing the Accept-Language header my browser sends and then going to www.wikipedia.org to see if it would divert me to it.wikipedia.org (or whatever it was) instead of en.wikipedia.org. I still ended up at en: though, which surprised me, as I had always assumed this redirection only happened for me because my browser was set up to choose the English option if a resource was available in different languages. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it now seems to me that Wikipedia doesn't make use of this useful feature and just redirects everyone to en: and then expects them to find their own langauge from there. This strikes me as somewhat arrogant on the part of us English-speakers. It makes sense to me to have wikipedia.org redirect according to prefered language, and if none of the specified langauges are available, or none is specified, the user ends up at a portal page listing all the different languages. Maybe a technical person behind the operation of Wikipedia can shed some light on the matter? I don't see why we don't use this system already. Have I missed something obvious here or otherwise been mistaken? — Trilobite 22:37, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

No, it doesn't use language negotiation. Wikipedia was originally at www.wikipedia.com and English-only; later other languages were added. Still later we moved to *.wikipedia.org. Still later we moved www.wikipedia.org to en.wikipedia.org. To preserve existing links, www.wikipedia.com and www.wikipedia.org redirect to the new location. --Brion VIBBER 21:53, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)
That is the reason for the current situation. But it is still a shamefull situation that should be resolved a long time ago. But that is Wiki-politics. Walter 22:04, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)
It is indeed shameful. Wikipedia is supposed to be an international project. I don't see why one language takes precedence, except for the fact that it was the first to be used on Wikipedia and remains the biggest, which for me aren't good enough reasons. Existing links can still be preserved with 301 Permanent Redirect (again, better use of HTTP) for a snapshot of pages from en:, with www.wikipedia.org/ being a multilingual portal. — Trilobite 04:26, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Well, could we negotiate just when no address is given: http://www.wikipedia.org ? This needs a translation anyway to get to /wiki/Main_Page, and the loss of compatibility should be minial. (Shouldn't that be /wiki/wikipedia/Main_Page, BTW?) Aliter 23:28, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I have removed all non-wikipedias form the page. This is The provisional portal of Wikipedia , provisional since Nov 7, 2002 because there is still no international portal on www.wikipedia.org The other projects can make there own portal if the like it. Maybe it is even possible to get a protal for the other projects on there www domain. Walter 12:22, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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