It's surely much less of a problem than most non-technical users wondering why Wikipedia URLs start with "en" instead of "www".

I'd be surprised if anyone but the oldest non-technical users had any idea what the "www" was or why it would or wouldn't be at the front of a URL. It takes zero technical knowledge to understand "en" indicates the language and probably rarely comes up since you can use www or omit the en and links mostly just work.

They might wonder (although I doubt it), but it’s nothing actionable.

With m., they used to see a mobile layout that’s a really poor fit for a desktop screen and that they would have manually switch out of via some relatively obscure button.

> but it’s nothing actionable

Of course it is, they just need to drop the pretense that English is not the default.

English is the default.

Hey, when you spend over $100 million a year to run your website, that's the kind of thoughtful analysis one might expect.

The mobile view is a really pleasant reading experience on desktop.

Admittedly, it does make for some good impromptu neck exercises on any typical screen.

> Really? That’s the reasoning, and not the fact that mobile links forwarded to desktop browsers would render the mobile view?!

If you read the more technical internal rationals instead of just the press release, what you said is mentioned as one of the reasons for the change

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Mobile_d...