[Mediawiki-i18n] [Wikitech-l] Making inter-language links shorter

[Petr Onderka]

There is a user script [1] that does a primitive version of this.
I have found it to be quite useful, so I think it's a good idea to do this
properly.

Petr Onderka
[[en:User:Svick]]

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lampak/MyLanguages


On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 6:50 PM, Pau Giner <pginer at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> As multilingual content grows, interlanguage links become longer on
> Wikipedia articles. Articles such as "Barak Obama" or "Sun" have more than
> 200 links, and that becomes a problem for users that often switch among
> several languages.
>
> As part of the future plans for the Universal Language Selector, we were
> considering to:
>
>    - Show only a short list of the relevant languages for the user based on
>    geo-IP, previous choices and browser settings of the current user. The
>    language the users are looking for will be there most of the times.
>    - Include a "more" option to access the rest of the languages for which
>    the content exists with an indicator of the number of languages.
>    - Provide a list of the rest of the languages that users can easily scan
>    (grouped by script and region ao that alphabetical ordering is
> possible),
>    and search (allowing users to search a language name in another
> language,
>    using ISO codes or even making typos).
>
> I have created a prototype <http://pauginer.github.io/prototype-uls/#lisa>
> to
> illustrate the idea. Since this is not connected to the MediaWiki backend,
> it lacks the advanced capabilities commented above but you can get the
> idea.
> If you are interested in the missing parts, you can check the flexible
> search and the list of likely languages ("common languages" section) on the
> language selector used at http://translatewiki.net/ which is connected to
> MediaWiki backend.
>
> As part of the testing process for the ULS language settings, I included a
> task to test also the compact interlanguage designs. Users seem to
> understand their use (view
> recording<https://www.usertesting.com/highlight_reels/qPYxPW1aRi1UazTMFreR
> >),
> but I wanted to get some feedback for changes affecting such an important
> element.
>
> Please let me know if you see any possible concern with this approach.
>
> Thanks
>
>
> --
> Pau Giner
> Interaction Designer
> Wikimedia Foundation
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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