[Mediawiki-i18n] [Design] Making inter-language links shorter

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

 From the various roadmaps and plans I don't understand: is this project 
still on the radar, is it going to be worked on in 2013-14?

Nemo

Pau Giner, 18/04/2013 18:50:
> 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