Last modified: 2011-03-13 18:04:30 UTC
It'd be great if someone could design icons for the Monobook skin's "in other languages" sidebar. They should be 16x16, and preferably be 8-bit color PNGs, so as to fit in with the icons mentioned in bug 4136 through bug 4139. These icons would draw more attention to the foreign-language Wikipedia versions. More people would visit and contribute. I suggest miniature country flags corresponding to the most populous country that has that language as a first language. But, if that causes political arguments, an alternative would be to create square standard language code icons (En, Fr, etc.) like Microsoft uses for the Windows taskbar system tray language selector, but colored. Thanks! (This bug is related to bug 4136, bug 4137, bug 4138, and bug 4140.)
Brion, before you mark this WONTFIX, please reread this bit above: "These icons would draw more attention to the foreign-language Wikipedia versions. More people would visit and contribute." Cheers :)
Too many icons make things ugly, cluttered, and hard to use. In judicious use, icons _can_ draw the eye to _important_ things. When you start putting an icon on *everything* you lose any benefit, and usability goes rapidly downhill. There are already too many language links on many pages and most proposals are to collapse that section to improve legibility. Filling it with politically dangerous flags would certainly not help. ;) Enthusiasm is appreciated, but we really need to go the opposite direction if we care about usability: tone down the visuals, keep things short and simple and out of the way. WONTFIX.
