Last modified: 2013-11-01 09:27:42 UTC
Why can't MediaWiki do like all major sites' software, and allow setting the interface language without requiring the user to establish an account? Observe the bottom of e.g., http://www.facebook.com/ http://www.flickr.com/ http://www.youtube.com/ Each has a language selector that doesn't require login. http://www.couchsurfing.org/ even puts it right at top. Yes, patient users can set their language preference in Preferences. But what about read-only sites? I.e., What should one suggest on http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Preventing_access#Restrict_account_creation to say to users who wish to view in a different language? Painfully suffix "?uselang=..." to the end of each URL they browse? One might argue "users will confuse MediaWiki uselang= with XX.wikipedia.org languages" ... well they haven't yet with the language choice in Preferences. I'm not saying rip it out of Preferences. I'm saying add an additional way to set it for even non-logged in users, just like the aforementioned "real websites" do. Also consider the current accessibility up until the point the user has managed to register an account and finally set his/her language preference... all of which has to be somehow accomplished in the "dark" of the default language, unless he/she knows to add the magic uselang=... to MediaWiki URLs every step of the way. Please don't suggest an add-on for such basic functionality.
There remains the question of how to exactly design a language selector that everybody can understand. All I can say is the aforementioned "real websites" offer very good examples there on the footers of their pages!
http://www.google.com/ 's approach is somewhat different... but still usually there at the bottom of the page.
We currently have 380 languages, So you would need to store a cache for each one of those languages (depending on your setup), You would need a nice language selector. Although I don't see the need in most cases, Since in most wikis I have come access, The user language is usually the same as the content language.
This would be absolutely trivial to do in a cache-friendly way... in a sufficiently redone JavaScript application UI. But I don't think jidanni would find it to work in lynx. :)
(In reply to comment #4) No worry, I'm with the 99% on this issue. What's good for the real sites is good for me!
There's a major difference between Wikipedia and those sites you listed: Wikipedia has different sites for contents in different languages, and those websites have an only global site with contents in mixed language. So on those websites, people using completely different language use the same site, so it's important to provide a language selector. While on Wikipedia, normally (I mean, except for those people doing crosswiki work) only people who know the content language come to the site and since the interface language defaults to the content language, it's safe to assume that people can understand the default interface language. However it can be useful for wikis with mixed contents, eg, http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home .
just a slight note from the IRC channel, for anyone that may want to attempt this: > [11:31] <p858snake|l> brion: I believe commons tried to do it a cache friendly way and couldn't get it to work properly for anons (although we have a slightly more complicated cache setup than normal) > [11:33] <brion> p858snake|l, yeah the "right" way is to make the frontend a javascript app that uses the api, and only has to fetch UI messages once etc ;)
(In reply to comment #6) > There's a major difference between Wikipedia and those sites you listed So how would you suggest owners of read-only databases who would like their database to be accessible in more than one language proceed? Hack up some xx.example.com massive redirect nightmare? One can't always assume "well the content has that problem too" so there is no need to make the interface accessible. I mean I keep reading about the efforts to make things internationally accessible, e.g., http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/09/end-of-sprint-6-translate-and-other-goodies/ but at the same time there is no path in ones language from a MediaWiki Main Page through the many steps to set up the correct preference... if indeed a given MediaWiki allows logging in in the first place.
By database I mean e.g., a ham radio frequency database or a database of Latin names for plants, etc. that the owner has chosen to use MediaWiki as the platform. I.e., the content is just numbers or other language neutral items, so why can't the interface (MediaWiki) be language neutral from click 1?
There are some efforts going on designing a language selector UI by integrating language tools to it. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_Selector for a draft specification.
I'm just going to mark this as fixed. ULS provides this functionality, and there is no mention about WMF where this functionality cannot currently be enabled.
(In reply to comment #11) > I'm just going to mark this as fixed. ULS provides this functionality, and > there is no mention about WMF where this functionality cannot currently be > enabled. Fixing dependencies and component then.
