Talk:Universal Language Selector/Compact Language Links/2016

This is the feedback page for the Compact Language Links feature.

See the Frequently Asked Questions.

All feedback is welcome. You can write in any language.

You don't have to do this, but it will be helpful if you mention the following things:

• The browser and the operating system you are using, including version numbers.
• The language of your operating system.
• The country from which you are reading the site.

See also:

• Archive of feedback before May 2016
• Archive of feedback in May–June 2016

Don't apply to main page

Some wikis like wuu: have selected several language links for their main page, which uses magic word {{noexternallanglinks}}. So can you make this feature not apply to such main pages? Lt2818 (talk) 04:59, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback!

How did you select the languages that do appear on your list?

Why did you choose this number of languages? Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 07:47, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Hello,

For Wuuwiki's main page, we chose languages in China and most popular languages in the world.

The number is as many as possible, only to make sure the navigation column shorter than body of page. Lt2818 (talk) 01:48, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

The Compact Language Links feature automatically chooses the languages of every country, and adds major languages of the world if needed. If you are using Wikipedia from China, can you please test in an article with a lot of interlanguage links, such as "Germany", that you see all the languages that are important for China?

The length of the list was chosen according to design research—9 items is the optimal length that helps people find the language they need easily, and the button that is added can show the rest of the languages. So it's the best of both worlds—short initially, and with access to everything else when needed.

As far as I can understand, the Compact Language Links feature already provides the same functionality automatically. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 05:39, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Just for the main page, I see 8 Chinese languages out of 9. But I think most users are more likely to search ja:, de: instead of bo:, za:, which have nothing to do with them though in the same country. Your initial selection of lang is improper or inflexible, especially for the main page. I hope this tool only appears when needed - just to control the length of sidebar. Lt2818 (talk) 01:52, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Language discrimination

It is not a feature, it is a bug! It discriminates against many languages. These are languages with not many speakers (tens of languages in Russia, hundreds of languages in Africa, etc.), and also languages whose most speakers are not familiar with computers and Internet. For example, I know that the Saam language exists thank to links to Wikipedia in it. But the new bug will hide links to articles in "small" languages, and Wikipedia readers will think that those languages do not exist. So, please do not enable this bug and no more develop it! Gamliel Fishkin 13:16, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Dear Gamlie Fishkin I can strongly support what you say: The new policy is a big discrimination of small languages and is completely unacceptable it is against the principles of human rights and lacks of respect of small cultures! ~ DidiWeidmann (talk) 13:46, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

I agree with you 100%. This feature is a nuisance and contrary to encyclopedic spirit. An encyclopedia is a place where you can find all knowledge. All of it! Not a selection of it, according to some algorithm's idea of the languages the reader should be concerned with. I want to be able to see all the languages in which an article is available, even if I cannot read them, I want to be able to browse through such a list, with its variety of scripts, because it captures the very beauty of the Internet. I want to be able to reach the language in which any article is best relevant. I want to be able to do that even when I'm not logged in. Please make this feature optional, or best, cancel it. Leofil2 (talk) 21:17, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

This feature will make these languages more prominent. Now languages of Russia, such as Tatar, Bashkir and Udmurt, will be shown prominently to people who connect from Russia. Earlier, you had to look for them in a list of more than 100 languages. Same for Saami—it will be shown prominently to people who connect from Norway or Finland. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 14:01, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

It gives the impression that this new feature is especially and expressly designed with the intention to discriminate several languages like Esperanto or Yiddish! There was now real need for such a system – I ask to restore the old System! DidiWeidmann (talk) 14:36, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

This is simply not true. The minor languages of Russia are not shown to me in the compact list on the Russian Wikipedia. What is being shown are just the wikis I use frequently. See w:ru:Земля, for instance, which has interwikis in a dozen of minor languages of Russia, but none are shown. Eugrus (talk) 13:26, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

@Eugrus, from which country are you connecting?

Which languages do you see? If you see languages that you use frequently, then it works as it is supposed to. Languages that you use frequently are probably the languages that you need the most. Languages of your country are shown if languages that you use frequently are not known, which will be true for all people the first time they see compact interlanguage links. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 18:26, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

What gives you the right to decide which languages I "need the most", and show me only these? Are we still on a free Wikipedia, or was it purchased by Facebook:(? Leofil2 (talk) 21:19, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

So, human beings outside of Russia will think that the Tatar language does not exist, etc. It is just a discrimination. As a final result of such a discrimination, almost any human being in the world will think, that there in the world only two languages do exist: his or her native language and English. Gamliel Fishkin 14:36, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

The user interface shows a list of languages that is customized for every user and helps people find information in their language. In articles with a lot of languages the list will have nine languages, and not two, and there will a button that says "X more languages", where X is the number. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 15:08, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

For me this feature also looks like a discrimination of especially small languages. It does not help people to find information in their language, it helps people to find information just in big dominating languages! Holder (talk) 11:46, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Holder,

Thanks a lot for your comment.

As I explained above, this feature doesn't discriminate minor languages, but actually helps them by showing them more prominently to users that are most likely to know them.

I noticed on your user page that you are writing in the Alemannic Wikipedia. I checked the CLDR territory-language information table, and this language is supposed to be shown prominently to people who are connecting from France, Liechtenstein and Switzerland (search that table for "gsw"). At the moment, however, there is a particular bug for this language because of which it is not actually shown. I filed this as a task with high priority, and it will be fixed very soon. Once it's fixed, it will be shown prominently to everybody who is connecting from these countries. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 15:13, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

@Amire80, that's indeed interesting news, thank you very much.

This long known problem is much more complicated: Alemannic language (and therefore also Alemannic Wikipedia) covers gsw, swg, wae and gct. That's why it hasn't been solved over the last ten years.

How will this be fixed in this case? It would be nice if als:wp would also be shown for readers in Germany where Alemannic is also be spoken by about five million people. Holder (talk) 09:57, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi,

The data that we use can be found at http://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/29/supplemental/territory_language_information.html

I can see that swg is listed in Germany and wae is listed under Liechtenstein and Switzerland. gct is not listed anywhere, but you can ask to add it by clicking "add new" under the relevant country and supplying information about the number of speakers of this language in that country.

Technically, we can probably redirect all these codes to als, but I'll have to discuss it with the team. I added a comment at the bug report: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T139949 Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 10:24, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

It rely on CLDR and CLDR rely on some official figures, so if a country refuse to recognize a language is spoken in it then the data could be slewed. Different country also have different standard of what language being spoken there are common enough to be listed in it, for instance some languages spoken by only 0.x% population are listed for some countries while they are not in some other regions. C933103 (talk) 19:26, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

From my experience, CLDR is fairly flexible with sources, and they listen to people who send reasonable bugs. If you have data that a language is spoken by a certain number of people, I encourage you to submit a bug there. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 19:39, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

And so we need people with enough knowledge in individual country's situation and are willing to put effort into searching for non biased info about language usage situation and also understanding that some languages that are traditionally not considered as language otself is actually a language, and the person must also be neutral enough in term of the matter to avoid intentional overlooking some languages and must also be willing to spend time to report the problem to CLDR. C933103 (talk) 23:44, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Firstly, some human beings speaking the Alemannic language can live outside of the countries where most its speakers live. Secondly, as a result of this universal language selector, human beings outside of these countries will not know that the Alemannic language exists.

It was in some of the first years of the twentieth century in the Russian Empire. Some day, one little Russian girl seen a nameplate in Yiddish or Hebrew on the door of some Jewish family. She was not Jewish, just Russian, but these letters interested her, she learned much and became a Soviet semitologist. Similarly, someone can be interested in a language of another nation thanks to seeing language's name in the interwikis; but that universal language selector destroys such a chance. Gamliel Fishkin 23:14, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

@Gamliel Fishkin, I understand, but there is also another possibility: That somebody who lives in Russia and thinks that there is no Wikipedia in the Tatar language, will find out that there is one. Compact Language Links make this more likely. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 09:17, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

@Amire80 When most major languages are displayed outside the panel, the need to find interlanguage link from the panel would be minimized. This reduce the chance for user to discover discover what they might want, if they don't know such a Wikipedia exist before. Even in a huge list, users would have a higher chance to discover their familiar small language than such a large list because users would be more familiar with language names written in their native script and native language, but if they never click into the panel then the chance for them to discover their language Wikipedia become 0 C933103 (talk) 19:38, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

The languages are tailored for each user, and they are not necessarily major. A minor language of the user's country will be preferred to a major language spoken outside of the user's country. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 19:46, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

In countries like Russia, India or China, there are far more than 10 languages spoken in those countries and inevitably native language of some users can only be found in the expanded panel. C933103 (talk) 20:03, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

This is indeed an issue: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T133029

There's no easy solution for it, but we'll definitely get there. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 20:07, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

There is an easy solution: just cancel your very bad idea:( (aka known as fausse bonne idée in my mother tongue...) Leofil2 (talk) 21:23, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

The only solution for such an issue is to turn this "feature" off and forget it. Gamliel Fishkin 20:16, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Even if you enable subregion-based filtering, there are always regions like Moscow or Shanghai where every community in the country would have people going to there for economic reason and result in more than 10 languages spoken in the same subregion. C933103 (talk) 21:21, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

I can see great possibilities in this feature - if it is changed a little bit. It is impossible to get all people satisfied with a uniform solution. Let the user decide! Have a list in 'preferences' where you can tick all the languages you want shown, and a button below to show the full list. As a dane, I see english, spanish and german, but need french, swedish and norwegian too. I have arabic, urdu, chinese and hindi. These languages are probably spoken by some immigrated inhabitants of my country, but useless to the vast majority. Føroysk and kalaalisut are languages from the north atlantic former possesions. I have no idea what to do with them, most danes cannot understand them, let alone write these languages. Jørgen (talk) 07:52, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

@Jørgen, the problem is that there has to be a decision what is shown to readers. Holder (talk) 07:59, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

yes, let the readers decide themselves by ticking a list. And for Ip-readers, let the list be default 'all' as it used to be. Jørgen (talk) 08:01, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

You can pre-select the languages according to instructions at Universal Language Selector/Compact Language Links.

Also, every language that you select simply by clicking is remembered, so this feature adapts itself to every user (including anonymous readers). Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 09:12, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Agree with Jørgen. The list is unusable, because it shows "big languages", of which many, nobody in a far away region understand (like Indonesian languages in Denmark, on the other side of the planet). It does not show the languages in the neighbourghing countries, that most people understand. Note also, that most users are not registered and cannot change their settings. Madglad (talk) 08:30, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Madglad,

Are you connecting from Denmark? May I ask on which article do you see Indonesian? Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 09:12, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

I saw Indonesian on several articles as far as I remember. Logged in from Denmark, and visiting da-wiki. But the languages are changing, depending on how I search around. But on another clean browser (tor) and logged out, I see

• ة
• English
• Español
• हिन्दी
• Bahasa Indonesia
• Bahasa Melayu
• Русский
• اردو
• 中文

(still visiting da-wiki). This list of languages is not a good starting default value for Danish language speakers. It should be assumed that most people visiting da-wiki also know the other neighbourghing languages, and that almost no Danish speakers understand Indonesian and Indian languages. The algorithm shouldn't try to guess known languages, but should pick them from a list when visiting a language-specifik Wikipedia. Connecting to da-wiki from Australia, it should be considered more likely that the user understands Norwegian, than some aboriginal language. I don't understand why things like these are rolled out without previous discussion i the wikipedias. Madglad (talk) 10:59, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

In a usual working scenario, your previously selected languages are supposed to be remembered. If you are using Tor or other anonymizers or proxies, the system cannot know anything about you, so it is showing the biggest global languages, and Indonesian happens to be one of them. If you are using a private browser window, you also won't see any of your previous selections

You can configure your own preferred languages in the browser according to the instructions in Universal Language Selector/Compact Language Links.

Configuring preferred languages per specific project, as you suggest, will be possible very soon. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T138973 . Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 11:37, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

What is "a usual working scenario"?

I guess a typical scenario is a not logged in user, visiting one of the versions of Wikpedia, possibly not English. The IP is placed somewhere on the planet in region where the Indonesian languages etc. are not known, but the languages in the region are.

Quote: "Configuring preferred languages per specific project ... will be possible" - this gives me the impression, that this change is designed for en-wiki, and is not ready for implementation in the other wikipedias yet. Roll it out when it is developed and tested. Roll back for now. Madglad (talk) 08:36, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes. This is a change that should not to be done. Höyhens (talk) 09:15, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

There is one more topic. I see no problem if the system uses IP-address and other current information about an unregistered visitor. But if the system not only uses current information, but also remembers pages visited by this human being, it is a privacy gap. Gamliel Fishkin 14:09, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

No, the Compact Language Links feature doesn't remember this information. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 15:15, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

If a user visits the Danish language Wikipedia from a Danish IP address it will be reasonable to assume that interesting language versions to the person would be:

*sv=Swedish (neighbour country, mutually intelligible with Danish)

*no=Norwegian Bokmål (neighbour country, mutually intelligible with Danish)

*nn=Norwegian Nynorsk (neighbour country, mutually intelligible with Danish)

*de=German (minority language in part of Denmark, neighbour country, language taught in in Danish schools)

*en=English (language taught in in Danish schools)

Languages spoken in overseas countries of The Danish Realm:

*fo=Faroese

*kl=Kalaallisut

Languages taught in some schools:

*fr=French

*es=Spanish

Now, this example focused on Danish (and Denmark proper) can probably be generalised to most languages; languages, which have no contact with Indian, Indonesian, Chinese languages, but have contact with a lot of neighbour languages. Madglad (talk) 17:09, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

If the IP is identified as Denmark, then German, Faroese and Kalaallisut are supposed to be shown in the initial list (if, of course, a corresponding article in these languages is available).

Your IP probably wasn't identified as Denmark, which is quite possible if you used something like Tor, so the world's largest languages were shown.

If you don't see a language that interests you in the initial list, you can click "X more" and select the language that you need, and the next time it will be shown in the short list.

I know that Danish is similar to Norwegian and Swedish, but do you have data about the number of people in Denmark who are actually reading in these languages? Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 17:42, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

1. IIRC wikipedia have its data about percentage of visit per language version per country? It should be possible to use the data in reverse to find out percentage of visit on specific language version in a specific country or subregion.
2. You can also check the mediawiki language fallback tree? C933103 (talk) 20:44, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Many times more read Swedish and Norwegian, than distant languages like Chinese. Especially if the article is better than the Danish one. Exact numbers unknown, but almost nobody in Denmark is able to read Chinese, almost everybody is able to read Swedish.

But I think Danish/Denmark is just an example, the problem is general for language-wikipedias. The solution is usable for en-wiki, not for the Wikipedias of other languages, and should not be implemented in these, in the current form. Madglad (talk) 20:03, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

I must admit to be extremely worried and sad for this attack against Wikipedia as a free dictionary. Cancel it as soon as possible, please. Höyhens (talk) 17:18, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

I now see that part of the problem is the guess is made based on the number of native speakers in a country, not the number of readers, which is a very big mistake.

An important issue is the assumption is that everybody is logged in, and has set up their browser languages etc. Setting up browser languages manually is what nerds were doing in the Netscape times. We are writing 2016. And most users btw. are not registered Wikipedia accounts.

And finally, assumption should be made on basis of the language the Wikipedia is running, the IP solution is developed for en-wiki.

This experiment should be rolled back on all language wikipedias exept en-wiki, until an acceptable algorithm is found. Madglad (talk) 20:51, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

The guess is not based on the number of native speakers. We use the data from CLDR, which clearly doesn't refer only to native speakers—for example, the entry for Denmark puts English at 86%, which is obviously not the number of native English speakers in Denmark, but probably the number who know it in one way or another. If you can cite data about the number of people in Denmark who can read Swedish or any other language, you should add it there by clicking "add new" in the table.

Also, the software really doesn't assume that everybody is logged in. Obviously, the vast majority of readers are not registered. The languages that they click in the the "more" panel are automatically added to their preferred languages, and the research that we conducted showed that it works for casual readers.

As the FAQ says, the languages defined in the browser and the languages identified by geolocation are secondary to what users actually click. Once you click Swedish for example, you will see it in the compact list. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 10:02, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Technical question: How are »The languages that they click in the the "more" panel« added? Cookie? IP-address? Or? Madglad (talk) 19:30, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Using LocalStorage. Nikerabbit (talk) 12:25, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Our research shows that Swedish (and any other language) is less accessible when it is part of a long list than it is through the panel that opens when you click the "more" button.

The Nynorsk Wikipedia defined other Scandinavian languages as preferred in

Nn:MediaWiki:Interwiki config-sorting order

, so they would appear at the top of the long list. The same can be done in the Danish Wikipedia, and Compact Language Links will pick it up (not yet today, but soon). Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 10:23, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Which research? Link? Madglad (talk) 19:20, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

The CLDR list only cover how many people speak the language not how many people understand the language. For instance in Iceland it say 100% for Icelandic but only 0.7% for Danish and none for other Scandinavian languages. Hindi-Urdu and Malaysian-Indonesian are same language with different vocabulary under different name, but it does not have data for Hindi in Pakistan or data for Indonesian in Malay, and the data for Urdu in India or data for Malay in Indonesia is only ~10% the data for Hindi/Indonesian in respective country. Almost all country in the world have a number of people that hace at least a certain understanding in English but you can see how many regions in the list have English listed. And the list doesn't even have Libyan Arabic in Libya or Taiwanese(Min-nan) in Taiwan. There are also Iran and Iraq which have only listed Central and/or Southern Kurdish but not Kurdish in general.

And did your test ask users the accessibility to a specific language edition with the specific language's name given, or when the user don't know what they are lookibg for which is the most cases? C933103 (talk) 12:19, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

In Iceland they learn Danish in school, so they are able to read Danish as well as their native Icelandic. (The languages are not mutually intelligible). In many countries especially in Europe it's most common to speak more than one language. Madglad (talk) 19:19, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

ah I see, the example might be not that good. C933103 (talk) 00:11, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

The CLDR list is not perfect and it can be improved. It has direct and visible to add languages and report bugs.

Without Compact Language Links there is nothing that helps a user who is reading the Indonesian Wikipedia to find a link to the Malay language, because it is lost in the long list. With Compact Language Links, it is easier to find, because there is a search box to find the language, and after the user clicks it once, it will remembered.

As for the other question—it's a good question; I'll find it and I'll get back to you. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 12:30, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Have you get any answers? C933103 (talk) 19:53, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

That now not all language links are shown on Wikipedia, is a discrimination of the small languages and nothing else. There was now real need for such a change! All your arguments are very constructed an artificial and only serve to hide a political decision which sole goal is the discrimination of the small language communities: There was absolutely no reason to change the policy of language links: In an alphabetic list of languages there was never a problem to find the right ling even in a list of 200 and more languages! So I can only protest against this arbitral decision an ask to go back to the old System! DidiWeidmann (talk) 14:27, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

1. How about adding a link to CLDR in CLL panel so that people can tell CLDR what languages are missing in their region?
2. CLDR can be improved but the process seems long. Like I submitted some additional languages being used in Hong Kong back in last year and that already get accepted, but those info are still not available in CLDR v.30 beta which is supposed to be the last CLDR to release in this year according to the release cycle which mean the process of fixing something via CLDR's issue tracker take >1 year.
3. Even if CLDR data get improved, that still does not resolve the problem that its scope is "population that is able to read and write each language, and is comfortable enough to use it with computers.", instead of "able to understand and retrieve info from the page" which would be a lower standard. For instance, most Chinese users can't write in Japanese but they can read out basic info from Japanese Wikipedia because of the common use of Chinese characters. It will certainly not reflected onto CLDR. C933103 (talk) 12:54, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for submitting fixes for CLDR!

People who can read Japanese (or any other language) will find the language in the panel, and after they click it, they will always see it. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 12:59, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

1. but I'm talking about people in general who don't know what they're looking for instead of finding specific language.
2. After click it then always see it is also problematic because sometime I only want to use the language once and then when those one time clicks accumulate, they would repell those frequent language out of the short list C933103 (talk) 15:30, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for discriminating languages without an exact location, such as Esperanto and Yiddish. Ochilov (talk) 13:16, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

I'm going to restate some things that were posted above, because they don't seem to have penetrated. In New York City, Wolof, Tajik, Newari, Marathi, Hausa, Guarani, Azerbaijani, and Aymara are all spoken and read, but they will not be likely to appear on any location-based list of languages, because not enough people there speak and read them, and New York is a long way from the places where they originated. Users of these languages won't always think to click a "more languages" link, because they may not realize what the link is supposed to do, and they won't know their language is represented if they don't click to see. The natural assumption, given that some of these languages don't have much internet content to begin with, will be that they aren't there. Allowing users to customize which languages they see only helps if they know which languages they have to choose from. Frenezulo (talk) 11:44, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Nedersaksies (or: Nedersaksisch) not showing up in compact language search

Nedersaksies (or: Nedersaksisch) is not showing up in compact language search even if the article does exist. Searching with the language code provides no results, searching for 'Nedersaksisch' results in a link to the Plattdüütsch Wikipedia, or no result at all. Can some have a look at this? Thanks in advance. Servien (talk) 18:19, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi!

Thanks for the comment! A few questions:

• On which site are you looking at it?
• To which language code are you referring—nds, nds-nl, something else?
• On which article did you try this? Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 19:30, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

It appears to be like this on every Wikipedia (i.e. Afrikaans, Frisian, Limburgish, etc.). I'm refering to nds-nl.

I tried in on:

• https://fy.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederl%C3%A2n
• https://af.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederland

...and some other articles as well. Servien (talk) 20:02, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Thank you so much for reporting this. We take missing languages very seriously. I reported a high-priority task about this: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T139795 . We'll fix it very soon. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 20:32, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Useless tool

"Use a compact language list, with languages relevant to you." Haha, just kidding. If all languages are relevant to you, because you're interested in them, you hav to change your preferences on all language versions. What an useless setting developed by WMF! Only small languages are erased for normal readers. Why we're writing articles, when they're not listed normaly on all other language articles? I thought, protecting language links on Wikidata against vanalism and erasing is more important for us... Now small language versions are beaten in the face, because there not that important for WMF than bigger versions. As a long-time contributor for the Afrikaans Wikipedia (matter of the heart) that hurts senselessly! So please change it back. Best regards. SpesBona (talk) 19:30, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi,

Thanks for the comment and for your work in Afrikaans. I write in a small language—Hebrew—myself, and I understand what you say when you write "matter of the heart".

Afrikaans, and other small languages, will now be shown more prominently, and not less. When a user will connect from a country where Afrikaans is spoken, and an article in Afrikaans will be available, it will always be shown. The same goes for Zulu, Xhosa and other languages of South Africa, which will now be shown more prominently. The software will also remember your choices, so once you select a language, you won't have to look for it in a long list the next time. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 19:49, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Hello Amire80, thanks for your reply.

Why is this feature developed? Was there any troubles with long lists of interwikis? For me, interwikilinks are one of the best things on Wikipedia what is unique for it and I love them.

I understand, my motherlanguage is German, I speak Afrikaans and English, have good knowledge of Dutch and Frisian, so this feature will show me these languages and their dialects first. But what about an only-reader from South Africa what speaks Afrikaans, English, French and Portuguese? Will he/she see this four languages or all 11 official languages of South Africa? What about readers from other countries with more than one official language or important languages without official status? Spanish in the USA or Kurdish in Turkey?

Best regards SpesBona (talk) 20:30, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

This feature was developed because research that we conducted found that most people have trouble finding a language they need in a list of languages that has more than 10 items. This feature tries to guess the 9 languages that are most likely to be useful to the reader by trying the following methods in the following order:

• the languages that the user selected previously
• the languages of the browser
• the languages of the country from which the user is connecting
• if there are still less than 9 languages found by trying the above methods, some common world languages will be shown as a fallback—Chinese, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and several others.

The first time that the user you are talking about will see a list of languages, Afrikaans and English will definitely be there, because they are spoken in South Africa. If that user's browser is set to French or Portuguese, this language will be shown, too (in fact, it's possible to add several languages in the language preference of all browsers).

The user's own selection will be automatically remembered, and it will be given the highest priority the next time the user will see a language list.

If that user uses a browser in English and doesn't have French or Portuguese in the browser's language settings, then maybe these languages won't be shown in the initial list. However, finding them in a long list will be very hard as well. It may seem easy to experienced Wikipedia editors who are accustomed to seeing this long list, but research shows that for most readers this list is very hard to use and most people cannot find their language there. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 21:24, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

@Amire80 If that is a problem you want to solve with the function then I would recommend putting other languages below most used language lis insyead of collapsing them into a button. C933103 (talk) 12:18, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Our research showed that it is easier to find languages in a panel opened by a button than in a long list that is fully shown from the start. Items in a long list are hard to find in a long list even if they are near the top of the list. And if another language is needed—as Portuguese or French in this example—then we're back at square one: looking for them in a long list. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 14:01, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Recommendation: Pop up a larger panel to after clicking the button to ease the finding process. C933103 (talk) 08:02, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Our research shows that this is not needed, because all the people were comfortable with finding the language they needed in the panel that is currently shown. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 08:16, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Have you tested that on screens with vertical height > horizontal width and screen width <70mm ? C933103 (talk) 23:13, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

It is not intended at small and mobile screens. At the moment, Mobile Frontend covers that. Compact Language Links are only intended for large desktop screens.

In the future there will probably be gradual convergence between how language links work on small mobile screens and large desktop screens. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 04:08, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

How about vertical desktop screen, or tablets running desktop operation systems? C933103 (talk) 23:17, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

More harmful, not useful. Höyhens (talk) 09:17, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Mysterious space in CLL list

http://imgur.com/HSDUzQK What is the space about Thai in the panel? C933103 (talk) 19:23, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

p.s. this screenshot was taken from en Wikipedia homepage. Also, I am interested in why en wiki homepage only displayed interwiki link to 40-ish Wikipedia while mainpage is supposedly something every wikipedia would have C933103 (talk) 19:28, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks a lot.

It's an edge case. It's theoretically by design, because it tries to put every alphabet family in a different column, and Arabic, Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai are all different families, but I agree that it looks weird in practice.

Can I repost this screenshot to a bug in Phabricator? Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 19:41, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

you can. C933103 (talk) 19:43, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T140154 Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 19:55, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Chinese varieties like Hakka, Minnan, Mingdeng should stay next to other Chinese Wikipedias

They are same language family but their wikipedia picked different script to write in, they would be better stay together rather than separate.

Btw, why is hakka grouped together with other latin script based wikipedia when it have both latin script version and hanzi ideograph version? what's the determination criteria here? C933103 (talk) 21:32, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

When you say "stay next to other Chinese Wikipedias", what do you mean exactly by "next to"? Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 04:44, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

in immediate proximity C933103 (talk) 22:38, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

I'm still not sure what do you mean. Do you mean that all these languages are supposed to appear together when they are shown in a list? Can you give me an example of how they are separate? Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 05:32, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

1. Yes, I think language versions from same macrolanguage should stay together in the list.
2. See http://m.imgur.com/76csMaH C933103 (talk) 23:15, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

To be more specific, C933103 is referring to the sorting order of the languages. Since lots of Chinese speakers are able to understand a few other dialects and are interested in these versions when they are available, it is much easier to notice the availability of other Chinese varieties if all these are sorted as if they have the same sort key. Quest for Truth (talk) 17:57, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

How to turn off CLL at all WMF's wikis

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This transfer discussion from https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T138524

Kusurija: Hi All! Please, tell me, what can I do to disable this "Compact Language Links" anywhere on any Wikimedia project. Because it definitely paralyses my work with them. It paralyses my work not only as Wikimedia project editor, but paralyses my work with all Wikimedia projects as sources of information anywhere outside of WMF. If You can't offer me, any usable solution, please tell me, where else could I defense my rights to non impeded information from any Wikimedia project as source. Thanks for answer.

Me: The only one possibility is to turn off it at all WMF wikis individually. There isn't something like global settings, sorry for it.

But I don't know why it is paralysing your work with WMF's projects. Could you explain to me?

Kusurija: Because I'm working with cs,wictionary, on dictionaries out of WMF, themes, where I gather information from any site of WMF projects (so languages in use, where I gather info is about 70 (seventy, not seven). Most often languages I use, besides my motherlanguage Czech is samogitian, lithuanian, japanese, russian, byelorussian, ukrainian, polish, slovak, english, lettonian, latgalian, latin, chinese (Kantonese), slovene, bulgarian, macedonian, greece, swedish, african, neederlandese, vietnamese, hindi, kannadian, georgian, german, french, italian, spain, romanian, portuguese, ... ... And how i can switch out it?

Me: I asked on IRC for another solutions. I'll notify you when I'll know something more.

Kusurija: Should I remove it on all about 750 projects of WMF? I tried it, it takes about 2.5 minutes or more for each, It means about more than 3000 minutes it is 50 hours (some of projects takes time to first find/load them), it is more, than entire 2 days or more, than a week of workhours. Why I am banned to work such nonsense work?!

Me: You could copy https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedista:Martin_Urbanec/Random_notes/Compact_language_links_turn_off.js to your global.js subpage on meta and then visit every WMF wiki. It should disable the feature and notify you about it. With global.js subpage I mean https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kusurija/global.js for you.

Kusurija: Kde najdu to Cache na této mojí stránce:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kusurija/global.js ?? Nikde ho nemohu

najít, nemám k tomu ze svého prohlížeče Mozzila Firefox přístup...

Me: Translation: Where can I find cache at my page https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kusurija/global.js ? I can't find it, I have no access to it from my browser (Mozilla Firefox).

Pokud by to nefungovalo, stiskněte Ctrl+R anebo Ctrl+F5 (tím se vyprázdní cache). Při návštěvě každé wiki by se compact language links měl automaticky vypnout, tedy by Vás nic nemělo paralyzovat.

Translation of my reply: If it won't work please hit Ctrl+R or Ctrl+F5 (it'll clear the cache). When you'll first visit a wiki compact language links will be automaticlly turned off so nothing will paralyse you.

Me: Cs: Funguje to? En: Does it work?

Aklapper: [en] This task is about disabling Compact Language Links by default on Russian Wikivoyage.

Could you bring up your topic on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Universal_Language_Selector/Compact_Language_Links please, where it is better suited? Thanks for your understanding!

[cs] Muzes prosim diskutovat na https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Universal_Language_Selector/Compact_Language_Links , protoze tento task je o ruske Wikivoyage? Diky moc!

Kusurija: You are welcome to transfer it Yourself, because i'm not familiar with

editing on phabricator.wikimedia enough to do it myself. Thank You. (If You

can, transfer the answers too.). Yours sincerely kusurija

Atsirlin^: @Urbanecm: I confirm that this patch does not work, and I second Kusurija's question. It is highly relevant to this thread.

Kusurija: By the way: this nonsense works for non-logged. It is illegitimate censoring, as most of non-logged users does NOT understand, what it means, and does NOT see languages relevant for them. Is there any authority, superiot to authors of this nonsense, who could put them in order??

Me: @Atsirlin It must be inserted at meta to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Atsirlin/global.js for you and I can't see it there (and no delete log present). Then it should automatically turn off at all WMF wikis when you'll first visit them. Martin Urbanec (talk) 06:54, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it works for me. Now the question is how I can apply a similar patch for all users of a project Atsirlin (talk) 08:30, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

You can insert the same code to MediaWiki:Common.js as an admin but I do not recommend it because it will turn off CLL for all users and nobody will be able to activate it (at every visit it'll be automatically turned off independently of user settings). Or you can create a new gadget with this code which will be turned on at default state. Martin Urbanec (talk) 08:37, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Well, that's exactly my question. I added this code to MediaWiki:Common.js, but it does not deactivate CLL for anonymous users. Of course, it will be ideal if we could switch CLL off by default and leave every user an option of activating it. However, in the current circumstances, when we are refused of switching CLL off, we are left with the choice of keeping it as it is or deactivating it completely (if we find the way to do so). Atsirlin (talk) 16:40, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Yep, this don't deactivate CLL for anonymous simply because anons have no user settings so any settings can't be changed for them. I asked at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/conpherence/398/ for solution about this issue. You can look at it and find out if somebody replied. Martin Urbanec (talk) 16:52, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

OK, I understand. Thank you for your support, Martin! Atsirlin (talk) 18:11, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

You're welcome :). Martin Urbanec (talk) 19:01, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

I tried see cs.wikipedia as IP adress (anonymous) and - as I often on my computer see samogitian wikipedia, I on CLL get offer: 1-st english (it's naturally), but 2-nd: samogitian, 3-rd: lithuanian. OK, so if I'd be of bad willing (if), I could go to internet cafee service, there sit and use computer, see wikipedia in chinese, tamil, kannadian, lao, tibetian... and several other languages, which lithuanians can't understand, even see anything but white squares (as on these computers are not implemented such uncommon letters (fonts)) several times interchangeably - and this would practically block ability to watch wikipedia at all for all users after me. If in internet caffe services use to be many computers, I could do any time the same on other PC set. And in other internet caffe services, also in other cities... So I think, that for anonymes must be CLL switched off by default, only who want, can switch it on. Kusurija (talk) 17:44, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

The languages you would see from Lithuania is based on country code. So that does not change whether you are anonymous or logged in user. Kannada, Chinese, Lao , Tibetan will not be shown for a user at Lithuania, unless a user click these language links(we use previous languages). There is no case compacting a language list to small size and then offering a selector to search in a big list block ability to watch wikipedia. No languages are removed, and the search for a language is provided. Please see this FAQ entry. Thanks Santhosh.thottingal (talk) 03:38, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

I see You did not understand. Yes You are true with it, that, when I in first moment log as anonymous, these languages will not be shown until I especially shall find and see these (Kannada, Chinese, Lao , Tibetan ans so on) wikipedia's pages. After several seeing, the priority of languages will be automatically changed. So another human, who comes to see after me, will be able get offer in these languages, and, could not understand any of them, will be deprived of ability to get information from wikipedia. This must be denied, because it works. Kusurija (talk) 07:38, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

I can't help you with it and I have no permissions to decide things like this. You can ask for somebody who can give you better answers than me at #wikimedia-tech at irc.freenode.net (you can use client at http://webchat.freenode.net/). Martin Urbanec (talk) 17:50, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

I will never use IRC due to collapse of my PC trying join to IRC. Kusurija (talk) 07:42, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Norwegian bokmål, please turn the system off

Unwanted change on Norwegian bokmål Wikipedia. The system is now the default choice if you are logged inn, but it is possible to turn off. The system is not possible to turn off if you read not logged inn. There have been no vote to turn this on. Please turn it off and await a consensus on Norwegian bokmål Wikipedia that it is our choice to use this. There is a discussion raised on noWP, https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tinget#Kompakte_spr.C3.A5klenker_skrudd_p.C3.A5_for_denne_wikien_i_dag . Turn the change off and await a decision on noWP. Thanks, regards. Dyveldi Dyveldi (talk) 09:57, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

The user has attempted to start a voting over the feature, but it is now closed as premature. The closed thread is at w:no:Wikipedia:Tinget#Avstemning om tvungen innføring av «Kompakte språklenker». I sort of expect the thread to be reopened. Jeblad (talk) 12:35, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Sorry for not noticing the voting was closed, and hoping it opens again. Migrant (talk) 13:14, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

There is still no consensus to introduce this feature as default on nowiki. Please turn it off. Telaneo (talk) 15:52, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

There are no consensus for anything on nowiki. Jeblad (talk) 16:09, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Well, we do in fact have a norwegian wiki, mainly working quite well. Any lack of consesus might be either implicit or explicit. In this case it is quite explicit. Hebue (talk) 15:26, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Well, a majority then. Still no reason for it to be introduced and forced upon the users. Telaneo (talk) 16:11, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Agrees with user Dyveldi and user Telaneo in this subject. hopefully it can be a optional for logged in users and not a default. This makes it more hard for finding other languages the same subject is written on. Migrant (talk) 13:13, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Please turn this feature off as Default. Make it available for users that Choose to turn it on. Hiding information like this is not good. Nsaa (talk) 06:11, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

There are no consensus on nowiki to turn this off. There are although pretty clear indications that a number of users have no clear idea how this feature is used, and even how to turn it on and off. Jeblad (talk) 08:48, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

There was no consensus to turn it on either. Make it a opt-in feature. Not an opt-out. Noorse (talk) 10:51, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Nor was there consensus to turn it on in the first place. Telaneo (talk) 08:51, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

It is the usual "nobody has asked me" with the usual drama queens involved. ;/ Jeblad (talk) 08:53, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

As far as I've been able to establish, nobody asked anyone in the community (possibly exept one user, Jeblad) about turning this on. This hit as lightning from a clear blue sky. Noorse (talk) 10:53, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Why do you continue claiming that I had anything to do with this being turned on? You have been told several times that this is not true! This is an effort by the language team! Jeblad (talk) 12:07, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

I'm not saying you turned it on.

I'm saying that as far as I've been able to establish there were no check done with the community before turning this on. If anyone knew in advance, it seems only to have been you.

Furthermore: you seem to be the only one wanting this and welcoming it as it is at nb-wiki.

I've repeatedly tried to explain this to you, and you insist on claiming it's something else. Please cease steadfastily misrepresenting what I write. Noorse (talk) 13:53, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

No I'm not the only one. Have you read what GAD said? Have you read what pmt said? Have you read what Floyd said? Have you read what stigmj said? And TommyG, and Ters, … No it is not only me.

But it do seems like the usual IP-crowd are emerging. ;/ Jeblad (talk) 20:38, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

I said "seem(s)". I accept you can't do anything but attack and accuse those who disagree. Noorse (talk) 16:48, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

-.- Telaneo (talk) 08:55, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Just turn it of. This was never asked by the no.wikipedia-community. There has been raised a number of issues around this new functionality.

For people not logged in, it's not even possible to turn it off. People should see all languages as default. Hiding information is against Wikipedia principles, see Jimmy Wales here https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-March/020469.html

That this functionality is turned on default should be rolled back immediately per https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tinget#Avstemning_om_tvungen_innf.C3.B8ring_av_.C2.ABKompakte_spr.C3.A5klenker.C2.BB Nsaa (talk) 06:52, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

moving my reply further down. Noorse (talk) 10:34, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

No consensus on the so-called voting. It has even been closed, but as I said earlier in this thread I would not be surprised if it were restarted. Jeblad (talk) 08:36, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Voting was never closed. It was hidden by a collapse function. People voted in spite of the hiding. The collapse was removed 23 hours ago. All of this Jeblad knows very well as it happened 15 hours before Jeblad wrote the above https://no.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ATinget&type=revision&diff=16540006&oldid=16539933. Jeblad has written on Tinget 10 times afterward, which is not an unusual frequency for Jeblad and he is known to follow Tinget very closely. Dyveldi (talk) 17:19, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Text from Wikipedia:Tinget (Those that want to read the text should translate it themselves. I completely agree with Stigmj on this.)

Jeg har kollapset hele denne avstemningen av følgende grunner:

1. Først og fremst fordi den går mot hele prinsippet med at avstemninger har et minstekrav til deltakelse (registrerte brukere etc.)
2. Dernest fordi det er ekstremt prematurt da hele temaet og "diskusjonen" som ledet opp til denne ble gjennomført i løpet av en helg. Det er ikke tilstrekkelig tid til at alle kan få tenkt igjennom situasjonen eller sagt sitt før en eventuell avstemning skal påbegynnes.

-- Stigmj (diskusjon) 18. jul. 2016 kl. 11:49 (CEST) Jeblad (talk) 20:33, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Supporting Nsaa, Migrant, Telaneo, Dyveldi and others (at nb-wiki) requesting this turned off as a standard. Make it opt-in. Noorse (talk) 10:36, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Editing the default languages

Hello, here it says says that "main factor for choosing the languages are the previous language selections from the user". However, I tried to click my favourite Western European languages, but the list keeps having Indonesian and Urdu. Is there any options menu? NaBUru38 (talk) 17:11, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Can you please tell me:

• In which Wikipedia did you try to do it?
• Which languages did you click?
• On which articles did you try it?

Thanks! Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 19:00, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Hello, I tried it in Spanish Wikipedia. I clicked Western European languages like Portuguese, Italian, French, English, German, Dutch and Swedish. I tried it on about five different articles. NaBUru38 (talk) 15:49, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

I just opened twenty articles of countries and opened the search bar to open the article on those languages. I still get Urdu, Hindi and Arabic. NaBUru38 (talk) 16:02, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

From the Spanish Wikipedia, article "Jane Austen", I opened the menu and clicked the link for Aymara. It went to the Aymara Wikipedia, as it should. But the link for Azerbaijani (which I had selected earlier from another Wikipedia, for the same article) does not appear. Does that mean I have to select every language I want to see from every Wikipedia where I might want to see it? From the Esperanto Wikipedia homepage, I don't see links to From the Spanish Wikipedia article "John Denver", the link for French doesn't appear under "Africa", where it should, since English and Portugese both appear there. Is there a way to edit the list of languages I'd like included in my short menu directly? Frenezulo (talk) 10:43, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

I've found the answers to some of my questions from other comments on this page. The issue about French not appearing under the Africa heading remains. Frenezulo (talk) 10:46, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Now I get Afrikaans, Arabic, Nahuatl and Latvian, instead of French, Italian and Portuguese as I clicked several times. NaBUru38 (talk) 21:59, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Another Google Inc.?

For a long time Wikipedia was great because the community decided what content to show on a web-site. Not that "smart" google/facebookk-style algorythms that decide what a user wil see, but people, devoted to NPOV, full and free data. Now we are shifting towards digital slavery, spying for my geolocation and suggesting me something i do not want. Not the full & NPOV-content, but something prejudged. Abiyoyo (talk) 22:34, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

The notion that "before Google, The Internet was fair" is wrong. Whenever humans are confronted with a mass of information too large to process at a glance, they devise concepts and algorithms to tame that mass and make it human-processable. These algorithms are designed by humans to specifically distort "the original information" and carry a bit of subjectivity to them. The aim of Wikipedia cannot be "lets just dump all the information at a reader (like 200-language list)" but "lets present the most relevant information using algorithms that are WELL-INTENDED (as opposed e.g. to profit-optimized algorithms of Facebook)". SSneg (talk) 10:47, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

@Abiyoyo, your comment seems to imply that Compact Language links is only driven algorithmically without user or community intervention. However, human intervention is given priority in the languages shown more prominently to the user:

• Individual users can decide their preferred languages by selecting them. That is, a user navigating between Hindi and Punjabi, will have those two languages available in the short list. Previous choices is the criteria with a highest priority (since it is based on actual decisions by the user), it will not be overridden by other guesses.
• Browser accept languages are also considered. The user can configure those through the browser settings.
• Communities can define their list of closely related languages that will be taken into account to surface those, when there are no previous selections.
• Finally, other criteria such as location-related guesses are based on CLDR, an information repository open for contribution.

More details here. Pginer-WMF (talk) 17:52, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, Pginer-WMF, Now i think my comment was a kind of overreacting and too harsh. Sorry for that. The future possibility to change the default interwiki lists for communities (T138973) is a kind of a solution. The other reason behind my comment was also the invisibility of "show other languages" button, which was broken due to css conflict in ru-wiki. The first impression was that other interwiki links were hidden completely. Now it is obvious that it was problem on local ru-wiki side. Abiyoyo (talk) 23:42, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

I agree with OP, this option merely shuts off users from learning other/obscure languages. Sigehelmus (talk) 21:38, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Comparison

It makes it more difficult to compare the names of entries in different languages - instead of just putting the cursor over the languages for comparison. 85.64.172.205 (talk) 14:54, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

The tool was mainly focused on facilitating the navigation across the set of languages users speak.

The listing of language links in Wikidata may be a good place for viewing the name of a topic in all languages.

Having more details on the specific usecase, would be helpful to understand how to better support it. Are you interested in looking the name of the article on a given language (to get the translation)? Comparing the lengths of the titles in different languages? Verifying they meet some rules?

thanks Pginer-WMF (talk) 11:49, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

yardımcı yokmu amk CIRKIN (talk) 18:55, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

This is a very BAD idea. I want to see ALL the languages for which a version of the article exists. If some issue pops up involving, say, Thailand, I want to see the Thai language version of it, even if I do not know Thai and have never clicked on it before. I may want to see a translation of the Thai article (per Google translate), just to see what they are saying. Mr.Slade (talk) 02:48, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Inspect Babel Options

The language knowledge declaration via the Babel Template / Parser Function should be inspected too (if present). There, many Wikipedians offer the languages they know in a machine-readable format. Mathelerner (talk) 19:04, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback @Mathelerner. Babel templates are a good source of information to consider since the user explicitly selected those. There is a ticket to support the idea where this can be tracked. Pginer-WMF (talk) 18:18, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

(Just going over old posts here... FYI, this was done.) Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 08:31, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

This still sucks.

I guess I will continue complaining about this, as I did here (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T136677 – not sure if it was the right place) and repeat my comments.

This feature is annoyingly complicated. Please make the list more simple, and get rid of the pop-up window. A similar approach that has been taken for the mobile version would be good. I don't understand the need for this kind of complexity. For example, compare a situation of a typical article with 17 interwiki links in the English wiki and the Finnish one: which list is more complicated to navigate, the English one with 17 languages – or the Finnish one with a separate scrollable pop-up window, five different categories and two columns of text!?

Hiding the interwiki links like this actually causes me a lot of extra trouble instead of helping me. I am interested in a fairly wide array of languages, as well as seeing, which languages are available for a given topic. For example, on the Finnish Wikipedia page on Philippe Buonarroti (https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Buonarroti), nine interwiki links are shown and seven are hidden. I have to open a pop-up window to know which languages they are. Instead of showing me a list of those previously hidden languages, I have a long list of all the available languages grouped into eight (!) different categories, some geographical and some not, with some languages repeated (e.g. Russian is on the list three times, and English a full eight!). If I was searching for Hungarian, for instance, I would have no way of knowing whether it actually exists, and I would have to browse through a long and confusingly, unintuitively arranged list to actually know that yes, there is a Hungarian article available on the topic (if I ever made it that far). This feels outright discriminatory in some ways.

It seems to be a larger trend to only show users content that a service presumes that they would be interested in. I'm sure that this is often terribly useful, although sometimes problematic (as in the case of Google algorithms that leave out certain search results and bring up others, for example). Here, however, that is currently executed in a way that I find quite annoying. Using a simple, alphabetised list in which what you see is all there is can in many situations actually be easier, more equal, neutral and helpful. Browsing different languages and moving between them, which I like to do a lot, becomes much more difficult with this kind of an arrangement. Now, this does not preclude lifting up some languages to the top of the list, for example (like has been done with the mobile version), but the current version is IMHO a complete mess. Epiq (talk) 21:56, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback @Epiq. I'll try to cover the different topics mentioned below:

Language grouping

You provided a good example that illustrates the need for some improvements in this area. The grouping by region has proven to be helpful when there are many languages available (e.g., articles such as Moon available in ~200 languages, or in tools such as Content Translation where it has been used to select among all existing languages to translate to/from).

However, for pages available in fewer languages, grouping by region may add some unnecessary complexity. It makes sense to avoid the grouping in those cases, and this is something we plan to work on. More details are available in this ticket.

Using a separate panel to access more languages

Regarding the use of a separate panel for language selection, we considered that it (a) allowed the user to focus on their languages of interest (the initially visible provides enough room to include the number of languages most of our uses speak), and (b) it allowed us to provide advanced searching capabilities to facilitate the selection. Searching was the most common method for users to find their language during our research, and providing flexible search (you can search for a language based on the name in another languages, making typos or using the ISO codes) made it easier to support the cases where the language you are looking for was not in the initial list.

Although the tool does not show initially all the interlanguage links, the access to them is provided through a "continuation" pattern where it is quite clear how to access to the rest of the languages. Our research confirmed that users were able to figure out how to find their language when it was not present in the initial list (something that they only need to do once at most). We are monitoring the volume of inter-language navigations to identify any potential issues.

Advanced usecases

Our main usecase we optimised the tool for is for multilingual users to quickly navigate across the languages they know (to read/edit the content). With the previous model, a user speaking several languages was forced to search their languages again and again on lists of very different length. Every single time. This is especially harming for small languages (in which few articles are available, but those available are also available in many others), since users often do this effort in vain which demotivates users to check if content is available in their language.

With the Compact Language links, once the user selected their languages once, they become extremely visible later, making it easy to navigate to them and inviting to do so. We think this significantly improves the experience of many multilingual readers and editors.

Having said that, we know there are many other usecases, and we'd like to explore how to better support them. In order to do so, we need a deep understanding of the activities those involve. You said you are interested in a wide array of languages, would you be able to describe the use you do of them in more detail? Are the listing of language links in Wikidata a reasonable mechanism to support those?

Keeping users in control

I don't think Compact language links could be described as part of the trend of "only show users content that a service presumes that they would be interested in".  Human intervention is given priority in the languages shown more prominently to the user:

• Individual users can decide their preferred languages by selecting them. Previous choices is the criteria with a highest priority (since it is based on actual decisions by the user), it will not be overridden by other guesses.
• Browser accept languages are also considered. The user can configure those through the browser settings.
• Communities can define their list of closely related languages that will be taken into account to surface those, when there are no previous selections.
• Finally, other criteria such as location-related guesses are based on CLDR, an information repository open for contribution.

More details about how are languages selected are available here. Pginer-WMF (talk) 11:44, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi Pginer-WMF, thank you for your reply.

Language grouping

This might really be the biggest problem of the feature. I do understand the need to get a more usable interface for articles with dozens or hundreds of interwiki links, as an alphabetical list gets terribly long and hard to navigate. However, this subset of articles is relatively small for big wikis – the vast majority of articles must have from a few to a few dozen iw links. Instead of starting with the cases that are actually problematic and easy to improve, you adopted an unnecessarily complicated approach for situations that are working just fine. Apparently you have done research here (?), but as you see in the ticket you refecenced above, the result is just ridiculously complex. I do not understand why you could not have taken a safer approach from the start and just see first how this feature is actually working for the difficult cases (say over 50 links) before making many more people suffer using it.

Using a separate panel to access more languages

"[A]llowed the user to focus on their languages of interest (the initially visible provides enough room to include the number of languages most of our uses speak)" – so basically prioritizing large languages on the expense of smaller ones, because they are searched less?

"[I]t allowed us to provide advanced searching capabilities to facilitate the selection" – so does the mobile version, the design of which is much superior to this one. Why can't you just include a simple search box above the list of links? It works great in the mobile version!

Advanced usecases

"With the previous model, a user speaking several languages was forced to search their languages again and again on lists of very different length. Every single time." That is true, and the reason why the mobile version with a few links lifted above the list coupled with a search feature works well. Having to use a confusingly subcatecorized pop-up window does not in my opinion make the situation better overall. I am a user speaking several languages who has had to search for his languages on different length lists for years and years, and this is still hugely more annoying to use.

"With the Compact Language links, once the user selected their languages once, they become extremely visible later, making it easy to navigate to them and inviting to do so." I have not disputed this (and as I said I think it works great in the mobile version), I only have a problem with the execution of the feature. However, I must point out that this is actually not working for me at all when I'm not logged in (browser history/cookies are cleared, IP changes), which is most of the time when I check Wikipedia on the computer. I just see a random and/or geographical selection of languages which is even less useful for me since I live in a country where my native language is not spoken.

"You said you are interested in a wide array of languages, would you be able to describe the use you do of them in more detail? Are the listing of language links in Wikidata a reasonable mechanism to support those?" I'm not sure what you are referring to with the Wikidata list – it's just a regular alphabetical list? I meant that I don't check just, say, Spanish every single time; if I'm reading an article on something Czech, maybe I'll check the Czech article, if Danish, the Danish article, or even all or most of the interwikis if I'm writing on something, or translations of a term by just hovering over the link, etc. etc. I'm wondering if you actually use the iw links much in spite of making changes to them...?

Anyway, I now managed to hide this whole thing globally, so out of sight and out of mind, I guess... Epiq (talk) 10:50, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

"[A]llowed the user to focus on their languages of interest (the initially visible provides enough room to include the number of languages most of our uses speak)" – so basically prioritizing large languages on the expense of smaller ones, because they are searched less?

No. I was referring that we are showing up to 9 languages in the main list and most users consume content on less than 9 languages. so over time, as users access content in their languages of interest (bigger or smaller), those will be right at hand to easily switch to them back and forth with no additional searching effort.

"[I]t allowed us to provide advanced searching capabilities to facilitate the selection" – so does the mobile version, the design of which is much superior to this one. Why can't you just include a simple search box above the list of links? It works great in the mobile version!

I'm not sure I understand the comparison with the mobile version. On mobile the list of languages are in a separate view. On the article you just have a button (similar to the "X more" Compact Language links provide) that leads to a separate view for the language lists. I wonder what makes you consider this transition not to be a problem on mobile and a similar one that keeps more context on desktop (not navigating away) represents a problem. Pginer-WMF (talk) 07:36, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

@Epiq, have you been using the search feature? I don't try to read through the list of grouped languages. When I reach a page such as w:fi:Suur-Zimbabwe, I don't usually even look at the list. I click the "32 more" button and immediately start typing the name or language code that I want. I find my target language very quickly this way. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:38, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

WP for Norwegian bokmål has voted against

Answer to the vote on Norwegian bokmål was the users being against this change and we want it rolled back. We want the "old" alphabetical language list for all users that are not logged on. We want the personal preferences of all registered users changed back to turned off. Everybody who want this option should be free to turn it on and everybody else should not be forced to turn it off.

The complete discussion and the vote as it was of 23. August 2016 in Norwegian can be found here: https://no.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Tinget&oldid=16610928

Summary of the vote in English:

-- This change was introduced without anyone asking what the editors on Wikipedia in Norwegian bokmål wanted. The change resulted in all users on Norwegian bokmål had their preferences changed and if anyone reads Wikipedia in Norwegian bokmål not-logged-in they were shown a changed and reduced visible liste of languages.

-- The change was implemented while most of Norway had their summer holidays. The discussion has been in the most common holiday period and the week after and this would normally result in a not very high participation in votes and discussions.

-- The discussion has become long and complex with a lot of sub themes which also often results in fewer and fewer active participants. The discussion contains a lot of text, when a reader turns his og her attention to the discussion it is not always clear what is new since the reader last read the discussion and in addition it can be unclear what the purpose with some of the sub themes. Some independent discussions have also been posted in week 29 and 20. All this influences the amount of participators and their participation.

-- There is also a separate discussion on this page belonging to the project.

-- 28 registered users have participated in the discussion and in addition some unregistered users (ip-adresses). 14 users chose to use the option to voice their opinion in form of a vote.

-- 13 users voted for the DLL change to be rolled back (1 user was strictly speaking half an hour late and I am uncertain if this has to do with a local time or if the user really was late). 1 user has voted to keep the change. Looking at the remaining participants who did not vote does not change the fact that a majority is against the change. Of the remaining 15 who have written about their opinion in the discussion 7 have as far as I can see been very critical or clearly said that they wanted it turned off, 4 have been positive and 4 have been critical albeit not as clearly as the previously mentioned 7. No ip-adresses have voted but 8 different ip-s have been very negative to this change. It is not possible to ascertain how many persons these ip-s represent.

-- Jeblad has chosen not to use the possibility to vote. He has contributed with over 30% of the posts in the discussion and is interpreted as positive to keep this change. Jeblad has also posted 5 Phabricator-discussions. This is a lot of contributions and a very high activity, but he is counted as one user conclusively positive to the change.

-- The discussion has also led to several users finding out how to change their personal preferences, but how many who have turned this off is not known. Some users have made an active choose and kept it. This is however not possible to turn off for users reading not-logged-in.

-- Altogether 20 of the 28 participants in the discussion do not want this change. 4 users are critical of the system. 4 of the 28 participants are positive.

-- This is a solid majority whichever way this discussion and/or vote is summarized. I can't but conclude that the majority is lage enough to warrant the change being rolled back to the way it was. Users who want it can turn it on of their own volition, not-logged-in users get the complete alphabetical list back.

-- Please listen to our wish and roll the change bak to being voluntary to turn on. Regards from user Dyveldi. Dyveldi (talk) 18:43, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia as seen from Norwegian ip-adresses

Wikipedia as seen from Norwegian ip-adresses

There is a lot we do not know about Wikipedia editors and readers. One thing we do know is that one of the larger user groups is students. So what does Wikipedia offer students and academics working from Norwegian ip-adresses?

I have quite unofficially done a small piece of original research. I have visited two of the largest educational institutions in Norway logged on and taken a good look at the selection of languages offered to Norwegian students and academics. I visited Norways biggest and oldest university (UiO se article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Oslo). It has around 27 000 studentes and 6000 employees. I also visited Høgskolen i Oslo og Akershus (HiOA, see article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_and_Akershus_University_College ) with more than 17 000 studentes and 1 700 employees.

In addition I visited Norways main library (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Library_of_Norway ) and supplemented my findings from one of their PCs.

I looked at the Main page, first from Norwegian bokmål, clicked on to Norwegian nyorsk and went on to Danish. All of which have turned DLL on. I logged which languages Wikipedia has to offer for a Norwegian student or academic reading from any of these institutions.

After looking at the Main page I looked at Tinget (English counterpart Wikipedia:Village pump), bokmål and nynorsk and Danish. Went on to « Edvard Munch », looked at the same three languages and on to  « Norge » (Norway),  « Zanzibar» and last but not least looked at « Botswana ».

The selection at UiO and HiOA was identical. Interestingly the selection as viewed from our national library was slightly different. It was also somewhat astonishing that the main page existed in eighter 22, or 33 or 292 languages depending on which wikipedia I visited.

MAINPAGE - Norwegian bokmål

Offers me the following language list

·     Norsk nynorsk

·     Deutsch

·     English

·     Espanol

·     Francais

·     Portugues

·     ru

·     samegiella

·     zh

·     + 13 more

MAINPAGE - Norwegian nynorsk

Offers me the following language list

·     Norsk bokmål

·     Svenska

·     Dansk

·     English

·     Samegiella

·     ar

·     ur

·     hi

·     zh

·     + 24 more

MAINPAGE - Danish

·     ar

·     Cebuano

·     English

·     hi

·     ja

·     Norsk nynorsk

·     Samegiella

·     Winaray

·     zh

·     +283 mer

Working from The National Library of Norway I get a slightly different choice: I lose hi. but gain norsk bokmål.

****************

TINGET- bokmål

·     ar

·     English

·     Espanol

·     hi.

·     Norsk nynorsk

·     ru

·     Samegiella

·     ur

·     zh

·     + 201 flere

TINGET- nynorsk

·     Norsk bokmål

·     svenska

·     Dansk

·     English

·     Espanol

·     .hi

·     samegiella

·     .ur

·     .zh

·     + 206 til

TINGET- dansk

·     .ar

·     English

·     Espanol

·     .hi

·     norsk nynors

·     ru

·     samegiella

·     .ur

·     .zh

·     + 201 mer

Working from The National Library of Norway I get a slightly different choice: Russian is replaced with Norsk bokmål.

**************

EDVARD MUNCH - bokmål

·     .ar

·     English

·     Espanol

·     .hi

·     bahasa ingonesia

·     norsk nynorsk

·     ru

·     samegiella

·     .zh

·     +74 flere

EDVARD MUNCH - nynorsk

·     Norsk bokmål

·     svenska

·     dansk

·     .ar

·     English

·     Espanol

·     .hi

·     samegiella

·     .zh

·     +74 mer

EDVARD MUNCH fra dansk

·     .ar

·     English

·     Espanol

·     .hi

·     bahasa Indonesia

·     norsk nynorsk

·     russisk

·     samegiella

·     .zh

·     +74 mer

Working from The National Library of Norway I get a slightly different choice as Bahasa Indonesia is replaced with norsk bokmål.

************

NORGE  - bokmål

·     afrikaans

·     .AR

·     dansk

·     føroyskt

·     hrvatski

·     norsk nynorsk

·     samegiella

·     Suomi

·     svenska

·     +248 flere

Working from The National Library of Norway I get a slightly different choice as hrvatski is replacedwith english.

NORGE  -nynorsk

·     norsk bokmål

·     svenska

·     dansk

·     afrikaans

·     .ar

·     føroyskt

·     hrvatski

·     samegiella

·     Suomi 

·     +248 til

Working from The National Library of Norway I get a slightly different choice as Suomi (Finnish) is replaced with English

NORGE  - dansk

·     Afrikaans

·     .ar

·     Suomi

·     føroyskt

·     hrvatski

·     norsk nynorsk

·     norsk bokmål

·     samegeilla

·     svenska 

·     +248 mer

Working from The National Library of Norway I get a slightly different choice as Swedish is replaced with English.

**********

ZANZIBAR bokmål

·     .ar

·     English

·     Espanol

·     .hi

·     bahasa Indonesia

·     norsk nynorsk

·     ru

·     .ur

·     .zh

·     +76 flere

ZANZIBAR nynorsk

·     norsk bokmål

·     svenska

·     dansk

·     .ar

·     English

·     Espanol

·     .hi

·     .ur

·     .zh

·     +76 til

ZANZIBAR dansk

·     .ar

·     English

·     Espanol

·     .hi

·     bahasa Indonesia

·     norsk nynorsk

·     ru

·     .ur

·     .zh

·     +76 mer

Working from The National Library of Norway I get a slightly different choice as Bahasa Indonesia is replaced with Norwegian bokmål.

**************

BOTSWANA bokmål

·     Dansk

·     .mk

·     norsk nynorsk

·     ru

·     samegiella

·     setswana

·     Suomi

·     svenska

·     .zh

·     +201 flere

Working from The National Library of Norway I get a slightly different choice as Chinese is replaced with English.

BOTSWANA nynorsk

·     norsk bokmål

·     svenska

·     dansk

·     .mk

·     ru

·     samegiella

·     setswana

·     Suomi

·     .zh

·     +201 til

Working from The National Library of Norway I get a slightly different choice as Chinese is replaced with English

BOTSWANA dansk

·     English

·     Suomi

·     mk

·     norsk nynorsk

·     ru

·     samegiella

·     svenska

·     setswana

·     zh.

·     +201 mere

Working from The National Library of Norway I get a slightly different choice as Chinese is repalaced with Norwegian bokmål.

My question is how on Earth has DLL figured out that this should be the prefered language lists for Norwegian students and Academics? Why is this considered a useful list working from Norway? Dyveldi (talk) 19:40, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

And if anybody wonders what DLLs choice of languages for Dyveldi is it was arabisk, english, espanol, hindi, norsk nynorsk, samegiella, svenska, urdu og kinesisk on July 19th and so it still is today. It is most certainly not representative of the languages I have visited or have the remotest connection with which languages I am interested in, read or write. Regards, although not so very respectfully, Dyveldi Dyveldi (talk) 20:04, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Plural:38

Its sometimes doing this https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chyba_u_kompaktn%C3%ADch_jazyk%C5%AF.png Walter Klosse (talk) 08:42, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm getting this too, on en.wiktionary. Noticed it yesterday. Seems intermittent, most of the time it'll be "broken", but if I keep reloading, sometimes it displays correctly.

Race condition maybe, with load order/timing making a difference?

I haven't managed to have it "break" when using debug=true. Yeryry (talk) 11:37, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi,

This is a known bug. It will be fixed on the live Wikimedia sites later today. Thanks for the report and sorry about the inconvenience. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 17:40, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

How are languages relevant to me determined?

I'm guessing it's something like showing me languages spoken in the country my IP says I'm from, but I'm not entirely sure. HalfOfAKebab (talk) 19:43, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

This is one of the things. See the FAQ for a full explanation. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 21:11, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

On english language wikipedia

Why is this feature turned off on the english-language wikipedia ? And the german and french language. 193.163.131.133 (talk) 07:05, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Also Swedish and Dutch.

These are bigger projects with more users, so it requires a bit more planning, but it will definitely be enabled in the coming weeks. Announcements with dates will be published soon.

In the meantime, it can be enabled as a beta feature, and we'll be very happy to listen to the feedback. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 10:40, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

@Amire80: And how about Meta-Wiki? I even can't try it out? Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:44, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

It's not on Meta because Meta doesn't have different language versions in the same way that Wikipedia does.

Technically, the preferences doesn't appear anywhere at Meta, because $wgInterwikiMagic is set to false there. If I understand correctly, pre-Wikidata interlanguage links like [[fr:Accueil principal]] won't go to the sidebar without $wgInterwikiMagic. Meta can have Wikidata sitelinks, however, which is why the Meta Main page has interlanguage links, but where else does Meta have them?

I guess that Compact Language Links could be enabled on Meta if the use case on Meta is comparable to Wikipedia. (And on a more technical note, maybe $wgInterwikiMagic could be set to true now that we've had Wikidata for years, but that would be a separate discussion.) Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 12:41, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

"but where else does Meta have them?" at least Meta:Babel and Assume good faith. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 10:38, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Cool, thanks for the example. These definitely needs improvement, and Compact Language Links could one way to resolve it. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 11:27, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Took me some time, but I filed a task about this: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T202284

It's possible now to use Compact Language Links on English and all other Wikipedias, as well as on Meta, but wgInterwikiMagic is still false for meta for some reason, so maybe it should be changed.

Thanks for raising this, @Liuxinyu970226. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 13:56, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Request for deactivation for dawiki

Please deactivate this unsolicited and misguided feature for dawiki.

The languages selected are not very relevant to Danish speakers. Several relevant languages are absent, and in their place are languages understood by only a miniscule fraction of Danish speakers.

Note that major changes to da.wiki are not to be implemented prior to achieving consensus on da:wikipedia:Landsbybrønden , or, if need be, a vote on the issue. Madglad (talk) 13:10, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

If it can't be deactivated, it would be nice to have the following relevant languages connected to danish:

• DE German
• EN English
• FO Faeroe
• FR French
• KL Greenlandic
• IS Icelandic
• NL Dutch
• NN Norwegian nynorsk
• NO Norwegian bokmål
• SV Swedish

Kind regards Rodejong Kind regards,  Rodejong  💬 Talk ✉️ Email ✐ Edits  13:18, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback @Madglad and @Rodejong,

Multiple criteria is used to determine the likely languages for a user, and users can customise the languages shown at different levels. The easies way is just to navigate through the languages you are interested in, and those will be remembered for the next time. Users can also adjust their language settings in the browser or contribute to CLDR to have more accurate information about the languages in their region which is used as fallback information when direct information from the user is not available. Communities can also customize the order of the languages which is also taken into account in the language selection.

Note also that the languages shown are selected only from those in which the article is available, so they can differ from article to article. the lack of global settings, makes that the system does not learn about previous choices globally but on a per wiki basis, as a result it may take more time until your usual options are totally personalised.

Our observations suggest that the new links make it more easy to switch across languages, and the data we collected so far indicates that the cross-language navigation has increased for the projects where the compact language links are available. If this is not your case, we are definitely interested in knowing more details about your particular cases (which languages were shown for which article, which ones were expected, whether the results were better over time or not, etc.).

Thanks! Pginer-WMF (talk) 12:14, 26 January 2017 (UTC)