So does the language box at the top need to be so prominent? Surely thats something that the user is unlikely to change very often, if at all. As so, why is it right at the top of the sidebar?
Topic on Talk:Winter
CaptainPedge: 70% of our user base is multilingual (with 30% speaking three or more languages). The multi-lingual facet of the projects is arguably the most important feature of the entire encyclopedia.
We're experimenting with various language selection designs and this is just one of them. The reason the language selector is so prominent is that you need to be able to find it if you accidentally end up on a page in a language you do not speak or recognize anything from - specifically things with non-latin scripts, in many cases.
I'm working on a test harness that will allow us to replace everything with Russian, which is a good way to see if English speakers can find out how to get to their own language.
CaptainPedge: I have to second this thought. When consuming wiki content (Wikipedia or 3rd party) changing the language is low on my activity radar. Full disclosure. I'm an English native and have never edited or visited other language-versions of pages.
Besides this, I really like the direction of this project.