Interlanguage links/Implementation comparison

On Wikimedia sites and apps there are a lot of different ways to switch to reading an article in another language. Here are some observations and comparisons.

Vector and Monobook: compact
See Universal Language Selector/Compact Language Links

This is the default view in Wikipedia in all the languages and in most other Wikipedia projects, and available as a beta feature in all others. It can be disabled using a preference so that all the languages are shown.

Location
In the end of the sidebar (left-hand in LTR, right-hand in RTL). In a small number of Wikimedia project it is not at the bottom of the sidebar.

Label
"In other languages". Customized in some projects as "Languages", "This page in other languages", and so on.

Appearance
Up to nine autonyms are shown initially. They are chosen by the user's previously selected languages, Babel boxes, browser language, Accept-Language, geolocation, and featured articles. If this still doesn't fill up the whole list, common world languages are added to avoid random languages with autonyms from the beginning of the alphabet appearing in the list. An button with the label "X more" is shown at the bottom of the list, where "X" is the number of the other languages. All the available autonyms are shown in a ULS panel that opens when the user clicks the "More" button. Languages are searchable using the ULS search box. The gear icon is shown near the label - it opens ULS, which doesn't change the content language, but controls other language settings.

Are the foreign article names shown?
Target article name and the name of the target language in the user's language is shown as a tooltip on each autonym link.

Are featured article indicated?
Yes.

Pros

 * We have data that shows that people are more likely to click these links than in the non-compact list.
 * No clicking needed to see the language names.
 * The big list of languages shows Wikipedia's massive multilingualism.
 * The initial list is short and manageable.
 * The most likely languages are shown first.
 * The user's previous languages are remembered.
 * The languages are easy to search thanks to ULS's support for searching any language name in any language, especially in a very long list and for people who cannot easily type in the language that they need.
 * Geolocation doesn't add issues with privacy and performance. It's already done on every request anyway, and it's not stored.
 * We use the standard CLDR language-territory data, and we contribute to it.

Cons

 * The location of the list is low on the page and hard to find for people who are not familiar with the existence of the language list. On many screens, even with modern currently-sold desktop and laptop computers, the list is only visible if the user scrolls down. A user who doesn't know the language may leave the page without becoming aware of the existence of an article in their language without scrolling.
 * Languages that don't appear in the initial list are hidden behind a click:
 * This makes them unsearchable with browsers' "Find in page" feature, although a surprisingly small number of people on the web actually use this browser feature.
 * This may be inconvenient for editors who want to examine or compare articles in many languages at once.
 * More conditions may be added to select the initial languages: long articles, articles in languages that are related to the article's subject, and so on.
 * The process to update CLDR language-territory data, while easy enough, is not entirely under our control. Reasonable requests sometimes take a long time to process (for example adding more languages of Russia).
 * See some more known issues on the ULS-CompactLinks Phabricator workboard.

Location
Same as with Compact Language Links.

Label
Same as with Compact Language Links.

Appearance
All the languages' autonyms are shown. They are sorted according to the wgInterwikiSortingSort value specified in the InitialiseSettings.php file in the WMF server configuration. The default is to sort alphabetically by the language code, but this is customized for many projects. The actual customizations are detailed in the InterwikiSortOrders.php file. As with Compact Language Links, the gear icon is shown near the label.

Are the foreign article names shown?
Article names and names of the languages in the language of the wiki are shown as a tooltip.

Are featured article indicated?
Featured articles are marked using an icon near the autonym. The icon itself is different in different projects.

Pros:

 * No clicking needed to see the language names.
 * The big list of languages shows Wikipedia's massive multilingualism.

Cons:

 * It's hard to find the needed language in the long list. Fewer people click links in such a list than in the compact list.
 * As with the compact list, the location of the list is low on the page and hard to find.
 * It appears after all the other sidebar links, and scrolling may be needed.
 * The list can be very long. It sometimes happens that short articles have long lists.

Timeless
This experimental skin is available on all projects as a preference, but it is not default anywhere. It was developed in 2017 based on some ideas from the Winter design experiment from 2014.

It can work with both compact and classic (full) language list.

The main difference is the location of the list. This skin has two sidebars, on the left and on the right. The language list is shown as the second box on the right-hand sidebar in LTR wikis, and left-hand sidebar in RTL wikis. This makes it rather more prominent than it is with the Vector or Monobook skins.

(At the time of this writing, it shows an unnecessary scrollbar, although this is probably an easily fixable bug.)

Where
A clickable element in the end of the page.

Label
"大A" Icon + "You can read this article in %d other languages"

Appearance
Tapping the element replaces the view with a list of languages. The autonym is shown in large type, and the English name of the language is shown below it in small grey type. The list is not shown immediately, but loaded after tapping. The sort order is probably by the article count of the Wikipedias. A search box at the top allows to filter the list by the autonym or the English language name.

Are the foreign article names shown?
No.

Are featured article indicated?
No.

Pros:

 * The design of the list matches iOS design visual patterns (citation needed!!!)
 * The location matches iOS design visual patterns (citation needed!!!)
 * The location is consistent with the desktop site.
 * Showing the language name in English is useful for people who don't have fonts for that language. However, if they don't have a font, they probably won't be able to read the article anyway (bundling a font or auto-downloading it may resolve this problem).

Cons:

 * If the user knows where to look for the list, scrolling is needed.
 * If the user doesn't know where the list is, it's not discoverable unless the user scrolls all the way down.
 * Scrolling all the way down can be a long process.
 * The order of the autonym and the English language name is opposite from the Android app.

Where:
The first item in a menu that opens after tapping a vertical ellipsis menu at the top.

Label
Read in other languages

Appearance
Tapping the menu item replaces the view with a list of languages. The English name of the language is shown in large type, and the autonym of the language is shown below it in small type. The list is not shown immediately, but loaded after tapping. The sort order is probably by the article count of the Wikipedias. A search box at the top allows to filter the list by the autonym or the English language name.

Are the foreign article names shown?
No.

Are featured article indicated?
No.

Pros

 * Showing the language name in English is useful for people who don't have fonts for that language. However, if they don't have a font, they probably won't be able to read the article anyway (bundling a font or auto-downloading it may resolve this problem).

Cons

 * The order of the autonym and the English language name is opposite from the Android app.

Where:
A blue button in the end of the article.

Label
Read in another language or "大A" icon or both, overlapping (the latter is definitely a bug, but I cannot reproduce it consistently)

Appearance
Tapping the menu item replaces the view with a list of languages. The autonym is shown, followed by a pipe character (|) and the article name. The list is not shown immediately, but loaded after tapping. The sort order is (probably) the same as on desktop: by the language code. A search box at the top allows to filter the list by the autonym or the English language name.

Are the foreign article names shown?
Yes.

Are featured article indicated?
No.

Pros

 * Nice searching.
 * The article title is a useful addition to the language name (this assumption may need to be tested thoroughly, however)
 * The location is consistent with the iOS app.

Cons

 * If the user knows where to look for the list, scrolling is needed.
 * If the user doesn't know where the list is, it's not discoverable unless the user scrolls all the way down.
 * Scrolling all the way down can be a long process.
 * The article title is not an indicator of the language; if one is only looking for language information, it's noise.

Where
A round clickable element near the middle of a persistent top bar.

Label
The current language code in serif capital Latin letters. If the code has more than two letters, it is shortened to two.

Appearance
Clicking the element shows a menu of up to 5 items. Each item shows a language code, the English language name and the article name in smaller type. If there are more than 5 languages, another line is added. Clicking it shows the full list of languages as a sidebar on the left-hand side, with a search box at the top. This sidebar only shows the autonym and the English language name. It’s unclear how the first five languages are picked; I am in Israel and when I am reading the English Wikipedia article True Jesus Church, clicking this item shows English (!), French, German, Hebrew and Portuguese.

Are the foreign article names shown?
Only in the initial menu.

Are featured article indicated?
No.

Pros

 * Nice searching.
 * The discoverability at the top may be good (but see cons)

Cons

 * It’s unclear how the initial languages are chosen.
 * Inconsistency: Article names are only shown in the first list, but not in the full list.
 * I happen to know that EN and HE are language codes, but not all users know it.