Talk:Universal Language Selector/Design/Interlanguage links

Feel free to provide any feedback

Is anything happening with this feature?
Is anyone carrying about this getting into live form? – Oxmaster (talk) 16:10, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The project is active but it is not a high priority project so I expect code updates to take some time. Most of the code for the feature was created by a volunteer participating on the OPW program. She is still involved but I expect development to happen at a slower pace compared to when the OPW program was still active. The project falls under the area of the Language Engineering team which has already helped in the development and may continue to do so in the future but is busy working on a high priority project as Content Translation.

In addition, considering that the tool is already useful in its current state, and that it heavily depends on context (languages the article is available, user location...) having it being tested a longer period inside the beta features area does not seem a bad thing. --Pginer-WMF (talk) 18:16, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Unclear what this tool does
Thanks to the developers for working on this tool.

However, I'm not exactly clear on what it does or how to use it. I've selected the tool to use, and I'm given a list of language that are apparently "relevant to me", but I can't find any way to customise it. Browsing through the above, it seems that this is determined by what languages are spoken in a region. I guess if the tool were renamed then that would make sense. Otherwise some degree of customization would be appreciated.

That said, I know the WMF is rationalising its approach to development, and focusing on tools that are more immediate and useful. I would also strongly support if this tool were closed down and the efforts of developers moved to other activities. --LT910001 (talk) 09:50, 6 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Hello, the page currently described the customisation feature as follows: «When a language from the "more" list of languages is selected, it should become more prominent the next time by appearing on the initial list of languages.» Is this unclear? Does it not match what you're seeing? Would you place it somewhere else in the page?
 * The default selection ("How does Universal Language Selector determine which languages I may understand?") is explained by the second bullet in the first section so I'm not sure why you had to scan this long talk page instead. Suggestions and edits appreciated to make it clearer.
 * As for prioritisation, this is/was a GSoC project and currently most time spent on it comes from volunteers like me and its original author Niharika: certainly the WMF is not over-investing on it. :-) --Nemo 10:30, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see! It's clear you've put a lot of effort into it, and I think for most users this tool is very useful. Unfortunately a while ago I trawled the interwikis looking for GAs that I could machine-translate to see how other languages deal with my topic area (anatomy), so I have some rather odd languages (for me) stuck there. That said thanks for being so prompt about replying and I do recognise you've put a lot of work into this. --LT910001 (talk) 23:57, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Why not flow here?!
--Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 12:24, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I've read that it was introduced here (mediawikiwiki) for new talk pages at some date in 2014, but this is an old talk page (2013). After about 30 minutes trying to figure out where exactly I read this I gave up, maybe it wasn't on mediawikiwiki, but an engineering report on meta, or the MW blog. –Be..anyone (talk) 15:20, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Disabled?
and others: Why this beta feature has been disabled in the English Wikipedia? I noticed it's missing from the Beta tab, although the feature was working for me. After disabling all Betas to find out what's happening, it's not working anymore. I think it was a really essential feature especially on pages which have more than 100 interwiki links.

If the beta feature was disbanded just like the compact personal bar due to "end of funding", it's a major disappointment. Betas are being run for more than a year and then just given up on. --Pudeo (talk) 02:25, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * It will be back soon(https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T105795), we are fixing a regressoion that cause it unlisted from beta features. --Santhosh.thottingal (talk) 14:42, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the heads up. --Pudeo (talk) 01:16, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Labels look like links but aren't
Please make the blue labels in the UI actual links I can open by clicking the middle mouse button, for example. --TMg 15:17, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the feedback. You are right, links on the language list should be real links. I've added this to the list of issues to be fixed. --Pginer (talk) 16:01, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Two more things. For the extra interwikis, I can't middle click or Ctrl+click the link to open in a new tab too. [...] Bennylin (talk) 13:32, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I split your message across the two sections which deal with it. This one is tracked at 64797. --Nemo 20:37, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Interwiki titles
One of the good thing of having the old interwikis are for comparing titles between 'pedias. For example in the name of a person, does the majority of 'pedias use X or Y, or in the name of species, Latin or common, or geographic entities. Therefore reducing them to select few limits this functionality. Even after the "..." button is clicked, user still can't see the titles in other 'pedias (not even in mouse hover). A Wikidata-like list would be very useful, and an improvement over the old interwikis.

Also, can we select the short-list through our preferences? The autodetect isn't functioning properly; for example it tend to shows ar.wp and af.wp (alphabetical?), where I would prefer ms.wp and fr.wp. Bennylin (talk) 12:10, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your feedback. I added a new issue in our list about preserving the title information on language links. That would make the new language links to behave closer to the current ones. The auto-detect functionality not working is already a known issue, and there is already a fix for it in progress, so it should be working soon. --Pginer (talk) 10:09, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Besides the articles title being shown in the links pop-up title also remember to restore the translated language name to be shown in the pop-up title that was added this year (5231) – also in the pop-up language select. --Patrick87 (talk) 21:15, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The localised title on hover is working for me. --Nemo 19:22, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Badges
It looks like the Compact Interlanguage links feature doesn't display the badges in the articles? I'm not sure whether this was always the case, or it is a consequence of the new Wikidata feature.--Qgil (talk) 08:35, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
 * "Bug 64797 - [Interlanguage links] Collapsed language links should be actual  elements"?--Qgil (talk) 18:37, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Actually not, I was told, because badges apply styles to the li elements. Asking on . --Nemo 07:30, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Bold on Kazakh Wikipedia
This page says "Kazakh wiki shows inter-language links for English and Russian in bold" and gives an example. But with the migration to Wikidata, that example doesnt show English and Russian in bold. Does anyone have a screenshot of that, or know how it was implemented (Common.css/js?) Is there a plan to add bold as a feature? John Vandenberg (talk) 05:56, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Line height
The gray text at the bottom breaks in certain languages. For example in German it says "20 weitere

Sprachen" with a much to big line-height. --TMg 15:17, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I've tried the Obama article with "195 weitere Sprachen" and it fits on the small window sizes for both Chrome and Firefox with and without the typography refresh, so I could not reproduce that (is there any beta feature / gadget that could be affecting this n your case?). One of the plans for the future is to integrate the label into the button with a shorter text ("X languages") which should reduce the issues. In any case we'll also need to review the line height for those cases that text requires a new line. --Pginer (talk) 16:14, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The line break is not the problem. It can't be avoided in all languages. The line height is wrong. --TMg 14:06, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Search functionality obfuscated
The search box at the top of the UI doesn't look like a search box. It looks like a headline. The only hint that you can type something is the blinking text cursor. This is bad for usability. And it's strange since the same UI element in the ULS language selection actually does look like an input field (example screen shot). It does have a border. This one does not. --TMg 15:17, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Apart from the blinking cursor, the magnifying glass icon and the "search languages" placeholder text help to identify this as a search bar. The decision of avoiding too many boxes is to try to simplify the UI (the search bar occupies all the space on top becoming the main entry point since the map is not used here and it is more closely connected to the list of languages that it filters). During our tests with users we found no issues identifying and using the search bar, but we'll keep paying attention to it. --Pginer (talk) 16:26, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I can't believe this. This is oversimplifying. Microsoft tried the same in a lot of places in Windows 8 and failed horribly. Nobody understood he can simply start typing without having an input field. Did you told your test users there is a filter functionality or did they found it without knowing it is there? Users are looking for search boxes. That's why every search engine still uses a small input field with a clearly visible border. But in this case there simply is no search box. Neither the icon nor the text make it clear that the list can be filtered by typing. Both look like labels for the pop-up (that's the purpose of the pop-up, to "search for a language", right?). The Winter experiment does have the same major design flaw. And the main question remains: Why do think it's a good idea to make every UI (the Beta checkboxes, the new Special:Search, and basically every pop-up in every extension recently developed by the WMF) look different? I once learned being consistent is a major aspect in usability. --TMg 14:27, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

"More" shouldn't show same languages again
I expected the "..." button to show what it says: more languages. Instead it's like it shows the same languages again (with the completely generic headline "Sprachen" in German), plus some more. I find this confusing. Are these two selections of "common" languages based on two different assumptions? --TMg 15:17, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
 * There are a couple of aspects to consider here. The initial list is supposed to be very short, so the first section of the language list ("Common languages") will leave more room for languages the user is interested in. The reason for keeping the initial languages also on the language list is to allow the language list to be able to find all languages. This is useful if you overlook a language in the initial list or went directly to the more languages list due to muscle memory. Having said that, I can imagine that for cases where there are few languages in addition to those in the main list, the "Common languages" section could possibly be skipped. I'll add a note on the future explorations for adapting the language list to few items. --Pginer (talk) 16:43, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I understand and agree that having the "commons" section in the pop-up is probably a good idea. But it should be the same as the languages in the sidebar. Currently it's almost the same, sometimes with one or two more languages, sometimes with one or two missing, sometimes almost empty with a single language only. I don't see the benefit of this. It feels like it's random (the user can not understand the rules from comparing the two lists). And as I said the headline of the "commons" section is bad in German but I couldn't find the message (?uselang=qqx is ignored for some reason). PS: Found it. --TMg 14:42, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
 * If you take a look at the testing recordings, users were asked the following: "Could you search for the 'Mona Lisa' article, and access it in Spanish, Dutch, French and Russian" (you can see the tester box on the top-right area of the screen). They were asked to access the article in different languages which aligns with the user goal regardless of the technical means provided to do so. Those were part of some tests done through usertesting.com. On one-on-one tests with users we followed a similar script (but also asking a more open version of the question initially: "access the languages you know"). In that case, we were able to have a conversation and ask why users made use of the different entry points, and even the users that didn't used search seemed to be aware of the search capability. Once the "known issues" section gets reduced, I'll plan some tests for the current feature. Then, we could check again if the problem appears. --Pginer (talk) 09:43, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

It keeps annoying me.
The … button stands out too much, distracting from the rest of the page. Please remove it, and instead make the " n more languages" text clickable. Keφr 19:48, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I love this extremely simple button with no text. Please keep it and don't make it bigger by switching the "…" with text. --TMg 11:26, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
 * My reflect was to click the 73 more languages instead of the ellipses. Bennylin (talk) 12:16, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Me too. I was somehow subconsciously confused by the "…" at first sight which I think is a bad sign regarding UI design and usability. When clicking "…" I was even more confused since I would have expected the hidden languages to be somehow unfolded (as normally when three dots are used to omit sth. somewhere) but surely not a new UI dialog to pop up. I'd favor the proposed solution below (incorporate number of languages into a button) which will actually make the UI less distracting in my opinion (by saving one UI element). --Patrick87 (talk) 21:06, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * There is a benefit in having an entry point for switching languages that is understood in any language, but it is also true that the indicator of the total length could be understood as the entry point. We have explored several solutions:


 * Integrate both (example design) . While keeping the universal icon and avoiding the multiple-entry point problem, the main entry point becomes slightly more complex than it was.
 * Make the "X more languages" also to act as an entry point. Although it could make it work for users that click on it, having two separate entrypoints for the same thing next to each other seems not to be the best solution.
 * Remove the "X more languages", if the "..." is enough to indicate that there are more languages, do we need the specific number? While it is not strictly needed (it is not provided with the current language links), I think it communicates the multilingualism of our project and helps to answer a reasonable question ("in how many languages is the article available?") easier than what we currently are able to. I prefer to keep this info but I'm open to present it in a different way (popup? as part of the search field placeholder?). ---Pginer (talk) 09:58, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The number is totally misleading. Because the extra interwikis are presented per continent basis (in itself is a bit problematic), some languages occur several times in several continents, i.e. France, English, Nederlands, etc. When it said 5 links, I expect to see the 5 links that were not in the short list, instead I get the full list, with the aforementioned redundancies. Bennylin (talk)
 * The list of languages was initially designed to select from all languages, addapting it to work well with fewer languages is something in our todo list (more details on the "Adapt the list of languages to accommodate a reduced number of languages" point on the "Suggestions for improvement" section) --Pginer (talk) 07:48, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

I would like it if the x more Languages would simply expand into a list of the remaining Languages.--Saehrimnir (talk) 18:22, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I was looking at this again today, and I agree with the above comments. The button is adding to the visual clutter. Three dots don't tell me much regarding what kind of action i'm performing and "35 more languages" IS telling me something, but is not an actionable element... Something is still way off here... —Th e DJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 11:39, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree to the comments in this discussion, too. In fact I would like to click the "more languages" and I strongly prefer a list in alphabetical order, that is more rational and easy. In fact the list "by continent" it is misleading and confusing. "Pacific" and "Middle East" for example are not continents. In conclusion, the only good thing of this "tool" is that it is more compact that the normal view, but when I clicked the "..." I had very bad thoughts about developers. --Daniele Pugliesi (talk) 20:39, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Screenshots for the docs
Hi. Please add some screenshots to the project page, so that we can see the various components in action. Thanks :) –Quiddity (talk) 16:17, 12 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi. Will do that. Thanks! NiharikaKohli (talk) 03:59, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

middle click on languages doesn't work
All links required to be real "a" HTML links, so middle mouse button click can work (to open in new window). -- Vlsergey (talk) 09:13, 19 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Hello. This issue has been fixed now and is in the process of deployment. It should be in effect within a couple of days. Thanks. :) Niharika (talk) 13:19, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

wikidata
On wikidata I somehow managed that I can only see descriptions in languages listed in a #babel: box on my user page. So when I wanted to check a Cyril description I just added ru-0, and could check the Russian description on Q223535. Please blank, revert, or move this section if it is off topic here. –Be..anyone (talk) 00:03, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, Wikidata relies on ULS, but also has some hacky customisations which I think will be eventually removed. See also T88284 and T86191. --Nemo 08:08, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Cantonese Wikipedia disappeared from interwiki link
For instance for https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%9B%B7%E6%9B%BC%E5%85%84%E5%BC%9F it clearly have yue wiki link in wikidata, and before ULS being loaded to collapse the interwiki link the yue link still appears on the side. But after it collapse by itself, the Cantonese Wikipedia link vanished.

Deeply hidden German interwiki for Berlin
I have de-1 userbox on my page, and I'm reading about Berlin. I think de interwiki is highly appropriate. Instead most of presented languages are highly obscure, irrelevant, distant etc. I'm shown magyar, polski, română, Türkçe, Ελληνικά, беларуская, български, русиньскый, русский, українська, ייִדיש (Common languages section). Worldwide section includes español, Esperanto, français Ido, interlingua, Interlingue, lojban, Novial, português, Simple English, Volapük. Then goes America section with Avañe'ẽ, Aymar aru, Deitsch, Hawai`i, kalaallisut, Kreyòl ayisyen, Nederlands, Nāhuatl, Papiamentu, Runa Simi, Sranantongo, ייִדיש, ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ. Only then there is a list of about half an hundred European languages that finally has Deutsch. --Ilya (talk) 23:18, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Default languages
Default languages are strange. In Ruwiki, there are 10 small national languages, and no English! Ardomlank (talk) 23:11, 25 March 2016 (UTC)