Universal Language Selector/Compact Language Links

As we develop content in more and more languages, the lists of interlanguage links on Wikipedia articles grow longer. Articles such as "Barack Obama" or "Sun" have more than 200 links, and that becomes a problem for users who often switch among several languages. It is not easy to find a specific language in those long lists. With compact language links the list can be made shorter by showing subset of languages the user is most likely interested in and let the user to access the rest via a separate menu.

Compact language links feature is part of Universal Language Selector (ULS) – the extension that provides language selection and various language related settings. ULS has been in use on all Wikimedia wikis since 2013. Compact language links was available as a separate beta-feature since 2014 when it was created in an OPW project.

How does it work


Compact language links can be enabled and disabled using a setting that is available under Preferences -> Appearance. This setting is currently being made available for users across all Wikimedia wikis in several stages.

With compact language links a short list of the relevant languages for the user is displayed. This selection is based on your location, your previous language selections and your browser settings. You can read more about this selection at this FAQ: How does Universal Language Selector determine which languages I may understand?.



At the bottom of the list there will be an indicator of the number of languages for which the page exists and a button to access the rest of the languages. Clicking on more will open the language selection dialog. It provides a list of languages that can be searched by language name in any language, and it can handle spelling mistakes. Also language codes are supported.

You will also be able to see badges like featured article inside this language dialog.

I have been using Compact Language Links as a beta feature. What is the change I will see?
You should not see any major change in the interlanguage area. You will however see that Compact Language Links does no longer appear as a feature under the Beta features section. Instead, you will see a new preference setting under Preferences -> Appearance where the checkbox would be selected.

I tried Compact Language Links earlier and then turned off the beta feature. Now it is enabled again. How do I turn it off?


Please go to Preferences -> Appearance and scroll down to the Languages section. Here you can see a checkbox which says Use compact language links, with languages relevant for you. Deselect this checkbox and save the preferences. (See image)

How many languages are shown in the compact list?
Between 7 and 9 languages are generally shown in the list. The size of the list was based in two factors.

On the one hand, making enough room for the number of languages people may need. During our research on different language related projects we have asked participants about the languages they speak and 9 was a limit very rarely exceeded. For example, for Content Translation, from 187 responses 85% of the users spoke 4 languages or less. this sees also consistent with research on multilingual editors.

On the other hand, we wanted the list to be short enough to be easier to process quickly. While working memory can be different from human to human the 7 ± 2 seems to be a common guideline that suggests we may be providing a short-enough list for humans to process.

How do you decide which languages are relevant for me?
The main factor for choosing the languages are the previous language selections from the user. This means that you can select the languages you want by simply clicking on them. If you are interested in reading an article in Japanese, once you select it, it will be surfaced for easier access next time. The first time, due to the lack of previous choices, the language selection is based on other factors. These include the languages of your browser (also configurable by you), and geographic information (which is based on CLDR data to which anyone can contribute).

How do you determine my location?
Your IP address is checked on the servers against a database which contains mappings from addresses to approximate locations. The results are stored in a cookie named GeoIP. ULS then reads this information and combines it with a list languages spoken in a territory. This information comes from the Unicode CLDR project. Geolocation has some more links.

It is said that Geo-IP i.e. geographic information is used to determine the language selection. How important is this criteria?
Geo-IP is not perfect, but that is not used as the only information source. It is used in addition to more reliable sources—your previous selections and browser language. In any case, our data relies on CLDR so it is expected to improve over time and we encourage users to ask for improvements on it.

With Geo-IP are you not enforcing certain languages in certain geographic areas, which would be contrary to the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation?
Geo-IP is only one of the mechanisms used to guess the user's language. In fact, if suggestions include the languages of a region this can bring more visibility to them than the old list.

I use a VPN most of the times. The geo-IP information is useless for me.
Geo-IP is only one of the mechanisms used to guess the user's language. Your browser settings and previously selected languages will always be used.

Why do I see some of the languages listed in the interlanguage links as gray?
The language lists that you see in gray are being shown by Content Translation which is a beta feature that you have enabled. The languages in gray indicate that the article you are viewing is not present in those languages and can be translated via Content Translation by clicking on the gray links.

Where can I provide feedback?
You can use the project talk page. Bugs and feature requests will be tracked in Phabricator.

Known issues and feature requests
See full list on Phabricator.


 * Previous choices are not remembered cross-wiki. The previously selected languages are currently only remembered in the current wiki.
 * This beta feature is incompatible with the SidebarTranslate gadget. (Won't be fixed ULS-side.)