I have been trying to use babel to instruct what language should CLL pick, however when I put the babel userbox on my wikimedia homepage, it'd only get transcluded onto wikis that I do not have individual user page, and thus there are multiple wikis that this would not be affected. I tried to use syntax like {{meta::User:C933103/babel}} to manually transclude but that does not work either. Another possibility could be copy the code over in each wiki's userpage but it will be a pain to update everytime across all the different wikis. Is there a easier solution?
Topic on Talk:Universal Language Selector/Compact Language Links
Sorry, no.
Transclusion across wikis is one of the oldest requested features, and it would be useful for thousands of things, and not only for Babel. Think, for example, of how the code for citation and infobox templates is replicated across a lot of wikis with little variations, which is extremely inefficient. This will be resolved some day, but it's impossible at the moment to say when.
One thing that may be resolved in the nearer future is global preferences. See meta:Community Tech/Global preferences. This will help with setting global language preferences, too.
That would first require integrating babel selection into user preference in some way that is not currently done and I would like to write a feature request for it but don't know how to..
And According to https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Topic:U1sukwghjzgv3qjg&topic_showPostId=u1z4u0ngqt62m2o6&fromnotif=1#flow-post-u1z4u0ngqt62m2o6, seems like I would have to ask in each individual wiki if I want to request a universal acceptance of enabling certain mediawiki preference for subbing in my babel box on meta so that my language setting can be universally accepted. Would it be possible if CLL developers be able to contact all the wikis for us so that users can stop worrying about that?C933103 (talk) 23:38, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
It's definitely on our radar.
The "scary transclusion" technology, which is mentioned in the discussion to which you linked, is a certain way to make transclusion of templates (and other pages) across different wikis possible. It's indeed disabled on all the wikis, and in its current state it will not be enabled because it is to experimental and incomplete. I do hope that some day there will be a stable technology that will allow this. This will be a very big project, which will will involve a lot of discussion across all the communities.
In the meantime, I suggest doing the following things:
- Make sure that you have a global user page with a valid Babel box.
- Delete local user pages in wikis where you don't really need them.
- Copy the Babel box to user pages in wikis where you do need a local user page.
Is it possible to disable CLL until you're ready?
And it is troublesome to have to manually flip the switch on all wikis too
This preference is just as troublesome to change in multiple wikis as any other preference. More importantly, as it is now, CLL is useful for millions of readers for easier navigation between wikis. We see it clearly in the statistics. Disabling it will again make it more complicated for them. So no, this is not a good reason to disable it.
Other perference would only affect local editing and viewing while CLL affect interwiki behavior.
The "easier navigation" being claimed based on navigation stats was based on the assumption that readers were generally looking for a specific language version when they look at interlanguage link, and the assumption is not necessarily true. As a result, the conclusion is not firmly established.