Topic on Talk:Universal Language Selector/Compact Language Links

The “compact” list always includes some languages I don’t use (e.g., Russian and Romanian), but never includes languages I don’t speak but use (e.g., Japanese, Hebrew). Before I noticed a search box in the menu I had to spend like a minute scrolling through the list of languages every time I need to find Japanese (it’s way down there in the Asia section), which is very annoying. For some reason it knows to “suggest” Korean (which I do use, very rarely, like Hebrew) but never Japanese or Hebrew.

If this is some kind of machine learning I suggest that it be be nuked and replaced with a user preference; machine learning often does not actually work. (To be honest the non-compact list is a lot more user-friendly.)

It's not machine learning. As described in the FAQ, it's a very simple algorithm. See the question "How do you decide which languages are shown to me in the initial compact list?"

If you often use Japanese and Hebrew, consider adding them to your Babel box on the global user page on Meta. And if you click Japanese, you are supposed to see it in the suggested languages the next time (on the same wiki).

Ok, so this is some kind of hidden affordance, which is almost always bad. This explains why the list is so strange.

I wonder how many people are affected by the algorithm’s opacity. When you’re editing and want to see how the article is written in a different language, you right click and open in new tab (or even new window); you left click only when you’re just curious and want to browse (or if you left-clicked by mistake). This must be why languages that I don’t use are on the list (I was curious and left-clicked) but languages that I actually use don’t get into the list (I need to compare so I right-clicked). I bet this affects many more people.

A link to the FAQ should probably be put near the list. Not in Preferences where people won’t see it except once in a blue moon.