Yes, but what about people not on earth? https://xkcd.com/713/ and similar have to be taken into consideration as well for such an important part of the wikipedia experience, I believe. It's 'Free knowledge for all', not 'Free knowledge for all that we can accurately geolocate'.
I wonder if we can set a permanent cookie after asking people with a large modal dialog box about their language preferences on first load. Thoughts? On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 9:52 PM, WereSpielChequers <werespielchequ...@gmail.com> wrote: > When a reader comes to Wikipedia from the web we can detect their IP address > and that usually geolocates them to a country. More often than not that then > tells you the dominant language of that country. > > If we were to default to official or dominant languages then I predict > endless arguments as to which language(s) should be the default in which > countries. The large expat community in some parts of the Arab world might > prefer English over Arabic. India would want to do things by state, and a > whole new front would emerge in the Israeli Palestine debate. > > Regards > > Jonathan Cardy > > >> On 7 May 2015, at 05:06, Sam Katz <smk...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> hey guys, you can't guess geolocation, because occasionally you'd be >> wrong. this happens to me all the time. I want to read a site in >> spanish... and then it thinks I'm in Latin America, when I'm not. >> >> --Sam >> >>> On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 10:07 PM, Oliver Keyes <oke...@wikimedia.org> wrote: >>> Possibly. But that sounds potentially wooly and sometimes inaccurate. >>> >>> When a browser makes a web request, it sends a header called the >>> accept_language header >>> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_header_fields#Accept-Language) >>> which indicates what languages the browser finds ideal - i.e., what >>> languages the user and system are using. >>> >>> If we're going to make modifications here (I hope we will. But again; >>> early days) I don't see a good argument for using geolocation, which >>> is, as you've noted, flawed without substantial time and energy being >>> applied to map those countries to "probable" languages. The data the >>> browser already sends to the server contains the /certain/ languages. >>> We can just use that. >>> >>>> On 6 May 2015 at 22:50, Stuart A. Yeates <syea...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>> This seems like a great place to use analytics data, for each division >>>> in the geo-location classification, rank each of the languages by >>>> usage and present the top N as likely candidates (+ browser settings) >>>> when we need the user to pick a language. >>>> >>>> cheers >>>> stuart >>>> -- >>>> ...let us be heard from red core to black sky >>>> >>>> >>>>> On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 2:24 PM, Mark J. Nelson <m...@anadrome.org> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Stuart A. Yeates <syea...@gmail.com> writes: >>>>> >>>>>> Reading that excellent presentation, the thought that struck me was: >>>>>> >>>>>> "If I wanted to subvert the assumption that Wikipedia == en.wiki, >>>>>> linking to http://www.wikipedia.org/ is what I'd do." >>>>>> >>>>>> A smarter http://www.wikipedia.org/ might guess geo-location and thus >>>>>> local languages. >>>>> >>>>> I'd also like to see something smarter done at the main page, but the >>>>> "and thus" bit here is notoriously tricky. >>>>> >>>>> For example most geolocation-based things, like Wikidata by default, >>>>> tend to produce funny results in Denmark. A Copenhagener is offered >>>>> something like this choice, in order: >>>>> >>>>> * Danish, Greelandic, Faroese, Swedish, German, ... >>>>> >>>>> The reasoning here is that Danish, Greenlandic, and Faroese are official >>>>> languages of the Danish Realm, which includes both Denmark proper, and >>>>> two autonomous territories, Greeland and the Faroe Islands. And then >>>>> Sweden and Germany are the two neighboring countries. >>>>> >>>>> But for the average Copenhagener, the following order is far more >>>>> likely: >>>>> >>>>> * Danish, English, Norwegian Bokmål, ... >>>>> >>>>> The reason here is that Norwegian Bokmål is very close to Danish in >>>>> written form (more than Swedish is, and especially more than Faroese is) >>>>> while English is a widely used semi-official language in business, >>>>> government, and education (for example about half of university theses >>>>> are now written in English, and several major companies use it as their >>>>> official workplace language). >>>>> >>>>> I think it's possible to come up with something that better aligns with >>>>> readers' actual preferences, but it's not easy! >>>>> >>>>> -Mark >>>>> >>>>> -- >>>>> Mark J. Nelson >>>>> Anadrome Research >>>>> http://www.kmjn.org >>>>> >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> Wiki-research-l mailing list >>>>> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org >>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Wiki-research-l mailing list >>>> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org >>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Oliver Keyes >>> Research Analyst >>> Wikimedia Foundation >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Wiki-research-l mailing list >>> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wiki-research-l mailing list >> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l -- Yuvi Panda T http://yuvi.in/blog _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l