Automatic messages to users: guessing user preferred language

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Alexandre NOUVEL

4 Oct 2007 4 Oct '07

2:07 p.m.

Hi list, I've seen that some users run bots that add some message templates to user talk pages, generally in order to warn them about missing tags and other similar problems. The problem is that bots are not able to guess the preferred user language :) As for now, here are some clues about the user preferred language: * he has a Babel box on his user page or on his talk page => the highest skill could do it * he has a Welcome template or another message template that is not in English => get the lang code from the template translation subpage, but actually this is quite difficult because templates are generally subst'd and no link remains to the translation page... Then, which tools could we set up to know in an easier way the user preferred language? I'd say: * other users check the user contributions and guess his preferred language, then add some {{guessed language|<language code>}} template to the user talk page. This very template would provide information about how to add a Babel box. This is not much better than adding a Welcome template, so I don't think it to be a good solution. * some toolserver asking the database and returning as raw text the preferred language code that the user has set up in his preferences. This seems to me the best way to handle automatically this information, but shall assume that the user has set up this information. I think it's okay because when we need to contact this user, that's because he interacted on the project and has a high probability of having set up his preferences... Any thoughts? Any volunteers to code such a simple tool? :) Best regards from France, -- Alexandre.NOUVEL(a)alnoprods.net |-> http://alnoprods.net |-> L'encyclopédie libre et gratuite : http://fr.wikipedia.org \ I hate spam. I kill spammers. Non mais.

Show replies by date

Gregory Maxwell

4 Oct 4 Oct

1:28 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing user preferred language

On 10/4/07, Alexandre NOUVEL <alexandre.nouvel(a)alnoprods.net> wrote:

...

Why don't we just make the user's language preference setting public data?

Florian Straub

6 Oct 6 Oct

12:20 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferred language

: "Gregory Maxwell" <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote on Thursday, October 04, 2007 3:28 PM:

...

Why don't we just make the user's language preference setting public data?

What about {{notify me}}? The users are advised to put it on their user page after registration. Regards, Flo

Bryan Tong Minh

12:34 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferred language

On 10/6/07, Florian Straub <flominator(a)gmx.net> wrote:

...

: "Gregory Maxwell" <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote on Thursday, October 04, 2007 3:28 PM:

Why don't we just make the user's language preference setting public data?

What about {{notify me}}? The users are advised to put it on their user page after registration.

Yes. advised. That means that we cannot depend on it. It has been used less than 500 times. If we can decide on whether or not user language is private, I will implement a function to query the language in the API. Bryan

Yuval Y

1:39 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferred language

What about my suggestion - if you haven't read my previous letter... What I suggest, is that in the "Log in / create an account" section would be a drop down menu for "native language" or something like that (maybe with the help of uselang) - so after the user creates an account, a script would create a babel box in the user's page (something like {{user $1}} ) or he would get a welcome message in the user talk page ( {{subst:welcome/$1}} ) - or maybe both? That way the user would get a welcome message that could guide him in the Commons, and it would be easier to contact with him. Yuval

Eugene Zelenko

2:19 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferred language

Hi! On 10/6/07, Yuval Y <yuval.y.il(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Yuval Y

3:06 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferred language

Atleast {{user $1}} is available in all languages... I can be much better than using the preferences... Yuval On 10/6/07, Eugene Zelenko <eugene.zelenko(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hi! On 10/6/07, Yuval Y <yuval.y.il(a)gmail.com> wrote:

What about my suggestion - if you haven't read my previous letter... What I suggest, is that in the "Log in / create an account" section

would be

a drop down menu for "native language" or something like that (maybe

with

the help of uselang) - so after the user creates an account, a script

would

create a babel box in the user's page (something like {{user $1}} ) or

would get a welcome message in the user talk page ( {{subst:welcome/$1}}

) -

or maybe both? That way the user would get a welcome message that could guide him in

the

Commons, and it would be easier to contact with him. Yuval

Please also note that not all templates are translated on all languages (actually translations wary by template). So we need intelligent fallback to default template before substitution. For example, MediaWiki:UserMessages.js can't do this. Eugene. _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

Alex Nordstrom

1:55 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferred language

Saturday, 6 October 2007, Florian Straub wrote:

...

What about {{notify me}}? The users are advised to put it on their user page after registration.

What? We have a template encouraging this behaviour? English, Polish and Spanish Wikipedia are not Wikimedia Commons. Demanding that Commons discussions take place there is about as reasonable as asking notification on one's Facebook page. It's a long-standing principle on Wikimedia projects that discouraging use of one's talk page (and that includes diverting such use elsewhere) is unacceptable. * Users who can't be bothered to check their user talk pages should enable e-mail notifications. It takes all of three clicks. * Users who can't be bothered checking their user talk pages should not expect other users to jump through hoops such as registering on another site or divulging their IP address. Apart from the rudeness of expecting this burden to be reversed, there are several technical problems with this idea. 1. Users of UserMessages.js might not even see such notices, or would be slowed down in their janitorial tasks if they were to cater to them. 2. There is no way of using Commons talk page templates outside of Commons, short of copying the wiki code, manually filling in the parameters, and modifying all the links. 3. It increases the risk of users being impersonated and of inactive accounts being compromised. The best course of action would be to have a bot inform users on the page they have requested that this is a bad idea and that they can easily enable e-mail notifications to achieve their objectives without any of the downsides. This should then be followed by the delinking and removal of the template. I have previously discussed this matter at [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2007Mar#Redi…] and [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Talk_page_guidelines] and I will leave a copy of this message at [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Notify_me]. -- Alex Nordstrom http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LX Please do not CC me in followups; I am subscribed to commons-l.

Platonides

5:13 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferred language

Alex Nordstrom wrote:

...

Saturday, 6 October 2007, Florian Straub wrote:

What about {{notify me}}? The users are advised to put it on their user page after registration.

You only need to tell them: You have a new message at your [[commons:User Talk:Foo|commons talk page]] ~~~~ Is it so difficult? I understand that you may not want to register a new account, but *It will be fixed with SUL *It's also needed for other tasks, such as replacing images. *There's a [[Locality_of_reference]]s, you will only need an account on a quite small number of wikis. On the other hand, you're welcome to nicely recommend email notifications (which are a newer system than {{notify me}}).

Alex Nordstrom

5:53 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferred language

Saturday, 6 October 2007, Platonides wrote:

...

Alex Nordstrom wrote:

Saturday, 6 October 2007, Florian Straub wrote:

What about {{notify me}}? The users are advised to put it on their user page after registration.

* Users who can't be bothered to check their user talk pages should enable e-mail notifications. It takes all of three clicks. * Users who can't be bothered checking their user talk pages should not expect other users to jump through hoops such as registering on another site or divulging their IP address.

You only need to tell them: You have a new message at your [[commons:User Talk:Foo|commons talk page]] ~~~~

That's not what the template says. The template actively discourages leaving messages on the talk page on which it appears.

...

Is it so difficult?

Even disregarding the demand of leaving the entire notification off-site rather than giving notification of the notification... it is if you don't want to divulge your IP address. It is if you tag dozens or hundreds of images with missing source information in a day. It takes more steps every time it needs to be done than it does to enable e-mail notifications--and that only needs to be done once.

...

I understand that you may not want to register a new account, but *It will be fixed with SUL

As I understand it, talk pages will still be decentralised, so if you change which non-Commons site you want your Commons talk on, getting a good picture of previous messages and warnings received still requires quite a bit of detective work. And since Commons templates don't work there, it's still double the work to leave one message (to honour the request not to use the Commons talk page at all, it's a lot more than that).

...

On the other hand, you're welcome to nicely recommend email notifications (which are a newer system than {{notify me}}).

Enotif was enabled in November 2006 [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump_archive/2006Nov#6328…] and the template was created in February 2007. In any case, the template is obsolete now. We shouldn't encourage people to continue making these demands when there's a way that doesn't inconvenience others. -- Alex Nordstrom http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LX Please do not CC me in followups; I am subscribed to commons-l.

Florian Straub

7 Oct 7 Oct

8:28 a.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferredlanguage

"Alex Nordstrom" <lx(a)se.linux.org> wrote on Saturday, October 06, 2007 7:53 PM:

...

Saturday, 6 October 2007, Platonides wrote:

Alex Nordstrom wrote:

Saturday, 6 October 2007, Florian Straub wrote:

What about {{notify me}}? The users are advised to put it on their user page after registration.

You only need to tell them: You have a new message at your [[commons:User Talk:Foo|commons talk page]] ~~~~

That's not what the template says. The template actively discourages leaving messages on the talk page on which it appears.

It's the choice of the ones who read it. It's just a way to make sure, we can keep good images with missing information.

...

On the other hand, you're welcome to nicely recommend email notifications (which are a newer system than {{notify me}}).

The idea of the template was to notify the uploader by a CommonsTicker. This will be implemented when Duesentrieb is done with his exams. As long as it shows a way to contact users and as long as its useful we should keep it. Not all Wikipedians are all about media files. Some occasionally write tiny texts, the so called encyclopedia articles .... Regards, Flo

Alex Nordstrom

9:17 a.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferredlanguage

Sunday, 7 October 2007, Florian Straub wrote:

...

"Alex Nordstrom" <lx(a)se.linux.org> wrote on Saturday, October 06, 2007 7:53 PM:

Saturday, 6 October 2007, Platonides wrote:

You only need to tell them: You have a new message at your [[commons:User Talk:Foo|commons talk page]] ~~~~

That's not what the template says. The template actively discourages leaving messages on the talk page on which it appears.

It's the choice of the ones who read it. It's just a way to make sure, we can keep good images with missing information.

"Please leave me deletion notifications on my talk page *there*, not here" means "do not leave messages here." Whether or not to comply with the rather unreasonable demands should be up to the reader, but that tends not to be the expectations of those who make them, in my experience.

...

Well, if it were done by a bot, it wouldn't need to contain any human-readable demands and it wouldn't inconvenience others for the convenience of the requester, so I'd be more willing to accept that. But until then, I think promoting e-mail notifications would be a better option.

...

Not all Wikipedians are all about media files. Some occasionally write tiny texts, the so called encyclopedia articles ....

That's rather off-topic, and the sarcasm is uncalled for. I don't need to be lectured about article-writing. -- Alex Nordstrom http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LX Please do not CC me in followups; I am subscribed to commons-l.

David Gerard

9:30 a.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferredlanguage

On 07/10/2007, Alex Nordstrom <lx(a)se.linux.org> wrote:

...

I think it's eminently reasonable to say "if *you* want to communicate to *me*, here's how to do it." You appear to be taking great offence at them not accepting the means most convenient to *you*. Commons is not a separate project all of its own - it was started as a service project for the other projects. So people are not going to regard it as another place they must check for messages. At least they're nice enough to tell you they're not reading, and that if you want to achieve communication you may have to do something else.

...

> Not all Wikipedians are all about media files. Some occasionally > write tiny texts, the so called encyclopedia articles ....

...

That's rather off-topic, and the sarcasm is uncalled for. I don't need to be lectured about article-writing.

The point is that you do not appear to understand the role of Commons as a service project for the other projects. - d.

Alex Nordstrom

10:21 a.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferredlanguage

Sunday, 7 October 2007, David Gerard wrote:

...

You appear to be taking great offence at them not accepting the means most convenient to *you*.

It's not quite that arbitrary. You can't really equate the effort of checking for and complying with such demands every time you need to leave someone a message with the effort of ticking a checkbox. Discussing Commons matters at Commons is the logical and convenient thing for everyone with a Commons account because it's the common (no pun intended) denominator. Accounts on other sites are not.

...

Commons is not a separate project all of its own - it was started as a service project for the other projects. So people are not going to regard it as another place they must check for messages.

Which is why we have Enotif. -- Alex Nordstrom http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LX Please do not CC me in followups; I am subscribed to commons-l.

David Gerard

10:43 a.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferredlanguage

On 07/10/2007, Alex Nordstrom <lx(a)se.linux.org> wrote:

...

Sunday, 7 October 2007, David Gerard wrote:

...

> You appear to be taking great offence at them not accepting the means > most convenient to *you*.

...

It's not quite that arbitrary.

Considering you're the one who went off in deeply offended high dudgeon, it does appear to be. You're behaving as if you have a right to someone's attention. Commons is a service project for other wikis. They work on those wikis - writing those "encyclopedia article" things, as previously noted (even if you decide it's deeply offensive and sarcastic to even mention it) - and upload pictures here. If you're trying to righteously drive them away from wanting to even bother with commons, which is what your attitude here comes across as, then you are doing both Commons and the projects it was created to serve a great disservice. - d. - d.

Alex Nordstrom

11:34 a.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferredlanguage

Sunday, 7 October 2007, David Gerard wrote:

...

You're behaving as if you have a right to someone's attention.

That's not what I'm saying. I have, however, had people complain because I didn't notice messages to this effect on their user page (you'll notice the template is used very frequently on user pages or even images rather than on user talk pages) or when I didn't notice it on their user talk page (often because I was using UserMessages.js) or because I chose not to cater to the demand/request to go off-site. But this isn't about me or my rights. I simply happen to know what a Commons janitor's workflow is like, and I know we need that workflow to be as smooth as possible to preserve the integrity and organisation of Commons so that it can be of as much use to other Wikimedia projects and society as possible. Occasionally visiting uploaders enabling e-mail notifications so that their works aren't deleted when they forget to add the necessary legal information is a step in that direction. Slowing janitors down in their process of identifying such works is a step away from it.

...

Commons is a service project for other wikis. They work on those wikis - writing those "encyclopedia article" things, as previously noted (even if you decide it's deeply offensive and sarcastic to even mention it)

I consider informing someone with 16,000 Wikipedia edits that there's such a thing as "encyclopedia articles" pretty unnecessary, yes.

...

- and upload pictures here. If you're trying to righteously drive them away from wanting to even bother with commons, which is what your attitude here comes across as, then you are doing both Commons and the projects it was created to serve a great disservice.

Personally I think "don't use Commons to discuss Commons matters" is the attitude more aimed at driving people away from Commons, rather than "enable notifications so that you know what's happening to your work at Commons". I've updated the usage section of the template to recommend Enotif instead. I won't mess with the deterring wording of the actual template (as much as I disagree with it), because I don't want to distort the intended statement of those who use the template. -- Alex Nordstrom http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LX Please do not CC me in followups; I am subscribed to commons-l.

Andrew Gray

12:59 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferredlanguage

On 07/10/2007, Alex Nordstrom <lx(a)se.linux.org> wrote:

...

Sunday, 7 October 2007, David Gerard wrote:

You appear to be taking great offence at them not accepting the means most convenient to *you*.

It's not quite that arbitrary. You can't really equate the effort of checking for and complying with such demands every time you need to leave someone a message with the effort of ticking a checkbox.

...a checkbox many people don't know is there. I just ticked it for the first time ever. Mind you, I don't think I'd ever even looked at my Commons preferences page before, given it still has two things I try to remember to fix (time offsets and equation rendering)... Case study time! I have a note on my Commons talkpage (with its two whole messages in a year and a half) saying "you'll probably get a quicker response via [enwp talkpage]". It's there because when I set up a Commons account I didn't know about email notifications for page edits (indeed, they may not have been enabled) and, let's face it, I would never have heard about them without the fact that I happened to subscribe to commons-l one day. My putting a note up isn't a "demand" to be complied with - and I don't think anyone else in my situation really thinks of it as one. It's a courtesy to Commons; "I don't come by here much, and when I do I'm often not logged in, so if you need to communicate with me, here's a way to reach me". I am unsure exactly what I've done wrong. Clearly, if I was more involved in Commons, I might have heard that there were other ways of ensuring I heard about people wanting to communicate with me on Commons. But, if I was involved enough to have heard about those methods, I'd be involved enough to log in there more than once every few weeks. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

Alex Nordstrom

1:25 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferredlanguage

Sunday, 7 October 2007, Andrew Gray wrote:

...

On 07/10/2007, Alex Nordstrom <lx(a)se.linux.org> wrote:

It's not quite that arbitrary. You can't really equate the effort of checking for and complying with such demands every time you need to leave someone a message with the effort of ticking a checkbox.

...a checkbox many people don't know is there.

Agreed. We need to make people more aware of this option. Seeing as missing out on Commons messages seems to be a frequent concern, perhaps we should put it in welcome templates or even mention it somewhere in the signup process.

...

I have a note on my Commons talkpage (with its two whole messages in a year and a half) saying "you'll probably get a quicker response via [enwp talkpage]". It's there because when I set up a Commons account I didn't know about email notifications for page edits (indeed, they may not have been enabled) and, let's face it, I would never have heard about them without the fact that I happened to subscribe to commons-l one day.

Yeah, I don't have a problem with that. The wording is courteous rather than dismissive, and if it's been there for a year and a half, Enotif would not have been enabled when you added it.

...

My putting a note up isn't a "demand" to be complied with - and I don't think anyone else in my situation really thinks of it as one.

Well... you'd be surprised. Some people get quite upset if you don't bend over backwards to inform them that they forgot to add the legal information they were told to add when uploading. I've seen some pretty hostile reactions to Commons user talk pages being used to discuss Commons matters, even after the user was informed about Enotif. -- Alex Nordstrom http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LX Please do not CC me in followups; I am subscribed to commons-l.

David Gerard

1:47 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferredlanguage

On 07/10/2007, Alex Nordstrom <lx(a)se.linux.org> wrote:

...

Hence you considering starting here with hostility was just the way to fix this? I must confess, it's not clear how that's actually supposed to be effective. - d.

Alex Nordstrom

2:38 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferredlanguage

Sunday, 7 October 2007, David Gerard wrote:

...

On 07/10/2007, Alex Nordstrom <lx(a)se.linux.org> wrote:

Hence you considering starting here with hostility was just the way to fix this? I must confess, it's not clear how that's actually supposed to be effective.

I do find the wording of the template and the idea that it represents to be unreasonable and ineffective, and I won't sugarcoat that opinion, but I haven't intended to come across as hostile. I began by making what I intended to be a constructive suggestion for how to eliminate this template, since the need for anything like it already has been. Perhaps the wording of it was unnecessarily harsh, and I do regret following the debate in the direction of whether it's more rude to have such expectations or to ignore them, rather than focusing on my original proposition. Efficiency is less subjective than etiquette, so let's focus on that. Can we agree on the following points? * Users shouldn't have to monitor Commons actively. * Users should not attempt to hinder or discourage discussions on their Commons user talk pages. They may request notification of such discussions by some other means, but there should be no obligation to comply, and any missed messages is the responsibility of the recipient. * E-mail notifications are technically superior, because they're sent every time, whereas other notices may be intentionally or unintentionally overlooked. -- Alex Nordstrom http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LX Please do not CC me in followups; I am subscribed to commons-l.

David Gerard

2:56 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferredlanguage

On 07/10/2007, Alex Nordstrom <lx(a)se.linux.org> wrote:

...

* Users shouldn't have to monitor Commons actively. * Users should not attempt to hinder or discourage discussions on their Commons user talk pages. They may request notification of such discussions by some other means, but there should be no obligation to comply, and any missed messages is the responsibility of the recipient.

I don't really see how it's possible for the sender to say in good faith "any missed messages is the responsibility of the recipient" when the sender has a note *right there* saying the message is unlikely to be read there. - d.

Alex Nordstrom

3:10 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferredlanguage

Sunday, 7 October 2007, David Gerard wrote:

...

On 07/10/2007, Alex Nordstrom <lx(a)se.linux.org> wrote:

Bots tend not to notice or understand such messages, if you use UserMessages.js, you don't necessarily look at the user talk page first, and a lot of times it's not right there but on the user page or on the images. Not everyone might understand English well enough to follow the instructions. I have a request at the top of my user talk page to continue discussions where they started rather than taking them to my user talk page. People frequently fail to read it, for whatever reason, so I know it happens. I don't think it's because of bad faith, though. -- Alex Nordstrom http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LX Please do not CC me in followups; I am subscribed to commons-l.

Platonides

9:20 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferredlanguage

I have just being {{nsd}} tagging 100 unsourced images from the OsamaK list at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:OsamaK/Tagging <spam>Go and help tagging!</spam> For each image, i tagged <no source> with UserMessages.js trying to guess the user language, and for users with user page/seeming to be the authors/many images (they often have a bunch of unsourced images with the same license) i also notified them in their home wiki (these are old images, we can't expect they're checking their commons talk if they haven't contributed for months!). The 'notifications' were a line from the localised image source template with a link to their commons talk page. My message may be nonsense, but i hope they will understand and figure out they should go to commons and (seeing the full template) source their images ;-) Doing it i found out that: *My guesses were quite good (they *had* an account there). *It's fast to create a new account (i made 4 and used several more). *A good way to detect the user language/home wiki is to check-usage where is the tagged image being used. *Leaving messages on RTL is hard.

Platonides

2:37 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferredlanguage

Andrew Gray wrote:

...

On 07/10/2007, Alex Nordstrom wrote:

It's not quite that arbitrary. You can't really equate the effort of checking for and complying with such demands every time you need to leave someone a message with the effort of ticking a checkbox.

Maybe add that checkbox on the account creation? It's already on the message when the account is created, but could help. It would be interesting to have statistics about options popularity after advertising new options. What about adding to mediawiki to tell you new options since you last logged in? So we wouldn't have so many old users unaware of the new facilities.

Florian Straub

6:36 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessinguserpreferredlanguage

"Platonides" <Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote on Sunday, October 07, 2007 4:37 PM:

...

Andrew Gray wrote:

...

Maybe add that checkbox on the account creation? It's already on the message when the account is created, but could help.

That's what I did right after creating{{notify me}}. Its name already suggests what it's meant to be for. It says "please notify me" not "I don't want to use the Commons talk pages". I think the majority of new registered users will read about enotif, but we should try to reach the older ones. Is there any way of finding out, who has a correct email address and no enotif? Best regards, Flo

Florian Straub

6:39 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessinguserpreferredlanguage

"Platonides" <Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote on Sunday, October 07, 2007 4:37 PM

...

It would be interesting to have statistics about options popularity after advertising new options. What about adding to mediawiki to tell you new options since you last logged in? So we wouldn't have so many old users unaware of the new facilities.

This sounds like an awesome suggestion. Any idea what to do to achieve it? Regards, Flo

David Gerard

6 Oct 6 Oct

6:22 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferred language

On 06/10/2007, Alex Nordstrom <lx(a)se.linux.org> wrote:

...

Er, no. Commons is a *service project* for those wikis. It's not for Facebook. - d.

Eugene Zelenko

4 Oct 4 Oct

1:30 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing user preferred language

Hi! On 10/4/07, Alexandre NOUVEL <alexandre.nouvel(a)alnoprods.net> wrote:

...

I think it's great idea! However I don't sure about extraction of language from user's preferences, since it could be privacy issue. But declaring preferred contact language on user page looks fine for me. Instructions could be added to account creation page or welcome template. At least some of recent complains could be avoided in future. With best regards, Eugene.

Matthew Brown

9:03 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing user preferred language

On 10/4/07, Eugene Zelenko <eugene.zelenko(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

However I don't sure about extraction of language from user's preferences, since it could be privacy issue.

Why on earth would such a preference be a genuine privacy issue? -Matt

Andrew Gray

9:18 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing user preferred language

On 04/10/2007, Matthew Brown <morven(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

On 10/4/07, Eugene Zelenko <eugene.zelenko(a)gmail.com> wrote:

However I don't sure about extraction of language from user's preferences, since it could be privacy issue.

Why on earth would such a preference be a genuine privacy issue? -Matt

Well, it isn't really. (Though you'd be amazed what people will complain about) However, it is currently data that we *say* we'll keep private, so... -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

Gregory Maxwell

10:32 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing user preferred language

On 10/4/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

On 04/10/2007, Matthew Brown <morven(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 10/4/07, Eugene Zelenko <eugene.zelenko(a)gmail.com> wrote:

However I don't sure about extraction of language from user's preferences, since it could be privacy issue.

Why on earth would such a preference be a genuine privacy issue? -Matt

Well, it isn't really. (Though you'd be amazed what people will complain about) However, it is currently data that we *say* we'll keep private, so...

Well right, we'd have to jump through some hoops to make the change but I think it may well be worth it. Perhaps tie in the data becoming public with the switch to SUL? I can't find where we actually state that the data will be private however, so I'm not sure of how we'd go about making the change.

Erik Moeller

10:46 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing user preferred language

On 10/5/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Well right, we'd have to jump through some hoops to make the change but I think it may well be worth it. Perhaps tie in the data becoming public with the switch to SUL?

I don't see a privacy issue here. IMHO it would be fine to immediately make this visible on the user page. It would actually be wise to allow users to express language abilities in a more fine-grained way through the preferences. But this is information that users should only have to maintain once, not repeatedly, so that part should probably wait until SUL. -- Toward Peace, Love & Progress: Erik DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

Andrew Gray

10:57 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing user preferred language

On 04/10/2007, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Well, it isn't really. (Though you'd be amazed what people will complain about) However, it is currently data that we *say* we'll keep private, so...

I had assumed the privacy policy implicitly said that any information you give us that "isn't* publicly posted is considered private, but this may be a slightly overenthusiastic interpretation! Information you provide in preferences seems to be ambiguous - other than email addresses, we don't say what we do with it or how private we consider it, but we do imply that the only things we consider "public" are your actual edits and associated metadata. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

Yuval Y

2:10 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing user preferred language

Finally someone thinks about user friendly messages =) I've noticed that there are many people who doesn't use the babel box, and I was trying to figure out their native language (or something close to that) according to what they wrote in the images. I also used the language template in all the versions of {{welcome}}, so when I see that, I'm usually add the welcome template in that language. The problem is that I'm using Google translator, so it's a bit limited. I think that the {{guessed language|<language code>}} template would be quite fine for a start, since the user has to learn how to do more than uploading images (like - how to EDIT the text...) I think that users who know how to change the preferences, do know how to do other things, so it wouldn't do much to use a script who reads that info - after all, this is more difficult than placing a babel box, not to mention that some users - like me, prefer the English interface. What I suggest, is that in the "Log in / create an account" section would be a drop down menu for "native language" or something like that (maybe with the help of uselang) - so after the user creates an account, a script would create a babel box in the user's page (something like {{user $1}} ) or he would get a welcome message in the user talk page ( {{subst:welcome/$1}} ) - or maybe both? That way the user would get a welcome message that could guide him in the Commons, and it would be easier to contact with him. Yuval On 10/4/07, Alexandre NOUVEL <alexandre.nouvel(a)alnoprods.net> wrote:

...

Platonides

6 Oct 6 Oct

5:22 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing user preferred language

Yuval Y wrote:

...

A Babel box would have an higuer priority. But it is not generally used. i don't know about language customization.

...

What I suggest, is that in the "Log in / create an account" section would be a drop down menu for "native language" or something like that (maybe with the help of uselang) - so after the user creates an account, a script would create a babel box in the user's page (something like {{user $1}} ) or he would get a welcome message in the user talk page ( {{subst:welcome/$1}} ) - or maybe both? That way the user would get a welcome message that could guide him in the Commons, and it would be easier to contact with him. Yuval

When they create their account, they can do it in a number of languages. It will become the preferences language. Automatically substing Welcome is dumb, as would be a bot welcoming every registered user, as we already have MediaWiki:Welcomecreation

Yuval Y

5:46 p.m.

New subject: Automatic messages to users: guessing user preferred language

On 10/6/07, Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Yuval Y wrote:

A Babel box would have an higuer priority. But it is not generally used. i don't know about language customization.

Which means that a script which writes the babel box in the user's page, can be quite a good idea. The main problem is how to talk with users who know almost nothing about commons, or editing pages etc - they just upload images. When the user do know how to write information in his user page, or how to use categories etc, it much simpler to communicate with him, since the message templates are translated to many languages. When the user doesn't know what's commons or what does the admins want from him - That's the time when it's so necessary to chat with him in a language he understand. That's why I suggested that when a user logs into commons, he'll get a {{user $1}} in his main page, and a {{subst:welcome/$1}} in his user talk page. After all, I've seen many sites which wrote me a welcome message when I signed in to them. Yuval

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participants (13)

Alex Nordstrom
Alexandre NOUVEL
Andrew Gray
Andrew Gray
Bryan Tong Minh
David Gerard
Erik Moeller
Eugene Zelenko
Florian Straub
Gregory Maxwell
Matthew Brown
Platonides
Yuval Y