Hello,
I came across this on the project Wikipedia mobile, and I thought it's
worth sharing.
---
On mobile devices , many people go directly to
wikipedia.org .
Unfortunately, this shows the standard portal page of the globe and
languages . Everyone in the world currently sees the same page on their
mobile device, and it is not so easy to read and navigate that page on a
small screen.
What if we could show a country-
specific portal page automatically, based on the current location of the
user?
The search interface would use the most-used language of that country, with
secondary languages for that
country prominently displayed as
options.
In order to see how countries use languages, take a look here :
http://stats .wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportPageViewsPerCountryBreakdown.htm
In some countries, the native
language is the primary version of Wikipedia that is used. Certainly that
is true of all
English-speaking countries,
Germany, France, Spain, Japan, etc.
But there are more than 60 countries where English is not their native
language, and yet English Wikipedia is the primary version. Usually the
secondary version is the one in their
native language.
And in India , English may be the
common denominator, but all the Indic languages would be obvious choices.
Easily searching in one of those
languages could be so much more obvious. Viewing and typing in some
languages can be an issue, of course.
What do you think of this idea? Give us your feedback so we can prioritize
this project.
***
Regards,
Stephen
---Better late than never,but never late is better.---
iwanjau.WordPress.com
________________________________
sent from my $100 Phone.