[Commons-l] Automatic messages to users: guessing user preferred language

[Eugene Zelenko]

Hi!

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