On 10/6/07, Platonides <Platonides@gmail.com> wrote:
Yuval Y wrote:
> 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.
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