Van: Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
>
> FYI. This likely has implications for the work that's being done on
> universal language selection.
>
> Erik
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Lydia Pintscher <lydia.pintscher(a)wikimedia.de>
> Date: Tue, May 8, 2012 at 2:46 AM
> Subject: [Wikidata-l] mockups for linking Wikipedia articles up for feedback
> To: "Discussion list for the Wikidata project." <wikidata-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>
>
> Heya folks :)
>
> We've worked on mockups for how we think linking of articles between
> different Wikipedias should work with Wikidata. You can find the
> mock-ups and explanations here:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata/Notes/Storyboard_for_linking_Wikip…
> It'd be great if you could have a look and give feedback either here
> or on the discussion page on meta.
>
>
> Cheers
> Lydia
>
> --
> Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher
> Community Communications for Wikidata
I'm gonna be, like, 5 minutes late for our cabal meeting. I'll skype in pau when i get there.
---
Brandon Harris, Senior Designer, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
We had a conversation the other day about how the concept of an icon that says "change language" was a . . . formidable . . . design challenge. I mentioned that I'd brought this up to the Design Guild a few months back, and we spent several hours talking about it.
They had some far-out concepts. But the end boiled down to something like this:
Obviously, this is something I threw together in about 20 minutes. I pulled glyphs from the WP logo for it; the proportions are way off, and i don't know that it's going to work below 32 pixels.
Here's the thinking:
Indicating *languages* is next to impossible.
Indicating *scripts* is less so.
People will be more likely to recognize foreign scripts than foreign language names (e.g., if you don't speak a Latin script, "English", "Deutsch", and "Italiano" are going to look the same to you).
Opposition research showed that most of the more intelligent switchers depend on script-recognition than actual word recognition.
Thoughts? I'm eager to think about this because I'm working on the "Wikipedia 2015" designs, and it's important to have a handle on this for them.
---
Brandon Harris, Senior Designer, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
On Wed, May 2, 2012 at 12:49 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan <srik.lak(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Sorry you missed it! If you want to
>> have a look at the presentation, you can find it at
>>
>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Localisation_team_Sprint_14_demo.pdf.
>
>
> Small note on the design prototype of ULS that just struck me.
>
> The personal bar is currently used by communities, to add custom items.
> Moodbar also uses it. Would the ULS be using personal-bar, in which case it
> might be a good idea to check if the screen breaks (not just in English, but
> in languages which have lengthy translations of personal-bar[1]). Also,
> would ULS be preceeding the proposed(?) redesign of personal bar?
>
> [1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/34681
Thanks for the feedback, Srikanth.
The current designs are not final by any means, so on exact position
and other properties I cannot reply with any certainty. Our goal as
Localisation team, is to provide anyone with a user experience that is
equal to that in the English language. This means that language, or
localisation, should not unnecessarily hinder user experience. The
flexibility of the MediaWiki software, with its gadgets, skins, and
other arbitrary visual elements pose a big challenge. I accept that
any and all eventualities cannot be foreseen for each and every
language. Inevitably, some things will pop up that we need to address
once the functionality has been developed.
I've asked the design group to expedite the creation of a design guide
for MediaWiki[1] a while ago in the Product Management team. The
current guide is mostly about shapes and colours of different possible
elements. Having guidelines for adding elements to the standard chrome
in a standard and prescribed way, may help reduce future issues. Until
then, we have to unfortunately mostly guess and hope that when and
where we add elements, they will not interfere (too much) with already
existing unknown elements.
I'm not sure if this fully satisfies as an answer to your question,
but at the moment it's the best I can provide. Maybe someone from the
design list[2] is able to provide additional input.
Cheers!
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Style_guide
[2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
--
Siebrand Mazeland
Product Manager Localisation
Wikimedia Foundation
M: +31 6 50 69 1239
Skype: siebrand
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate