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/SquidReportPageViewsPerCountryB…
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.
***
As a reminder, the home page of other Wikimedia sites will be converted
quite soon to the mobile view, meaning users by default will see the Mobile
Frontend version of the site from mobile devices. User can switch to the
desktop view at the bottom of the page. If the home page has not been
formatted, only the search bar will appear in the mobile view. Again, for
instructions on how to format the home page, see:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Projects/Mobile_Gateway#Mobile_homepa…
Please forward this email as needed to other lists.
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Phil Inje Chang
Product Manager, Mobile
Wikimedia Foundation
415-812-0854 m
415-882-7982 x 6810