The accept-language header is the obvious place to start, but there is
amble scope to combine multiple approaches together.
In addition to accept-language and geolocation data, any logged in user
will have view/edit history related to multiple editions. If the user is
requesting a specific article, (e.g.,
https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/普天間飛行場
<https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%99%AE%E5%A4%A9%E9%96%93%E9%A3%9B%E8%A1%8C%E5%A0%B4+>)
we also can take account of what editions actually have the article --- the
vast majority of content on Wikipedia only exists in one language or a few
languages. (I.e., the above link redirects me to create the article on
en-wiki although it exists on ja-wiki and Japanese is my second preferred
language by my accept-language header and is an edition I edit captured in
my edit history)
This isn't an either-or question of which to use, but rather a question of
how all these indicators can be used together to create the best
experience. I would venture that most users don't change their
accept-language header (not even possible on some mobile browsers!) and
hence probably list give only one language. If so, geography and edit
history can be signals for possible second languages beyond the one
language in the accept-language header when hitting the homepage without a
specific article.
Cheers,
Scott
P.S. It looks like the Universal Language Selector already uses the
accept-language header for its preference screen.
On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 5:58 AM, Oliver Keyes <okeyes(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
As I've now said...4 times, I don't think
we'd be using geolocation.
We'd be using the accept-language header. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_header_fields#Accept-Language
On 7 May 2015 at 00:52, WereSpielChequers <werespielchequers(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
When a reader comes to Wikipedia from the web we
can detect their IP
address and that usually geolocates them to a country. More
often than not
that then tells you the dominant language of that country.
If we were to default to official or dominant languages then I predict
endless
arguments as to which language(s) should be the default in which
countries. The large expat community in some parts of the Arab world might
prefer English over Arabic. India would want to do things by state, and a
whole new front would emerge in the Israeli Palestine debate.
Regards
Jonathan Cardy