Cross-posting to research and analytics, too!
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org Date: 6 May 2015 at 13:11 Subject: Traffic to the portal from Zero providers To: wikimedia-search@lists.wikimedia.org
Hey all,
(Throwing this to the public list, because transparency is Good)
I recently did a presentation on a traffic analysis to the Wikipedia "home page" - www.wikipedia.org.[1]
One of the biggest visualisations, in impact terms, showed that a lot of portal traffic - far more, proportionately, than traffic to Wikipedia overall - is coming from India and Brazil.[2] One of the hypotheses was that this could be Zero traffic.
I've done a basic analysis of the traffic, looking specifically at the zero headers,[3] and this hypothesis turns out to be incorrect - almost no zero traffic is hitting the portal. The traffic we're seeing from Brazil and India is not zero-based.
This makes a lot of sense (the reason mobile traffic redirects to the enwiki home page from the portal is the Zero extension, so presumably this happens specifically to Zero traffic) but it does mean that our null hypothesis - that this traffic is down to ISP-level or device-level design choices and links - is more likely to be correct.
[1] http://ironholds.org/misc/homepage_presentation.html [2] http://ironholds.org/misc/homepage_presentation.html#/11 [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T98076
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
hey oliver,
I don't mean to be a help vampire...
but what is zero traffic? you think the traffic is being proxied? perhaps even reverse proxied?
--Sam
On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 1:40 PM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
Cross-posting to research and analytics, too!
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org Date: 6 May 2015 at 13:11 Subject: Traffic to the portal from Zero providers To: wikimedia-search@lists.wikimedia.org
Hey all,
(Throwing this to the public list, because transparency is Good)
I recently did a presentation on a traffic analysis to the Wikipedia "home page" - www.wikipedia.org.[1]
One of the biggest visualisations, in impact terms, showed that a lot of portal traffic - far more, proportionately, than traffic to Wikipedia overall - is coming from India and Brazil.[2] One of the hypotheses was that this could be Zero traffic.
I've done a basic analysis of the traffic, looking specifically at the zero headers,[3] and this hypothesis turns out to be incorrect - almost no zero traffic is hitting the portal. The traffic we're seeing from Brazil and India is not zero-based.
This makes a lot of sense (the reason mobile traffic redirects to the enwiki home page from the portal is the Zero extension, so presumably this happens specifically to Zero traffic) but it does mean that our null hypothesis - that this traffic is down to ISP-level or device-level design choices and links - is more likely to be correct.
[1] http://ironholds.org/misc/homepage_presentation.html [2] http://ironholds.org/misc/homepage_presentation.html#/11 [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T98076
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Traffic through Wikipedia zero; apologies for not being clear.
On 6 May 2015 at 19:56, Sam Katz smkatz@gmail.com wrote:
hey oliver,
I don't mean to be a help vampire...
but what is zero traffic? you think the traffic is being proxied? perhaps even reverse proxied?
--Sam
On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 1:40 PM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
Cross-posting to research and analytics, too!
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org Date: 6 May 2015 at 13:11 Subject: Traffic to the portal from Zero providers To: wikimedia-search@lists.wikimedia.org
Hey all,
(Throwing this to the public list, because transparency is Good)
I recently did a presentation on a traffic analysis to the Wikipedia "home page" - www.wikipedia.org.[1]
One of the biggest visualisations, in impact terms, showed that a lot of portal traffic - far more, proportionately, than traffic to Wikipedia overall - is coming from India and Brazil.[2] One of the hypotheses was that this could be Zero traffic.
I've done a basic analysis of the traffic, looking specifically at the zero headers,[3] and this hypothesis turns out to be incorrect - almost no zero traffic is hitting the portal. The traffic we're seeing from Brazil and India is not zero-based.
This makes a lot of sense (the reason mobile traffic redirects to the enwiki home page from the portal is the Zero extension, so presumably this happens specifically to Zero traffic) but it does mean that our null hypothesis - that this traffic is down to ISP-level or device-level design choices and links - is more likely to be correct.
[1] http://ironholds.org/misc/homepage_presentation.html [2] http://ironholds.org/misc/homepage_presentation.html#/11 [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T98076
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero
Not something that you probably know about if you live in the grey bits of the map.
Kerry
-----Original Message----- From: wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Oliver Keyes Sent: Thursday, 7 May 2015 10:06 AM To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Fwd: Traffic to the portal from Zero providers
Traffic through Wikipedia zero; apologies for not being clear.
On 6 May 2015 at 19:56, Sam Katz smkatz@gmail.com wrote:
hey oliver,
I don't mean to be a help vampire...
but what is zero traffic? you think the traffic is being proxied? perhaps even reverse proxied?
--Sam
On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 1:40 PM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
Cross-posting to research and analytics, too!
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org Date: 6 May 2015 at 13:11 Subject: Traffic to the portal from Zero providers To: wikimedia-search@lists.wikimedia.org
Hey all,
(Throwing this to the public list, because transparency is Good)
I recently did a presentation on a traffic analysis to the Wikipedia "home page" - www.wikipedia.org.[1]
One of the biggest visualisations, in impact terms, showed that a lot of portal traffic - far more, proportionately, than traffic to Wikipedia overall - is coming from India and Brazil.[2] One of the hypotheses was that this could be Zero traffic.
I've done a basic analysis of the traffic, looking specifically at the zero headers,[3] and this hypothesis turns out to be incorrect - almost no zero traffic is hitting the portal. The traffic we're seeing from Brazil and India is not zero-based.
This makes a lot of sense (the reason mobile traffic redirects to the enwiki home page from the portal is the Zero extension, so presumably this happens specifically to Zero traffic) but it does mean that our null hypothesis - that this traffic is down to ISP-level or device-level design choices and links - is more likely to be correct.
[1] http://ironholds.org/misc/homepage_presentation.html [2] http://ironholds.org/misc/homepage_presentation.html#/11 [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T98076
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Reading that excellent presentation, the thought that struck me was:
"If I wanted to subvert the assumption that Wikipedia == en.wiki, linking to http://www.wikipedia.org/ is what I'd do."
A smarter http://www.wikipedia.org/ might guess geo-location and thus local languages.
cheers stuart
-- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 6:40 AM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
Cross-posting to research and analytics, too!
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org Date: 6 May 2015 at 13:11 Subject: Traffic to the portal from Zero providers To: wikimedia-search@lists.wikimedia.org
Hey all,
(Throwing this to the public list, because transparency is Good)
I recently did a presentation on a traffic analysis to the Wikipedia "home page" - www.wikipedia.org.[1]
One of the biggest visualisations, in impact terms, showed that a lot of portal traffic - far more, proportionately, than traffic to Wikipedia overall - is coming from India and Brazil.[2] One of the hypotheses was that this could be Zero traffic.
I've done a basic analysis of the traffic, looking specifically at the zero headers,[3] and this hypothesis turns out to be incorrect - almost no zero traffic is hitting the portal. The traffic we're seeing from Brazil and India is not zero-based.
This makes a lot of sense (the reason mobile traffic redirects to the enwiki home page from the portal is the Zero extension, so presumably this happens specifically to Zero traffic) but it does mean that our null hypothesis - that this traffic is down to ISP-level or device-level design choices and links - is more likely to be correct.
[1] http://ironholds.org/misc/homepage_presentation.html [2] http://ironholds.org/misc/homepage_presentation.html#/11 [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T98076
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Agreed! That's one of the changes I'd really like to push ahead with, although we're going to do some more in-depth data collection before any redesign :).
On 6 May 2015 at 20:27, Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com wrote:
Reading that excellent presentation, the thought that struck me was:
"If I wanted to subvert the assumption that Wikipedia == en.wiki, linking to http://www.wikipedia.org/ is what I'd do."
A smarter http://www.wikipedia.org/ might guess geo-location and thus local languages.
cheers stuart
-- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 6:40 AM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
Cross-posting to research and analytics, too!
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org Date: 6 May 2015 at 13:11 Subject: Traffic to the portal from Zero providers To: wikimedia-search@lists.wikimedia.org
Hey all,
(Throwing this to the public list, because transparency is Good)
I recently did a presentation on a traffic analysis to the Wikipedia "home page" - www.wikipedia.org.[1]
One of the biggest visualisations, in impact terms, showed that a lot of portal traffic - far more, proportionately, than traffic to Wikipedia overall - is coming from India and Brazil.[2] One of the hypotheses was that this could be Zero traffic.
I've done a basic analysis of the traffic, looking specifically at the zero headers,[3] and this hypothesis turns out to be incorrect - almost no zero traffic is hitting the portal. The traffic we're seeing from Brazil and India is not zero-based.
This makes a lot of sense (the reason mobile traffic redirects to the enwiki home page from the portal is the Zero extension, so presumably this happens specifically to Zero traffic) but it does mean that our null hypothesis - that this traffic is down to ISP-level or device-level design choices and links - is more likely to be correct.
[1] http://ironholds.org/misc/homepage_presentation.html [2] http://ironholds.org/misc/homepage_presentation.html#/11 [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T98076
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Probably also an excellent time to consider whether we can do anything for those languages which don't have wikis yet.
For example, I'm in .nz, which has en, mi and nzs as official languages, but we're a long way from an nzs.wiki, given that ase.wiki is still in incubator. With the release of Unicode 8 with Sutton SignWriting in June, these may or may not kick off in a big way.
cheers stuart -- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 12:34 PM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
Agreed! That's one of the changes I'd really like to push ahead with, although we're going to do some more in-depth data collection before any redesign :).
On 6 May 2015 at 20:27, Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com wrote:
Reading that excellent presentation, the thought that struck me was:
"If I wanted to subvert the assumption that Wikipedia == en.wiki, linking to http://www.wikipedia.org/ is what I'd do."
A smarter http://www.wikipedia.org/ might guess geo-location and thus local languages.
cheers stuart
-- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 6:40 AM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
Cross-posting to research and analytics, too!
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org Date: 6 May 2015 at 13:11 Subject: Traffic to the portal from Zero providers To: wikimedia-search@lists.wikimedia.org
Hey all,
(Throwing this to the public list, because transparency is Good)
I recently did a presentation on a traffic analysis to the Wikipedia "home page" - www.wikipedia.org.[1]
One of the biggest visualisations, in impact terms, showed that a lot of portal traffic - far more, proportionately, than traffic to Wikipedia overall - is coming from India and Brazil.[2] One of the hypotheses was that this could be Zero traffic.
I've done a basic analysis of the traffic, looking specifically at the zero headers,[3] and this hypothesis turns out to be incorrect - almost no zero traffic is hitting the portal. The traffic we're seeing from Brazil and India is not zero-based.
This makes a lot of sense (the reason mobile traffic redirects to the enwiki home page from the portal is the Zero extension, so presumably this happens specifically to Zero traffic) but it does mean that our null hypothesis - that this traffic is down to ISP-level or device-level design choices and links - is more likely to be correct.
[1] http://ironholds.org/misc/homepage_presentation.html [2] http://ironholds.org/misc/homepage_presentation.html#/11 [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T98076
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
One thing we could also do is check the accept_language header and prioritise around that; that way we'd be prioritising specifically "the language the user's browser thinks they want".
On 6 May 2015 at 21:28, Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com wrote:
Probably also an excellent time to consider whether we can do anything for those languages which don't have wikis yet.
For example, I'm in .nz, which has en, mi and nzs as official languages, but we're a long way from an nzs.wiki, given that ase.wiki is still in incubator. With the release of Unicode 8 with Sutton SignWriting in June, these may or may not kick off in a big way.
cheers stuart -- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 12:34 PM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
Agreed! That's one of the changes I'd really like to push ahead with, although we're going to do some more in-depth data collection before any redesign :).
On 6 May 2015 at 20:27, Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com wrote:
Reading that excellent presentation, the thought that struck me was:
"If I wanted to subvert the assumption that Wikipedia == en.wiki, linking to http://www.wikipedia.org/ is what I'd do."
A smarter http://www.wikipedia.org/ might guess geo-location and thus local languages.
cheers stuart
-- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 6:40 AM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
Cross-posting to research and analytics, too!
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org Date: 6 May 2015 at 13:11 Subject: Traffic to the portal from Zero providers To: wikimedia-search@lists.wikimedia.org
Hey all,
(Throwing this to the public list, because transparency is Good)
I recently did a presentation on a traffic analysis to the Wikipedia "home page" - www.wikipedia.org.[1]
One of the biggest visualisations, in impact terms, showed that a lot of portal traffic - far more, proportionately, than traffic to Wikipedia overall - is coming from India and Brazil.[2] One of the hypotheses was that this could be Zero traffic.
I've done a basic analysis of the traffic, looking specifically at the zero headers,[3] and this hypothesis turns out to be incorrect - almost no zero traffic is hitting the portal. The traffic we're seeing from Brazil and India is not zero-based.
This makes a lot of sense (the reason mobile traffic redirects to the enwiki home page from the portal is the Zero extension, so presumably this happens specifically to Zero traffic) but it does mean that our null hypothesis - that this traffic is down to ISP-level or device-level design choices and links - is more likely to be correct.
[1] http://ironholds.org/misc/homepage_presentation.html [2] http://ironholds.org/misc/homepage_presentation.html#/11 [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T98076
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com writes:
Reading that excellent presentation, the thought that struck me was:
"If I wanted to subvert the assumption that Wikipedia == en.wiki, linking to http://www.wikipedia.org/ is what I'd do."
A smarter http://www.wikipedia.org/ might guess geo-location and thus local languages.
I'd also like to see something smarter done at the main page, but the "and thus" bit here is notoriously tricky.
For example most geolocation-based things, like Wikidata by default, tend to produce funny results in Denmark. A Copenhagener is offered something like this choice, in order:
* Danish, Greelandic, Faroese, Swedish, German, ...
The reasoning here is that Danish, Greenlandic, and Faroese are official languages of the Danish Realm, which includes both Denmark proper, and two autonomous territories, Greeland and the Faroe Islands. And then Sweden and Germany are the two neighboring countries.
But for the average Copenhagener, the following order is far more likely:
* Danish, English, Norwegian Bokmål, ...
The reason here is that Norwegian Bokmål is very close to Danish in written form (more than Swedish is, and especially more than Faroese is) while English is a widely used semi-official language in business, government, and education (for example about half of university theses are now written in English, and several major companies use it as their official workplace language).
I think it's possible to come up with something that better aligns with readers' actual preferences, but it's not easy!
-Mark
Totally! As said, I think accept-language is a better variable to operate from. But these are early days; we're just beginning to understand the space. Realistically, software changes will come a lot later :)
On 6 May 2015 at 22:24, Mark J. Nelson mjn@anadrome.org wrote:
Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com writes:
Reading that excellent presentation, the thought that struck me was:
"If I wanted to subvert the assumption that Wikipedia == en.wiki, linking to http://www.wikipedia.org/ is what I'd do."
A smarter http://www.wikipedia.org/ might guess geo-location and thus local languages.
I'd also like to see something smarter done at the main page, but the "and thus" bit here is notoriously tricky.
For example most geolocation-based things, like Wikidata by default, tend to produce funny results in Denmark. A Copenhagener is offered something like this choice, in order:
- Danish, Greelandic, Faroese, Swedish, German, ...
The reasoning here is that Danish, Greenlandic, and Faroese are official languages of the Danish Realm, which includes both Denmark proper, and two autonomous territories, Greeland and the Faroe Islands. And then Sweden and Germany are the two neighboring countries.
But for the average Copenhagener, the following order is far more likely:
- Danish, English, Norwegian Bokmål, ...
The reason here is that Norwegian Bokmål is very close to Danish in written form (more than Swedish is, and especially more than Faroese is) while English is a widely used semi-official language in business, government, and education (for example about half of university theses are now written in English, and several major companies use it as their official workplace language).
I think it's possible to come up with something that better aligns with readers' actual preferences, but it's not easy!
-Mark
-- Mark J. Nelson Anadrome Research http://www.kmjn.org
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
This seems like a great place to use analytics data, for each division in the geo-location classification, rank each of the languages by usage and present the top N as likely candidates (+ browser settings) when we need the user to pick a language.
cheers stuart -- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 2:24 PM, Mark J. Nelson mjn@anadrome.org wrote:
Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com writes:
Reading that excellent presentation, the thought that struck me was:
"If I wanted to subvert the assumption that Wikipedia == en.wiki, linking to http://www.wikipedia.org/ is what I'd do."
A smarter http://www.wikipedia.org/ might guess geo-location and thus local languages.
I'd also like to see something smarter done at the main page, but the "and thus" bit here is notoriously tricky.
For example most geolocation-based things, like Wikidata by default, tend to produce funny results in Denmark. A Copenhagener is offered something like this choice, in order:
- Danish, Greelandic, Faroese, Swedish, German, ...
The reasoning here is that Danish, Greenlandic, and Faroese are official languages of the Danish Realm, which includes both Denmark proper, and two autonomous territories, Greeland and the Faroe Islands. And then Sweden and Germany are the two neighboring countries.
But for the average Copenhagener, the following order is far more likely:
- Danish, English, Norwegian Bokmål, ...
The reason here is that Norwegian Bokmål is very close to Danish in written form (more than Swedish is, and especially more than Faroese is) while English is a widely used semi-official language in business, government, and education (for example about half of university theses are now written in English, and several major companies use it as their official workplace language).
I think it's possible to come up with something that better aligns with readers' actual preferences, but it's not easy!
-Mark
-- Mark J. Nelson Anadrome Research http://www.kmjn.org
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Possibly. But that sounds potentially wooly and sometimes inaccurate.
When a browser makes a web request, it sends a header called the accept_language header (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_header_fields#Accept-Language) which indicates what languages the browser finds ideal - i.e., what languages the user and system are using.
If we're going to make modifications here (I hope we will. But again; early days) I don't see a good argument for using geolocation, which is, as you've noted, flawed without substantial time and energy being applied to map those countries to "probable" languages. The data the browser already sends to the server contains the /certain/ languages. We can just use that.
On 6 May 2015 at 22:50, Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com wrote:
This seems like a great place to use analytics data, for each division in the geo-location classification, rank each of the languages by usage and present the top N as likely candidates (+ browser settings) when we need the user to pick a language.
cheers stuart -- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 2:24 PM, Mark J. Nelson mjn@anadrome.org wrote:
Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com writes:
Reading that excellent presentation, the thought that struck me was:
"If I wanted to subvert the assumption that Wikipedia == en.wiki, linking to http://www.wikipedia.org/ is what I'd do."
A smarter http://www.wikipedia.org/ might guess geo-location and thus local languages.
I'd also like to see something smarter done at the main page, but the "and thus" bit here is notoriously tricky.
For example most geolocation-based things, like Wikidata by default, tend to produce funny results in Denmark. A Copenhagener is offered something like this choice, in order:
- Danish, Greelandic, Faroese, Swedish, German, ...
The reasoning here is that Danish, Greenlandic, and Faroese are official languages of the Danish Realm, which includes both Denmark proper, and two autonomous territories, Greeland and the Faroe Islands. And then Sweden and Germany are the two neighboring countries.
But for the average Copenhagener, the following order is far more likely:
- Danish, English, Norwegian Bokmål, ...
The reason here is that Norwegian Bokmål is very close to Danish in written form (more than Swedish is, and especially more than Faroese is) while English is a widely used semi-official language in business, government, and education (for example about half of university theses are now written in English, and several major companies use it as their official workplace language).
I think it's possible to come up with something that better aligns with readers' actual preferences, but it's not easy!
-Mark
-- Mark J. Nelson Anadrome Research http://www.kmjn.org
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
hey guys, you can't guess geolocation, because occasionally you'd be wrong. this happens to me all the time. I want to read a site in spanish... and then it thinks I'm in Latin America, when I'm not.
--Sam
On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 10:07 PM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
Possibly. But that sounds potentially wooly and sometimes inaccurate.
When a browser makes a web request, it sends a header called the accept_language header (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_header_fields#Accept-Language) which indicates what languages the browser finds ideal - i.e., what languages the user and system are using.
If we're going to make modifications here (I hope we will. But again; early days) I don't see a good argument for using geolocation, which is, as you've noted, flawed without substantial time and energy being applied to map those countries to "probable" languages. The data the browser already sends to the server contains the /certain/ languages. We can just use that.
On 6 May 2015 at 22:50, Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com wrote:
This seems like a great place to use analytics data, for each division in the geo-location classification, rank each of the languages by usage and present the top N as likely candidates (+ browser settings) when we need the user to pick a language.
cheers stuart -- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 2:24 PM, Mark J. Nelson mjn@anadrome.org wrote:
Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com writes:
Reading that excellent presentation, the thought that struck me was:
"If I wanted to subvert the assumption that Wikipedia == en.wiki, linking to http://www.wikipedia.org/ is what I'd do."
A smarter http://www.wikipedia.org/ might guess geo-location and thus local languages.
I'd also like to see something smarter done at the main page, but the "and thus" bit here is notoriously tricky.
For example most geolocation-based things, like Wikidata by default, tend to produce funny results in Denmark. A Copenhagener is offered something like this choice, in order:
- Danish, Greelandic, Faroese, Swedish, German, ...
The reasoning here is that Danish, Greenlandic, and Faroese are official languages of the Danish Realm, which includes both Denmark proper, and two autonomous territories, Greeland and the Faroe Islands. And then Sweden and Germany are the two neighboring countries.
But for the average Copenhagener, the following order is far more likely:
- Danish, English, Norwegian Bokmål, ...
The reason here is that Norwegian Bokmål is very close to Danish in written form (more than Swedish is, and especially more than Faroese is) while English is a widely used semi-official language in business, government, and education (for example about half of university theses are now written in English, and several major companies use it as their official workplace language).
I think it's possible to come up with something that better aligns with readers' actual preferences, but it's not easy!
-Mark
-- Mark J. Nelson Anadrome Research http://www.kmjn.org
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
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
On 7 May 2015, at 05:06, Sam Katz smkatz@gmail.com wrote:
hey guys, you can't guess geolocation, because occasionally you'd be wrong. this happens to me all the time. I want to read a site in spanish... and then it thinks I'm in Latin America, when I'm not.
--Sam
On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 10:07 PM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote: Possibly. But that sounds potentially wooly and sometimes inaccurate.
When a browser makes a web request, it sends a header called the accept_language header (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_header_fields#Accept-Language) which indicates what languages the browser finds ideal - i.e., what languages the user and system are using.
If we're going to make modifications here (I hope we will. But again; early days) I don't see a good argument for using geolocation, which is, as you've noted, flawed without substantial time and energy being applied to map those countries to "probable" languages. The data the browser already sends to the server contains the /certain/ languages. We can just use that.
On 6 May 2015 at 22:50, Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com wrote: This seems like a great place to use analytics data, for each division in the geo-location classification, rank each of the languages by usage and present the top N as likely candidates (+ browser settings) when we need the user to pick a language.
cheers stuart -- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 2:24 PM, Mark J. Nelson mjn@anadrome.org wrote:
Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com writes:
Reading that excellent presentation, the thought that struck me was:
"If I wanted to subvert the assumption that Wikipedia == en.wiki, linking to http://www.wikipedia.org/ is what I'd do."
A smarter http://www.wikipedia.org/ might guess geo-location and thus local languages.
I'd also like to see something smarter done at the main page, but the "and thus" bit here is notoriously tricky.
For example most geolocation-based things, like Wikidata by default, tend to produce funny results in Denmark. A Copenhagener is offered something like this choice, in order:
- Danish, Greelandic, Faroese, Swedish, German, ...
The reasoning here is that Danish, Greenlandic, and Faroese are official languages of the Danish Realm, which includes both Denmark proper, and two autonomous territories, Greeland and the Faroe Islands. And then Sweden and Germany are the two neighboring countries.
But for the average Copenhagener, the following order is far more likely:
- Danish, English, Norwegian Bokmål, ...
The reason here is that Norwegian Bokmål is very close to Danish in written form (more than Swedish is, and especially more than Faroese is) while English is a widely used semi-official language in business, government, and education (for example about half of university theses are now written in English, and several major companies use it as their official workplace language).
I think it's possible to come up with something that better aligns with readers' actual preferences, but it's not easy!
-Mark
-- Mark J. Nelson Anadrome Research http://www.kmjn.org
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
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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@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
On 7 May 2015, at 05:06, Sam Katz smkatz@gmail.com wrote:
hey guys, you can't guess geolocation, because occasionally you'd be wrong. this happens to me all the time. I want to read a site in spanish... and then it thinks I'm in Latin America, when I'm not.
--Sam
On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 10:07 PM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote: Possibly. But that sounds potentially wooly and sometimes inaccurate.
When a browser makes a web request, it sends a header called the accept_language header (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_header_fields#Accept-Language) which indicates what languages the browser finds ideal - i.e., what languages the user and system are using.
If we're going to make modifications here (I hope we will. But again; early days) I don't see a good argument for using geolocation, which is, as you've noted, flawed without substantial time and energy being applied to map those countries to "probable" languages. The data the browser already sends to the server contains the /certain/ languages. We can just use that.
On 6 May 2015 at 22:50, Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com wrote: This seems like a great place to use analytics data, for each division in the geo-location classification, rank each of the languages by usage and present the top N as likely candidates (+ browser settings) when we need the user to pick a language.
cheers stuart -- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 2:24 PM, Mark J. Nelson mjn@anadrome.org wrote:
Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com writes:
Reading that excellent presentation, the thought that struck me was:
"If I wanted to subvert the assumption that Wikipedia == en.wiki, linking to http://www.wikipedia.org/ is what I'd do."
A smarter http://www.wikipedia.org/ might guess geo-location and thus local languages.
I'd also like to see something smarter done at the main page, but the "and thus" bit here is notoriously tricky.
For example most geolocation-based things, like Wikidata by default, tend to produce funny results in Denmark. A Copenhagener is offered something like this choice, in order:
- Danish, Greelandic, Faroese, Swedish, German, ...
The reasoning here is that Danish, Greenlandic, and Faroese are official languages of the Danish Realm, which includes both Denmark proper, and two autonomous territories, Greeland and the Faroe Islands. And then Sweden and Germany are the two neighboring countries.
But for the average Copenhagener, the following order is far more likely:
- Danish, English, Norwegian Bokmål, ...
The reason here is that Norwegian Bokmål is very close to Danish in written form (more than Swedish is, and especially more than Faroese is) while English is a widely used semi-official language in business, government, and education (for example about half of university theses are now written in English, and several major companies use it as their official workplace language).
I think it's possible to come up with something that better aligns with readers' actual preferences, but it's not easy!
-Mark
-- Mark J. Nelson Anadrome Research http://www.kmjn.org
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
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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/%E6%99%AE%E5%A4%A9%E9%96%93%E9%A3%9B%E8%A1%8C... 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@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@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
Makes sense! I actually hadn't factored in that sort of action (although it does happen), more: the order of the main page links on the root www.wikipedia.org page.
On 7 May 2015 at 03:51, Scott Hale computermacgyver@gmail.com wrote:
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/%E6%99%AE%E5%A4%A9%E9%96%93%E9%A3%9B%E8%A1%8C... ) 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@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@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
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Scott Hale, 07/05/2015 09:51:
The accept-language header is the obvious place to start, but there is amble scope to combine multiple approaches together.
Which is what UniversalLanguageSelector / jquery.uls, used on all Wikimedia projects, exists for. :)
In addition to accept-language and geolocation data, any logged in user will have view/edit history related to multiple editions.
This was proposed at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Universal_Language_Selector/Design/Inter... . If you can think of a design/algorithm, please file: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/create/?parent=66793
Nemo
Accept-language is systematically broken for minority languages within dominant language communities. In New Zealand, a country with three official languages and a textbook case of language revivalism, I've never met anyone without a degree in computer science who sets accept-language, and I've never seen a computer system which ships with all three official languages selectable. Most computer systems ship with en or en-us as the default.
If there were silver bullets in this area, the solution would be obvious and we wouldn't even be thinking about having this conversation.
cheers stuart
On Thursday, May 7, 2015, Oliver Keyes okeyes@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@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
On 7 May 2015, at 05:06, Sam Katz smkatz@gmail.com wrote:
hey guys, you can't guess geolocation, because occasionally you'd be wrong. this happens to me all the time. I want to read a site in spanish... and then it thinks I'm in Latin America, when I'm not.
--Sam
On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 10:07 PM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Possibly. But that sounds potentially wooly and sometimes inaccurate.
When a browser makes a web request, it sends a header called the accept_language header (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_header_fields#Accept-Language)
which indicates what languages the browser finds ideal - i.e., what languages the user and system are using.
If we're going to make modifications here (I hope we will. But again; early days) I don't see a good argument for using geolocation, which is, as you've noted, flawed without substantial time and energy being applied to map those countries to "probable" languages. The data the browser already sends to the server contains the /certain/ languages. We can just use that.
On 6 May 2015 at 22:50, Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com wrote: This seems like a great place to use analytics data, for each division in the geo-location classification, rank each of the languages by usage and present the top N as likely candidates (+ browser settings) when we need the user to pick a language.
cheers stuart -- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 2:24 PM, Mark J. Nelson mjn@anadrome.org
wrote:
Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com writes:
> Reading that excellent presentation, the thought that struck me was: > > "If I wanted to subvert the assumption that Wikipedia == en.wiki, > linking to http://www.wikipedia.org/ is what I'd do." > > A smarter http://www.wikipedia.org/ might guess geo-location and
thus
> local languages.
I'd also like to see something smarter done at the main page, but the "and thus" bit here is notoriously tricky.
For example most geolocation-based things, like Wikidata by default, tend to produce funny results in Denmark. A Copenhagener is offered something like this choice, in order:
- Danish, Greelandic, Faroese, Swedish, German, ...
The reasoning here is that Danish, Greenlandic, and Faroese are
official
languages of the Danish Realm, which includes both Denmark proper,
and
two autonomous territories, Greeland and the Faroe Islands. And then Sweden and Germany are the two neighboring countries.
But for the average Copenhagener, the following order is far more likely:
- Danish, English, Norwegian Bokmål, ...
The reason here is that Norwegian Bokmål is very close to Danish in written form (more than Swedish is, and especially more than Faroese
is)
while English is a widely used semi-official language in business, government, and education (for example about half of university
theses
are now written in English, and several major companies use it as
their
official workplace language).
I think it's possible to come up with something that better aligns
with
readers' actual preferences, but it's not easy!
-Mark
-- Mark J. Nelson Anadrome Research http://www.kmjn.org
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
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-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
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Interesting! This I didn't know; I'll factor it in :).
On 7 May 2015 at 04:48, Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com wrote:
Accept-language is systematically broken for minority languages within dominant language communities. In New Zealand, a country with three official languages and a textbook case of language revivalism, I've never met anyone without a degree in computer science who sets accept-language, and I've never seen a computer system which ships with all three official languages selectable. Most computer systems ship with en or en-us as the default.
If there were silver bullets in this area, the solution would be obvious and we wouldn't even be thinking about having this conversation.
cheers stuart
On Thursday, May 7, 2015, Oliver Keyes okeyes@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@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
On 7 May 2015, at 05:06, Sam Katz smkatz@gmail.com wrote:
hey guys, you can't guess geolocation, because occasionally you'd be wrong. this happens to me all the time. I want to read a site in spanish... and then it thinks I'm in Latin America, when I'm not.
--Sam
On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 10:07 PM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote: Possibly. But that sounds potentially wooly and sometimes inaccurate.
When a browser makes a web request, it sends a header called the accept_language header
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_header_fields#Accept-Language) which indicates what languages the browser finds ideal - i.e., what languages the user and system are using.
If we're going to make modifications here (I hope we will. But again; early days) I don't see a good argument for using geolocation, which is, as you've noted, flawed without substantial time and energy being applied to map those countries to "probable" languages. The data the browser already sends to the server contains the /certain/ languages. We can just use that.
On 6 May 2015 at 22:50, Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com wrote: This seems like a great place to use analytics data, for each division in the geo-location classification, rank each of the languages by usage and present the top N as likely candidates (+ browser settings) when we need the user to pick a language.
cheers stuart -- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
> On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 2:24 PM, Mark J. Nelson mjn@anadrome.org > wrote: > > Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com writes: > >> Reading that excellent presentation, the thought that struck me >> was: >> >> "If I wanted to subvert the assumption that Wikipedia == en.wiki, >> linking to http://www.wikipedia.org/ is what I'd do." >> >> A smarter http://www.wikipedia.org/ might guess geo-location and >> thus >> local languages. > > I'd also like to see something smarter done at the main page, but > the > "and thus" bit here is notoriously tricky. > > For example most geolocation-based things, like Wikidata by default, > tend to produce funny results in Denmark. A Copenhagener is offered > something like this choice, in order: > > * Danish, Greelandic, Faroese, Swedish, German, ... > > The reasoning here is that Danish, Greenlandic, and Faroese are > official > languages of the Danish Realm, which includes both Denmark proper, > and > two autonomous territories, Greeland and the Faroe Islands. And then > Sweden and Germany are the two neighboring countries. > > But for the average Copenhagener, the following order is far more > likely: > > * Danish, English, Norwegian Bokmål, ... > > The reason here is that Norwegian Bokmål is very close to Danish in > written form (more than Swedish is, and especially more than Faroese > is) > while English is a widely used semi-official language in business, > government, and education (for example about half of university > theses > are now written in English, and several major companies use it as > their > official workplace language). > > I think it's possible to come up with something that better aligns > with > readers' actual preferences, but it's not easy! > > -Mark > > -- > Mark J. Nelson > Anadrome Research > http://www.kmjn.org > > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
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-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
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Yes, but what about people not on earth? https://xkcd.com/713/ and similar have to be taken into consideration as well for such an important part of the wikipedia experience, I believe. It's 'Free knowledge for all', not 'Free knowledge for all that we can accurately geolocate'.
I wonder if we can set a permanent cookie after asking people with a large modal dialog box about their language preferences on first load. Thoughts?
On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 9:52 PM, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@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
On 7 May 2015, at 05:06, Sam Katz smkatz@gmail.com wrote:
hey guys, you can't guess geolocation, because occasionally you'd be wrong. this happens to me all the time. I want to read a site in spanish... and then it thinks I'm in Latin America, when I'm not.
--Sam
On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 10:07 PM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote: Possibly. But that sounds potentially wooly and sometimes inaccurate.
When a browser makes a web request, it sends a header called the accept_language header (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_header_fields#Accept-Language) which indicates what languages the browser finds ideal - i.e., what languages the user and system are using.
If we're going to make modifications here (I hope we will. But again; early days) I don't see a good argument for using geolocation, which is, as you've noted, flawed without substantial time and energy being applied to map those countries to "probable" languages. The data the browser already sends to the server contains the /certain/ languages. We can just use that.
On 6 May 2015 at 22:50, Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com wrote: This seems like a great place to use analytics data, for each division in the geo-location classification, rank each of the languages by usage and present the top N as likely candidates (+ browser settings) when we need the user to pick a language.
cheers stuart -- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 2:24 PM, Mark J. Nelson mjn@anadrome.org wrote:
Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com writes:
Reading that excellent presentation, the thought that struck me was:
"If I wanted to subvert the assumption that Wikipedia == en.wiki, linking to http://www.wikipedia.org/ is what I'd do."
A smarter http://www.wikipedia.org/ might guess geo-location and thus local languages.
I'd also like to see something smarter done at the main page, but the "and thus" bit here is notoriously tricky.
For example most geolocation-based things, like Wikidata by default, tend to produce funny results in Denmark. A Copenhagener is offered something like this choice, in order:
- Danish, Greelandic, Faroese, Swedish, German, ...
The reasoning here is that Danish, Greenlandic, and Faroese are official languages of the Danish Realm, which includes both Denmark proper, and two autonomous territories, Greeland and the Faroe Islands. And then Sweden and Germany are the two neighboring countries.
But for the average Copenhagener, the following order is far more likely:
- Danish, English, Norwegian Bokmål, ...
The reason here is that Norwegian Bokmål is very close to Danish in written form (more than Swedish is, and especially more than Faroese is) while English is a widely used semi-official language in business, government, and education (for example about half of university theses are now written in English, and several major companies use it as their official workplace language).
I think it's possible to come up with something that better aligns with readers' actual preferences, but it's not easy!
-Mark
-- Mark J. Nelson Anadrome Research http://www.kmjn.org
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
-- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
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Thanks for looking into www.wikipedia.org traffic from India; I've been "complaining" about it for a while. :) See also: * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T26767 * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T5665
Mark J. Nelson, 07/05/2015 04:24:
But for the average Copenhagener, the following order is far more likely:
- Danish, English, Norwegian Bokmål, ...
This is something you can help fix. Please do! https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ULS/FAQ#language-territory
Nemo
Thanks for the bugs, Nemo!
(search team: should we take those over?)
On 7 May 2015 at 03:08, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks for looking into www.wikipedia.org traffic from India; I've been "complaining" about it for a while. :) See also:
Mark J. Nelson, 07/05/2015 04:24:
But for the average Copenhagener, the following order is far more likely:
- Danish, English, Norwegian Bokmål, ...
This is something you can help fix. Please do! https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ULS/FAQ#language-territory
Nemo
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