Hello,
I came across this on the project Wikipedia mobile, and I thought it's worth sharing. --- 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/SquidReportPageViewsPerCountryBreakdown.htm 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. ***
Regards, Stephen
---Better late than never,but never late is better.---
iwanjau.WordPress.com ________________________________ sent from my $100 Phone.
Hi, I'm not quite sure I've understood what you're talking about. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that WMF is prioritizing Wikipedia Mobile. <snip>On mobile devices , many people go directly to wikipedia.org . Unfortunately, this shows the standard portal page of the globe and languages .</snip> Errm, are you sure about this statement? My mobile phone automatically redirects to Wikipedia Mobile, which is in Beta currently. This Beta version has new features already, such as a drop-down feature for changing your language. //Abbas.
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2011 05:46:23 +0300 From: wanjaustev@gmail.com To: wikimediake@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikimedia Kenya] Join The Discussion
Hello, I came across this on the project Wikipedia mobile, and I thought it's worth sharing.
---
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/SquidReportPageViewsPerCountryBreakdown.htm
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.
*** Regards,
Stephen ---Better late than never,but never late is better.--- iwanjau.WordPress.com
________________________________
sent from my $100 Phone.
_______________________________________________ WikimediaKE mailing list WikimediaKE@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediake
True, surfing on phone takes you to Wikipedia mobile. I think what the guy was trying to pass is that when one goes to www.wikipedia.org (on phone) the page there is somewhat hectic to view/navigate for mobile phones with small screens and his suggestion was to display only primary languages with an option of secondary languages dep[ending on which country you are accessing Wikipedia from.
IMO, yah, the page (on mobile) could be easier to navigate through if the suggestion put forward was implemented. I'd suggest an inclusion of a drop-down-list or something as other languages to list all languages on Wikipedia.
Alex
________________________________
Hi,
I'm not quite sure I've understood what you're talking about.
Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that WMF is prioritizing Wikipedia Mobile.
<snip>On mobile devices , many people go directly to wikipedia.org . Unfortunately, this shows the standard portal page of the globe and languages .</snip>
Errm, are you sure about this statement? My mobile phone automatically redirects to Wikipedia Mobile, which is in Beta currently. This Beta version has new features already, such as a drop-down feature for changing your language.
//Abbas.
________________________________ Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2011 05:46:23 +0300 From: wanjaustev@gmail.com To: wikimediake@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikimedia Kenya] Join The Discussion
Hello, I came across this on the project Wikipedia mobile, and I thought it's worth sharing. --- 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/SquidReportPageViewsPerCountryBreakdown.htm 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. *** Regards, Stephen ---Better late than never,but never late is better.--- iwanjau.WordPress.com ________________________________ sent from my $100 Phone.
_______________________________________________ WikimediaKE mailing list WikimediaKE@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediake _______________________________________________ WikimediaKE mailing list WikimediaKE@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediake
I fullly support the idea to have the language preset to the region from which one is surfing wikipedia from. However, it is not obvious that the person reading wikipedia is comfortable reading in the langugage spoken in the region that they are in. For instance google have adopted this by having google.com load in swahili if you are in Kenya..not many people want to use google in Swahili and Wikipedia is no exception..
In fact I was in Tanzania last week and the guys were not comfortable doing google search in Swahili. We had to keep typing www.google.com/ncr to avoid the country redirect (No Country Redirect) NCR.
But again it would be good to have the language on the drop down menu as the closest,or the first to appear when a user opts to switch to another language which could be the one being spoken in their region.
regards Stephen.
I used my phone to post the links and may be that's why the message wasn't clear. The links are broken.
You can follow this at the link in the tweet below by @Wikipediamobile
"Country specific portal pages yes/no? Join in on the discussion http://t.co/4WKcFLq3"
Cheers, Stephen. ---Better late than never,but never late is better.---
iwanjau.WordPress.com ________________________________ sent from my $100 Phone. On Dec 6, 2011 5:46 AM, "stephen wanjau" wanjaustev@gmail.com wrote:
Hello,
I came across this on the project Wikipedia mobile, and I thought it's worth sharing.
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/SquidReportPageViewsPerCountryBreakdown.htm 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.
Regards, Stephen
---Better late than never,but never late is better.---
iwanjau.WordPress.com ________________________________ sent from my $100 Phone.
wikimediake@lists.wikimedia.org