I also find Google.com stupid annoying, for the said reasons. Yes, okay, granted, I am actually German and I also am resident in Germany again. From that it is not to be inferred that German was my first communication preference. It is not. English is. So don't try to be a smart-a** about what you only "think" you know by looking at my IP. Did I mention I find that annoying? I thus pretty much agree with the aforesaid.
=== But: I'd also like to add that I WOULD NOT want to see ANY highlighting either. ===
I detest it when some effin' thingmabob tries to be smarter than me. "Everything begins with choice." AFTER I've selected a language, then, ok, if you must, feel free to feed me a cookie that will return me to that language UNTIL I choose a different one. (Though I think no magic at all would be best.) I hate to be guessed or second-guessed. No highlighting or other form of "preference guessing" in the first instance, please.
As for page design, I think the way things are done at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page#lang is a good concept. Of course one would want to add images/flags and give things more space, but the idea of ranking the biggest Wikipedias at the top and smaller ones further below is quite sound (and eliminates the potential for rivalry about whose language is "more important" and should be higher up, because our article counts are a good indicator of what's actually in demand), as is ranking the respective Wikipedias alphabetically within their size group (so they can still be found rather easily).
-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com
On 7 Jan 2005, at 16:35, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
Black Fox wrote:
It's realy horrible for the user such a thing. It's already a nightmare with google sometimes -- If google.com want to be displayed in french because it's my default language in the browser, OK but when he begin to auto-limit my search to "french pages" he change what i expect --- so please not this on the wikipedia.
What google does is actually even more annoying than this. When I travel in Europe, Google redirects me to the site they think I want based on my *geographical location*. So when I'm in Germany, they assume I speak German, when I'm in Italy, they assume I speak Italian, etc.
This is disconcerting and unpleasant for me.
Better by far would be for them to combine information from my default browser language and my location to offer me options that are likely to make the most sense.
If I'm in Germany, but with English as my default language, why not offer me a German/English hybrid page?
Instead of a link to *either* 'Images' *or* 'Bilder' they could say: "Hmm, his browser wants English, but he's in Germany, so let's give him: 'Images (Bilder)'.
In our case, we don't have (to my knowledge) the technical ability to make a good guess of where people are in a timely fashion. So we can just do what Magnus suggested: give a page that highlights alternatives based on people's default browser language.
I agree completely that serving different *content* based on anything automatic is a bad idea. It can be extremely annoying.