[Commons-l] Automatic messages to users: guessing user preferred language

[Yuval Y]

Finally someone thinks about user friendly messages =)
I've noticed that there are many people who doesn't use the babel box, and I
was trying to figure out their native language (or something close to that)
according to what they wrote in the images. I also used the language
template in all the versions of {{welcome}}, so when I see that, I'm usually
add the welcome template in that language. The problem is that I'm using
Google translator, so it's a bit limited.
I think that the {{guessed language|<language code>}}  template would be
quite fine for a start, since the user has to learn how to do more than
uploading images (like - how to EDIT the text...)
I think that users who know how to change the preferences, do know how to do
other things, so it wouldn't do much to use a script who reads that info -
after all, this is more difficult than placing a babel box, not to mention
that some users - like me, prefer the English interface.

What I suggest, is that in the "Log in / create an account" section would be
a drop down menu for "native language" or something like that  (maybe with
the help of uselang) - so after the user creates an account, a script would
create a babel box in the user's page (something like {{user $1}} ) or he
would get a welcome message in the user talk page ( {{subst:welcome/$1}} ) -
or maybe both?
That way the user would get a welcome message that could guide him in the
Commons, and it would be easier to contact with him.

Yuval

On 10/4/07, Alexandre NOUVEL <alexandre.nouvel at alnoprods.net> wrote:
>
> Hi list,
>
> I've seen that some users run bots that add some message templates to
> user  talk pages, generally in order to warn them about missing tags and
> other similar problems.
>
> The problem is that bots are not able to guess the preferred user
> language :)
>
> As for now, here are some clues about the user preferred language:
> * he has a Babel box on his user page or on his talk page => the highest
> skill could do it
> * he has a Welcome template or another message template that is not in
> English => get the lang code from the template translation subpage, but
> actually this is quite difficult because templates are generally subst'd
> and no link remains to the translation page...
>
> Then, which tools could we set up to know in an easier way the user
> preferred language?
>
> I'd say:
> * other users check the user contributions and guess his preferred
> language, then add some {{guessed language|<language code>}} template to
> the user talk page. This very template would provide information about
> how to add a Babel box. This is not much better than adding a Welcome
> template, so I don't think it to be a good solution.
> * some toolserver asking the database and returning as raw text the
> preferred language code that the user has set up in his preferences.
> This seems to me the best way to handle automatically this information,
> but shall assume that the user has set up this information. I think it's
> okay because when we need to contact this user, that's because he
> interacted on the project and has a high probability of having set up
> his preferences...
>
> Any thoughts? Any volunteers to code such a simple tool? :)
>
> Best regards from France,
> --
> Alexandre.NOUVEL at alnoprods.net
> |-> http://alnoprods.net
> |-> L'encyclopédie libre et gratuite : http://fr.wikipedia.org
> \ I hate spam. I kill spammers. Non mais.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/attachments/20071004/36ceb4c3/attachment.htm