Yuval Y wrote:
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.
A Babel box would have an higuer priority. But it is not generally used.
i don't know about language customization.
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
When they create their account, they can do it in a number of languages.
It will become the preferences language.
Automatically substing Welcome is dumb, as would be a bot welcoming
every registered user, as we already have MediaWiki:Welcomecreation