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