[Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2

[Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva]

2010/6/2 Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+wikilist at gmail.com>:
> On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 2:50 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Who cares if people click them a lot?  The space they formally
>> occupied is filled with nothing now.
>
> Interface clutter is not psychologically free.  Empty space is better
> than space filled with mostly-useless controls.  Whether these
> particular controls are worth it I don't know, but the general
> principle of hiding seldom-used things is sound.

(Taking English as example)

Problem is, for most readers with a first language other than English,
English Wikipedia is now annoying and slightly less useful. someone
coming from Google might find English Wikipedia (due to enormous
pagerank) but really want to read in her own language; the collapsing
may make them to simply close the window, and try the next result.
Might seem too dramatic, but this happens in practice.

If one wants to talk about usability, it's important to keep track the
most impaired users, because they have more urgent needs. (Yeah,
people with little English skills are actually in a disadvantageous
position on wiki-en: there are few multilingual clues at the first
spot, and then the "see in the language I prefer" section is now
behind an unnecessary "Languages")

[

BTW, I liked that "universal signs" idea of some poster I lost track
here. I just think it doesn't really apply to the language list (that
should be fully expanded), but rather to "Discussion", "Edit", etc

Some universal symbols:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_symbol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_symbol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_symbol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_symbol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Symbol_of_Access

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_common_standards

If those (and others) were properly used on Wikipedia menus, it would
be more accessible to people with poor English skills.

]

-- 
Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva <tolkiendili at gmail.com>