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

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 11:19 AM, Michael Snow <wikipedia at verizon.net> wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> 2010/6/3 Fajro <faigos at gmail.com>:
>>
>>> Maybe we should support the "Language Icon" idea:
>>>
>>> http://languageicon.org/index-icon.php
>>>
>> That icon seems about as intuitive as the name "Hyperion
>> Frobnosticating Endoswitch" for FlaggedRevs. The only relevant mental
>> association that comes to mind is "robot tongue".
>>
> As a sports fan, to me it looks like the backboard of a basketball hoop.
> I actually rather liked "Hyperion Frobnosticating Endoswitch", but such
> a wonderful name deserves to find a more worthy home than the MediaWiki
> pending changes feature.

I'm with Michael on this point: such a great name should be the name
of the entire new skin, or perhaps a new version of MediaWiki itself:
this 'pedia runs on HYPERION FROBNOSTICATING ENDOSWITCH technology.
Alternatively, it could make the best magic word ever. Who knows what
such a variable would do?

Re: list of languages, I like having the big list of languages present
in the sidebar for the reasons David, Austin & Greg mentioned. (It's
not exactly like our site is uncluttered even without it: every
article is a *giant list of words*, surrounded by *even more words*,
and people seem basically fine with this). In every presentation I
make about Wikipedia I emphasize its multilingual nature -- being as
multilingual as we are is both unique and special on the internet, and
is one of the things that makes us great, and we should show this
feature off as well as we can.

That said, having the # of languages and/or a global selector as
others have mentioned are both good ideas too and could be a good
compromise.

-- phoebe

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