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

[Hans A. Rosbach]

On 7 June 2010 23:16, Howie Fung <hfung at wikimedia.org> wrote:

>
>
> So in terms of a path forward, here is a proposal:
> 1.  Immediate revert so that all languages are exposed by default.
> 2.  We will continue work on a compromise solution.  The current
> interface is probably not perfect, so we’ll be continuing to look for
> ways to improve it.  We welcome your ideas -- please direct them to [2]
> so we can keep track.
> 3.  We will A/B-test proposed solutions against the default.  We'll
> involve the community to design the A/B test (e.g., what % of traffic,
> what threshold we use for decisions, etc).  In response to the comments
> about the data being only on enwp, we should be open to the fact that
> different Wikipedias may require different implementations.
>
>
You need also to take into account that almost 25% of the visits to enwp are
from non-English speaking countries. Among these readers are users that
might be recruited to read or even perhaps edit in their own language by
noticing that there was a link visible. Wikipedia is more than a set of
separate language projects. It is a connected set of language projects. The
iw-links are what connects these projects. Hiding them on en-wp damages the
other projects by cutting connections.

Hans Rosbach