Talk:Community Wishlist/Wishes/Add size of every Wikipedia article language version on a list of all language versions

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Thank you

Hey @Plogeo thanks for sharing this wish. I could see how information about the breadth of translation of an article could be helpful for editors who want to translate an article from Language A to Language B, but I'm struggling to see the reader benefit. Is there a use case that I'm missing? JWheeler-WMF (talk) 21:54, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Hello. For me, as a reader, it is even more important. When I want to translate some article, I may assume that it will take longer time and checking even dozen or two links is a small % of time for whole work (nevertheless, it may be annoying). When I want to get possibly wide information about some topic, which is not strictly connected with some language/nation, I don't want to check language version, after language version. When my Internet browser can automatic translate most of languages (better or worse) then language of article stops become a problem. For example I need information about a priest who lived hundred of years ago in a country which doesn't exists, during ages area was ruled by a few empires and today lays on border area between a few countries (e.g. Dalmatia): I should check language versions of both countries (Croat, Serbian, Serbo-Croatian), of former empires (German, Italian, Hungarian, Turkish) and of course main world languages (English, French, Spanish, Arab etc.). Even then I may miss article made by some christian history enthusiast from other small country (e.g. Albania). Plogeo (talk) 07:04, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks - adding this to the content page! JWheeler-WMF (talk) 19:30, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't think this is a reasonable feature for default WP. It could be a feature provided with some gadget but I think only few users would find it useful. If an ENWP article exists, it is usually the best and most comprehensive. If it doesn't there's a few languages to check like Spanish which often also have good quality articles and the user may choose which depending on either the language they speak or the other quality indicators like featured article status. Article length on its own is not necessarily a good quality indicator. There could be lots of barely sourced text saying very little. Having so much article metadata there would confuse readers and make it hard to read / clutter the page. I think there is some script that displays article quality ratings next to wikilinks, maybe that would be a feature within its scope. In the rare case where something like that would be useful one could also simply open all the versions in new tabs and check them quickly one after another. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:20, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

On desktop you get a raw list of interwiki links, on mobile the languages dialogue opens up and has "SUGGESTED LANGUAGES" at the top, the top three I think. I am not sure how the system selects these top languages but it could use length and quality rating, plus whatever your babel boxes suggest.

Maybe just port the "suggested" approach to desktop and rely on that.

With the advent of machine translation (both externally on Google and soon(?) internally at Wikipedia) figuring out the best languages to check out is important. I would also use it to find the best images for articles on English Wikipedia, no machine translation required for that task.

I appreciate the direction of this wish. Commander Keane (talk) 03:21, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree that displaying any metadata (including size) by default to readers would cause clutter, but it could be a toggle switch or a preference. Following on from Display Total Number of References Next to Language Links, would it be possible for the system to store the number of unique references used in an article in the page information (current page info example). It could also store number of files displayed and a word count (although I don't know how useful it is to compare word counts in Japanese and English for example). Otherwise a page analysis tool on Toolforge could be made listing these properties for each language version. Commander Keane (talk) 02:57, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

I think it would be best stored in Wikidata, see related wish at Talk:Community Wishlist/Wishes/En Wikidata valoración calidad articulos en diferentes idiomas. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:17, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Plogeo. Thanks for sharing your usecase. The language selector is focused on allowing users to quickly switch to their languages. Considering the high number of languages supported in our wikis, we may need to be cautious when adding additional information.

For this context, having a specific overview focused on the task of exploring the different language versions could be useful. As part of the MinT for wiki readers initiative, we are experimenting on how readers could benefit from learning more using machine translation. A concept to explore contents in the different language versions is provided (more details in Phabricator). For example, in this example translation you can change the source language and explore the table of contents for the different language versions. This is just an early implementation for experimental purposes, but it would be very useful to hear from you whether this could be useful for your usecase.

Thanks! Pginer-WMF (talk) 10:23, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi.

MiT is a good idea and I like it, nevertheless, if I'm using Chrome, the broser can do it for me the same (I don't know how others, but it is only matter of time). I beliewe that there are brainy Wikimedians, who consider where this service may be better.

Personaly, I don't mind if more complex features will be in Wikidata. Idea with showing table of contents is good, but this idea doesn't seems better than showing size of articles. Using both of them together maight be the most beneficial, from my point of view. Of course marking featured articles is always very helpful, meybe even the most.

Plogeo (talk) 12:11, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments @Plogeo. Since, "translation" can be interpreted in different ways, I would like to confirm with you which kind of key scenario you have in mind:

• a) A reader looks for the language versions of an article with the most coverage, including languages the user does not speak. The user access the article for the languages with most coverage, and for those that the user does not speak uses machine translation to read an automatic translation to learn more about the topic.
• b) A multilingual reader, looks for the language versions with the most coverage. From those, the user selects those that languages the user speaks and reads them.
• c) An editor looks for the language versions of an article with the most coverage in order to use it as the source to write a translation. The user creates a new article by translating contents from the original with the help of machine translation.

Please let me know if any of the above aligns with your thinking or you were thinking o n a different type of context.

Thanks! Pginer-WMF (talk) 17:24, 28 November 2024 (UTC)