@Pginer-WMF the inclusion of the language switcher on pages where there are no interlanguage links came up several times in the Vector 2022 RFC discussion on English Wikipedia (link). A few people questioned having the language switcher in such a prominent location on pages where it is less useful. Perhaps to mitigate this issue we could present the compact language menu button as a black quiet button (versus a blue one)? Also if this is already the plan then we're all set : )

In T316559#8335439, @alexhollender_WMF wrote:

Perhaps to mitigate this issue we could present the compact language menu button as a black quiet button (versus a blue one)? Also if this is already the plan then we're all set : )

Yes, that's the plan. I'll make it more explicit in the description (and reuse your mockup!), for extra clarity. Thanks for providing additional context on the community input, Alex.

@Pginer-WMF another question has come up: the language menu is included in the sticky header. For talk pages, which don't support interlanguage links, can we exclude the (condensed) language menu from the sticky header?

For example:

with language menu	without language menu

cc @ovasileva @ppelberg

In T316559#8350815, @alexhollender_WMF wrote:

@Pginer-WMF another question has come up: the language menu is included in the sticky header. For talk pages, which don't support interlanguage links, can we exclude the (condensed) language menu from the sticky header?

Yes. For talk pages which don't support interlanguage links, I think we can exclude the language menu from the sticky header.

Rationale:

• The general idea for pages not supporting content language switching, was to keep a low-key version of the language entry point to still keep access to change the UI language if needed.
• Hiding the language option from the sticky header reduces the prominence while the functionality is still present at the top of the page.
• The need for switching the UI language is expected to emerge immediately, so it is less relevant once the user scrolled down the content.
  • One exception could be when people reach the page through a link pointing to a section down the page. However, scrolling up seems reasonable expectation for such case.

Thanks for pinging about this, Alex.

@Pginer-WMF thanks for your above reply. I've created a task: T322153: Remove language menu from sticky header on Talk pages

Change 852139 had a related patch set uploaded (by Nik Gkountas; author: Nik Gkountas):

[mediawiki/skins/Vector@master] POC: Use less prominent ULS trigger button for unsupported pages

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/852139

Change 852140 had a related patch set uploaded (by Nik Gkountas; author: Nik Gkountas):

[mediawiki/extensions/UniversalLanguageSelector@master] Implement ULS empty for pages that do not support multilingual content

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/852140

Change 852139 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/skins/Vector@master] Update language dropdown for pages not supported in other languages

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/852139

Change 852140 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/UniversalLanguageSelector@master] Add language settings button inside dropdown for non-content pages

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/852140

In T316559#8507810, @gerritbot wrote:

Change 852140 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/UniversalLanguageSelector@master] Add language settings button inside dropdown for non-content pages

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/852140

Hi, just a heads-up that this patch was reverted (T326538: Vector 2022: Username does not display properly in personal tools section when GrowthExperiments enabled). The revert patch didn't tag this task, so leaving this comment for awareness.

Thank you Kosta! We are aware of this reverted patch, and will submit a new "equivalent" patch with an acceptable approach very soon, to come with the next train :)

Change 879053 had a related patch set uploaded (by Nik Gkountas; author: Nik Gkountas):

[mediawiki/extensions/UniversalLanguageSelector@master] Add language settings button inside dropdown for non-content pages

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/879053

awesome to see progress here. just calling out that until we do T322153: Remove language menu from sticky header on Talk pages we've got a sort of awkward/confusion situation here:

you see this at the top of the page:

then you scroll down and see this in the sticky header:

Change 879053 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/UniversalLanguageSelector@master] Add language settings button inside dropdown for non-content pages

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/879053

also just to clarify, the link "Open language settings" should be in this menu, right? seeing it on production but no language settings in there:

Change 879670 had a related patch set uploaded (by Func; author: Func):

[mediawiki/skins/Vector@master] LanguageDropdown:

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/879670

This change breaks ALL the interwiki links for, at least, categories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia, portals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events) and templates (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Coord).

I took a look to some cases to identify what needs some polishing still:

Case	Screenshot	Notes
A. Content page available in other languages (above the fold)		✅ Works as expected: list of links to read in other languages are shown
B. Content page available in other languages (below the fold)		✅ Works as expected: list of links to read in other languages are shown
C. Content page not yet available in other languages (above the fold)		✅ Works as expected: shows that there are no languages yet with the available options to add them (translation for now) and access to settings.
D. Content page not yet available in other languages (below the fold)		✅ Works as expected: shows that there are no languages yet with the available options to add them (translation for now) and access to settings.
E. Page not created yet		✅ Minimal language indicator used to communicate that contents are not supported in other languages. ❌ Option to open language settings should be visible but is not shown.
F. Talk page (above the fold)		✅ Minimal language indicator used to communicate that contents are not supported in other languages. ❌ Option to open language settings should be visible but is not shown.
G. Talk page (below the fold)		❌ Unsupported pages should not have the language option on the sticky bar (T322153).
H. Template page (above the fold)		❌ Language links should be listed allowing to access the template in other languages. Additional actions: access to settings should be available but no option to translate.
I. Template page (below the fold)		❌ Language links should be listed allowing to access the template in other languages. Additional actions: access to settings should be available but no option to translate.

It's definitely a bug, removing interwiki in template, category, and so on.

Change 879670 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/skins/Vector@master] LanguageDropdown: Check if the page is in talk namespaces instead

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/879670

I understand what the purpose is (telling the reader that some pages shouldn't have interwiki links). But... why? Why shouldnt a talk page be linked to another talk page? In which way is this good for our strategy? I would understand that the opposite is the good practice.

In T316559#8523516, @Theklan wrote:

I understand what the purpose is (telling the reader that some pages shouldn't have interwiki links). But... why? Why shouldnt a talk page be linked to another talk page? In which way is this good for our strategy? I would understand that the opposite is the good practice.

I don't have a strong opinion on whether it is better to show language links for talk pages or not. Here are some considerations in this aspect:

• In the previous version of Vector (Vector Legacy) links to other languages were not shown for talk pages (screenshot below). When adjusting the language selection to adapt it to the new version of Vector that notion was preserved. It is possible to revisit the approach, but we may want to think about it as a separate change (and think about the considerations below).
• Talk pages are not linked directly in Wikidata (as far as I know). In such case, when linking to the talk pages of the equivalent articles we need to determine whether including the cases where the article exists but the talk page has not been started or not (and how to filter those out in such case).
• User expectations for the same (or similar) content to be available may not be met with talk pages. Articles across languages are different but they cover the same topic to a higher or lower degree. However, Talk pages diverge much more. A use reading a particular discussion in a language may interpret the option to switch languages as a way to access that discussion in another language, but the contents (the discussions and people participating in them) will be totally different.

I think it makes sense to consider the possibility of connecting talk pages across languages, but I think it would be better to understand in more detail the expectations of people when offered such possibility.

@Pginer-WMF, I think that the language settings should be available on every page. This includes all the cases mentioned above, and special pages too. This is important for users of multilingual and multi-script wikis. Access to the language setting were available on every page in the old vector skin through the cog icon in the sidebar. There was an old task in Phabricator that cited statistics showing that the vast majority of UI language changes by users were effected using the ULS and not from the preferences. Do we have good reasons to think that access to language settings is not required from every page on the wiki?

The option to add interwiki links (not only to see them) for categories is gone.

Change 879798 had a related patch set uploaded (by Func; author: Func):

[mediawiki/skins/Vector@wmf/1.40.0-wmf.18] LanguageDropdown: Check if the page is in talk namespaces instead

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/879798

Change 879798 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/skins/Vector@wmf/1.40.0-wmf.18] LanguageDropdown: Check if the page is in talk namespaces instead

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/879798

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2023-01-16T01:05:09Z] <thcipriani@deploy1002> Started scap: Backport for [[gerrit:879798|LanguageDropdown: Check if the page is in talk namespaces instead (T316559 T326788)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2023-01-16T01:15:17Z] <thcipriani@deploy1002> thcipriani and func: Backport for [[gerrit:879798|LanguageDropdown: Check if the page is in talk namespaces instead (T316559 T326788)]] synced to the testservers: mwdebug1001.eqiad.wmnet, mwdebug2001.codfw.wmnet, mwdebug1002.eqiad.wmnet, mwdebug2002.codfw.wmnet

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2023-01-16T01:29:57Z] <thcipriani@deploy1002> Finished scap: Backport for [[gerrit:879798|LanguageDropdown: Check if the page is in talk namespaces instead (T316559 T326788)]] (duration: 24m 47s)

Change 880423 had a related patch set uploaded (by Nik Gkountas; author: Nik Gkountas):

[mediawiki/extensions/UniversalLanguageSelector@master] ULS: Display "Page contents not supported" body in missing and talk pages

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/880423

Change 880423 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/UniversalLanguageSelector@master] ULS: Display "Page contents not supported" body in missing and talk pages

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/880423

In T316559#8523516, @Theklan wrote:

I understand what the purpose is (telling the reader that some pages shouldn't have interwiki links). But... why? Why shouldnt a talk page be linked to another talk page? In which way is this good for our strategy? I would understand that the opposite is the good practice.

That was an community decision. When Wikidata added support for the WMF projects there was an discussion on the projects, and not one of those resulted in adding support for the talk namespaces. Even prior to Wikidata, I was working on the interwiki links and I do not remember a single talk page interwiki link. If you have an usecase, I think that should be brought up on Wikidata first, then to phabricator if you succeed.

@Pginer-WMF Reviewed most of the scenarios and found them to be good and consistent. See attached

Except for the scenario below. Please confirm if this is a valid abnomality

Template with Data (Above the fold)

This shows the language icon highlighted in blue and does not show suggestion of suggested languages. Access to Add language and access to the settings icon.

Template with Data (Below the fold)

This shows the language icon is not highlighted in blue and show suggestion of suggested languages. Access to Add language and access to the settings icon. This is inconsistent with the Above the fold scenario