When viewing the main page of a Wikipedia, the button to switch to another language is not seen.
However, Main pages are mapped by interlanguage links, and users should be able to switch between them via the toolbar.
Same issue for iOS: T196586
Description
Description
Related Objects
Related Objects
- Mentioned In
- T196586: [Bug] Cannot switch between main pages using the language selector in the iOS Wikipedia app
- Mentioned Here
- T192153: [V2 multilingual enhancement] Add an filter on the Explore feed to view cards in different app languages
T190920: Enable customization of the feed in multiple languages
T179140: consider special scenarios for interlanguage links on the main page
T196586: [Bug] Cannot switch between main pages using the language selector in the iOS Wikipedia app
Event Timeline
Comment Actions
Tapping on the change language icon in the center of the bottom article action toolbar brings up the "Other languages" the Main page is available in for selection.
The language selector is active on Main pages on the Android version of the app
Tapping on the change language icon in the center of the bottom article action toolbar brings up the "Other languages" the Main page is available in for selection.
Comment Actions
I don't see the languages bar at the bottom of the page:
We may have a misunderstanding about terminology here, however; maybe the right title is not "Main page", but "the page that appears when the user opens the app" (I'm not sure how should I call it).
Comment Actions
Here's a video demo of what I mean:
https://youtu.be/9VaEcG0F7rg
Hi @Amire80 - yes agree there seems to be a misunderstanding since the apps have deviated from mobile web recently in that we do not show the Main page any longer as the default UI.
Instead, when the app is opened the user sees an "Explore feed" (called "לַחקוֹר" in your screenshot), which contains a mix of different content from Wikipedia shown as a feed of cards. The user can still access the Main page in whatever is the first language of the app by opening a card in the Explore feed called "Today on Wikipedia":
Here's a video demo of what I mean:
https://youtu.be/9VaEcG0F7rg
The iOS ticket T196586 is valid though because they have disabled the language switcher on the Main page page (ie., the action in the Android app at the 11sec mark on the video is not currently possible on iOS)
Hope that helps clarify why this is invalid on Android, unless I am misunderstanding this ticket.
Comment Actions
- Ah not really, because the Explore feed is different to the Main page, in each card is pulling in different content from different areas depending on the language(s) set in the app, so it is really working as expected.
+ @JMinor in case he has further info/comments regarding this ticket on iOS as well...
Comment Actions
What I'm trying to say is that even though the explore page is not the same thing as the main page on desktop Wikipedia or on mobile web, there must be a language selector because it's the first thing that the people see when they open the app. I don't think that the app's users care that the explore feed is not really a wiki page, and I can easily imagine people wanting to switch languages easily on any place that resembles a page.
So:
- There should be a language selector here.
- It should look as similar as possible to the one on articles.
- Using this language selector it must be possible to select any language in which there is a Wikipedia. The list of languages will be the same as it is on the Wikidata item for the Main page, i.e. all the languages. (I'm intentionally saying "the Wikidata item" and not just "the main page", because on the actual main page the list is truncated. It's a special weird case on the desktop, and I'm taking care of it at T179140.)
Comment Actions
In the app, the user sets the languages they read Wikipedia in from the outset, and we are implementing a change to show all possible content on the Explore feed in the user's selected app languages on T190920, so think this mitigates your concern somewhat.
Else, to add language switching on the Explore feed as you propose would be an extremely large product change. +@Charlotte @Dbrant
Comment Actions
While I really appreciate the ability to control the little details of the feed, I suspect that for a lot of people this customization is too complicated, and that the way to switch the language shouldn't be too different between the articles and the feed (and other places in the app, if relevant). But I'll be happy to discuss it further with the PMs.
Comment Actions
Hi @Amire80. I understand you feel very strongly about this, which is great. As @RHo mentioned, users will be able to set the languages in which they read Wikipedia during onboarding. These languages are automatically detected from the keyboards the user has enabled on their phone, although of course they can add more or edit the languages if they wish right from onboarding. When they get to the Explore feed, they will see content in all the languages they've selected, where this content is available. They can edit this if they wish, of course, but they don't need to in order to get a useful experience.
The purpose of this update was specifically to show an Explore feed with content in multiple languages at once, as our research indicates that users prefer to read content in multiple languages, and choose which types of content to see in each language. The user testing we conducted at the Hackthon supports this. Adding a button to instantly change all content to a single language would be contrary to this purpose, and as such it's something we will not be exploring for now.