| • Niedzielski | |
| Sep 19 2018, 3:55 PM |
| F26075959: en.m.wikipedia.org_wiki_Montreal.png | |
| Sep 19 2018, 10:36 PM |
| F26063893: en.m.wikipedia.org_wiki_High-capacity_magazine_ban(iPhone 5_SE).png | |
| Sep 19 2018, 3:55 PM |
| F26063825: en.m.wikipedia.org_wiki_Montreal(iPhone 5_SE).png | |
| Sep 19 2018, 3:55 PM |
The change language icon is inert and useless when no alternate page languages exist. The icon should be changed to either:
IMO It's not useless, it clearly communicates to the user that an article has no translations, which is useful to know. If the button is there, how can I be sure that it is possible for this article to be translated, how do I know it's possible to translate it? It also provides UI consistency so that it reinforces to users where the language button is (given its not on every page).
Side note: In future, I'd love to see this wired up into the content translation tools that the language team have had great success with.
Note if $wgMinervaAlwaysShowLanguageButton = false, the language button will never show (ie. the wiki doesn't have translations)
It was specifically added in T132974 which hints at rationale (https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/297580).
Punting to @alexhollender for a quick reconsideration.
@Jdlrobson, should we always show the map button in a disabled state for pages without maps?
I don't know, but we don't have a map button... If we did, it doesn't seem to be a good comparison. A map only makes sense on certain pages (it likely wouldn't make sense on an article about Chemistry), but every page can have languages. Edit seems like a better comparison. We show an edit and talk icon on all pages, but on some pages it is not possible to edit and some pages do not have talk discussions, so I would expect language to behave consistently with these icons.
Anyway, I presume @Nirzar had his motivations to do it this way so I think "useless" may be a strong word to use without understanding his thought process.
@Jdlrobson, I'm talking about this guy:
It's either present and enabled or hidden. AFAIK, it does not show in a disabled state.
That's not added by Minerva and doesn't show for me. I believe that's the gadget - "Add map popups to coordinates in the mobile website" so nothing readers web design had anything to do with, thus probably not a good comparison with the language button which we spent a whole quarter thinking about, designing and testing.
I agree with @Jdlrobson that the disabled button is not useless, but I think it could be made much more useful, if it did, as @Niedzielski suggests, it acted as some sort of CTA to lead users to add a translation. That flow however, needs a lot of design consideration. For one, it would be confusing if the same button revealed translations in one state, and led you down a path to add translations in another state.
I agree with @Jdlrobson here. Adding in @RHo and @Pginer-WMF for further consideration regarding the button triggering some kind of translation flow when no translations exist.
@Niedzielski how would you feel about renaming this task to be a bit more general, e.g. how to handle pages with no translations?
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