Change Details

== Problem The links in the footer on Wikimedia wikis, such as "Privacy policy", "Code of conduct", "Cookie statement" etc. use `Special:MyLanguage` to link to pages on foundation.wikimedia.org, which is good – in theory. However, the way Special:MyLanguage works is that it chooses the user's interface language on the target wiki. I don't know if there's data on this, but I'd bet the amount of people who actually have an account on foundationwiki and have actually changed their interface language (or any preference at all) is so small as to be insignificant. So everyone who hasn't done that and clicks one of those links, gets the default "mylanugage", i.e. the content language of the target wiki, which unsurprisingly is English. So even if you click one of these links on a non-English wiki, and the target page **does** have a translation into that language, you will end up at the English page unless you're one of those statistical outliers that have changed their user language on foundationwiki. == Proposed solution For the relevant links, append `?uselang={{USERLANGUAGE}}` [1] to the links, so that the user is directed to the translation in their language if it exists. A bonus feature is that the rest of the MediaWiki interface on foundationwiki will be in the same language the user arrived from when visiting this link. [1] It is not documented in [[mw:Help:Magic words]], but I did some testing, and `{{USERLANGUAGE}}` seems to work even when `$wgParserEnableUserLanguage` is false, **when you use it in interface messages**. The alternative is to use `{{CONTENTLANGUAGE}}`, but USERLANGUAGE is probably better. == Caveats Currently, these links use internal links, but in order to append a URL query like `?uselang=`, you would have to use an external link instead. That should be fine, but that actually working is something to be cautious of.

== Problem The links in the footer on Wikimedia wikis, such as "Privacy policy", "Code of conduct", "Cookie statement" etc. use `Special:MyLanguage` to link to pages on foundation.wikimedia.org, which is good – in theory. However, the way Special:MyLanguage works is that it chooses the redirect target based on the user's interface language on the target wiki. I don't know if there's data on this, but I'd bet the amount of people who actually have an account on foundationwiki and have actually changed their interface language (or any preference at all) is so small as to be insignificant. So everyone who hasn't done that and clicks one of those links, gets the default "mylanugage", i.e. the content language of the target wiki, which unsurprisingly is English. So even if you click one of these links on a non-English wiki, and the target page **does** have a translation into that language, you will end up at the English page unless you're one of those statistical outliers that have changed their user language on foundationwiki. == Proposed solution For the relevant links, append `?uselang={{USERLANGUAGE}}` [1] to the links, so that the user is directed to the translation in their language if it exists. A bonus feature is that the rest of the MediaWiki interface on foundationwiki will be in the same language the user arrived from when visiting this link. [1] It is not documented in [[mw:Help:Magic words]], but I did some testing, and `{{USERLANGUAGE}}` seems to work even when `$wgParserEnableUserLanguage` is false, **when you use it in interface messages**. The alternative is to use `{{CONTENTLANGUAGE}}`, but USERLANGUAGE is probably better. == Caveats Currently, these links use internal links, but in order to append a URL query like `?uselang=`, you would have to use an external link instead. That should be fine, but that actually working is something to be cautious of.

== Problem The links in the footer on Wikimedia wikis, such as "Privacy policy", "Code of conduct", "Cookie statement" etc. use `Special:MyLanguage` to link to pages on foundation.wikimedia.org, which is good – in theory. However, the way Special:MyLanguage works is that it chooses the redirect target based on the user's interface language on the target wiki. I don't know if there's data on this, but I'd bet the amount of people who actually have an account on foundationwiki and have actually changed their interface language (or any preference at all) is so small as to be insignificant. So everyone who hasn't done that and clicks one of those links, gets the default "mylanugage", i.e. the content language of the target wiki, which unsurprisingly is English. So even if you click one of these links on a non-English wiki, and the target page **does** have a translation into that language, you will end up at the English page unless you're one of those statistical outliers that have changed their user language on foundationwiki. == Proposed solution For the relevant links, append `?uselang={{USERLANGUAGE}}` [1] to the links, so that the user is directed to the translation in their language if it exists. A bonus feature is that the rest of the MediaWiki interface on foundationwiki will be in the same language the user arrived from when visiting this link. [1] It is not documented in [[mw:Help:Magic words]], but I did some testing, and `{{USERLANGUAGE}}` seems to work even when `$wgParserEnableUserLanguage` is false, **when you use it in interface messages**. The alternative is to use `{{CONTENTLANGUAGE}}`, but USERLANGUAGE is probably better. == Caveats Currently, these links use internal links, but in order to append a URL query like `?uselang=`, you would have to use an external link instead. That should be fine, but that actually working is something to be cautious of.