Language badges

Question

Here's a suggestion born out a few akward situations :-)

How about we let people choose from a list which languages they speak and portay a small flag (or flags) on their profile.

I never know for shure If some one with a Dutch last name is from the Netherlands or  emigrants from another country like the US or South Africa.
I allways address them in English, ofcourse, but a lot of times we both find out we can speak dutch to one an other after several  messages to and fro.

It would surely emphasise the internationality of the global community.
What do you think?

Comments

From a greeter's point of view, this is an interesting suggestion but totally let the new WikiTreers pick their " language " as an option .

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I like this idea, even more so if multiple languages could be chosen for those talented individuals who are fluent in more than one language.

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I love this! The easiest way (technically) to do this would probably be to have language badges like the other badges, that could be awarded on the Award Badge page.

Another cool thing about this is that one could then look at the badge report and see everyone who has said they speak a certain language. Could be very helpful for finding someone to help translate something, or for finding someone who speaks your own language.

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Martyn, excellent idea (although sadly I only speak my native language = English)

 

Wendy

Answer 1

My first thought about this was more badges, but then I started thinking about Wikipedia:Babel. That's how people on Wikipedia display what languages they speak, and even their level of knowledge of those languages. For example, my Wikipedia user page shows that I'm a native speaker of English, and a beginner in Esperanto, and also specifically points out that I do not speak French, despite living in a country where many people do.

This could probably be duplicated fairly easily using templates here on WikiTree. I haven't looked at the code on Wikipedia, but I doubt it would be hard for me to duplicate here. And it's really easy to use: all I had to put on my profile to display my language information was "{{Babel|en|eo-1|fr-0}}".

What do you think?

Comments

I got a bit of a start on this. While I haven't gotten the bigger box to work yet, that contains multiple language boxes, I have got the individual ones working. For examples, see Template:User en, Template:User fr, and Template:User nl, for native speakers of English, French, and Dutch, respectively.

There's more that could be done with these. For example, we could make adding the box to your profile put you in a category. I can also add similar templates for non-native speakers; Wikipedia has an additional 5 levels of knowledge you can show with these user boxes.

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Yes! That's exactly what I mean.

I used to do some editing on Wikipedia myself but couldn't find what it was again.

The brilliant part about this is that it's also a Category, which means you can also search for people that speak the same language. Thanks Lianne!

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No problem, Martyn! :)

They aren't attached to categories yet. I haven't figured out what the categories should be called. It feels wrong to use English for all the category names, but it would be quite difficult to make the categories using the appropriate language for each.

It would be a bit cryptic, but if we just used the language codes for the categories (en, fr, nl, etc.), those are international, right? So they should be universally understandable.

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Better to copy than reinvent the wheel I'd say. What would Wikipedia do ;-)

I guess the Int. code would do nicely, and yes they are universal.

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Haha, yeah that's pretty much my motto!

The difference, though, is that Wikipedia has a separate site for each language. So on the English Wikipedia, they don't have to worry about being international.

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Such a great idea! Love it. Makes me want to go learn a language even more now ha ha.

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Wikipedia uses the category "Wikipedians by language" and with subgategories by the User Template, like "User en" or "User nl". (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians_by_language)

When going through the Helppages on Wikipedia I found that these badges show the sign both in the native language as in English  (look here for an example).

As to the different levels you can use, I'd say keep it as simple as possible. You either speak/read a language well enough to communicate or not. I suggest 1 badgelevel for your native language and 1 for a second language. Eg. "This user also speaks ...".

But it should be able to add very simple, either with a button or as an option on the Edit tab of your profile (perhaps below the E-Mail Address?). Perhaps our techies can have a look at this? ;-)

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I created Category:WikiTreers by Language, and the subcategories are just named En, Fr, etc. That was really easy to create and won't require much maintenance, and they're universally understood. The categories can have an explanation in both languages, but the badges themselves are only in the language they're about (same as on Wikipedia).

I still see the value in more levels like Wikipedia has. I can't say I speak French, but I know enough to understand church records in French.

Once I have the box that fits multiple languages working (just missing a MediaWiki extension; I'll be talking with Chris about that tomorrow), it'll be very simple to add them. It'll just be something like {{Languages|en|fr}} to show you're a native speaker of English and French, for example.

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Hey Lianne, that's a cool template! I saw in the edit history you were trying to make it work for a variable number of arguments, so I give it a shot and got it working. Since no profile but mine was using the template, I went ahead and edited your {{Languages}} template to make it handle from 1 to 10 languages. I hope you don't mind I did that!

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Roland! I can't believe you figured out how to do that! I'd eventually just accepted that it was impossible without the MediaWiki extension that allows if-else statements. I'm so excited the Languages template works now! Just added it to my profile.

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Yeah, the trick was to add a "User null" template to use as default arguments. Another idea I had was using some sort of recursion, but I'm just a newbie at template writing so I'm not sure if it would work. Theoretically, using recursion could allow for an unlimited number of languages, but I think we should be safe with 10 for now!

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Clever! And yeah 10 is probably sufficient for most. I don't know of any superpolyglots on WikiTree. :)

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Thanks. I'd like to have some extra levels in the templates, since I can't express the difference between my German and French, level wise.

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Enno, I just created the rest of the levels for German, and I'll have the French ones done in a few minutes. So feel free to add the appropriate levels to your profile now!

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Thanks. I changed levels, and set my biography to public. Otherwise it won't make much sense.