Template talk:Languageicon/Archive 1

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents 1 Design suggestions 2 Recreation of the "Symbole" PNG scheme 3 Merging functions 4 Strange font effects of language tag 5 Style (color vs. plain) 5.1 Alternatives 5.1.1 Appearance 5.1.1.1 Langlink template 5.1.1.2 Image 5.1.1.3 Plain Text 5.1.1.4 Formatted text 5.1.1.5 Boxed formatted 5.1.2 Behaviour 5.1.2.1 Click-through to language article 5.1.2.2 Display full description on hover 5.1.2.3 No behaviour, simple description 5.1.3 Language code (eo) vs. full description (Esperanto) 5.1.4 Template vs. no template 6 In the name of God, why? 7 Position 7.1 Format 8 Lang attribute in the icon 9 Problem 10 Requested move 10.1 Discussion 11 Category:Language icons 12 Boldness vs arrogance 13 Meta-templating

Design suggestions

I think we should have a few tries to give a good design to the language icons. Currently, the design is:

(Esperanto)

The previous design was done with PNG graphics, wasteful of precious bandwidth, but was also undeniably pretty in my opinion:

If anyone can replicate that, or has even better ideas, please write here your experiments! --Orzetto 19:20, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Recreation of the "Symbole" PNG scheme

((eo))

Enlarged for clarity, using a normal size (setting the font-size attribute in the outer <span> element to 1.5em would yield ((eo)), compare . --Orzetto 20:20, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I can think of no practical reason why there is a need to precisely match the old images... in fact, such a complex work-around introduces cross-browser problems. Simpler is better. -- Netoholic @ 17:19, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Merging functions

I'm shocked to find so many icon templates (Category:Language icons) in existence. This seems like an extremely flawed plan, prone to grow beyond reasonable bounds as hundreds of templates get created. This many template is inefficient and can lead to vandalism targets over time (since few of these would ever be on more than one watchlist. Instead, we should replace all calls within articles of {{en icon}} with {{languageicon|en|English}} (for example) instead. I have a bot that can help with such a conversion. This is better also because it reduces the number of database calls from 2 or more down to one single read, since only one template is being used. -- Netoholic @ 20:54, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I would also prefer to have one single template, but it places the responsibility of matching code and name on the user. I personally mistook Slovenian's code (Slovenian) with Slovakian's (Slovak) a short time ago. What if someone connects Kannada with "ka" (Georgian) or similar mistakes? How are we going to catch them? I think it is more editor-friendly to see immediately that the icon is not what the editor intended when (s)he makes a mistake. Also, different values for country and language codes can be problematic: Sweden's code is SE, but Swedish' is sv; language code se is Northern Sami. --Orzetto 23:07, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I that were the case, then using individual templates would cause the same problem. Most people using a template like with one do so by "cut-and-paste" -- seeing it in use on another article and moving it to the one they are working on. Perhaps we need to decide if any template is needed? Appending " (French) " after a link is far easier than any template use. -- Netoholic @ 23:10, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Maybe I have an idea. A bot could be run periodically (once a week? Once a certain page is viewed?) to check for inconsistencies. Say that we create somewhere an hash table with language codes and respective names—we already have a list of these on Wikipedia, some scripting should easily put that in place. Then this bot would report on all instances of {{languageicon}} that do not match the regular expression {{languageicon\|([a-z]{2,3})\|name["\1"]}}. We would be able to catch even spelling mistakes (most likely capitalisation).

However I know little of bots on Wikipedia, I have never programmed one. Do you think the process overhead would be unreasonable? --Orzetto 23:32, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Strange font effects of language tag

For some reasons I cannot fathom, the following code changes its appearance based on the value of the lang attribute:

<span style="font-family: sans-serif; cursor: help; color: blue; font-size: 5em;" title="Language: Esperanto"
 lang="eo" xml:lang="eo">'''(<span style="color: darkblue;font-size: 0.7em; position: relative; 
 bottom: 0.1em">(eo)</span>)'''</span>

((xx))

If I set the lang attribute to sl:

((xx))

Again, to it:

((xx))

This in Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7 on Linux. Is this a bug in Firefox CSS support, or in the code? Is there information that is not specified and it should be? --Orzetto 00:02, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

PS: it works fine in Konqueror. And in Opera.

Ok, I think I worked it out. On some of these examples (your viewing may vary) the browser picked a font, on others it picked another one. I guess the best thing is to specify a series of common font names (Bistream Vera Sans, Verdana, Arial Black) that look like the original Symbole. See table below:

Symbole
Arial Black	((eo))
Verdana	((eo))
Bitstream Vera Sans	((eo))
Generic sans-serif (may vary)	((eo))

--Orzetto 12:58, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I think the colors match a bit better on this one: ((eo)). Used Color Selector and WhatTheFont. Comparison: ((eo)) /AB-me (chit-chat) 16:11, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Style (color vs. plain)

An extremely similar debate was held on the Commons (link). There, a majority voted for plain black text over the image. Over on the French Wikipedia, their template also uses black text. I think that it's a valid debate what to use here, and encourage a straw poll to that effect if people feel it's needed. Until then, the lighter, simpler plain-ish text is best. Colored text is discouraged in the WP:MoS and these colors especially look too much like default link colors (blue) on my Windows system. -- Netoholic @ 21:00, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

You should know that a debate over there is not valid here, nor on the frensh wikipedia, nor on commons. I would suggest you to revert your edit until consensus defined the outcome and not trying to push your POV. _→AzaToth 21:47, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

The fact that in other places the same question has been raised and decided upon is a fairly good indication of what would happen here. It's not infallible, and if you want to hold a straw poll do, but it's a good indication of how to handle it for the time being. Maintaining consistency across projects is a good goal. -- Netoholic @ 21:58, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

It's an indication, but your initial argument assumed that their consensus applied here. _→AzaToth 22:01, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I think you read something that I didn't write, nor intend. -- Netoholic @ 22:37, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Your edit summary said: (per vote on Commons (which should probably be repeated here as well) see talk). _→AzaToth 00:21, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

And so I posted a full explanation on the talk page... that being the idea that we should probably stick with cross-project consistency. Any comments on the actual issue, or do you just want to talk about me. -- Netoholic @ 00:32, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree that we should keep the simple one until we agree on the next, this template is going to influence many articles. I am not sure that a plain-text template would necessarily be the best though—I feel it would be useful that language information stood out a bit. I am against returning to images, as they do not scale with text and do not degrade decently on text-based browsers such as Lynx. I was hoping for a bit more of a creative contest for the best possible design with CSS style properties before a vote, but there is always time for later modifications anyway... it's a wiki.

Anyway, I prefer the formatted text of the current alternatives, but I take your (Netholic's) point that it looks too much like a link (actually we could make it a link to the language's page, like ((eo))— that would mean changing the template a bit). Maybe something like ((eo)) would be less ambiguous? --Orzetto 13:25, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

The style should be distinctive enough to stand out as a language link within the line of text. But it should not stand out on the page, certainly not more than the external link itself—it is a label subordinate to the external link, and not a feature which needs to draw attention to itself on the page. The current black, monospaced text in parentheses is more than enough to fulfil this function. —Michael Z. 2006-02-07 16:13 Z

Alternatives

I reorganised the votes, hopefully in respect of the original ones, in various sections, because we are really voting on a number of different and independent aspects of this template. PizzaMargherita 10:22, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Can we please make one thing clear to all readers... get wide consensus on a style of marking foreign-language links, then figure out if you need a template, then work on an implementation of the template. This talk page is the wrong place to really decide this style question. -- Netoholic @ 15:40, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Appearance

Langlink template

De rien Français (French) or De rien Français (fr)

See {{langlink}}

1. I change my vote to this one, also taking onboard Michael's comments about fancy formatting attracting too much attention. Shame that a lot work has gone in the formatted version. I still like it, but I agree it's inappropriate, and it's more like I hated the bold+monospaced one really. PizzaMargherita 07:43, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
2. Thanks, PM—I'd better vote for my own creation. This could be improved, but is usable as-is, and could be the basis for a series of language-specific templates just like {{en icon}} etc (although I suggest a consistent prefix, as in "{{lang en}}"). It brings the label into the external link behind the icon. It's also flexible, allowing the label to appear before or after the link, text formatting or a background to be applied to the whole link, or an image to be added. —Michael Z. 2006-02-08 21:57 Z
3. Simplicity works, this one is definitely best imho. I would rather see the language formatted as a link as well (simply: De rien Français (French)) but thats a detail. The Minister of War ^(Peace) 22:03, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Image

Plain Text

(eo) or (Esperanto)

1. Definitely plain text, and please not bold and not monospaced. This is a jarring shift from the default font, and attracts way too much attention. [but see langlink template, above] —Michael Z. 2006-02-06 07:24 Z
2. Per Michael. Mark^{your words} 15:45, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Formatted text

((eo)) or ((Esperanto))

1. My vote is for this one. (Note: I took out the '''s since there already is a font-weight: bold; specified in the style element.) --Orzetto 13:09, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
2. Second that. At any rate, I find the plain text version extra ugly. GregorB 17:27, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
3. I'm for this one. GhePeU 18:48, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
4. I support this one, it's great. I'm also for deleting all the templates in Category:Language icons after replacing them. Also it would be better if this template gets a shorter name ({{Langicon}} maybe). CG 19:01, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
   • What du you mean by deleting the templates? _→AzaToth 19:30, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
     • Ups, I'm sorry. I meant deleting the templates in Category:Language icons. CG 21:21, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
5. Support — plus link to language site. _→AzaToth 16:52, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

• I vote for this one, much better than plain text. Would a link to the language page (Esperanto) be inappropriate? I found it slightly frustrating that I couldn't click through it. Also, how should this template be used? I found its use in IKEA quite baffling. Wouldn't a footnote be more appropriate there? And, if an article is written in English, is it desirable to have this template for English links (cf. Quebec)? Finally, have text-only browsers been catered for? What would they see? Anyway, I strongly support the idea of keeping a template in general. PizzaMargherita 07:07, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose—the label for a link shouldn't attract more attention on the page than the link itself. Furthermore, ((doubled parentheses)) go against all typesetting conventions—they look like a naive attempt to attract attention on the page, like multiple exclamation marks or question marks!!?? —Michael Z. 2006-02-07 01:39 Z

• Support. However the colors should be aimed at *lowering* the text prominence, not increasing it. I'm therefore inclined to a gray-based design, along the lines of: --Gennaro Prota 04:03, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

• Support Makes the user better aware of the langauge of the link. --Bob 20:20, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose So would blinking and a gigantic size, but the argument of who opposes overkill formatting is that it's not appropriate. PizzaMargherita 20:38, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

• Support per Orzetto abakharev 21:00, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose. per oppose votes above. ^BlankVerse 05:58, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Boxed formatted

((Esperanto)) or ((eo))

• Oppose—the label for a link shouldn't attract more attention on the page than the link itself. This is a thick crust of sugar, on the icing, on the cake. —Michael Z. 2006-02-07 01:40 Z
• Extreme oppose. Ugly, distracting, unnecessary, etc. ^BlankVerse 06:02, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Behaviour

Click-through to language article

• Support — plus link to language site. _→AzaToth 16:52, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
• Object. per User:Netoholic, "What links here" pages of language articles will become useless as links to irrelevant articles will fill the page. CG 09:49, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose—multiple, often redundant links on the line will distract and water down the "external links" section, similarly to non-disambiguating links on a disambiguation page. The name of a language is like any other dictionary word; multiple routine occurrences don't need to link to an encyclopedia article. This will often be doubly redundant, since foreign-language links most often occur in a context which already talks about foreign places, people, or languages. —Michael Z. 2006-02-07 16:23 Z
• Support—if the link is in language X, a link to language X is legitimate. If it "waters down" the links to the language X article, it simply means there are a lot of articles mentioning language X; bunches of irrelevant articles that mention a language in passing are already in "what links here" sections. --Orzetto 14:31, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

  This language label is to be used in the "External links" section of an article. Adding lots of repetitive internal wikilinks waters down the list of external links and affects its usability—I'm not talking about its effect on links to language X. I don't see the relevance of "what links here", which is not an article section with a specific purpose, but a special page. —Michael Z. 2006-02-14 15:32 Z

• Oppose. What would the purpose be? If I encounter an external link marked as Spanish I won't go to the article about the Spanish language; even more so if you consider that it won't teach me Spanish in any way ;) --Gennaro Prota 04:03, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support per above abakharev 21:02, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. Useless. ^BlankVerse 06:06, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Display full description on hover

1. Yes, just using a title tag attribute (not an onMouseover javascript). This suffers from no accessibility problems—screen readers support title tags, as do all visual browsers, even MSIE in this case except MSIE (which only respects titles on links). —Michael Z. 2006-02-06 07:26 Z

   Excuse my ignorance, but what is a "title tag"? Thanks. PizzaMargherita 20:11, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

   Sorry I meant an HTML title attribute, which makes the tool-tip pop up in most visual browsers including over Wikipedia links, instead of using Javascript. This seems to be what the current version does. Example: title in a span—doesn't work in MS Internet Explorer. —Michael Z. 2006-02-07 01:44 Z

   Well, Wikipedia has no obligation to adapt to non-standard-compliant browsers. If it does not work with Explorer, it's Explorer's fault, for that is indeed standard-compliant (X)HTML. If the user wants it fixed, the user should switch to a better browser such as Firefox, Opera or others. --Orzetto 15:26, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

2. Support abakharev 21:05, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

No behaviour, simple description

1. Links to language article would be extreme overkill, and would make the article's "What links here" function useless as hundreds of irrelevant articles would link to it. Can't rely on hovers, since it requires physical action (accessibility) and many older browsers do not support it. -- Netoholic @ 07:06, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
2. Per Netoholic. Mark^{your words} 15:44, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
3. What we have currently (tooltip AND click-through) is overkill. I would not oppose too strongly having only one of the two behaviours, but none would be best. PizzaMargherita 23:05, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
4. Support. Let us not do as Microsoft does when you hover the "?" button on the title bar (in case you didn't notice: it displays a tooltip showing... a question mark :-/) The tooltip should IMHO add value, maybe a newcomer aid such as: "This resource is in {{{language}}} language." I'm a little perplexed about sites available in various languages though: ((Italian)), ((English)), ((Spanish)) with separate tooltips for each "block" would look hideous. So we should consider something like ((Italian, English, Spanish) with "This resource is available in Italian, English and Spanish" as a tooltip. --Gennaro Prota 04:03, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
5. Support. ^BlankVerse 06:09, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Language code (eo) vs. full description (Esperanto)

• No template, no obscure two-letter language code. Just use a straight-forward description. -- Netoholic @ 23:22, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
• Per Netoholic. Mark¹ 11:00, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
• I don't care about the template, but I intensely dislike the use of ISO 639 codes to mark the languages of external pages. The meaning of "in Arabic", "in Hindi", or "in Walloon" is immediately obvious to anyone with basic fluency in English; to understand the little two-letter codes, on the other hand, a reader first needs to know that they stand for languages (which is not self-evident), then has to figure out which language is meant. This is also not self-evident: does "es" stand for "Esperanto" or "Estonian"? (What, it stands for "Spanish"?) This is an unnecessary level of jargon. —Charles P._(Mirv) 22:35, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

• hovering the mouse over the template gives a "Language: $LANGUAGE_NAME" tooltip, that eventually could become a link to the language article. GhePeU 23:32, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
  • a brief glance at plain text conveys the same information more quickly, and does so in every conceivable medium, not just in HTML viewed with a web browser. —Charles P._(Mirv) 06:32, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

• I agree that a full-blown description is better because it's immediate and more portable across browsers (even with no tooltip technology). Also it's still accessible when the article is printed out. PizzaMargherita 10:22, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Support language code—It's a Web site, so let's not shy away from standard Web technology. Two-letter code plus tool-tip is just fine: once you've seen a few you can stop checking, and it's just a 1/2 second hover when you encounter an unfamiliar language code. Perhaps a print style sheet can be used to expand the abbreviation on paper. —Michael Z. 2006-02-07 01:48 Z
    • Tooltips are just fine if your browser supports them. I don't want to rely on a non-standard, non-accessible, non-portable technology to understand that "el" means "Greek". PizzaMargherita 08:35, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
      • The HTML title attribute which most browsers render as a tool-tip is a totally standard technology, and recommended for accessibility in alternative browsers. It's been in HTML since the very first standardized version 2.0. I thought they weren't properly supported in MSIE/Win, but testing this template, I find that even that program supports them. Why on Earth would you object? —Michael Z. 2006-02-07 08:52 Z
        • I don't have a mouse. PizzaMargherita 09:00, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
          • Doesn't your browser display or read out the contents of the title tag when a link is selected, or active? What browser do you use? Mine (Safari) doesn't do it unless I use the mouse, but that's no excuse not to follow accessibility guidelines which may help users of other browsers and screen readers, e.g.:WAI accessibility guidelines 4.2 (priority 3) and 13.1 (priority 2). —Michael Z. 2006-02-07 16:37 Z
          • "Providing the expansion in the main body of the document also helps document usability." PizzaMargherita 17:23, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
            • Good point, but this is more directly applicable to, for example, the first occurrence of "Hyper Text markup Language (HTML)" in an article, which then mentions "HTML" several more times. Since this language label is likely to occur many times, on many pages, it is becoming a standard part of Wikipedia's interface, and doesn't need to be expanded at every occurrence. The less-obtrusive tool-tip, supported by explanations in help pages and the Manual of Style should more than suffice. Worst case: readers will learn to associate the labels with foreign-language articles by clicking external links a couple of times. —Michael Z. 2006-02-07 17:50 Z
  • You keep focussing on technology, but I still don't understand what's the advantage of showing ISO codes, can you please explain? Note that we are abbreviating "Greek" with "el" (a whopping save of 3 characters!), and not, using your example, "Hyper Text Markup Language" with "HTML". Plus, it's not like we are writing an article on the Greek language and therefore we are going to have many occurrences. Plus, unlike HTML, these code are not very widely understood or used: "My native language is no, but I am also fluent in ga." PizzaMargherita 07:31, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
    • I don't care about saving bandwidth, but about reducing page clutter. Since these templates will potentially appear multiple times on tens of thousands of pages in Wikipedia, they will be easier to spot, recognize, and read as condensed, iconic, 2-letter abbreviations in parentheses, and also easier to spot, recognize and ignore by those who choose to do so. Anyone who looks at just a few articles will quickly become familiar with them. Anyone who doesn't know that el='Greek language' can pause for all of 1-1/2 seconds to learn this fact using a pop-up tool-tip, once and for all. Usability will be improved over always having to stop and read the various language names, whether you need to or not. —Michael Z. 2006-02-08 21:46 Z
• Sorry if I'm late weighing in, but I strongly favor having the full name of the language, not an ISO code. It has really pissed me off when a perfectly comprehensible description "in Catalan" has been replaced by a generally incomprehensible icon saying roughly "((ca))". How many people have a clue what language has the ISO code "ca"? - Jmabel | Talk 19:21, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
• Support. Spelled out but unintrusive text label. --Gennaro Prota 04:03, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
• full description. ^BlankVerse 06:12, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Template vs. no template

• No template, no obscure two-letter language code. Just use a straight-forward description. -- Netoholic @ 23:22, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
• Per Netoholic. Mark¹ 11:00, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Can anyone please give arguments as to why we would not want a template for this, independently of the "style" chosen? PizzaMargherita 20:09, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Templates are non-intuitive, and discourage people from editing the articles. Mark^{your words} 16:51, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
• I think having a template is very important because it forces the occurrences to be uniform and allows for easy changes across the board. Also, if we decide to go for fancy text formatting, the template is a must. PizzaMargherita 10:22, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
• A template is necessary for better constitency and standarisation. CG 09:50, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

If we go with totally plain text, then no template is needed. Otherwise, a template is needed for formatting consistently and applying any other web technologies. Alternatively, something more transparent like the way ISBNs are handled might be created. —Michael Z. 2006-02-07 01:50 Z

I disagree. Even with plain text a template is welcome. A template may not be necessary today (though it wouldn't harm anyone), but it could be necessary tomorrow, when you want to change all the occurrences. Design for change. PizzaMargherita 08:41, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I really disagree with PizzaMargherita. There are dozens of "standard" elements in even the smallest article that I suppose "could" change in the future (bolding the subject in the first line, birth/death dates, section headings, etc.). There is harm in preemptively using templates to perform functions that are more easily done by typing them out. Each template requires an extra database call when the page is loaded. Templates are be confusing to newbies. Templates are prone to vandalism. Templates are a pain for anyone wanting to mirror our content. Templatizing "(German)" does not meet the threshold. -- Netoholic @ 14:53, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

As Michael hints at, this could be supported at the MediaWiki level. In the mean time I support the template. What Netoholic says ("there are dozen of elements that...") is true, and leads to the opposite conclusion than he draws: the MediaWiki software has no effective support for enforcing article consistency. Basically, it has no semantical markup. But whatever we can enforce without significant drawbacks we should. --Gennaro Prota 04:03, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I get used to the template. Unless everybody agree that the simple text with no formatting is the way to go forever, I would keep the template abakharev 21:10, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

See, that's a serious mistake. WP should be intuitive to new users, so if you got used to an arbitrary and wrong graphic convention it doesn't mean that it's not confusing to people who see it for the first time. PizzaMargherita 21:21, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

In the name of God, why?

Since Netoholic invited comments, I can't understand why anyone would want to create these things, whether as images or as text. Why not just use words, which are easier to understand for readers and for editors who don't hang out at this page? Mark¹ 23:01, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

It's allways better to have consistency, than not to have consistency. _→AzaToth 23:08, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

The problem I have is that the Style should be discussed, with the template being just an implementation of that style if it is found to be desireable. Currently, I can't find any discussion about how or whether to identify non-English external links. -- Netoholic @ 23:20, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

A template is useful because:

1. Information about the language of a link is useful, and should stand out. If the user cannot understand the link's language, (s)he knows at least what option to pass to an automatic translator such as babelfish, for instance.
2. Presenting such information with a template allows it to be easily recognised by readers, and not being lost in the description. It should stand out, as it is a critical piece of information. --Orzetto 15:20, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

This seems to me a case where consistency doesn't matter a whit. I don't care if one article has links saying (German) and another has links saying (in German) or (German language). Then again, if someone has nothing better to do than to standardise them, that won't worry me either. But anything not immediately obvious to writers and readers should be avoided, which I think would cover any use of templates. Mark¹ 23:35, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Standarisation is always better even though sometimes unnecessary. CG 17:22, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Consistency is not the only benefit you get out of using templates. You also have the advantage that any changes to style or behaviour can be applied to all occurrences instantly. Design for change. PizzaMargherita 10:26, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Standardization: sure! But i agree with Mark that how it is done is simply confusing. I came in through a Ukranian topic, and saw to tags: {{en icon}} and {{uk icon}}. English and United Kingdom? Not clear at first glance i can tell you! Why not just use English and Ukranian. Standardizing is fine, but to do so in a way which is not confusing is even better. The Minister of War ^(Peace) 08:52, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Position

For goodness' sake can we please add this template to a list of links, instead of making a list of language icons that happen to have links after them? I found the following example at FC Dynamo Kyiv. —Michael Z. 2006-02-05 21:27 Z

This is bad:

• (Ukrainian)/(Russian) Official website
• (Russian) Dynamo Kyiv page by Shurik - a popular fan-run website about the club and other Ukrainian soccer events.
• (German) FC Dynamo Kiev by Ewgeni Reznik - a German Fanpage about FC Dynamo Kyiv.
• (English) Ukraine's Football Website
• (English) The Game of Death - Australian National Centre for History Education, concerning the events of 1941-43.

It's a list of the links. Put the language labels after them. Multiple languages don't need multiple sets of parentheses. English-language labels seem superfluous to me. This is better:

• Official website (Ukrainian & Russian)
• Dynamo Kyiv page by Shurik (Russian) — a popular fan-run website about the club and other Ukrainian soccer events.
• FC Dynamo Kiev by Ewgeni Reznik (German) — a German Fanpage about FC Dynamo Kyiv.
• Ukraine's Football Website
• The Game of Death — Australian National Centre for History Education, concerning the events of 1941-43.

Agree totally. CG 09:52, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

English language icons are perhaps not superfluous when there's e.g. a dozen foreign-language links and only one or two English links. They are certainly not superfluous when linking to a multi-language website, and one of the languages is English. As for the placement, both solutions have their pros and cons. As for removing multiple parentheses, the cost ("merging" of language categories/templates, instead of keeping them separate) is high, and the benefit is modest. GregorB 18:42, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand the cost of merging. I created the merged link above, which seems to be fully-functional, simply by typing {{language icon|uk/ru|Ukrainian & Russian}}. In fact, it may be simpler and more flexible to do away with all of the including templates, and simply use {{language icon}} for everything. —Michael Z. 2006-02-06 21:57 Z

The cost is lost (or, perhaps, mangled) information. With the {{xy icon}} system, as implemented now, it's easy to say e.g. "let me see all the articles with links to Ukrainian language web sites". But which language exactly is indicated by {{language icon|uk/ru|Ukrainian & Russian}}? "uk/ru" is not a language designation. This breaks the First normal form (conditionally speaking, since Wikipedia is not a database) for the sake of presentation. GregorB 14:24, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Couldn't whatever tool searches the contents of the language tag be smart enough to recognize that "uk/ru" is a 2-cell table, containing two different codes? —Michael Z. 2006-02-07 16:41 Z

It probably could. Still: if we dispense with {{xy icon}} and directly use {{language icon}} instead, then there would be no way to do "show all the articles with..., etc." (at least not through Wikipedia interface, i.e. "What links here"), and my point would be moot anyway. There is no perfect solution. GregorB 17:39, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Ah, true. Is there any way to locate the pages where {{language icon}} is included directly on the page, and not transcluded, to find the non-standardized exceptions? —Michael Z. 2006-02-07 17:45 Z

None that I know of, unfortunately... GregorB 17:17, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I've begun going through the list of {{xy icon}}</noiwiki> icons and replacing icons at the beginning with ones at the end. However, I am keeping languages separate, as per the above searching reasons. ~~~~ == HTML technology == The HTML link element ''a'' has an optional ''hreflang'' attribute[http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/links.html#adef-hreflang], used to indicate the language of the link's destination. It would be nice if we could use a template surrounding the link, rather than just attached to it, so typing: <nowiki>{{langlink |fr|French|http://french.example.com/ French link}}

Would create the entire link, including the visible label and a correct hreflang attribute:

French link (French)

This could be extended to optionally include a lang attribute if the link's text is also in the other language, and perhaps to replace or change the colour, appearance, or position of the standard box-arrow external link icon, or the link text colour. Something like the following (note the tool-tip changes over the language label)?

French link (fr)

Perhaps the tool-tip could be extended too, to read something like:

http://french.example.com/ (French-language link)

—Michael Z. 2006-02-07 02:00 Z

Hey, that was simple enough. Here is {{langlink}} in use. Everything works, except for hreflang—don't know how to add that to a Wikipedia external link. —Michael Z. 2006-02-07 02:26 Z

• De rien Français (fr), a non-existant web site in French

---

I like this one. Though I stand by full description

• De rien Français (French), a non-existent web site in French

PizzaMargherita 09:13, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Example external links section from above, with this template applied:

• Official website (uk/ru)
• Dynamo Kyiv page by Shurik (ru) - a popular fan-run website about the club and other Ukrainian soccer events.
• FC Dynamo Kiev by Ewgeni Reznik (de) - a German Fanpage about FC Dynamo Kyiv.
• Ukraine's Football Website
• The Game of Death - Australian National Centre for History Education, concerning the events of 1941-43.

Format

For more distinctiveness, the label could be in a small font, or small capitals, although I think language codes are normally in lowercase, with country codes uppercase. Do square brackets make more sense? —Michael Z. 2006-02-08 22:15 Z

• French link [fr] — normal, brackets
• German link [de] — small, brackets
• Ukrainian link UK — small caps
• Greek link [EL] — small caps, brackets
• Chinese link zh — monospaced font
• Hebrew link HE — monospaced small caps
• English link [en] — small monospaced font, brackets

Lang attribute in the icon

In contrast with the proposal above, I just noticed that the current template includes lang="xx" xml:lang="xx" attributes in the span, labelling the icon as being in the same language as the linked site. This is odd, because the actual language code (the text: "en" or "de" or "fr") doesn't really have a language, or at least is no more in some other language than it is English. —Michael Z. 2006-02-07 02:17 Z

Removed. This was what caused me some problems (see above) when using (Slovenian): Firefox read it was a language not encoded in Latin-1, and changed to a default font that supported the corresponding encoding. This meant that tags to different languages could have very different looks, and still being on the same page. I think using the lang attributes in this template is Pure Evil^TM. --Orzetto 15:38, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Problem

There seems to be a problem with the template. On Yuriy Yekhanurov, the {{uk icon}} gives some strange font markup in IE6.

Additionally, i'd like to point out that using {{uk icon}} in itself is a violation of Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates, and without a real good reason i might add. {{language icon}} works just as well imho, and is much less of a server strain. I'd advise to keep it inline with this policy. If this language icon is really implemented, there will be LOADS of templates everywhere and thus LOADS of sever strain. We should really strive to avoid that, especially in cases where it is so easily avoided!

Greets, The Minister of War ^(Peace) 07:17, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

The template is fine, this is broken Wiki markup in the article itself, shows in all browsers. I have sort of fixed it. GregorB 14:48, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Netholic mentioned the possibility of using a bot to substitute all {{xx icon}}s with corresponding languageicon templates. Fine with me, but it is still better to use a meta-template than having dozens of independent templates, making style consistency practically impossible. --Orzetto 21:30, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Category:Language icons

Since this template is implemented and used widely, don't you think we should nominate all the templates in Category:Language icons for deletion? CG 20:00, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

At the minimum. I'm even thinking that the languageicon template itself is unnecessary. Typing "(German)" is easier than typing "{{languageicon|de|German}}", given that we tend to agree that the two-letter code was removed from being displayed for being ambiguous. Giving the full language name is preferable, and so this template is no longer efficient. -- Netoholic @ 21:17, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Boldness vs arrogance

So, let me get this right. We spend one month arguing and voting, and then anybody can change the template their way? (1) (2) PizzaMargherita 08:18, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

So it seems - maybe a template like Template:Controversial inside <noinclude></noinclude> will do the trick? Or you can just revert the changes saying that they need to be discussed... Which they do, by the way. /AB-me (chit-chat) 22:53, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Er... yes, well, it was a rhetorical question actually, but thanks. PizzaMargherita 23:02, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Meta-templating

Is there even anybody trying to get this to work, or is this total anarchy? The tempaltes keep being changed, they are now again hopelessly prominent, they are still meta-templating which is horrible for server strain.

Is there some kind of project which is handling these matters, or is it just chaos? Who is working on this anyway?

Cheers, The Minister of War ^(Peace) 08:04, 27 February 2006 (UTC)