Topic on Talk:Universal Language Selector/Compact Language Links

Personal opt-out from the feature is provided officially and available from Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. Furthermore, example code is being worked on Phabricator (see here) to allow advanced users to make a choice and disable the feature on each WMF site for themselves, if this is what they want.

Usually, the preferred place for discussions with developers about features, bugs and configuration is Phabricator. Requests for configuration change, such as enabling or disabling a feature, must be made in Phabricator after a discussion in the community took place, taking into account the problems the feature is trying to solve, the different types of users and use cases, and the possibility of fixing the features rather than disabling the feature entirely. The team has never stopped discussing with community members, and has actively addressed ru.voy's concerns.

Although it's understood that this is done in good faith, please refrain in the future from suggesting unreviewed code which may not work as intended, may be used somewhere by people who are not fully aware of its consequences (especially unintended ones) and may use it to bypass other users' legit decisions to use a certain tool or feature. Thanks for your understanding.

This transfer discussion from https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T138524

Kusurija: Hi All! Please, tell me, what can I do to disable this "Compact Language Links" anywhere on any Wikimedia project. Because it definitely paralyses my work with them. It paralyses my work not only as Wikimedia project editor, but paralyses my work with all Wikimedia projects as sources of information anywhere outside of WMF. If You can't offer me, any usable solution, please tell me, where else could I defense my rights to non impeded information from any Wikimedia project as source. Thanks for answer.

Me: The only one possibility is to turn off it at all WMF wikis individually. There isn't something like global settings, sorry for it.

But I don't know why it is paralysing your work with WMF's projects. Could you explain to me?

Kusurija: Because I'm working with cs,wictionary, on dictionaries out of WMF, themes, where I gather information from any site of WMF projects (so languages in use, where I gather info is about 70 (seventy, not seven). Most often languages I use, besides my motherlanguage Czech is samogitian, lithuanian, japanese, russian, byelorussian, ukrainian, polish, slovak, english, lettonian, latgalian, latin, chinese (Kantonese), slovene, bulgarian, macedonian, greece, swedish, african, neederlandese, vietnamese, hindi, kannadian, georgian, german, french, italian, spain, romanian, portuguese, ... ... And how i can switch out it?

Me: I asked on IRC for another solutions. I'll notify you when I'll know something more.

Kusurija: Should I remove it on all about 750 projects of WMF? I tried it, it takes about 2.5 minutes or more for each, It means about more than 3000 minutes it is 50 hours (some of projects takes time to first find/load them), it is more, than entire 2 days or more, than a week of workhours. Why I am banned to work such nonsense work?!

Me: You could copy https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedista:Martin_Urbanec/Random_notes/Compact_language_links_turn_off.js to your global.js subpage on meta and then visit every WMF wiki. It should disable the feature and notify you about it. With global.js subpage I mean https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kusurija/global.js for you.

Kusurija: Kde najdu to Cache na této mojí stránce:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kusurija/global.js ?? Nikde ho nemohu

najít, nemám k tomu ze svého prohlížeče Mozzila Firefox přístup...

Me: Translation: Where can I find cache at my page https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kusurija/global.js ? I can't find it, I have no access to it from my browser (Mozilla Firefox).

Pokud by to nefungovalo, stiskněte Ctrl+R anebo Ctrl+F5 (tím se vyprázdní cache). Při návštěvě každé wiki by se compact language links měl automaticky vypnout, tedy by Vás nic nemělo paralyzovat.

Translation of my reply: If it won't work please hit Ctrl+R or Ctrl+F5 (it'll clear the cache). When you'll first visit a wiki compact language links will be automaticlly turned off so nothing will paralyse you.

Me: Cs: Funguje to? En: Does it work?

Aklapper: [en] This task is about disabling Compact Language Links by default on Russian Wikivoyage.

Could you bring up your topic on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Universal_Language_Selector/Compact_Language_Links please, where it is better suited? Thanks for your understanding!

[cs] Muzes prosim diskutovat na https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Universal_Language_Selector/Compact_Language_Links , protoze tento task je o ruske Wikivoyage? Diky moc!

Kusurija: You are welcome to transfer it Yourself, because i'm not familiar with

editing on phabricator.wikimedia enough to do it myself. Thank You. (If You

can, transfer the answers too.). Yours sincerely kusurija

Atsirlin^: @Urbanecm: I confirm that this patch does not work, and I second Kusurija's question. It is highly relevant to this thread.

Kusurija: By the way: this nonsense works for non-logged. It is illegitimate censoring, as most of non-logged users does NOT understand, what it means, and does NOT see languages relevant for them. Is there any authority, superiot to authors of this nonsense, who could put them in order??

Me: @Atsirlin It must be inserted at meta to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Atsirlin/global.js for you and I can't see it there (and no delete log present). Then it should automatically turn off at all WMF wikis when you'll first visit them.

Yes, it works for me. Now the question is how I can apply a similar patch for all users of a project

You can insert the same code to MediaWiki:Common.js as an admin but I do not recommend it because it will turn off CLL for all users and nobody will be able to activate it (at every visit it'll be automatically turned off independently of user settings). Or you can create a new gadget with this code which will be turned on at default state.

Well, that's exactly my question. I added this code to MediaWiki:Common.js, but it does not deactivate CLL for anonymous users. Of course, it will be ideal if we could switch CLL off by default and leave every user an option of activating it. However, in the current circumstances, when we are refused of switching CLL off, we are left with the choice of keeping it as it is or deactivating it completely (if we find the way to do so).

Yep, this don't deactivate CLL for anonymous simply because anons have no user settings so any settings can't be changed for them. I asked at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/conpherence/398/ for solution about this issue. You can look at it and find out if somebody replied.

OK, I understand. Thank you for your support, Martin!

You're welcome :).

I tried see cs.wikipedia as IP adress (anonymous) and - as I often on my computer see samogitian wikipedia, I on CLL get offer: 1-st english (it's naturally), but 2-nd: samogitian, 3-rd: lithuanian. OK, so if I'd be of bad willing (if), I could go to internet cafee service, there sit and use computer, see wikipedia in chinese, tamil, kannadian, lao, tibetian... and several other languages, which lithuanians can't understand, even see anything but white squares (as on these computers are not implemented such uncommon letters (fonts)) several times interchangeably - and this would practically block ability to watch wikipedia at all for all users after me. If in internet caffe services use to be many computers, I could do any time the same on other PC set. And in other internet caffe services, also in other cities... So I think, that for anonymes must be CLL switched off by default, only who want, can switch it on.

The languages you would see from Lithuania is based on country code. So that does not change whether you are anonymous or logged in user. Kannada, Chinese, Lao , Tibetan will not be shown for a user at Lithuania, unless a user click these language links(we use previous languages). There is no case compacting a language list to small size and then offering a selector to search in a big list block ability to watch wikipedia. No languages are removed, and the search for a language is provided. Please see this FAQ entry. Thanks

I see You did not understand. Yes You are true with it, that, when I in first moment log as anonymous, these languages will not be shown until I especially shall find and see these (Kannada, Chinese, Lao , Tibetan ans so on) wikipedia's pages. After several seeing, the priority of languages will be automatically changed. So another human, who comes to see after me, will be able get offer in these languages, and, could not understand any of them, will be deprived of ability to get information from wikipedia. This must be denied, because it works.

I can't help you with it and I have no permissions to decide things like this. You can ask for somebody who can give you better answers than me at #wikimedia-tech at irc.freenode.net (you can use client at http://webchat.freenode.net/).

I will never use IRC due to collapse of my PC trying join to IRC.