Request expansion of introduction to special page LanguageStats
Hm. How about putting the information in the draft above onto the amended Translating:Statistics page, expanding the short explanation about "Special - Language Statistics" that is already there? Then we just add a sentence to the current summary at the top of Special:LanguageStats saying something like "Help on understanding and using this page is on this page." I can convert the present semicolon lists on Translating:Statistics to section headings so that the wikilink works.
Can you correct the draft where I have got the information wrong? And add something about the delay in updating statistics?
By the way, getting things wrong in my draft explanations, after being a translator for 3 years, indicates to me that we do need to expand a lot on the descriptions of tools and help pages here at translatewiki.net!
Is it possible to add a dropdown list to the language code input box, so that language codes and names can be selected, or the language code typed into the input box directly, if known? This would allow visitors to the site to explore the statistics for the language they are interested in without them having to know the language code. Would that be too expensive in computer resources?
What is the maximum length of a tooltip?
- dropdown box: possibly. Don't know how, may put it on the feature request list with a low priority. In the sidebar menu, the language code is automagically added for the user language.
- no limit, I guess. Any issues?
Low priority for the dropdown box is fine. If we had a link on the special page to a help paragraph about the page then we wouldn’t need the dropdown box at all. Or if it is possible to add a tooltip saying 'Click on Supported Languages in the menu bar to find a language code' then that would also be fine. The people that this could help are visitors to the site, including potential translators and potential new projects, who may not know how to find out a language code.
Is it possible and efficient to add tooltips to the column headers on the table? Then the information in the above draft would go onto the tooltip. Or we could have shorter explanations in the tooltip, as long as there is a link on the page to a longer explanation somewhere else.
There was an issue with a long tooltip message on Welsh Wikipedia, reported on 15 October 2008. The problem happened using Firefox version 2.0.0.7 and using Linux. Here is a link to a screenshot of the message Tooltip-preview ("Preview your changes. Please use this before publishing.") being truncated.
- grumble* Firefox 2.x is *very* outdated.
I wouldn't have raised the issue if you hadn't asked. There is now a Welsh version of the latest Firefox version 3.whatever, so I agree that the particular issue above is probably irrelevant. However, the Welsh version of Firefox wasn't always the most up-to-date; the latest Welsh version used to lag quite a way behind the latest English releases, a situation which I assume applied to other languages as well.
Anyway, if we assume that a tooltip can be of any length, then is it possible and efficient to add tooltips to the column headers?
I think that it would be quite useful to have a note about delays in updating statistics, depending on how a message has been translated – on FAQ or some other appropriate help page.