Commons:Babel/Proposal

Proposal for overhaul

With an inter-lingual project such as the Commons, language barriers can be a problem; especially when dealing with vandalism or users needing help. Babel boxes are a useful tool in more than one respect: the use of them on userpages allows people to find out what language another user speaks, and the category addition that the templates use make it easier to find another speaker of the same language to help translate if necessary.

Babel boxes are an extremely useful tool, yet are used too little. This proposal aims to find ways of advocating the use of the babel boxes, or even just use of categories, and to overhaul the entire system to make it more efficient and to work for the users.

Concerns

The main concern is, of course, that Babel boxes are not used enough. There are several likely reasons for this; most obvious would be that users do not know of them, or do not know how to use them. Another factor could be the visual appearance: they are simple and the colours are pleasant, but not interesting enough to be something people want to put on their page.

Ideas for encouraging wider use

• Add suggestion to use templates on userpage in welcome messages
• Suggest on newcomers' help pages
• Make more visually attractive
• Simplify usage
• Thoroughly organise info on templates and make navigation around various babel-related pages/resources simpler
• Suggest, rather than just mention, use of the templates
  • Explain more why they are important.