Hi, as I said earlier, I like that I have a not too long list of language links. But as a logged-in user I would like to tell the system simply in my preferences which languages I want to see. I understand a couple of languages, and I don't understand the whole rest. Whether a language is spoken a lot in my country (e.g. Turkish), or whether an article is a featured one in a specific language version (e.g., Japanese)... I don't understand Turkish or Japanese, so it doesnt't help me if the tool shows me links to those languages.
Topic on Talk:Universal Language Selector/Compact Language Links
If you are a logged-in user and you have a Babel box on your user page, then the languages from your babel box will be shown in the initial list. I see that you have a Babel box on your user page in Meta as {{#babel:de-N|en-3|eo-3|nl-3|fr-1|la-1}}, but in German, Dutch, and Esperanto you use a template on your user page. I suggest replacing the template with the same code as you have on Meta: {{#babel:de-N|en-3|eo-3|nl-3|fr-1|la-1}}.
I also improved the FAQ page with this information. See Universal Language Selector/Compact Language Links#I have a Babel box on my user page. Why don't I see the languages that I defined in it in the initial compact list?.
If you still don't see languages that you need, simply open the panel using the "More" button, and click on the language you need. The language on which you clicked will be shown from this point on.
Thank you! I see now that Simple English (on which I clicked several times) shows now usually, which is great.
Hello! I would like to pick up and "reactivate" this issue for two reasons: Personally, I don't want to use the Babel box for my user page which, if it was the only option, would be annoying as I have user pages in multiple Wikipedias and also want to use different preferred languages to the ones I would declare by Babel boxes. More importantly however, I think it isn't great for the user experience if the only way to manually control preferred languages is by using the Babel box and having no settings menu entry for this purpose whatsoever. Both from my personal perspective and with regards to general user experience, I think offering a setting in the settings menu to manually select preferred languages would be good, at least additionally next to the Babel box option. This would enable me and other users on the one hand to find this setting without painstakingly researching Wikipedia and Google to find the "manual-ish" FAQ and on the other hand to set this setting globally without having to edit user pages (i.e. via the global preferences). Could you please revisit the possibility of introducing an additional and simpler way to manually set preferred languages?
There is a way to do it, as simple as it can be, and I already mentioned it in my response: Simply open the panel using the "More" button, and click on the language you need. The language on which you clicked will be shown from this point on.
I know that as I have spent too much time researching this stuff, far more than any reasonable person would have done. Yes, I know those two ways exist to put languages at the top of the list, but from a UX point-of-view, this is no solution. Preferences are meant to be set in the preferences menu, whoever wants to use this setting will look for it in the preferences. Also, both current ways to set this have their strong limitations, with the once-clicked solution making languages appear I may have used only because the page's topic is related to that language, and with the Babel option requiring declaring all languages one wants to have in the menu publicly, even if it might seem braggy if I was to create 12 Babel boxes. And just to underline my main point: From an UX perspective, settings should be in the settings menu and should only optionally have automisations like the current two "solutions". This is why I am asking you to reconsider creating a section in the preferences menu to manually set preferred languages.
An other or additional solution to the preferences menu entry would be to create a new section in the Universal Language Selector settings menu where one could select preferred languages/Wikipedias.
I'm not directly involved in this now, but I'll pass it on to the people who are.