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I'm working on fixing something with the homepage and I will need a bit of help for the wordings.
Most of you are probably unaware of the problem because it doesn't affect logged in users, but there are currently 2 "homepages".
1. the page that you land in when you go to http://tatoeba.org/ (we'll call it "index")
2. the page that you land in when you click on "Home" in the menu (we'll call it "home")
When you are logged in, if you try to go to the "index" page, you get redirected automatically to the "home" page, so you never get to see the "index" page. But that's not the case for non-logged in users.
My goal is to merge the index and home page, in a way that doesn't affect logged in users.
What I have in mind currently looks like this: http://prntscr.com/6beuq6
* This top content will be displayed only to non logged in users.
* Everything that is below this top content is the same that what a logged in user would see.
* The video will be removed from the home page and placed in an "About" page.
What I would need help for is:
* the short description of Tatoeba --> What do you think should be written there?
* the content of the "About" page --> I will simply put the video in there at first, but there's definitely more that we can write in the page. I haven't decided yet what to write in there, and I welcome any suggestion.
Non-English characters on the users' pages are not supported now.
ü in my surname is not being displayed correctly:
http://puu.sh/gi57n/b67b963906.png
Is anyone aware of that?
Is this happening on the standard site or the dev.tatoeba site? I checked both and my profile is rendering correctly, and I use 4 scripts in it. I also edited in an ü to check, and it rendered correctly as well. I think this might be a browser problem. I'm using Firefox 37 on Windows 7 64-bit myself.
Thanks for testing. It's same on the both sites. I checked it with 2 different browsers (latest versions of Chrome and IE) on the same operating system and on a mobile one (Mobile Safari) but the result is still same.
> ü in my surname is not being displayed correctly:
My fault, sorry! Will fix it for the next release.
Would it be possible to allow characters like ü (or ä) in usernames, as well?
I think it should be possible, I’d be in favour of such a thing, but I’m not sure about the problems this could introduce.
First, let me explain why we’re having restricted characters in usernames.
Usernames are used inside URLs and should be unique. It is meant to create readable URLs (for both humans and machines). They act as unique identifiers and are part of the URL when you access a page that include the user name, such as tatoeba.org/jpn/user/profile/Pfirsichbaeumchen or tatoeba.org/jpn/activities/translate_sentences_of/Pfirsichbaeumchen.
URL can actually *only* contain these restricted symbols (letters, numbers and a few symbols). If you want to include any other character, you need to convert them into percent-escape sequences that look ugly. For instance, the actual URL of the Käse German Wikipedia article is de.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A4se, which only contains the restricted characters thanks to the percent escape. This extends to characters in any alphabet other than English, like Chinese, Arabic… anything supported by Unicode.
But nowadays, most browsers just display Käse instead of K%C3%A4se inside the address bar for your convenience. They can do this since 2005 because the way to do the percent-escape became standard¹, whereas it wasn’t before. So it’s mostly historical reasons.
Here are some problems I can think of because of the introduction of other characters in usernames:
• even if names would be displayed in a readable way within most browsers address bar, they wouldn’t be anymore in other contexts that include raw URLs, such as text emails, sentences comments and Wall posts (we may fix that), server logs…;
• current users should have to keep their original restricted username while new users would be able to create better usernames, unless we create a renaming feature
• the site would be vulnerable to user spoofing: a user that pretends to be someone else by creating an account that uses a name very close to an existing user, using very close characters².
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...rrent_standard
² https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3987#section-8
Okay, thank you.
[not needed anymore- removed by CK]
Your suggestions would go in a "Getting started page"/"How it works" page, rather than "About" page, I think.
When I read an "About" page, I expect to learn about the ideas and principles behind a project/app/company/organization.
My version of it:
"Tatoeba is a database of example sentences for language learners.
Search example sentences and find translations in your native language. Add or translate sentences to help other language learners. It's collaborative, open, free and even addictive.
[How it works]"
I'm consciously de-emphasising translation, as I've seen many visitors (mostly from South Asia) under the impression that Tatoeba is an auto-translation or even human-translation service. This results in a lot of what are essentially spam sentences in South Asian languages.
I'd also keep the vocabulary simple, both because a.) visitors may not be very good at English (or any of the localised languages), and b.) it helps when localising to not use a lot of jargon.
Suggestion: if we're going to remake the the front page, might as well use some neat AJAX trickery to have the username-password-email fields on the front page itself. If the username and password is correct, you're logged in instantly. If not, you're offered to register with one click.
Thanks for your suggestion sabretou. Based on what you've proposed, I'm thinking of the following:
----------------------------------------------------
Tatoeba is a database of sentences and translations.
Search example sentences, find translations, add or translate sentences to help other language learners, and much more. It's collaborative, open, free and even addictive.
[How it works] [About us]
----------------------------------------------------
I consider translation as a huge part of Tatoeba and I don't think we should de-emphasize it only because a lot of people end up thinking that Tatoeba is machine translation or a translation service.
The problem you are mentioning is more a problem of how we've designed the features of the website. We don't have any sort of sandbox for new users to learn how to contribute, what to contribute. Once you are registered you are thrown into the real corpus right away. As a result, some contributors who are just passing by end up adding "spam" because they just wanted to try out without really caring about what the whole thing is about.
Regarding the auto log in suggestion, there won't be anything to change. If you have checked the "remember me" box when you logged in, you already are logged in automatically everytime (or maybe I misunderstood what you meant with the suggestion).
I like that description!
---
Okay, so what I mean with the auto-login is that when if you've been logged off, you'd typically see the Register and Login buttons. And to log in, you'd click on the login button, then enter your details. What I'm proposing is something I've seen on a lot of newer sites: if there is no user signed in, you're simply provided a username/password form. If the username/password already matches an existing user, that user is logged in. If the password was incorrect, the Forgot Your Password option pops up. And if the username was not detected, the user is offered to register (with two new fields popping up: E-mail address and Confirm password).
It's no biggie really, just a UX/UI suggestion. Most websites get by without it.
To me, "database" seems like a very geeky word. It's true that we have a lot of geeks in our community, but we also serve people who are less technically oriented. I'm not sure what I would suggest as an alternative, since each word I can think of has drawbacks. Here are some possibilities:
(1) "collection"
pro: not a scary word
con: sounds a little less structured than it actually is
(2) "corpus"
pro: more technically accurate
con: mystifying to nonlinguists
(3) "resource" (as in "a resource consisting of sentences and translations")
pro: not scary
con: possibly a little vague
I think of the three, I prefer "collection".
I suggest replacing "Search example sentences" by "Search for words" or "Search for sentences containing words" or "Search sentences for words". (Or possibly replace "words" by "phrases".)
Since I would to apply the changes on the homepage next weekend, and this is the most viewed page, it would be nice if we could manage to have the new text translated into all the available interface languages.
Text to translate:
* Tatoeba is a collection of sentences and translations.
* Search for example sentences, find translations, add or translate sentences to help other language learners, and much more. It's collaborative, open, free and even addictive.
* How it works
* About us
Languages needed (some are already done):
* German
* Spanish
* Esperanto
* Basque
* French // done
* Italian
* Hungarian
* Low German
* Polish
* Portuguese (Brazil)
* Finnish // done
* Tagalog
* Turkish
* Greek
* Russian // done
* Arabic
* Marathi
* Chinese (Mandarin)
* Japanese
For the record we use a platform called Transifex to manage the translations of the website interface. You can find out more about how to help with it here:
http://en.wiki.tatoeba.org/arti...ce-translation
Thank you.
> Search for example sentences, find translations, add or translate sentences to help other language learners, and much more.
"Search for example sentences" is both awkward and confusing. It's awkward because "example sentences" sounds odd, and it's confusing because it suggests that you meant to say "Search, for example, sentences" but left out the commas.
I would suggest:
Search for words, find translations, add or translate sentences to help other language learners, and much more.
I see what you mean.
My problem is that "Search for words" can be understood (to me at least) as if the goal/result are words.
I'd like to have something that expresses that the goal/result are example sentences. Something that doesn't mention on what you input in the search, but just what you get as a result.
Maybe just "Find example sentences and translations"?
I understand that sentences are the focus at Tatoeba, which differentiates it from other sites. The problem is that "example sentences" is not a very transparent or smooth phrase.
Maybe "Find sentences and translations, and add your own to help other language learners"?
I favour "example sentences" because it is an actual term used by dictionaries for a very specific thing. For eg.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.c...sentences-help
http://www.macmillandictionary....sentences.html
http://www.online-languages.inf...h/examples.php
I think many language learners are specifically looking for Example Sentences, which are often hard to find in languages beyond the few major ones. I think it illustrates Tatoeba's purpose a lot more clearly and directly than just "sentences and translations".
At this point I think I'm tempted to just reduce it to:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tatoeba is a collection of sentences and translations.
It's collaborative, open, free and even addictive.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It sounds a bit redundant to have "Find (example) sentences and translations..." in between.
Or how about the following?
---
Tatoeba is a community-built collection of sentences and translations.
It's open, free, and even addictive.
---
Or "collaboratively-built".
Or "Tatoeba is a community that is building a collection of..."
I would prefer to use simpler sentences so I'll stick to "Tatoeba is a collection of sentences and translations" for now.
Technically speaking, Tatoeba is a copus + a community + a website, so neither "Tatoeba is a collection of sentences" or "Tatoeba is a community" are not exactly correct.
I generally use the word "platform" in this situation (maybe there's a better word), but I don't want to complexify the description just for the sake of being more accurate.
As long as people who discover the website for the first time understand the main idea, which is that they can find sentences and translations, and that they can contribute their own, it's enough I think.
I wonder if it wouldn't be enough to list the essential activities without the
"and much more" part, as in Trang's draft: http://prntscr.com/6beuq6.