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I have updated the dev website (http://dev.tatoeba.org) with a new feature: languages level in the profile.
There will/can be a lot more things that can be implemented around this feature, but for now it's just a very basic feature for members to list the languages that they speak, learning, or are interested in learning.
Please take a bit of time to test it: go to your profile on the dev website, add/edit/remove languages. Give me your feedback.
If everything's alright it will be released this weekend.
Thank you.
[not needed anymore- removed by CK]
I don't think it's worth having this 6th option.
From my understanding you would like to have this option in order to
1. display the main language of each user in the members list
2. be able to sort users by language
About 1, there's no reason we should limit the display to only 1 language. If a user is a native speaker in more than 1 language, then we can display more than 1 icon.
About 2, what you really want here is to be able to list all the native speakers in a certain language. It's not a "sort" feature that you would need, but a "filter/search" feature. And that's among the next things that will be implemented. There will be a page where you can ask to show all the users who have added a certain language in their profile, and you can order this list by level.
I'm missing a cancel button while adding and/or editing the languages.
That's noted.
+1 to CK's suggestion about the strongest native language.
Otherwise the feature seems to work fine.
> +1 to CK's suggestion about the strongest native language.
Do you a specific usecase in mind, where it is necessary or extremely beneficial to know the user's strongest language? (and that I have not mentioned in my reply to CK)
Most bilinguals/multilinguals have a dominant language that they can actually speak better than the other(s) language(s). The dominant language can change through time and in different circumstances. For a real life example, I have a friend who's bilingual speaking Finnish and Swedish. Swedish was the first language she learned at home and she acquired Finnish later. She had her education in Swedish, and while she was in school her dominant language was Swedish.
Now that her school years are way back and she mostly works in Finnish environment and most of her contacts (friends, husband) are speaking Finnish, her dominant language has switched to Finnish. She was actually worrying about her deteriorating Swedish skills the other day. But still she can say that she is bilingual and knows both Swedish and Finnish in native level.
For me to know this is the same thing to know as to know if the person is speaking some language in intermediate level or advanced level. I don't think that we should just leave it for the users to remember to mention about the strongest/dominant language in details. That's why I'm for adding a new category as CK suggests. Some people call this also the language of heart, ie. the language through which you can communicate your thoughts in most detailed nuances and express your feelings the best.
I like it a lot, especially the Details field. I agree with CK's suggestion.
Edit: I can't think of what the "0: Almost no knowledge" level can be useful for. I can think of half a dozen language I have "almost no knowledge" of, but stating those really wouldn't serve much purpose here on Tatoeba. After all, I have almost no knowledge of them.
If a user is actually learning a language (or studied it at some point), then "1: Beginner" sounds good enough.
+1
About the value "0", it would be the case where you just started learning a language, or are simply curious about a language.
This language list can be used in the future to customize the language dropdown lists, or the order in which the translations are displayed on your interface. So it needs the possibility for users to add a language that they have almost no knowledge of, but are still somewhat interested in.
Could the explanation be then a bit longer? Something like "Almost no knowledge, but I'm interested to learn it".
Personally I think it would be better if a message telling "level not selected" (or something similar) would be displayed if you decide to save a language without selecting any level, instead of displaying automatically 0
If someone decides to add a language without mentioning their level, then it may be worth just as much as someone adding a language in which they have almost no knowledge.
Obviously it's not the same thing, but I don't think that at this point it will bring anything to make a difference between these two situations.
This feature would further complicate this problem: http://tatoeba.org/wall/show_me...message_21859. Now there would be two pages and three "save" buttons. You wouldn't be able to change your languages by clicking "Edit profile" in the top menu.
Isn't it possible to have only one page and one "save" button? I think something like this http://prntscr.com/6jc397 would be more convenient (the screenshot is from http://www.interpals.net/). It also has the advantage of not having to load a new page lots of times.
I'd also like to be able to move the languages of the same "level" up and down to show which language I know better. If you make sure that users name their languages in order of competency, that would solve the problem mentioned by CK and Silja.
> Isn't it possible to have only one page and one "save" button?
It's rather easy to group the description with the rest of the profile info (name, country, birthday, etc), but it would be complicated to also include the languages in there.
> I'd also like to be able to move the languages of the same "level" up and down
I've also been thinking about this when I was coding the feature, but I wasn't sure and am still not sure how to implement it. I'm also not sure if it's the right solution for CK and Silja's request. I think the need to have this 6th option is due to the lack of precision of the scale. If users were able to choose from 0 to 10, then Silja's friend could choose 10 for Finnish and 9 for Swedish.
I don't have plans to implement a more precise scale at the moment though.