Why is this device forced as default universally to unsigned users?

When not signed in, this device ruins the whole usability and user experience of Wikipedia.

How can you even imagine that an algorithm could know better than any user by themselves what is "most relevant" to any user or reader of a certain wiki in a certain situation?

When there is one list in (about) alphabetical order, you can easily find what you are looking for in a few seconds and at best go trough the interwikies from tens of pages in a few minutes.

When this device is on, it takes several minutes to go trough the interwiki links even from a one single article and even then at the end you are still not sure, what was there and what what was not there.

This would do no harm whatsoever, if this device was not forced to be the default user interface for unsigned users globally.

But now when the freedom of choice of the user interface has been taken away from unsigned users, this will make any effective use of interwiki links practically impossible for unsigned users and by this ruin their whole user experience of Wikipedia as a multilingual project. - Contrary to the alphabetical list that is easy to use and provides an effective usability experience to anyone without selections forced from outside.

For people who are speakers of small languages (like for myself as a speaker oFinnish with about 5 million speakers globally) the interwiki links are in the core of any wikipedia use, because as a speaker of a small language one must follow the intrerwikies continuosly to find anything in the first place.

But how can you imagine that your algoritm could know better than users themselves, what every user will will need in a certain situation?

Some fiinnish people may have learned this language at chools, some may have learned that language, and some may have taken adult courses later on in this language and some in that language. Some may have been working or taveling in this country and some in that country. Some even may be born and grown up elsewhere and be fluent in languages of this or that faraway or neigboring country, but the algoritm imaginess that it knows better than the users themselves, "what is most relevant" for any single user in any faraway country such as Finland.

And what is worst, this device will drive away potential new users by ruining the usability of their user interface as any effective and fluent use of interwiki links for unsigned users has been made in practice impossible and therefore the whole user experiences for unsigned users has become uneffective and difficult.

For speakers of small language it is common that they use many languages - perphaps otherwise than for those whose native language is a very big languages and for whom the need to use other languages is something that occurs very seldom.

And as well, speakers of small languges do not need any geography lessons to use interwikies.

Anyone, for whom a language is relevant, will know the name of the languge and find it better in the alphabetical list without a forced geography lesson of this device every time from which it takes several minutes to find what you could find in seconds from one clear and single alphabetical list.

- Or at least this the cse in Europe, wehre certainly everyone has learned at shcool what are the main languages (or even minority languages) of each european country even in case they may not be able to speak or read all the languges. In some other parts of the world, like Africa and India or Southeast Asia, where the amount of of languages is huge, the situation perhaps may be different. But in any case, when using Wikipedia I guess that no user at least outside USA or the few other monoligually english speaking counties outside Europe will not need any geography lesson every time when clicking an intrerwiki link. The users just need the links in a usable form without having to use several minutes to find even the right continent from the awfull mess.

This may sound harsh, but as a native speaker of a small language this is my honest and true experience. Urjanhai (talk) 18:46, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

You are absolutely correct. The whole idea behind the tool is maybe usable in Northern America, but makes no sense in continental Europe, with many neighbouring languages, many mutually understandable languages, more and better language education in schools than in Northern America. This tool should be turned off by default for most languages, with English and possibly Spanish as exceptions. Today it's the other way around. This seems to me as a hobby-based project based in Northern America, but WMF for some reason does not dare to roll it out on Enwiki. Instead it is rolled out on the European languages, where nobody need it, nobody asked for it. And in the previous discussions the standard answer to solve the problem is "Change it in your preferences", ignoring the fact that most users of Wikpedia are not logged in. Madglad (talk) 19:26, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

What happened to the language list?

Once I registered, I turned off the compact language list wherever it was possible and was sure this would sort out the problem for good.

The other day, I noticed that the language list went nuts. For instance, for the article Ixelles on English Wikipedia it looks like this: Deutsch > Français > Español > Русский > Italiano > 日本語 > Nederlands ... Lëtzebuergesch > Afrikaans. It is absolutely not OK, but at least I can find relevant languages in the upper chunk of the list.

But on Russian Wikipedia for a random article, like Столица (Capital) it goes: Aragonés > Slovenščina > العربية > Võro > Беларуская (тарашкевіца)‎ > Français > Māori > کوردی > မြန်မာဘာသာ > مصرى > Lumbaart > Magyar ... Эрзянь > अवधी. How do I find English, for god's sake?!

And the sorting is different for every other article.

The same with German, Greek, Italian etc. wikipedias, but happily not with French where the list is still alphabetic (more or less).

What was the idea behind this random sorting? Who were the geniuses behind this decision? Where do I find a box to tick "alphabetic sorting"? (I do not find anything of this sort in the Preferences.)

I CANNOT USE Wikipedia the way I did. This change is prohibitive (and absolutely infuriating). 2dk (talk) 13:36, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

This is a known bug (phab:T257625) Taavi (talk!) 13:40, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. It is good to know that this is not another "improvement". But meanwhile interwikis are unusable. 2dk (talk) 14:18, 11 July 2020 (UTC)