08 Sep, 2010, Zeno wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
So I'm coding a mod for phpBB and I need to figure out the best way to display a users language to everyone (of all languages). I have a number of options and I'm not sure which to go with.

-ISO 639 (but this isn't exactly "user friendly" to a common user)
-Icon (country flag?)
-Full language name, translated to users own language

Using ISO 639 right now. Any suggestions or other methods?
08 Sep, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
Flags by the user name are a bit of an unofficial standard in forums I encounter that do this

Maya/Rudha
08 Sep, 2010, Zeno wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
That's what I've seen too.

But http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/flags.htm...
08 Sep, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
Personally I would avoid using flags except to denote country, not language, for reasons like what Zeno gave.
08 Sep, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 5th comment:
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You could just go like where posts are another field; ie posts: 42. Languages: english, french

That would seem the easiest to implement and probably the most easily identifiable; some of the iso codes are easy to figure out, others not so much.

Maya/Rudha
23 Sep, 2010, Bobo the bee wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
Personally I would avoid using flags except to denote country, not language, for reasons like what Zeno gave.


Honestly, I have a difficult time finding offense to using a flag as a link for language on the internet because it's, you know, the internet. A flag stands for many different things for many different people depending on how it's being used at the time. I doubt many people will see a small American flag at the bottom of, say, a website in French along with several other flags and think "I'm not clicking on that because the USA supports uncontrolled HFC's into the atmosphere and I just can't support that!"

I suppose, though, that if you're wanting to be the Poltically Correct type then having just a link that is the name of the language in that language is what I find the best. Really – and I get to sound off from a high horse and admit that I'm on the high horse – language barriers are never really a problem in sites that I visit, so I'm not the best authority to answer the question.
24 Sep, 2010, Runter wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
I agree that using flags to represent languages are just logical mistakes. Obviously a country is not a language. Nor should you need to know a flag representing a language to select it. Maybe I want japanese but have no clue what their flag is.

However, I disagree that functionally its that big of a deal. And the politically correct argument just makes me want to support the idea more.

In any event, I would just go with a drop down list of languages expressed in said language.
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