QRpedia – Dealing With Missing Entries – Terence Eden’s Blog https://shkspr.mobi/blog Regular nonsense about tech and its effects 🙃 Sun, 08 Sep 2024 06:52:41 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/cropped-avatar-32x32.jpeg QRpedia – Dealing With Missing Entries – Terence Eden’s Blog https://shkspr.mobi/blog 32 32 <![CDATA[QRpedia - Dealing With Missing Entries]]> https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2011/09/qrpedia-dealing-with-missing-entries/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2011/09/qrpedia-dealing-with-missing-entries/#comments Thu, 08 Sep 2011 09:21:25 +0000 http://shkspr.mobi/blog/?p=4397 QRpedia is designed to offer a single QR code which points to the same article in multiple languages.

The most common question about QRpedia is "What does it do if the article doesn't exist in my language?"

Consider the following example...

  • A French user is in a German museum.
  • They scan a code - which points to de.qrwp/Nelahozeves
  • Unfortunately, Wikipedia doesn't have the "Nelahozeves" article in French
  • What should QRpedia do?

Choices

This has been a matter for much debate in the QRpedia team. I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on the subject.

As we see it, our choices are...

  1. 404 - Tell the user that the page doesn't exist.
  2. Wrong Language - Show the French user the German page
  3. Choice of Language - Show the French user a choice of German, English, Dutch, etc.
  4. Smart Search - Search French Wikipedia for the term, display the results to the user.
  5. Latin - Omnis intelligit Latinum. Si non sunt barbarus!

At the moment, we do the smart search. In this case, we point to the French Wikipedia search for Nelahozeves - which has a couple of relevant results.

This isn't ideal. Often there are no suitable results - especially as we are searching French Wikipedia for a German word or phrase.

So - over to you. What should we do? Please leave your comments and suggestions.

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