1491777 - User profile language does not override Accept-Language header for redirects

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(developer.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Localization, enhancement)

Description

[Agostino]

What did you do?
================
1. Login with Github
2. Set language as English (US)
3. Opened developer.mozilla.org

What happened?
==============
I got redirected to the Italian version of the site

What should have happened?
==========================
I should have been redirected to the english version of the site

Is there anything else we should know?
======================================

Comment 1

[John Whitlock [:jwhitlock]]

Agostino,

I'm not sure how you set the language to English. Can you see if this discourse post helps?

https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/frequently-asked-question-faq-how-do-i-read-read-mdn-in-english

Comment 2

[Agostino]

Hi John, thanks for following up. Apologies for the lack of detail in the original issue description.

To set my language I did the following:

- log in with my Github account
- from the top right pop up menu that appears when hovering on my Gravatar, choose "Edit Profile" ("Modifica Profilo", since I'm seeing the Italian version of the site)
- Select "English (US)" in the "Language" ("Lingua") field, and choose publish to save the changes.

I expected that to be a setting that is taken into consideration when landing on an URL without locale specifier, but I guess it's not. 

The link do discourse you provided does capture correctly my issue.

About the proposed solutions / workarounds:

- installing an add-on is not viable, as I'm mostly browsing with Safari where AFAIK nothing of the sort is available
- configuring the accept-language header might be the strongest solution, but it could have effects on other sites
- setting the preferred search language: I've already done this and see the en-us urls in the search results; my issue appears only when navigating directly to developer.mozilla.org
- about the language preference cookie: this has worked. it was not triggered by me navigating manually, but using the language selector on a documentation page did it. I feel like this has solved the issue for me, even though the question about the language setting remains: what does it do?

Comment 3

[John Whitlock [:jwhitlock]]

I'm glad the language preference cookie worked for you. It most directly fixes your issues, of getting the right language when you go directly to https://developer.mozilla.org.

It's hard to say what the intent of the locale setting was. It was part of an earlier wiki engine, DekiWiki, and ported to Kuma. I was not part of the project when it was ported. 

The only current use of the user's locale setting is to set the language of emails, such as the watch email.