About ULS:
There was a strong rebellion in ml.projects (ml.wikipedia,
ml.wikisource, ml.wiktionary etc) while ULS was deployed. And later
developers responded chaotically and ULS was removed from
ml.wikiprojects and put us in stone age without any typing tool. Users
expressed even stronger rebellion at that time about the removal of a
feature (typing tool) which they were utilized atleast since 2007.
After two weeks someone with a better vision reinstated ULS.
Current move exactly placed wikis in a similar state. There is no
typing tool available by default. But unlike previous time, now users
are generally happy and appear thankful eventhough we cannot agree
unilateral actions. Infact we got only three queries about the
removal, this time. In first glance that is a happy situation, but if
we look deeper, problem is evident. Most familiar users switched
themselves to some other typing tool (IBus, Keymagic etc), now they
are happy because of easy loading. But this is totally against our
"anyone can edit" tagline. Currently editing is limited to regular
users.
Personally I think ULS is a bad Idea, it combines different
requirements unnecessarily. Worst thing about ULS is that, it is not
even possible to remove individual features completely. I personally
(and many others) doesn't understand why we need to load webfonts for
typing. Not everybody has ideal networks. There are low bandwidths,
usage limits, old softwares etc affecting normal users.
No EasyTimeLine is available for Malayalam, We cannot apply <math> to
any equations in Malayalam, we are not fortunate enough to write a
sentence in comments because it usually gets clipped because of
mediawiki size limits, we need to convert text in our SVGs to path for
correct rendering (which limits any advantages of SVGs), exporting any
mediawiki page to PDF never worked etc are some real bugs we are
suffering. ULS only reinvented the wheel (ULS replaced old perfect
Narayam in our wikis) and made it square. Now it is taken back to
garage for repairing and letting the vehicle to run.
IMHO adding features must be supportive to users. ULS and IME made
regular users less active because of accessibility and usability
problems, probably including atleast two admins.
Just sharing what we learned and observed.
:ml:user:Praveenp
On 1/27/14, Guillaume Paumier <gpaumier(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi,
The latest tech newsletter is now available at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2014/05 .
Below is the English version.
You can help write the next newsletter: whenever you see information about
Wikimedia technology that you think should be distributed more broadly, you
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*Recent software changes*
- Pages from Wikimedia sites now load faster in your browser thanks to
"module storage", a way for your browser to save data like JavaScript
and
CSS on your computer to avoid downloading them again. See
video<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ori_Livneh,_Site_performance_…bm>.
[
1]<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-January/074140.h…
- The code used to show videos has changed. You should be able to play
the video on the page, with the play button on top of the video. If you
see
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leads you to the original file, please file a
bug<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=MediaWiki%20ext…
tell
User:Bawolff <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User_talk:Bawolff>.
[
2]<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/55550>
- The Special:ActiveUsers page will be removed because it's too
slow. [
3]<https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/107988>
- The latest version of MediaWiki
(
1.23wmf11<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.23/wmf11>)
was added to test wikis and
MediaWiki.org on January 16. It will be
added
to non-Wikipedia wikis on January 28, and all Wikipedia wikis on January
30
(calendar <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.23/Roadmap>).
*Problems*
- On January 21, Universal Language
Selector<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Extension:Uni…
turned off on all Wikimedia sites because it
makes pages load
slowly<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Universal_Langu…14>.
If you want to use web fonts, or write in scripts that aren't on your
keyboard, you need to add it as an option in your
preferences<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefs…al>.
It will be turned back on when the issues are resolved.
[
4]<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/56433>
- For about 20 minutes on the same day, there were problems with
CSS<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/en:Cascading_Style_Sheets>and
JavaScript <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/en:JavaScript> due to high
server load.
*Future software changes*
- You can give comments
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Winter>about the new version of "
Winter <http://unicorn.wmflabs.org/winter/>", a proposal to have a fixed
toolbar at the top of wiki pages.
[
5]<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/design/2014-January/001411.html&…
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Guillaume Paumier
Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation
--
With love
Praveen
<http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Praveenp>:talk<http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Praveenp>