The problem is not that it was "Just one of the things that died out because no-one could be bothered to maintain it", it is worse: it was broken on purpose, and not recovered, because the WMF decided that no one cares about it.

You can read about the process here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T186740

2022(e)ko api. 19(a) 09:00 erabiltzaileak hau idatzi du (Peter Southwood <peter.southwood@telkomsa.net>):

I used to use it, but then it broke so I stopped using it. Just one of the things that died out because no-one could be bothered to maintain it.  Cheers, Peter

 

From: Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga [mailto:galder158@hotmail.com]
Sent: 17 April 2022 17:47
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Collection / Special:Book usage

 

No one or very few use it, because you can't save a book. I had some teachers in our university courses who used it to download what their students did, but since the WMF decided to break it, evidently they are not using it anymore. I repeat: it worked and it was broken in purpose. So now we have an option to create a book but no actual book can be created, besides printing it with PediaPress.

 

2022(e)ko api. 17(a) 09:59 erabiltzaileak hau idatzi du ("Amir E. Aharoni" <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il>):

> On Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 09:29 Strainu <strainu10@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > The correct question is: does it still do anything of value?
> ‫בתאריך יום א׳, 17 באפר׳ 2022 ב-10:42 מאת ‪Jan Ainali‏ <‪ainali.jan@gmail.com‏>:
>
> Even with all output options broken it is still a decent user interface for creating and organizing collections of articles.

This may well be true, but I'm wondering how much is it *actually* used. I know I never use it, but it's possible that thousand of other people do. If it's true, then everything is fine. I can't find a log of its usage, or a statistics page that shows how often do people use this feature.

 

It currently appears in at least two prominent places:

1. "Create a book" link in the desktop sidebar (in some wikis; I don't see it in the English Wikipedia, but I do see it in Swedish and Basque).

2. "Extensions used by Wikimedia - Main" group in translatewiki.net, which means that volunteer localizers are asked to translate it with (relatively) high priority.

 

If only, say, five people use it in the whole Wikimedia universe, then perhaps someone should consider downgrading its prominence or maybe removing it entirely.

 

On translatewiki, I can move it from "Extensions used by Wikimedia - Main" to "Extensions used by Wikimedia - Advanced" or even to "Extensions used by Wikimedia - Legacy", but again, before I do this, I'd like to make sure that it's not actually used by a lot of people.


--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore

 

 


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