On Sat, Feb 22, 2014 at 7:25 AM, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.comwrote:
could wmf please extend the mediawiki software in the following way:
- it should knows "groups"
- allow users to store an arbitrary number of groups with their profile
- allow to select one of the "group"s joined to an edit when saving
- add a checkbox "COI" to an edit, meaning "potential conflict of
interest" 5. display and filter edits marked with COI in a different color in history views 6. display and filter edits done for a group in a different color in history views 7. allow members of a group to receive notifications done on the group page, or when a group is mentioned in an edit/comment/talk page.
[With my WMF product manager hat on...]
This a big request with many moving parts. We should probably try to separate them out and simplify where we can. I'd recommend filing bugs for structured information about groups, profiles, the ability to join/leave groups, activity feeds per group, and more. This is something that is of general interest, and is not specific to COI-related issues at all.
Gryllida's comment was a bit abrasive but is a correct understanding of the challenge here I think, in terms of creating richer kinds of information about types of edits/editors without making a user do unnecessary extra work. Imagine if there is essentially as many group types as there are categories, for instance. It probably makes more sense to have collections of pages associated with a group, so that we can generate a feed of group activity not by making the user select a group when saving, but automatically. So for example: I'm in "Group:Beer" and I edit the article on "Pilsner", so my edits show in a feed of edits by Group:Beer members to articles in that subject.
In the long run, we should start creating structured information about topical groups, and let people access it both through a group page as well as some kind of editor profile. However, it's not going to happen in the next calendar year, so I'm not sure it's a good interim solution to the problem of how to make COI disclosures easier. AbuseFilter also is honestly probably not the right solution, even if self-tagging existed.
Steven