Dear Wikimedia developers,
TLDR: Please give this a try, subscribe, and forward the link to other mailing lists or projects: https://www.mediawiki.org/ wiki/Newsletter:Tech_Showcase.
I am of course biased, but I do believe that this newsletter is interesting basically for any active contributors. The simplest and easiest way to know about interesting software being developed by staff or volunteers for our readers and our contributors.
No tech knowledge needed and no time commitment required either. You will just receive one sentence notifications linking to the fresh software showcased.
PS: This is a new concept of newsletter for experienced Wikimedians as well. The Technical Collaboration team hopes that these types of newsletters will reach new audiences and new voices beyond the power users following Village Pumps, mailing lists or Phabricator.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org Date: Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 12:18 PM Subject: New newsletter: Tech Showcase To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Tech curious? This is for you:
Tech Showcase https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Newsletter:Tech_Showcase
A newsletter (*) about fresh software for Wikimedia caught on the spot. Plans, prototypes, releases... Do you have a scoop? Tell us in the Talk page!
Just click "Subscribe" and you will be notified in your preferred Wikimedia wiki. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Newsletter:Tech_Showcase
(*) This is a newsletter powered by the Newsletter extension https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:Newsletter. Expect one sentence notifications linking to the tech showcased, not lengthy articles and prose.
Dear Quim,
2017-10-13 12:40 GMT+02:00 Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org:
TLDR: Please give this a try, subscribe, and forward the link to other mailing lists or projects: https://www.mediawiki.org/ wiki/Newsletter:Tech_Showcase.
The simplest and easiest way to know about interesting software being developed by staff or volunteers for our readers and our contributors.
No tech knowledge needed and no time commitment required either. You will just receive one sentence notifications linking to the fresh software showcased.
Thank you!
Do you think it would be possible somehow to receive the actual content, either by RSS (preferred) or by email (fine as well)?
Here, I'm getting an email with only a link to a newsletter with only a link to the actual content. That's two levels of indirection with little information on what the notification is about, nor any way to easily keep the content at hand for reading later.
We had a discussion about the ambassadors' announce format a few months ago (was it with Benoît or Johan? I think Benoît, but I'm not sure) and I already underlined how the mailing-list and RSS formats currently in use were great for people who have to deal with hundreds of notifications per week.
I understand that this would mean more work for whoever writes the newsletter and that the mediawiki newsletter extension may not yet provide a way to send more content than just a title, so I'd be perfectly fine with a negative answer. I just want to draw attention to the the added cost to access the information.
Thanks again and best regards,
On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 5:22 PM, Jérémie Roquet jroquet@arkanosis.net wrote:
Dear Quim,
2017-10-13 12:40 GMT+02:00 Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org:
TLDR: Please give this a try, subscribe, and forward the link to other mailing lists or projects: https://www.mediawiki.org/ wiki/Newsletter:Tech_Showcase.
The simplest and easiest way to know about interesting software being developed by staff or volunteers for our readers and our contributors.
No tech knowledge needed and no time commitment required either. You will just receive one sentence notifications linking to the fresh software showcased.
Thank you!
Do you think it would be possible somehow to receive the actual content, either by RSS (preferred) or by email (fine as well)?
Here, I'm getting an email with only a link to a newsletter with only a link to the actual content. That's two levels of indirection with little information on what the notification is about, nor any way to easily keep the content at hand for reading later.
We had a discussion about the ambassadors' announce format a few months ago (was it with Benoît or Johan? I think Benoît, but I'm not sure) and I already underlined how the mailing-list and RSS formats currently in use were great for people who have to deal with hundreds of notifications per week.
I understand that this would mean more work for whoever writes the newsletter and that the mediawiki newsletter extension may not yet provide a way to send more content than just a title, so I'd be perfectly fine with a negative answer. I just want to draw attention to the the added cost to access the information.
Thanks again and best regards,
These are definitely features that would be possible to implement in Newsletter extension. Of course someone would have to do them, and I don't think very many people are working on the extension right now.
The RSS part already has a bug https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T173041 . I'd suggest filing a bug for the better email notice part.
-- Brian
Hi Jérémie!
On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 7:22 PM, Jérémie Roquet jroquet@arkanosis.net wrote:
Do you think it would be possible somehow to receive the actual content, either by RSS (preferred) or by email (fine as well)?
At least for this Tech Showcase, "the actual content" is one title and one link, by design. We don't want to write articles, just point to the action where it is happening.
Here, I'm getting an email with only a link to a newsletter with only
a link to the actual content. That's two levels of indirection
Yes, but the double step in this case (where the destination was a page out of MediaWiki.org) is due to a missing feature:
Support interwiki links for new Newsletter issues https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T174664
When that task is solved (contributors welcome!), you will click the link in the email or web notification, and you will land directly in the corresponding non-MediaWiki.org page.
For now, we are trying to bypass this problem creating a topic in the Tech Showcase Talk page, only to have a MediaWiki.org page to link to... A cheap solution that I hope embarrasses someone enough to write a patch. :)
We had a discussion about the ambassadors' announce format a few
months ago (was it with Benoît or Johan? I think Benoît, but I'm not sure) and I already underlined how the mailing-list and RSS formats currently in use were great for people who have to deal with hundreds of notifications per week.
I understand that this would mean more work for whoever writes the newsletter and that the mediawiki newsletter extension may not yet provide a way to send more content than just a title, so I'd be perfectly fine with a negative answer. I just want to draw attention to the the added cost to access the information.
It's a trade-off, right? Posting a newsletter issue reusing a title and a URL that already exist takes literally one minute (in this case https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes/Edit_Conflicts/Feedbac... and the title of the email sent by Birgit to the wikitech-ambassadors list). Writing a short informative article about the same takes more time, enough to maybe send the notification tomorrow instead of today, or after the weekend, or... maybe never because we are all so busy anyway. Besides, why to write an article when the own creators already are reporting the news in their own words so well?
The Newsletter extension allows for the distribution of traditional newsletters (you write everything in a wiki page, you announce it when you are done). However, the same software allows to create newsletters consisting in... basically collections of title+link pointing to a wiki or (some day) to any page that can be expressed with an interwiki link. Tech Showcase bets on this new paradigm and I personally believe it is going to be a success and a source of inspiration to others.
PS: and Brian was quicker commenting on the RSS feature request.
Hi Brian, Hi Quim,
Thank a lot for your detailed answers!
I understand the trade-offs there, and I want to thank you again for the notifications which, whatever their form, are definitely a valuable improvement over… well… no notification :)
Best regards,
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org