I'm proposing we introduce a new namespace on mediawiki.org.
The namespace name will be Archived (numerical id to be determined) and its purpose will be to hold pages like "Subversion" that have the template "historical" applied to it. These pages would move info that namespace and you would get Archived:Subversion, Archived:Manual:Small padlock icon, Archived:Help:Extension:WebFonts etc.
This will give us a place outside of the main content namespaces to keep information about configurations, manuals, extensions and skins that we want to keep, but where it will no longer pollute our set of currently relevant information. The namespace will not be part of $wgContentNamespaces and $wgNamespacesToBeSearchedDefault namespaces. Hopefully this will allow for a more searchable and better functioning mediawiki.org when it comes to documentation for new users, while preserving history in the spirit of wikis.
I've discussed this with various people at various points in time who all seemed to think this was a good idea, but we've never really had an open discussion about it that could result into action.
What are the benefits you are hoping for?
I understand that pages in the proposed namespace will not show up in search results any more, unless I specifically search in this namespace. While this can be beneficial, it can also have negative effects. If old pages are excluded users will often get seemingly incomplete or even empty results, thinking there is nothing to be found, or the internal search broken. Personally I rarely had issues with outdated pages polluting my search results. More the contrary. If old pages show up that's probably because I was searching for exactly that information.
I hope we are not going to hide this namespace from external search engines, as this would make this content largely inaccessible.
Another issue I see are broken links between pages. MediaWiki relies on one mechanism to make sure links between moved pages still work: redirects. These would need to stay behind. This can become a problem when people start deleting the redirects, or using them for other content.
Personally I'm really not sure if a namespace is the best possible solution. mediawiki.org is more a continuum of content we collected over the years. Pages are rarely up to date. It would probably be less cumbersome to consider the existing main namespace an "archive" and only mark pages that are known to be up to date.
Kind regards Thiemo
On Wed, May 31, 2023 at 3:37 PM Thiemo Kreuz thiemo.kreuz@wikimedia.de wrote:
Personally I'm really not sure if a namespace is the best possible solution. mediawiki.org is more a continuum of content we collected over the years. Pages are rarely up to date. It would probably be less cumbersome to consider the existing main namespace an "archive" and only mark pages that are known to be up to date.
I'm also on the skeptical side. I think whether something is relevant is rarely clear-cut. I think most pages where the information is in some sense old, and cannot be fixed just by updating the page, fall into one of these categories:
- The page documents a thing. The thing still exists, but isn't important anymore. Maybe it's not used by Wikimedia, but used by others. - The page documents a project. The project is finished. The page is not outdated (since the project finished, there is no need to change its description) but not that relevant to present-day capabilities.
In both of these situations, it's not that obvious whether the reader would want the page included in the search results or not.
What I'm hoping for is that we will have information that is relevant, show up better than information that is no longer relevant, especially for users of mediawiki.org that are newer and less versed in the history, terminology and mechanics of MediaWiki. At the same time we would still have all information available to anyone more experienced and willing to look deeper, with a simple click of "All" in the search page.
DJ
On Wed, May 31, 2023 at 3:37 PM Thiemo Kreuz thiemo.kreuz@wikimedia.de wrote:
What are the benefits you are hoping for?
I understand that pages in the proposed namespace will not show up in search results any more, unless I specifically search in this namespace. While this can be beneficial, it can also have negative effects. If old pages are excluded users will often get seemingly incomplete or even empty results, thinking there is nothing to be found, or the internal search broken. Personally I rarely had issues with outdated pages polluting my search results. More the contrary. If old pages show up that's probably because I was searching for exactly that information.
I hope we are not going to hide this namespace from external search engines, as this would make this content largely inaccessible.
Another issue I see are broken links between pages. MediaWiki relies on one mechanism to make sure links between moved pages still work: redirects. These would need to stay behind. This can become a problem when people start deleting the redirects, or using them for other content.
Personally I'm really not sure if a namespace is the best possible solution. mediawiki.org is more a continuum of content we collected over the years. Pages are rarely up to date. It would probably be less cumbersome to consider the existing main namespace an "archive" and only mark pages that are known to be up to date.
Kind regards Thiemo _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/
I like the idea of using https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Cirrussearch-boost-templates more extensively, for both positive and negative boosts. E.g. compare that to Wikitech's more extensive usage: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Cirrussearch-boost-templates (Docs: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:CirrusSearch#Boost-templates )
Perhaps we just need to apply {{historical}} more widely? Or maybe we need a new Header-template that's distinct from {{historical}} and {{outdated}} and {{fixme}} ? The current list of related and widely-used templates is under https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation/Style_guide/templates#Fixme
I think tagging pages is slightly preferable to moving pages, because it's less complicated to undo, and still leaves content accessible to a basic search (just further down the results), and to different use-cases (per Gergő's comment), and doesn't get technically semi-blocked for translated pages with >500 subpages. However, it is more labor-intensive for pages with many English sub-pages (i.e. needing to tag each individually), although I'm not sure how to evaluate that issue, without preemptively seeing the massive list of the pages that ought to be deprecated!
I'd recommend: Tag a few dozen pages, and simultaneously create a listing of pages where tagging doesn't seem sufficient, so that we can discuss more specific examples/buckets of examples. E.g. you mentioned [[Help:Extension:WebFonts]] as a candidate for Archival, but perhaps that could be handled in the same way as [[Extension:WebFonts]] itself was (blank and tag it with {{archived extension}} )? Plus I just checked, and that page has over 500 subpages (from translations) so it would require dev assistance to move!
The other semi-related problem this all makes me think of, is the cleanup needed in https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:PageTranslation to "discourage" any outdated pages. I'm not sure how extensive that problem or overlap is, but ideally anyone doing cleanup of one problem could also keep in mind the other.
Hope that helps! Quiddity.
Thanks for bringing this up! Some comments below.
On Wed, 2023-05-31 at 12:11 +0200, Derk-Jan Hartman wrote:
I'm proposing we introduce a new namespace on mediawiki.org.
The namespace name will be Archived (numerical id to be determined) and its purpose will be to hold pages like "Subversion" that have the template "historical" applied to it. These pages would move info that namespace and you would get Archived:Subversion, Archived:Manual:Small padlock icon, Archived:Help:Extension:WebFonts etc.
This will give us a place outside of the main content namespaces to keep information about configurations, manuals, extensions and skins that we want to keep, but where it will no longer pollute our set of currently relevant information. The namespace will not be part of $wgContentNamespaces and $wgNamespacesToBeSearchedDefault namespaces. Hopefully this will allow for a more searchable and better functioning mediawiki.org when it comes to documentation for new users, while preserving history in the spirit of wikis.
I've discussed this with various people at various points in time who all seemed to think this was a good idea, but we've never really had an open discussion about it that could result into action.
It is sometimes hard for me to find relevant information. Thus a while ago I asked for deboosting search results on mediawiki.org that include "Template:Historical": https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T274082
Still I'd love to have a way to exclude such pages by default. As time passes by the percentage of obsolete pages will increase. Thus relevant information become harder to find. I consider this a problem.
FYI, wikitech.wikimedia.org does have an "Obsolete" namespace (id 110; talk id: 111). Though I do not know how it came to existence and how regularly it is used (as moving pages requires special permissions).
IMHO a related issue is that authors and editors need to be more aware of time. I've come across many pages stating "currently" or "next July". Without going to the page history, readers cannot realize that these strings were added years ago and that the page *is* outdated.
It may also make sense to show more visibly when a wiki page was last edited and/or that there is a bigger chance that it might be outdated. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T247987 for a vague idea.
Cheers, andre
I'm sure others have better thoughts than I have on the proposed solution, but I agree this is a problem; I would really appreciate better ways to sort away things which are not only outdated but only historically relevant because it's about a tool or extension which is no longer installed or maintained – as opposed to something still in use, but where the information was last updated three years ago.
Best,
*Johan Jönsson*Manager, Product Ambassadors Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
On Wed, May 31, 2023 at 12:12 PM Derk-Jan Hartman < d.j.hartman+wmf_ml@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm proposing we introduce a new namespace on mediawiki.org.
The namespace name will be Archived (numerical id to be determined) and its purpose will be to hold pages like "Subversion" that have the template "historical" applied to it. These pages would move info that namespace and you would get Archived:Subversion, Archived:Manual:Small padlock icon, Archived:Help:Extension:WebFonts etc.
This will give us a place outside of the main content namespaces to keep information about configurations, manuals, extensions and skins that we want to keep, but where it will no longer pollute our set of currently relevant information. The namespace will not be part of $wgContentNamespaces and $wgNamespacesToBeSearchedDefault namespaces. Hopefully this will allow for a more searchable and better functioning mediawiki.org when it comes to documentation for new users, while preserving history in the spirit of wikis.
I've discussed this with various people at various points in time who all seemed to think this was a good idea, but we've never really had an open discussion about it that could result into action. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org