Hi, Wiki communities can ask to override their default configurations (following consensus). The reasons to override may vary:
1. *customization* for community to align to community specific policy (example: special namespaces / upload policy/user groups rights defined per project and language version) 2. *technical dispute* where community and engineering don't agree (example: VE as single tab for enwiki[1], disabling description tagline in enwiki[2] etc).
Technical dispute are problematic - if the product is not good enough engineering and community should ideally come with a solution how to address the issues. We can define a plan to fix the product (disable till task X is fixed), enable/disable feature in the USER level if it is a matter of choice (not the site level) etc. Anyway we should try to avoid letting specific communities override defaults for long term if there is no community specific reason to override the configuration. This create a jungle of configurations, inconsistent UI across languages and more complex maintenance etc.
This is a call for action for the wiki communities and engineering:
- Engineering - consider to align all wikis to similar configuration if it isn't community customization but "technical dispute" - Communities - consider whether these configurations are old and can be removed
Examples of issues found in wmf-config:
- VisualEditor tabs (wmgVisualEditorUseSingleEditTab 60 wikis "Deploying slowly with community advanced notice"? wmgVisualEditorSingleEditTabSecondaryEditor - enwiki overrides the default editor) - and more generally enabling VE deployments: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Rollouts - Patroling - wgUseRCPatrol - disabled by default but ~80 wikis enable it. Should be enabled for all wikis? (if not - what is missing from getting it deployed in more wikis? are there alternative feature for it used in other wikis?) - wgUseNPPatrol/wgUseFilePatrol - few wikis override it. Do we really need to override it? - wgImportSources - Each wiki define arbitrary list of wikis it import from. We should get rid of it and allow import between any Wikimedia site. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T17583 - wmgUseSandboxLink - Enabled in 80 wikis. Why not enabling it everywhere? - wmgUseWikiLove -enabled in ~50 wikis including enwiki. is there a reason to not enable in all wikis?
Thanks, Eran
[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T128478 [2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T161805 [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T214678
I suspect that a major factor in whether or not to deploy many of these extensions to every wiki is that, frankly...not every wiki has enough active editors for these extensions to make sense or to be helpful. In some ways, the extension may well be unhelpful or could act to distract the few active editors from their main focus (content creation, in most cases) to activities that do not help them to build their projects. Anything that requires language localization - often involving the use of interface administrator permission - is not helpful for projects that have no interface admins (or, in some cases, any administrators at all).
It's not a good idea to assume that one configuration fits all. There's a huge difference between the larger projects, with thousands of active users and dozens if not hundreds of administrators, and the majority of Wikimedia wikis that have fewer than 100 active contributors. Looking only at Wikipedia, 165 of 303 Wikipedias have fewer than 100 active (i.e., at least one edit a month) editors and fewer than 10 administrators.[1]
It's easy to forget that many of the extensions were designed to assist in the work of medium to large Wikipedias; a lot of them aren't all that useful for smaller projects, and some of them can significantly add to the burden of projects with a small user and admin base. Remember that every extension that's enabled extends the loading time - it may appear to be statistically unimportant in much of the Western world, but there are cumulative effects that are much more noticeable when contributors are participating on slow internet connections with older technology and are located a long way away from the servers. These are real effects that most people participating on this list simply never have a reason to notice, until we're trying to edit logged-in from remote areas.
Risker/Anne
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias
On Sat, 9 Mar 2019 at 10:12, Eran Rosenthal eranroz89@gmail.com wrote:
Hi, Wiki communities can ask to override their default configurations (following consensus). The reasons to override may vary:
- *customization* for community to align to community specific policy
(example: special namespaces / upload policy/user groups rights defined per project and language version) 2. *technical dispute* where community and engineering don't agree (example: VE as single tab for enwiki[1], disabling description tagline in enwiki[2] etc).
Technical dispute are problematic - if the product is not good enough engineering and community should ideally come with a solution how to address the issues. We can define a plan to fix the product (disable till task X is fixed), enable/disable feature in the USER level if it is a matter of choice (not the site level) etc. Anyway we should try to avoid letting specific communities override defaults for long term if there is no community specific reason to override the configuration. This create a jungle of configurations, inconsistent UI across languages and more complex maintenance etc.
This is a call for action for the wiki communities and engineering:
- Engineering - consider to align all wikis to similar configuration if
it isn't community customization but "technical dispute"
- Communities - consider whether these configurations are old and can be
removed
Examples of issues found in wmf-config:
- VisualEditor tabs (wmgVisualEditorUseSingleEditTab 60 wikis "Deploying
slowly with community advanced notice"? wmgVisualEditorSingleEditTabSecondaryEditor - enwiki overrides the default editor) - and more generally enabling VE deployments: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Rollouts - Patroling - wgUseRCPatrol - disabled by default but ~80 wikis enable it. Should be enabled for all wikis? (if not - what is missing from getting it deployed in more wikis? are there alternative feature for it used in other wikis?) - wgUseNPPatrol/wgUseFilePatrol - few wikis override it. Do we really need to override it?
- wgImportSources
- Each wiki define arbitrary list of wikis it import from. We should get rid of it and allow import between any Wikimedia site. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T17583
- wmgUseSandboxLink
- Enabled in 80 wikis. Why not enabling it everywhere?
- wmgUseWikiLove -enabled in ~50 wikis including enwiki. is there a
reason to not enable in all wikis?
Thanks, Eran
[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T128478 [2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T161805 [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T214678 _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
In regards to wgUseRCPatrol - I suspect (but don't know) that originally that was disabled on enwiki as a performance thing. If it was a performance concern, that's probably irrelevant at this point.
I generally agree that its good to try an unify config complexity where it makes sense. But I don't think we should force it where it does not. People are different and have different needs. Keeping communities happy in the case of technical disputes is well worth the extra complexity in my mind (within reason).
Re Risker with loading time: That can depend on the extensions. Some do slightly increase loading times, but there are many extensions which should not cause any change in loading time (or at least negligable - i.e. less than a millisecond) no matter how bad the internet connection is.
-- Brian
On Sat, Mar 9, 2019 at 6:44 PM Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
I suspect that a major factor in whether or not to deploy many of these extensions to every wiki is that, frankly...not every wiki has enough active editors for these extensions to make sense or to be helpful. In some ways, the extension may well be unhelpful or could act to distract the few active editors from their main focus (content creation, in most cases) to activities that do not help them to build their projects. Anything that requires language localization - often involving the use of interface administrator permission - is not helpful for projects that have no interface admins (or, in some cases, any administrators at all).
It's not a good idea to assume that one configuration fits all. There's a huge difference between the larger projects, with thousands of active users and dozens if not hundreds of administrators, and the majority of Wikimedia wikis that have fewer than 100 active contributors. Looking only at Wikipedia, 165 of 303 Wikipedias have fewer than 100 active (i.e., at least one edit a month) editors and fewer than 10 administrators.[1]
It's easy to forget that many of the extensions were designed to assist in the work of medium to large Wikipedias; a lot of them aren't all that useful for smaller projects, and some of them can significantly add to the burden of projects with a small user and admin base. Remember that every extension that's enabled extends the loading time - it may appear to be statistically unimportant in much of the Western world, but there are cumulative effects that are much more noticeable when contributors are participating on slow internet connections with older technology and are located a long way away from the servers. These are real effects that most people participating on this list simply never have a reason to notice, until we're trying to edit logged-in from remote areas.
Risker/Anne
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias
On Sat, 9 Mar 2019 at 10:12, Eran Rosenthal eranroz89@gmail.com wrote:
Hi, Wiki communities can ask to override their default configurations (following consensus). The reasons to override may vary:
- *customization* for community to align to community specific policy
(example: special namespaces / upload policy/user groups rights
defined
per project and language version) 2. *technical dispute* where community and engineering don't agree (example: VE as single tab for enwiki[1], disabling description tagline in enwiki[2] etc).
Technical dispute are problematic - if the product is not good enough engineering and community should ideally come with a solution how to address the issues. We can define a plan to fix the product (disable till task X is fixed), enable/disable feature in the USER level if it is a matter of choice (not the site level) etc. Anyway we should try to avoid letting specific communities override defaults for long term if there is no community specific reason to
override
the configuration. This create a jungle of configurations, inconsistent
UI
across languages and more complex maintenance etc.
This is a call for action for the wiki communities and engineering:
- Engineering - consider to align all wikis to similar configuration
if
it isn't community customization but "technical dispute"
- Communities - consider whether these configurations are old and can
be
removed
Examples of issues found in wmf-config:
- VisualEditor tabs (wmgVisualEditorUseSingleEditTab 60 wikis
"Deploying
slowly with community advanced notice"? wmgVisualEditorSingleEditTabSecondaryEditor - enwiki overrides the default editor) - and more generally enabling VE deployments: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Rollouts - Patroling - wgUseRCPatrol - disabled by default but ~80 wikis enable it.
Should
be enabled for all wikis? (if not - what is missing from getting it deployed in more wikis? are there alternative feature for itused in other wikis?) - wgUseNPPatrol/wgUseFilePatrol - few wikis override it. Do we
really
need to override it?
- wgImportSources
- Each wiki define arbitrary list of wikis it import from. We should
get
rid of it and allow import between any Wikimedia site. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T17583
- wmgUseSandboxLink
- Enabled in 80 wikis. Why not enabling it everywhere?
- wmgUseWikiLove -enabled in ~50 wikis including enwiki. is there a
reason to not enable in all wikis?
Thanks, Eran
[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T128478 [2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T161805 [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T214678 _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Sat, 9 Mar 2019 at 11:50, bawolff bawolff+wn@gmail.com wrote:
In regards to wgUseRCPatrol - I suspect (but don't know) that originally that was disabled on enwiki as a performance thing. If it was a performance concern, that's probably irrelevant at this point.
Sadly, no. It was enabled as a new feature to help communities do their patrolling work. A small handful on enwiki power users complained in the hours after it was deployed about the "disruption" (the appearance of a ! on edits in Recent Changes), and rather than help the community adjust to the new software and find it useful, the feature was disabled, effectively permanently. In the subsequent years, many English Wikipedians have complained about the lack of support for their work on Recent Changes patrolling, but there's been no effort to struggle through the community arguments to (re-)enable this tool, I believe.
It would be lovely if we could enable this feature on the English Wikipedia given how useful many other communities have found this, but I don't expect it to happen.
J.
This is one of things Scoring platform team wanted to tackle because having RC patrolling enabled for a wiki + ORES predications can improve efficiency of the patrollers significantly but we didn't have community relations resources to start the discussion with communities and get it approved. Maybe Growth team can take a look? I know they have a lot on their plate already...
One ticket I found, I think there are more: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T140475
Best
On Tue, 12 Mar 2019 at 18:00, James Forrester jforrester@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Sat, 9 Mar 2019 at 11:50, bawolff bawolff+wn@gmail.com wrote:
In regards to wgUseRCPatrol - I suspect (but don't know) that originally that was disabled on enwiki as a performance thing. If it was a
performance
concern, that's probably irrelevant at this point.
Sadly, no. It was enabled as a new feature to help communities do their patrolling work. A small handful on enwiki power users complained in the hours after it was deployed about the "disruption" (the appearance of a ! on edits in Recent Changes), and rather than help the community adjust to the new software and find it useful, the feature was disabled, effectively permanently. In the subsequent years, many English Wikipedians have complained about the lack of support for their work on Recent Changes patrolling, but there's been no effort to struggle through the community arguments to (re-)enable this tool, I believe.
It would be lovely if we could enable this feature on the English Wikipedia given how useful many other communities have found this, but I don't expect it to happen.
J.
*James D. Forrester* (he/him http://pronoun.is/he or they/themself http://pronoun.is/they/.../themself) Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/ _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
I believe that I've seen discussions of RC patrolling on ENWP too, although I can't recall specifics. I am not familiar with the original discussion, although my first guess is that the experienced patrollers were surprised and that the surprise factored into their opposition to the change.
Starting an RfC regarding this would require some effort, but if other communities are finding that the tool is useful, then I'll +1 the hope that ENWP reconsiders this. Similar to Amir's comment, I'm thinking that having participation in the discussion from someone like a WMF Community Relations person or someone who could offer training might be useful so that people can familiarize themselves with the option before making a decision. I haven't used the tool myself, but in general I prefer that people have "informed consent".
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 5:00 PM James Forrester jforrester@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Sat, 9 Mar 2019 at 11:50, bawolff bawolff+wn@gmail.com wrote:
In regards to wgUseRCPatrol - I suspect (but don't know) that originally that was disabled on enwiki as a performance thing. If it was a
performance
concern, that's probably irrelevant at this point.
Sadly, no. It was enabled as a new feature to help communities do their patrolling work. A small handful on enwiki power users complained in the hours after it was deployed about the "disruption" (the appearance of a ! on edits in Recent Changes), and rather than help the community adjust to the new software and find it useful, the feature was disabled, effectively permanently. In the subsequent years, many English Wikipedians have complained about the lack of support for their work on Recent Changes patrolling, but there's been no effort to struggle through the community arguments to (re-)enable this tool, I believe.
It would be lovely if we could enable this feature on the English Wikipedia given how useful many other communities have found this, but I don't expect it to happen.
J.
*James D. Forrester* (he/him http://pronoun.is/he or they/themself http://pronoun.is/they/.../themself) Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/ _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 2019-03-09 16:12, Eran Rosenthal wrote:
- wmgUseSandboxLink - Enabled in 80 wikis. Why not enabling it everywhere?
It was enabled on all wikis that were already adding a link to a user's personal sandbox using site JS or a gadget enabled by default.
I wrote that extension as part of my volunteer work, and the goal was to improve page load performance on wikis that already had that link. In my experience discussing any interface changes to Wikimedia wikis is very unfun and I had no particular interest in doing that for this.
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org