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Performance issue with regard to...

Bartosz Dziewoński

9 Apr 2014 9 Apr '14

9:33 p.m.

Let's talk about something that's not text-related for a change. This has already been brought up on several venues recently; Antoine suggested I bring it up here [1], so I'm doing that. It's pretty clear that various wiki communities would like to see larger thumbnails [2], either by default or as an option. The largest we offer is 300px, the default is 220px, and that's like a speck of dust on the displays common these days. It is apparently not possible to provide a different set of sizes per-wiki, not to support more sizes than we support now [3]. Now the question is, can we enlarge them for all Wikimedia wikis at once instead? What if we lower the available number of sizes (we have 7 different ones now)? I haven't seen that answered anywhere, and I and others would love to know. (The latest request that sparked this e-mail is <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63440>.) [1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63440#c5 [2] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=RESOLVED%20%3Areques… [3] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41712#c14 -- Matma Rex

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James Forrester

9 Apr 9 Apr

9:45 p.m.

Proposal: - Make the default a nice proper size for the modern Web; I suggest 360px but could be argued up. - Remove all the other sizes from wgThumbLimits - Remove the user preferences for thumbnail size Simple. J. On 9 April 2014 12:33, Bartosz Dziewoński <matma.rex(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Let's talk about something that's not text-related for a change. This has already been brought up on several venues recently; Antoine suggested I bring it up here [1], so I'm doing that. It's pretty clear that various wiki communities would like to see larger thumbnails [2], either by default or as an option. The largest we offer is 300px, the default is 220px, and that's like a speck of dust on the displays common these days. It is apparently not possible to provide a different set of sizes per-wiki, not to support more sizes than we support now [3]. Now the question is, can we enlarge them for all Wikimedia wikis at once instead? What if we lower the available number of sizes (we have 7 different ones now)? I haven't seen that answered anywhere, and I and others would love to know. (The latest request that sparked this e-mail is < https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63440>gt;.) [1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63440#c5 [2] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch= RESOLVED%20%3Arequests%20summary%3Athumb [3] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41712#c14 -- Matma Rex _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

-- James D. Forrester Product Manager, VisualEditor Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. jforrester(a)wikimedia.org | @jdforrester

Brandon Harris

9:49 p.m.

On Apr 9, 2014, at 12:45 PM, James Forrester <jforrester(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

Well. Maybe not so simple. We also have to think about the thumbnails included in galleries. Galleries with 360px thumbnails won't be very browsable. Also search results. Also mobile. There's plenty of reasons not to remove other sizes. --- Brandon Harris, Senior Designer, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

Chad

9:55 p.m.

On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 12:49 PM, Brandon Harris <bharris(a)wikimedia.org>wrote;wrote:

...

On Apr 9, 2014, at 12:45 PM, James Forrester <jforrester(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

Search results don't care about this setting if memory serves, nor should it. -Chad

James Forrester

10:43 p.m.

On 9 April 2014 12:49, Brandon Harris <bharris(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

On Apr 9, 2014, at 12:45 PM, James Forrester <jforrester(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

Well. Maybe not so simple. We also have to think about the thumbnails included in galleries. Galleries with 360px thumbnails won't be very browsable.

They're just as browsable as galleries with 220px thumbnails were for most of our users 5 years ago. It didn't stop us spewing galleries forth then. (Actually, with the new style layouts, much more so. There's a distinct discussion worth having about changing the default rendering of galleries to those for better UX.)

...

Also search results.

I presume you mean Special:NewImages, galleries in Category pags, and the like? Fair, though I think it's reasonable to shoot for consistency.

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Also mobile.

Mobile has its own system for re-scaling images already, and I wouldn't propose changing that.

...

There's plenty of reasons not to remove other sizes.

Do the other uses actually use wgThumbLimits, though, or just an arbitrary size? J. -- James D. Forrester Product Manager, VisualEditor Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. jforrester(a)wikimedia.org | @jdforrester

Brian Wolff

10 Apr 10 Apr

3:08 a.m.

On Apr 9, 2014 5:43 PM, "James Forrester" <jforrester(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

On 9 April 2014 12:49, Brandon Harris <bharris(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: > > On Apr 9, 2014, at 12:45 PM, James Forrester <jforrester(a)wikimedia.org> > wrote: > > > Proposal: > > > > - Make the default a nice proper size for the modern Web; I suggest > > 360px but could be argued up. > > - Remove all the other sizes from wgThumbLimits > > - Remove the user preferences for thumbnail size > > > > Simple. > > Well. Maybe not so simple. > > We also have to think about the thumbnails included in

galleries.

...

Galleries with 360px thumbnails won't be very browsable.

They're just as browsable as galleries with 220px thumbnails were for

most

...

of our users 5 years ago. It didn't stop us spewing galleries forth then. (Actually, with the new style layouts, much more so. There's a distinct discussion worth having about changing the default rendering of galleries to those for better UX.)

Also search results.

I presume you mean Special:NewImages, galleries in Category pags, and the like? Fair, though I think it's reasonable to shoot for consistency.

This setting applies to none of these. This is for people doing [[file:foo.png|thumb]] (I think upping the gallery default size would be nice, but that's a different config variable) As for killing the pref, while if users arent too atached to it, killing a parser-cache varrying preference would be nice. Of course this thread isnt supposed to be about if its a good idea to increase the size, so far everyone is agreement on that front. The issue is whether doing so would kill swift due to a large increase in object count (or some other performance concern(?)) as has appearantly been suggested. Im not sure it would actually increase the object count that much, if the new size chosen was a multiple of the old (as was suggested on wikipedia) since that size will already probably be rendered for retina display. Also we added the whole retina display srcset feature without the world exploding, and i think that was orders of magnitude bigger change than this would be. Ill admit im not actually familar with what the performance issues are, and may have just said something totally irrelavent. --bawolff

James Forrester

3:16 a.m.

On 9 April 2014 18:08, Brian Wolff <bawolff(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Of course this thread isnt supposed to be about if its a good idea to increase the size, so far everyone is agreement on that front. The issue is whether doing so would kill swift due to a large increase in object count (or some other performance concern(?)) as has appearantly been suggested. Im not sure it would actually increase the object count that much, if the new size chosen was a multiple of the old (as was suggested on wikipedia) since that size will already probably be rendered for retina display. Also we added the whole retina display srcset feature without the world exploding, and i think that was orders of magnitude bigger change than this would be. Ill admit im not actually familar with what the performance issues are, and may have just said something totally irrelavent.

I can't see how enabling a size that's already enabled in production on a further wiki will significantly increase the object count, but removing all sizes except one will definitely reduce it. :-) J. -- James D. Forrester Product Manager, VisualEditor Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. jforrester(a)wikimedia.org | @jdforrester

Brian Wolff

3:18 a.m.

On Apr 9, 2014 10:16 PM, "James Forrester" <jforrester(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

On 9 April 2014 18:08, Brian Wolff <bawolff(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Of course this thread isnt supposed to be about if its a good idea to > increase the size, so far everyone is agreement on that front. The

issue

...

> is > whether doing so would kill swift due to a large increase in object

count

...

> (or some other performance concern(?)) as has appearantly been

suggested.

...

> > Im not sure it would actually increase the object count that much, if

the

...

> new size chosen was a multiple of the old (as was suggested on

wikipedia)

...

> since that size will already probably be rendered for retina display.

Also

...

> we added the whole retina display srcset feature without the world > exploding, and i think that was orders of magnitude bigger change than

this

...

would be. Ill admit im not actually familar with what the performance issues are, and may have just said something totally irrelavent.

I can't see how enabling a size that's already enabled in production on

...

further wiki will significantly increase the object count, but removing

all

...

sizes except one will definitely reduce it. :-) J.

Actually it wont because things only ever get deleted when somebody uploads a new version, deletes a file, or ?action=purge. Otherwise we keep thumbs forever. --bawolff

Antoine Musso

10:56 a.m.

Le 10/04/2014 03:08, Brian Wolff a écrit :

...

I have no idea how we can evaluate the impact on our infrastructure if we change the available thumbnail size. I think some wikis already have a template to raise the size for all images, so they would use something like: {{image|CuteKitten.jpg}} and the template raise the thumbsize to say 360px. The potential impacts are: - the disk usage exploding (in Swift) - more bandwidth being consumed - upload caches being able to cache less, which would mean more hits to the backend I am not sure how we handled thumbs for retina display. I am assuming we always push a small thumbnail (like 220px) and whenever we detect a high density display we would fetch a larger thumb (lets say 440px). The same can probably be done on desktop depending on the screen resolution. We could also let the client scale thumbs for us, albeit with some loss in quality. -- Antoine "hashar" Musso

Bartosz Dziewoński

9 Apr 9 Apr

9:50 p.m.

On Wed, 09 Apr 2014 21:45:05 +0200, James Forrester <jforrester(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

Despite the increase in screen sizes some people do still use 1024x768 and the like, so this seems a little radical to me, but it might be a reasonable option to consider if that's the only way. I hope that it isn't :) -- Matma Rex

Brad Jorsch (Anomie)

10 Apr 10 Apr

3:31 p.m.

On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 3:50 PM, Bartosz Dziewoński <matma.rex(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:

...

On Wed, 09 Apr 2014 21:45:05 +0200, James Forrester < jforrester(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: Proposal:

- Make the default a nice proper size for the modern Web; I suggest 360px but could be argued up. - Remove all the other sizes from wgThumbLimits - Remove the user preferences for thumbnail size

C. Scott Ananian

14 Apr 14 Apr

6:05 p.m.

Note that https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Square_bounding_boxes may be related, since we're talking about what size "default" thumbnails appear at. Also https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Standardized_thumbnails… has existed for a while, it would be nice to get some traction on that. --scott On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 9:31 AM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) <bjorsch(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 3:50 PM, Bartosz Dziewoński <matma.rex(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:

On Wed, 09 Apr 2014 21:45:05 +0200, James Forrester < jforrester(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: Proposal:

- Make the default a nice proper size for the modern Web; I suggest 360px but could be argued up. - Remove all the other sizes from wgThumbLimits - Remove the user preferences for thumbnail size

This. I for one keep my browser window sized at 1024x768 most of the time, which gives me plenty of extra screen room for other windows. I only maximize when dealing with sites that are designed for larger sizes only and degrade poorly, or occasionally for video calls if I feel like seeing people better. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

-- (http://cscott.net)

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participants (8)

Antoine Musso
Bartosz Dziewoński
Brad Jorsch (Anomie)
Brandon Harris
Brian Wolff
C. Scott Ananian
Chad
James Forrester