Hello everyone, I am happy to announce that as a part of the GSOC project we have succeeded in developing a platform to allow user's to rate different extensions of mediawiki on Wikiapiary https://wikiapiary.com/wiki/Main_Page and syndicating them back to MediaWiki. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki Now people can rate different extensions on WikiApiary (which maintain a catalogue for extensions of mediawiki) and the total ratings will show up on Mediawiki.org.
You can look the rating system in action here: https://wikiapiary.com/wiki/Extension:ConfirmEdit
and the syndication (done for only few pages ) here: https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Extension:ConfirmEdit&diff=p...
However, to run the system in production first, we need assistance on how to make these ratings visible on the pages of extension. For this I need help from the community to know the best way of doing so. I have started a discussion on the Talk page for Extension template. Please join in. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Thread:Template_talk:Extension/Modifying_the_... https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Template_talk:Extension
Also, please visit WikiApiary https://wikiapiary.com/wiki/Extension:Extensions and start rating extensions as per your best knowledge and help us gather data. Thanks.
Regards, Aditya.
On Sun, Aug 17, 2014 at 6:06 PM, Aditya Chaturvedi < aditya.iiita102@gmail.com> wrote:
However, to run the system in production first, we need assistance on how to make these ratings visible on the pages of extension.
Has it already been asked anywhere *whether* to make these ratings available on mediawiki.org? How useful is it really to know that Extension:ConfirmEdit scored "3" on some external website, especially without knowing that that "3" comes from a grand total of 1 person?
On 18/08/14 14:54, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) wrote:
On Sun, Aug 17, 2014 at 6:06 PM, Aditya Chaturvedi < aditya.iiita102@gmail.com> wrote:
However, to run the system in production first, we need assistance on how to make these ratings visible on the pages of extension.
Has it already been asked anywhere *whether* to make these ratings available on mediawiki.org? How useful is it really to know that Extension:ConfirmEdit scored "3" on some external website, especially without knowing that that "3" comes from a grand total of 1 person?
Or without knowing what version they were running on, or what specifically was the issue (different issues apply to different projects; for instance a quirk that would be a blocker on wikinews might be something we'd WANT for unnews on uncyclopedia)...
The ratings also aren't necessarily for the things people might expect, either, especially if only a flat number is supplied: I expected 'rating' to be about the extension's effectiveness in production, but only 'usability' maybe covers that, despite not really applying to all extensions. And documentation quality should be pretty apparent if you're already on the extension documentation page on mw.org. Installation can be a massive pain in the arse but still very much worth it, especially as it is a one-time thing, so the real question may be is it worth it.
I feel like we'd need context for the ratings to be at all useful. So I'd say the question should be asked - should these ratings be available? Going from there, that's also the discussion that would hone down what could make them truly valuable.
-I
On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 4:54 PM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) <bjorsch@wikimedia.org
wrote:
On Sun, Aug 17, 2014 at 6:06 PM, Aditya Chaturvedi < aditya.iiita102@gmail.com> wrote:
However, to run the system in production first, we need assistance on how to make these ratings visible on the pages of extension.
Has it already been asked anywhere *whether* to make these ratings available on mediawiki.org? How useful is it really to know that Extension:ConfirmEdit scored "3" on some external website, especially without knowing that that "3" comes from a grand total of 1 person?
Relevant: http://xkcd.com/1098/
-Chad
On 8/18/14, 8:47 AM, Chad wrote:
On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 4:54 PM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) <bjorsch@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Has it already been asked anywhere *whether* to make these ratings available on mediawiki.org? How useful is it really to know that Extension:ConfirmEdit scored "3" on some external website, especially without knowing that that "3" comes from a grand total of 1 person?
Relevant: http://xkcd.com/1098/
-Chad
Also: http://xkcd.com/937/
-- Legoktm
Legoktm legoktm.wikipedia@gmail.com writes:
On 8/18/14, 8:47 AM, Chad wrote:
On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 4:54 PM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) <bjorsch@wikimedia.org
Has it already been asked anywhere *whether* to make these ratings available on mediawiki.org?
Yes. This is a GSoC project that was accepted. Getting the ratings to mw.o is the final step of that.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Adi.iiita/Gsoc2014
As XKCD makes clear, though, ratings like this have problems. We didn't ask Aditya to solve all those problems.
Instead, we want to start bootstrapping a way for users of MW extensions to provide feedback. If someone solves the problems with ratings, I'd love to see that implemented on mw.o.
For now, though, this is a step towards improving the ecosystem for MW users.
Mark.
On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 12:08 PM, Mark A. Hershberger mah@nichework.com wrote:
Legoktm legoktm.wikipedia@gmail.com writes:
On 8/18/14, 8:47 AM, Chad wrote:
On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 4:54 PM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) <
bjorsch@wikimedia.org
Has it already been asked anywhere *whether* to make these ratings available on mediawiki.org?
Yes. This is a GSoC project that was accepted. Getting the ratings to mw.o is the final step of that.
I see no discussion there.
I agree to the points raised about ratings and what parameters are best suitable for representing them. However, I believe these are evolutionary features and can only be improved in an agile manner. The key issue I believe is to address the cold start problem and for this I suppose that reflecting the ratings back to mw.o will catalyses the process of data collection in due time and make the ratings more meaningful. Currently, a flat number 3 was reflected as rating but I hope everyone takes it in symbolic terms i.e it can be modified to suit best needs. To re-iterate, it means that instead of 3 we can use 3/5 which tells the total rating is out of 5. Also we may use the information about how many people rated the extension and display that too. So this is where I need help to decide what will comprise as a meaningful data which can be presented on the extension page and address the cold start of this functionality. Please see all the knowledge generated on the extension pages of WikiApiary and suggest what combination of parameters will be best suited to be pushed to mediawiki. Thanks.
On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 10:05 PM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) < bjorsch@wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 12:08 PM, Mark A. Hershberger mah@nichework.com wrote:
Legoktm legoktm.wikipedia@gmail.com writes:
On 8/18/14, 8:47 AM, Chad wrote:
On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 4:54 PM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) <
bjorsch@wikimedia.org
Has it already been asked anywhere *whether* to make these ratings available on mediawiki.org?
Yes. This is a GSoC project that was accepted. Getting the ratings to mw.o is the final step of that.
I see no discussion there.
-- Brad Jorsch (Anomie) Software Engineer Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
I was meaning to comment on the overall GSoC proposal before the acceptance stage and didn't get a chance.
Personally I don't think in it's current state/design it is overly suitable for deployment onto MediaWiki wiki as it will introduce a external factor on the page load for each visitor, although I haven't looked at the current privacy policy but it is generally considered a no-no for us.
Also I do have concerns about the overall usefullness of the data and how it will correlate with the extensions, especially when it comes to matching to individual release versions and overall participation on data submission.
On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 10:05 PM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) < bjorsch@wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 12:08 PM, Mark A. Hershberger <mah@nichework.com
wrote:
Legoktm legoktm.wikipedia@gmail.com writes:
On 8/18/14, 8:47 AM, Chad wrote:
On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 4:54 PM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) <
bjorsch@wikimedia.org
Has it already been asked anywhere *whether* to make these ratings available on mediawiki.org?
Yes. This is a GSoC project that was accepted. Getting the ratings to mw.o is the final step of that.
I see no discussion there.
-- Brad Jorsch (Anomie) Software Engineer Wikimedia Foundation
On 19 August 2014 07:36, K. Peachey p858snake@gmail.com wrote:
Personally I don't think in it's current state/design it is overly suitable for deployment onto MediaWiki wiki as it will introduce a external factor on the page load for each visitor, although I haven't looked at the current privacy policy but it is generally considered a no-no for us.
What do you base that on? As far as I can see, there's just a bot that adds/updates the rating to the extension template:
https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Extension:ConfirmEdit&diff=p...
And that's also explicitly stated in the GSoC proposal: "During this period I will work on the Data Syndication phase of the project.
* For this, I will be extending the existing WikiApiary bot, creating new asynchronous worker tasks."
Probably the original IRC discussions.
On 19 August 2014 17:22, Merlijn van Deen valhallasw@arctus.nl wrote:
On 19 August 2014 07:36, K. Peachey p858snake@gmail.com wrote:
Personally I don't think in it's current state/design it is overly
suitable
for deployment onto MediaWiki wiki as it will introduce a external factor on the page load for each visitor, although I haven't looked at the
current
privacy policy but it is generally considered a no-no for us.
What do you base that on? As far as I can see, there's just a bot that adds/updates the rating to the extension template:
https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Extension:ConfirmEdit&diff=p...
And that's also explicitly stated in the GSoC proposal: "During this period I will work on the Data Syndication phase of the project.
- For this, I will be extending the existing WikiApiary bot, creating new
asynchronous worker tasks." _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Hi Aditya I'm truly sorry you are getting this kind of response, the replies you've got here seem very mean spirited but please don't take them personally. I hope it doesn't put you off building stuff on top of MediaWiki.
I just wanted to say thank you for building this, regardless of whether it gets used or not on mediawiki.org.
I was curious to how generic the rating system is. For example would it be possible to use such a thing on something like BetaFeatures or was it specifically designed for extension rating?
Could you point me to the code that provides this functionality? wikiapiary seems to be down :/ Jon
On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 2:03 AM, K. Peachey p858snake@gmail.com wrote:
Probably the original IRC discussions.
On 19 August 2014 17:22, Merlijn van Deen valhallasw@arctus.nl wrote:
On 19 August 2014 07:36, K. Peachey p858snake@gmail.com wrote:
Personally I don't think in it's current state/design it is overly
suitable
for deployment onto MediaWiki wiki as it will introduce a external factor on the page load for each visitor, although I haven't looked at the
current
privacy policy but it is generally considered a no-no for us.
What do you base that on? As far as I can see, there's just a bot that adds/updates the rating to the extension template:
https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Extension:ConfirmEdit&diff=p...
And that's also explicitly stated in the GSoC proposal: "During this period I will work on the Data Syndication phase of the project.
- For this, I will be extending the existing WikiApiary bot, creating new
asynchronous worker tasks." _______________________________________________ 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
Hi Jon, I am grateful to the wikimedia community for providing their responses about this project so there is nothing to be sorry about. I understand they have a lot of concerns to maintain the quality of data on the site.
The rating system has been built on top of semantic mediawiki so this can be replicated anywhere on any wiki which has SMW installed along with a few other extensions.
I really wish to see the project take shape and be helpful to mediawiki and for that i am willing to contribute beyond the gsoc period too. Jamie, the owner of wikiApiary thinks the same and he is willing to add more knowledge he farmed using data of extensions to mediawiki ( things like basket analysis; which extensions are used together, data from openhub.org on activity etc ) which in future may really enrich information on mediawiki.
I hope this idea gets support for deployment. I believe it will open up a path for all such 3rd party sources who collect data in multiple forms, to process that data and enrich mediawiki with new knowledge and analytics in the future. Anyhow, I had a great time working on this. So thanks to everyone. :)
On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 12:31 AM, Jon Robson jdlrobson@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Aditya I'm truly sorry you are getting this kind of response, the replies you've got here seem very mean spirited but please don't take them personally. I hope it doesn't put you off building stuff on top of MediaWiki.
I just wanted to say thank you for building this, regardless of whether it gets used or not on mediawiki.org.
I was curious to how generic the rating system is. For example would it be possible to use such a thing on something like BetaFeatures or was it specifically designed for extension rating?
Could you point me to the code that provides this functionality? wikiapiary seems to be down :/ Jon
On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 2:03 AM, K. Peachey p858snake@gmail.com wrote:
Probably the original IRC discussions.
On 19 August 2014 17:22, Merlijn van Deen valhallasw@arctus.nl wrote:
On 19 August 2014 07:36, K. Peachey p858snake@gmail.com wrote:
Personally I don't think in it's current state/design it is overly
suitable
for deployment onto MediaWiki wiki as it will introduce a external
factor
on the page load for each visitor, although I haven't looked at the
current
privacy policy but it is generally considered a no-no for us.
What do you base that on? As far as I can see, there's just a bot that adds/updates the rating to the extension template:
https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Extension:ConfirmEdit&diff=p...
And that's also explicitly stated in the GSoC proposal: "During this period I will work on the Data Syndication phase of the project.
- For this, I will be extending the existing WikiApiary bot, creating
new
asynchronous worker tasks." _______________________________________________ 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
-- Jon Robson
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
2014-08-18 19:35 GMT+03:00 Brad Jorsch (Anomie) bjorsch@wikimedia.org:
On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 12:08 PM, Mark A. Hershberger mah@nichework.com wrote:
Yes. This is a GSoC project that was accepted. Getting the ratings to mw.o is the final step of that.
I see no discussion there.
This sounds like a serious miscommunication before the GSoC project begun. Something for the https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs/Lessons_learned page, perhaps?
Is it really necessary for people to openly mock the work of a volunteer developer on the list? No wonder we have so few volunteer developers.
On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 8:52 AM, Legoktm legoktm.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/18/14, 8:47 AM, Chad wrote:
On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 4:54 PM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) <
bjorsch@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Has it already been asked anywhere *whether* to make these ratings available on mediawiki.org? How useful is it really to know that Extension:ConfirmEdit scored "3" on some external website, especially without knowing that that "3" comes from a grand total of 1 person?
Relevant: http://xkcd.com/1098/
-Chad
Also: http://xkcd.com/937/
-- Legoktm
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Has it already been asked anywhere *whether* to make these ratings available on mediawiki.org? How useful is it really to know that Extension:ConfirmEdit scored "3" on some external website, especially without knowing that that "3" comes from a grand total of 1 person?
Relevant: http://xkcd.com/1098/
-Chad
Also: http://xkcd.com/937/
-- Legoktm
Is it really necessary for people to openly mock the work of a volunteer developer on the list? No wonder we have so few volunteer developers.
I do think that they are legitimate complaints, though I also agree that there might have been a better way to point them out. While doing a bit of research for something else I came across a rating display that might help solve some of these problems at least.
http://easycaptures.com/fs/uploaded/831/6188233746.png Source: Spiceworks (product page) (when hovering over a number of stars it says how many people gave it that rating)
I think that this sort of display solves at least the problem shown in XKCD 1098 along with the complaint of not knowing how many people actually scored something someway and whether or not it's a significant percentage. The visual display of the information can solve the issue in 1098 if we tweak the colours a bit to show some of the lower ratings as more greenish.
The use of a rotating display of top rated comments allows problems like those highlighted in XKCD 937 to be solved. Hopefully we can find some way to allow the more helpful ratings to be shown to users. Amazon does a pretty good job with this as well.
Does Wikiapiary collect data on how many wikis make use of any given extension? Exposing that data may also help someone make an informed decision about whether or not to use an extension.
Thank you, Derric Atzrott
Hi,
One thing is clear, Aditya has a thick skin, which sadly still seems to be a quality required in many open source projects including ours. I wonder of many old-timers would enjoy the kind of reception he got here after introducing himself as a GSoC student -- even by people that know well what is to be an intern or a mentor. As a community, we should do better.
To the point of the thread, we can have a discussion about extension ratings featured at mediawiki.org while wikiapiary.com enjoys the feature and users start using it there. We can even reject the feature altogether if this is what we want. This GSoC project, like all GSoC projects accepted, has explicitly avoided any deployment on Wikimedia servers lacking support from the related maintainers / community. Aditya just wants to get further with his project.
Now, let's continue discussing user ratings as they could be implemented in a first iteration at mediawiki.org. Remember, the goal is to have a proper catalog of extensions, something that today we sorely miss (and thank Jamie for wikiapiary.com).
For those interested in the process of proposing and accepting internship projects, here you have a post mortem of this specific case:
On Tuesday, August 19, 2014, Strainu strainu10@gmail.com wrote:
This sounds like a serious miscommunication before the GSoC project begun. Something for the https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs/Lessons_learned page, perhaps?
Perhaps, but what is the lesson we need to learn?
Let's look at the history of this project:
* The first idea was proposed in the "Possible projects" on February 2013 by Maria Miteva, as part of her FOSS OPW internship -- https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Mentorship_programs/Possible_pro...
* Between March and April 2013, we fine tuned the proposal as "Research & propose a catalog of extensions", Yuri Katkov volunteered as mentor, and we moved it to the Featured section, and we created a report in Bugzilla -- https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Mentorship_programs%2FPossible_p... & https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46704
* During 2013, this project idea was featured in one GSoC round and two OPW rounds before, but candidates didn't pick it.
* In January 2014, at the Architecture Summit, I had a chat with Mark Hersberger and Markus Glaser, aka MediaWiki release management team, where we decided to keep polishing this project at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ExtensionGallery , and they volunteered as mentors.
* This brought some discussion to the Bugzilla report and the wiki talk page. We also reached out to Jamie Thingelstad from Wikiapiari.com, a great service that we already link to in our extensions pages.
* This time we got students interested. Aditya Chaturvedi was the first one reaching to us (as early as February) and he started drafting his proposal publicly by March -- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Adi.iiita/Gsoc2014 -- https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-March/075378.html
* The fact of having students interested helped us narrowing the project. We decided to focus on implementing user ratings in Wikiapiary and finding a way to make that data exportable so mediawiki.org or whoever else could make use of it. We explicitly left out of the scope of the project any changes to mediawiki.org.
* Aditya got some feedback during the review process but actually nothing (that I recall) criticizing the focus on user ratings. Then he was accepted. The he started to work under the supervision of Mark and Jamie. You can read his reports at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Adi.iiita/Gsoc2014/Report
... And now Aditya is about to finish his GSoC project (looks like successfully), having followed our processes as they were designed and having accomplished the goals initially set. In the first place he deserves our congratulations and gratitude. The we can discuss what are the best next steps in the direction of improving mediawiki.org.
2014-08-20 14:48 GMT+03:00 Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org:
Hi,
One thing is clear, Aditya has a thick skin, which sadly still seems to be a quality required in many open source projects including ours.
And will remain so for the foreseeable future.
On Tuesday, August 19, 2014, Strainu strainu10@gmail.com wrote:
This sounds like a serious miscommunication before the GSoC project begun. Something for the https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs/Lessons_learned page, perhaps?
Perhaps, but what is the lesson we need to learn?
I was thinking along the lines of "the MW wiki-community is similar to other communities in our movement; they want to be consulted for every important (where important for them is not necessarily what you would expect) change"
... And now Aditya is about to finish his GSoC project (looks like successfully), having followed our processes as they were designed and having accomplished the goals initially set. In the first place he deserves our congratulations and gratitude.
Absolutely! Still, the bikeshedding will not stop for such details... :)
Strainu
On 20/08/14 11:48, Quim Gil wrote:
For those interested in the process of proposing and accepting internship projects, here you have a post mortem of this specific case:
On Tuesday, August 19, 2014, Strainu strainu10@gmail.com wrote:
This sounds like a serious miscommunication before the GSoC project begun. Something for the https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs/Lessons_learned page, perhaps?
Perhaps, but what is the lesson we need to learn?
The lesson to be learned here is not unlike what many teams could learn.
When someone creates a product specifically for a certain group of users (in this case folks installing extensions) without actually knowing what is useful to them (never even mind 'important' at this stage), there is something seriously wrong with that process. This, however, doesn't particularly reflect on Aditya, who simply did the project as it was layed out; it was the folks guiding the project who should have started the process of actually talking to the users about this well before GSoC began, and continued it as part of the project itself.
So here, the GSoC project needs to have been set up better. Simply put, you cannot reasonably expect random community members to carefully review every single proposal or new feature, so where feedback is needed, you need to go out and get it. The student is there to learn, and probably will not know that, and that's fine because it's supposed to be the sort of thing they're learning. The mentors may not know that either, if product design and engineering aren't their things, so that's not necessarily an issue either. But for projects that will affect people outside the project itself, for projects facing specific groups of users, someone along the line needs to know the importance of discussion, of determining the user/developer/whatever needs before engineering the product, and someone needs to give the guidance needed to make sure the relevant discussions happen.
That's what needs to be addressed moving forward.
-I
When someone creates a product specifically for a certain group of users (in this case folks installing extensions) without actually knowing what is useful to them (never even mind 'important' at this stage), there is something seriously wrong with that process.
Though I might only be a single voice, I just want to say that as someone who installs extensions, I support this project. While its generally pretty easy to tell that an extension is abandoned, it isn't always easy to tell if it is any good.
I would consider a rating system for extensions a perfectly viable GSoC project that has both useful and important implications.
Thank you, Derric Atzrott
On Wednesday, August 20, 2014, Isarra Yos <zhorishna@gmail.com javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','zhorishna@gmail.com');> wrote:
When someone creates a product specifically for a certain group of users (in this case folks installing extensions) without actually knowing what is useful to them (never even mind 'important' at this stage), there is something seriously wrong with that process.
This proposal was part of a research project done by Maria Miteva which involved a survey to a diverse collection of third party MediaWiki users.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Third-party_MediaWiki_users_discussion/Summar...
On the other hand, user ratings are a widespread feature. They are not THE solution for the current mess we have in the mediawiki.org Extensions namespace (call it a catalog would be too ambitious), but it looks like a reasonable candidate for the mix.
Wikiapiary.com is part of the MediaWiki community and they have happily mentored, supported, and deployed this feature. Only for this, Aditya's GSoC can be considered a success.
In order to move forward, we can discuss at different levels:
* At a general level, which should be the priorities for mediawiki.org's gallery of extensions? This will allow us to define more tasks and projects for potential developers. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ExtensionGallery
* At the level of Aditya's project, do we want to try the integration of user ratings for extensions in mediawiki.org? Which requirements should the ratings shown meet? For the next step, should we focus on integrating Wikiapiary's data or should we come up with a solution for MW.O users to ate directly there?
On 8/20/14, 9:04 AM, Quim Gil wrote:
In order to move forward, we can discuss at different levels:
- At a general level, which should be the priorities for mediawiki.org's
gallery of extensions? This will allow us to define more tasks and projects for potential developers. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ExtensionGallery
At Wikimania, we had a good conversation and a proposal (that was basically agreed upon by everyone in the room IIRC!) about creating a "gold standard" for extensions, judging them based on their code quality, compatibility with MediaWiki versions, tests, etc. I don't remember the etherpad link unfortunately, but I assume someone has the notes.
IMO, that would be way more useful to me than arbitrary user ratings.
-- Legoktm
On Wednesday, August 20, 2014, Legoktm legoktm.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
At Wikimania, we had a good conversation and a proposal (that was basically agreed upon by everyone in the room IIRC!) about creating a "gold standard" for extensions, judging them based on their code quality, compatibility with MediaWiki versions, tests, etc.
I was in that room and I agree that defining and implementing this "gold standard" is a good idea. For what I recall, factors considered included objective facts like compatibility tested with Jenkins, support for LTS, etc. Still, I don't see this as a substitution of user feedack, with its potential drawbacks but also with the uniqueness that such human feedback provides.
Whenever we have this type of discussion, Wordpress is mentioned as a good example of a catalog of plugins with information useful for Wordpress users (meaning Wordpress admins, just like in the case of MediaWiki). Look for instance http://wordpress.org/plugins/feedweb/
Requires: 3.0 or higher Compatible up to: 3.9.2 Last Updated: 2014-8-21 Downloads: 90,268
((((This first block is quite objective))))
Ratings 4 stars 4.8 out of 5 stars 5 stars http://wordpress.org/support/view/plugin-reviews/feedweb?filter=5 24 4 stars http://wordpress.org/support/view/plugin-reviews/feedweb?filter=4 1 3 stars http://wordpress.org/support/view/plugin-reviews/feedweb?filter=3 0 2 stars http://wordpress.org/support/view/plugin-reviews/feedweb?filter=2 0 1 stars http://wordpress.org/support/view/plugin-reviews/feedweb?filter=1 1
((((The ratings we are talking about, they show also the amount of votes, it does draw a picture about this plugin.))))
Author Feedweb Research http://profiles.wordpress.org/feedweb/ 1 plugin
((((You can see how prolific this developer is, and check data & feedback on their other plugins, if you wish))))
Support 3 of 3 support threads in the last two months have been resolved.
((((We could apply something similar with Bugzilla/Phabricator, and perhaps even Flow one day))))
Got something to say? Need help? View support forum http://wordpress.org/support/plugin/feedweb
Compatibility WordPress +Plugin = Works! 4 people say it works. 0 people say it's broken.
((((This little module is especially useful, as it attempts to tell you about specific combinations of Wordpress and plugin versions, according to other users -- imagine if Jenkins could vote there as well))))
IMO, that would be way more useful to me than arbitrary user ratings.
Why not having both?
On 21/08/14 13:13, Quim Gil wrote:
On Wednesday, August 20, 2014, Legoktm legoktm.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
At Wikimania, we had a good conversation and a proposal (that was basically agreed upon by everyone in the room IIRC!) about creating a "gold standard" for extensions, judging them based on their code quality, compatibility with MediaWiki versions, tests, etc.
I was in that room and I agree that defining and implementing this "gold standard" is a good idea. For what I recall, factors considered included objective facts like compatibility tested with Jenkins, support for LTS, etc. Still, I don't see this as a substitution of user feedack, with its potential drawbacks but also with the uniqueness that such human feedback provides.
Whenever we have this type of discussion, Wordpress is mentioned as a good example of a catalog of plugins with information useful for Wordpress users (meaning Wordpress admins, just like in the case of MediaWiki). Look for instance http://wordpress.org/plugins/feedweb/
Requires: 3.0 or higher Compatible up to: 3.9.2 Last Updated: 2014-8-21 Downloads: 90,268
Something to consider about user ratings. Ratings with stars/whatever are most useful when you're looking at a condensed list of multiple similar <item>s because they add a metric that can be compared and sorted. Suppose you're looking at laptops - you've got a bunch of otherwise similar machines all within the same general hardware specs - so then you look at the higher-rated ones first. More stars? Go check the comments to see why they rated it higher.
But that only applies when you have many, similar items that do the same thing and you need to choose between them, and that just isn't generally the case with extensions. In many cases there is only a single extension for a single purpose, and if you are looking for an extension, you are looking for one that does specifically what you want. So you go find that one, and once you are there, the actual question at this point is 'does it work?', not if it's better than anything else.
So a better model here may be endorsements. Look at game mods as an example - Skyrim has an insane amount of mods you can install, with often surprisingly little overlap of funtionality (yes, there are different lighting mods, but they all do it a little differently, so it comes down to which kind of lighting you prefer more than anything else). Suppose you find a mod on nexusmods that does what you're after, you see it has 100ish endorsements, that means it probably actually works and does what it says on the tin. That's good. You look at the comments, nobody's complaining about it being broken or causing other problems, well, there you go. Good to go.
This seems much more feasible and realistic to our purposes, and I suspect the same backend as for the ratings could well be adapted to do this for extensions overall. Whereas skins, which all tend to be much more similar in their purpose, might actually make better use of the ratings as they are now.
-I
On 21 August 2014 08:58, Isarra Yos zhorishna@gmail.com wrote:
On 21/08/14 13:13, Quim Gil wrote:
On Wednesday, August 20, 2014, Legoktm legoktm.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
At Wikimania, we had a good conversation and a proposal (that was basically agreed upon by everyone in the room IIRC!) about creating a "gold standard" for extensions, judging them based on their code quality, compatibility with MediaWiki versions, tests, etc.
I was in that room and I agree that defining and implementing this "gold standard" is a good idea. For what I recall, factors considered included objective facts like compatibility tested with Jenkins, support for LTS, etc. Still, I don't see this as a substitution of user feedack, with its potential drawbacks but also with the uniqueness that such human feedback provides.
Whenever we have this type of discussion, Wordpress is mentioned as a good example of a catalog of plugins with information useful for Wordpress users (meaning Wordpress admins, just like in the case of MediaWiki). Look for instance http://wordpress.org/plugins/feedweb/
Requires: 3.0 or higher Compatible up to: 3.9.2 Last Updated: 2014-8-21 Downloads: 90,268
Something to consider about user ratings. Ratings with stars/whatever are most useful when you're looking at a condensed list of multiple similar <item>s because they add a metric that can be compared and sorted. Suppose you're looking at laptops - you've got a bunch of otherwise similar machines all within the same general hardware specs - so then you look at the higher-rated ones first. More stars? Go check the comments to see why they rated it higher.
But that only applies when you have many, similar items that do the same thing and you need to choose between them, and that just isn't generally the case with extensions. In many cases there is only a single extension for a single purpose, and if you are looking for an extension, you are looking for one that does specifically what you want. So you go find that one, and once you are there, the actual question at this point is 'does it work?', not if it's better than anything else.
So a better model here may be endorsements. Look at game mods as an example - Skyrim has an insane amount of mods you can install, with often surprisingly little overlap of funtionality (yes, there are different lighting mods, but they all do it a little differently, so it comes down to which kind of lighting you prefer more than anything else). Suppose you find a mod on nexusmods that does what you're after, you see it has 100ish endorsements, that means it probably actually works and does what it says on the tin. That's good. You look at the comments, nobody's complaining about it being broken or causing other problems, well, there you go. Good to go.
Just thinking aloud, there are a few alternative mechanisms for helping users find extensions that are right for them:
We could badge-ify installations based on some major re-users – "This extension is used by Wikia", "This extension is used by …" to help people get a feel for common big-wiki items, though that probably doesn't work for the majority of users who may have less specialised (or differently specialised) needs.
We could have curated lists ("Good for internal corporate wikis"; "Good for managing multi-lingual user communities") that would guide users based on what they want to do, maybe with some basic roles pre-defined.
We could have the "new", "new version released" and "popular" sections, of course, which are *de rigeur* in app stores and the like. This might be a bit too frothy for most users, though?
Lots of possibilities!
(BTW, some basic structured data about each extension would be great to expose for users for this purpose; maybe MediaWiki.org could be a potential future Wikibase target?)
J.
Isarra, I like the idea of endorsements. Of course the best endorsement to an extension is to have it installed and actively used in a wiki, and the more popular the wiki is, the bigger that endorsement can be considered. Wikiapiary has the building blocks for this in place, since they also track wikis (with various stats) that users can claim.
And then you could also have the endorsement of pure users just giving a thumbs up. I wonder whether "counter-endorsements" aka thumbs down could help here as well. And thjis would ring us closer to ratings, but I get your point.
On Thursday, August 21, 2014, James Forrester jforrester@wikimedia.org wrote:
Lots of possibilities!
Well, yes. I wonder whether Mark & Markus or someone else would like to pick a first one and push it until deploying it.
(BTW, some basic structured data about each extension would be great to
expose for users for this purpose; maybe MediaWiki.org could be a potential future Wikibase target?)
I asked/suggested this ( https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata-l/2014-March/003588.html ) but the idea didn't fly.
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org