[Wikitech-l] Community-Engineering gaps as defined in configuration

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