Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Archive/Ability to use gadgets crosswiki

Ability to use gadgets crosswiki

 N Outside the scope of Community Tech / declined in a previous survey

  • Problem: I've gone from Wikipedia to other sites part of the Wikimedia foundation, such as German Wikipedia, Wikicommons, etc. and tried to use the gadget's funcionality, but found it never crossed over. I'd gone to the gadgets page, wondering if the gadget just got turned off for some reason, only to find it isn't in the gadgets page. This has/would create some problems that, although some might be small, it's may be enough to push users away from using that specific site.
  • Who would benefit: Users of any gadget that have tried to use it crosswiki, but found it couldn't
  • Proposed solution: Sites of the Wikimedia foundation are largely similar, and gadgets probably would act similar now to if they became crosswiki. All that'd need to happen is allow the use of gadgets anywhere on the Wikimedia foundation's sites, since the "Global prefs" option should allow them on all Wikimedia's sites (EDIT: It doesn't. I've enabled HotCat, and a variety of other things on Wikipedia, but it isn't enabled here. The global preferences thing doesn't even seem to affect the section)
  • More comments: If some sites either are largely different, or if it's in a completely different language, I'd get that. It'd be up to the gadget's developer(s) to do that. However, some sites are basically the same, and gadgets should function the same on each site, but the gadget isn't there. Also, if you can't implement this, at least allow editing tools' gadgets, as the editing is the same on every Wikimedia foundation site.
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: JMVR1 (talk) 20:57, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

  • We couldn't agree more! This was the #1 wish from the 2016 survey. Gadgets are currently defined on a per-wiki basis. Unfortunately globalizing them into Special:GlobalPreferences is a massive project that is too out of scope for our team. For this reason I must archive this proposal. As an alternative, you can instead propose that your favourite gadget(s) be turned into extensions (HotCat, for example). That is much more feasible. Sorry my message could not be more favorable, but nonetheless thank you for participating in the survey! MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 21:52, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@MusikAnimal (WMF): This is the community wishlist, whether your or any other team should work on this has to be decided after the community can make its preferences, do not accept it, because some random small team doesn't want is is not reason to reject ist. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden) 08:32, 22 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
We'll reply to the thread on the talk page soon. But short answer – this is all explained in the documentation and is no different than how we conducted the survey in previous years. Thanks for your understanding and cooperation, MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 20:50, 22 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@MusikAnimal (WMF): 'no different than how we conducted the survey in previous years' does not make it the right way, and that is what Sanger, several others and I are arguing. We've seen these comments/arguments over and over, but basically you can utterly ignore what the community wants and just work on whatever you like and define that all the rest is 'out of scope'. Not much of a community wishlist then. --Dirk Beetstra T C (en: U, T) 06:04, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I've started another thread over there, as this survey is either completely misnamed or the restrictive handling is wrong. A Community Wishlist is the wishlist of the community for all the devs, I could not care less, how the internal organisation of WMF/WMDE, i.e. the software service orgs, is done, but this survey is, from the name of it, the wishlist of the community. If it should just be the wishlist for a tiny team, that is very busy and constructive, but not able to accomodate the community wishlist, this should be made clear with a better naming. I would prefer to keep the title and make it a real community wishlist, as that's what's really missing, tons of wishes rot somewhere in Phabricator and nobody cares about them. As the community isd the highest Entity in the Wikiverse, they should be far more accomodated, they are the ones, that matter, not shiny new projects like the unwanted FLOW or such. Maintenance matters, bling is not relevant. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden) 06:56, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]