Meta:Babel/Archives/2017-06

Please do not post any new comments on this page. This is a discussion archive first created in June 2017, although the comments contained were likely posted before and after this date. See current discussion or the archives index.

Substituting welcome template

Hi, all. I would like to ask for input from the community about the issue of substituting the {{welcome}} template on user talk pages. My bot was approved and has been running this task for years but @Billinghurst: now objects saying that this task is without value. (Full discussion is included below.) Please comment on whether I should continue to run this task or stop the bot. Thank you. --Meno25 (talk) 15:33, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Full discussion from User talk:Meno25

I am not sure why you are substituting Template:welcome. In fact, it is a ridiculous requirement that the template should be substituted, and seems an imported, and valueless and pointless requirement, and then to have a bot go and do that task seems equally inane. — billinghurst sDrewth 16:53, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: Is this your personal opinion or is this a requirement every bot should follow? (Has there been a discussion about this issue that I missed?) According to WP:TG

Templates for short, temporary messages that will be removed quickly (such as on User_talk: pages) or that contain text which is not likely to ever be changed should be invoked with substitution (subst:).

And there wasn't opposition for this task when I applied for bot flag. Anyway, I am open to stopping the bot if the opinion of the community changed here. --Meno25 (talk) 07:39, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Blindly following an arcane process from English Wikipedia on a multi-language wiki where there is no demonstrated benefit seems weird. 1) Special:PrefixIndex/Template:Welcome shows multiple languages to welcome, and these can all be regularly updated. 2) What are we gaining by substituting this template? I can see none. I am all for fixes that have value, but this one has no clear value, especially with relation to the welcome message. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:43, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: OK. I will stop the bot then. --Meno25 (talk) 13:37, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

I haven't asked you to stop the bot, that will have to be your assessment based on what you are doing, I am asking about Template:Welcome. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:20, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: I mistunderstood you then. Sorry. The reason why welcome templates should be substituted is explained in en:WP:SUBST (Couldn't find documentation about this issue on Meta, so, I am quoting enwiki):

Templates are often modified or deleted. If a template is boilerplate text, consider whether you want it to vary as the template is modified. If your answer is "no", substitution is warranted. An example of this is the {{welcome}} template. The archives of a user's talk page should show the actual welcome message they received, not the current welcome message.

This is the added value that you are asking about. (Showing the welcome template in user archives as the user received it not as it is now.) If you feel that this reason is not enough, then tell me and I will stop the bot. However, in my 11+ years on Wikimedia wikis, welcome messages were always substituted. I actually ran my bot to do this specific task in 7 different Arabic Wikimedia wikis. Substituting welcome templates was always a non-controversial bot task. --Meno25 (talk) 15:09, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

I would dispute the underlying premise that at a place like metawiki that a static welcome template on a user talk page is of more value. I would put forward that a template with contemporary messaging is more beneficial, and the quieter the wiki, and the quieter the talk page, then the greater value in a dynamic user page. The argument that it has to represent a piece of history rather than a contemporary welcome and guidance here at metawiki is one that I challenge. (We can always find their message in history.) Add in the factor of a multi-language template that is not built concurrently, rather than a single language wiki, in a faster-paced talk page environment. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:36, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: We are running around in circles here and we need input from a 3rd party to settle the dispute. (As we really shouldn't be wasting all this time on a tiny issue like this.) I will post about this on Meta:Babel. --Meno25 (talk) 15:24, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

I personally don't substitute the welcome template when I use it, because I appreciate being able to update links a nd translations later. --Nemo 16:15, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Comment Pretty much what I was saying. A 2007 bot approval looked at with fresh eyes. I don't doubt that it was approved in 2007, a few wiki-generations ago, relatively early in meta-age, and as a process imported from a single language wiki (enWP). I simply don't see that this old process has value. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:52, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
- Merits of the argument aside, you come off as really hostile and aggressive in your comments to Meno25, in my opinion. I really applaud Meno25 for not replying in-kind and instead being helpful, constructive, and reasonable, explaining how the current situation came to be and offering to reëxamine the previous decisions made. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:07, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
As noted above, we've traditionally substituted all talk page templates, welcome templates included, to preserve the messages as they were at the time of delivery. Does anybody care about preserving the messages as they were? If not, we should change the default guideline to not substitute talk page templates and individual users can choose to substitute on their own talk pages at their own discretion. If we do want to try to preserve the messages as they were delivered, substituting by default makes some sense.
I can see arguments both ways, but I don't think either view is that crazy. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:10, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
I, too, see arguments both ways. I'm inclined to side with those who don't want to substitute, because to the extent that the information in the welcome template should continue to be useful the template might have to update from time to time. But I could see wanting the record to reflect the time of the posting, too. In my mind, the only thing one needs to be careful about is this: If we are not going to substitute the template, then the user or bot that leaves the template needs to sign the talk page outside the template. I'd like there to be an accurate record of when the edit itself was made. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:52, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Here at meta there is a bot that adds the template signs and outside the template. I know that I sign outside of the template. We also have a history for each user page and welcome messages typically are added at or about the time of the account creation, never before, and hardly ever a long time after. Further, since when and with what regularity have we actually done a post-mortem analysis of a user talk page to see what message someone was given prior to reflecting on someone's editing behaviour? So we have a requirement that is actually useful on a very rare occasions, compared with a modern, active welcome message that would be useful pretty well every day, especially with low traffic, low archiving talk pages of users. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:27, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Edit the text of a banner

Hi there,

Could someone please edit the text 2 in French in Special:CentralNoticeBanners/edit/wle_2017_ch?

It should be informez-vous, not informez vous.

Thanks. --Thibaut120094 (talk) 17:16, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Already fixed by Linedwell and I marked it as "published" so it goes live. Stryn (talk) 17:28, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. --Thibaut120094 (talk) 19:26, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Module:Protection banner/config

I think we need to customize Module:Protection banner/config to avoid the Module to output very specific enwiki links and categories. Unfortunately I do not know Lua so I am leaving this here and maybe anyone can have a look at it. Thanks, —Marco Aurelio 22:15, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Ping

Why did this edit notify me? The edit-summary tells it was a revert of me, but my change to the page was not affected at all by this edit. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 11:34, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Not at all? But the ip reverted your edit (where I can't understand your edit summary). Stryn (talk) 16:03, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Strange! This is what I intended to do! -- Innocent bystander (talk) 09:10, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Some user scripts and gadgets will break on Meta during July

The MediaWiki devs have been slowly improving the accessibility of the user interface. The next step in this transition will change the appearance of some buttons and may break some outdated (non-updated or unmaintained) user scripts and gadgets.

Most editors will only notice that some buttons are slightly larger and have different colors:

Comparison of old and new styles
Buttons before the change
Buttons after the change

You can see and use the old and new versions now. These links will take you to Meta's sandbox page, but the same approach works at all WMF wikis.

However, this change also affects some user scripts and gadgets. Unfortunately, some of them may not work well in the new system and will need to be updated. If you maintain any user scripts or gadgets that are used for editing, please see mw:Contributors/Projects/Accessible editing buttons for information on how to test and fix your scripts. Outdated scripts can be tested and fixed now.

This change has already been deployed to the Persian and Polish Wikipedias. This change will probably reach Meta on Wednesday, 5 July 2017, along with several other larger Wikipedias. Later in July, it will reach other Wikipedias (including the English and German Wikipedias), and then other sites (e.g., the Wikisources and Commons) after that.

Please leave a message at mw:Talk:Contributors/Projects/Accessible editing buttons if you have any questions. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:28, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Two days until this happens. Please mention/ping/notify me if you have questions or need help. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:51, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF): Thanks for the notification. Unfortunately it seems all our mantainers are either gone or in vacation. Scripts on Meta ain't regularly mantained so I'm not sure how many of them will crash with the update. Is there a way to test how many of them would? Regards, —Marco Aurelio 21:49, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Hi Marco,

There's no way to test all the (hundreds of? thousands of?) scripts on Meta en masse. However, if you go to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Sandbox?action=submit&ooui=1 and try to edit (using whatever scripts/gadgets you have installed), then you can find out whether any of the scripts you personally use are working. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:45, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Done This just happened. If stuff's broken, please let everyone know. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:16, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Using Phabricator to report bugs and plan updates on Meta-Wiki gadgets

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T167983 stalled

I propose that we do what Wikidata did and use Phabricator to report bugs and plan improvements in our Gadgets. Few of us know how to code, debug, etc. a Gadget. Maybe having a central place stuff like that can be reported and worked upon would be a good idea? Regards, —Marco Aurelio 22:18, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

If some sysop here wants to fix Meta-Wiki gadgets and feels like they'd do better with an issue tracker, sure. --Nemo 08:09, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
Same as Nemo. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:36, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
Given that currently there's no central place where to track this kind of technical requests, I'm in favor of Phabricator. I am not a JS/CSS expert, but for very simple things I might be able to give a hand. —Marco Aurelio 20:35, 10 July 2017 (UTC)