Talk:Abstract Wikipedia/Updates

I would subscribe...

As I love the format I would subscribe and option to get it by email and/or on user talk page would be awesome! Zblace (talk) 04:56, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

@Zblace: Thanks! Would you want the content, or just a ping that a new one is out? --DVrandecic (WMF) (talk) 17:09, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

@DVrandecic (WMF): My preference is just a ping here. Zblace (talk) 05:04, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

I just unsubscribed since I would like to read it where I get pinged and not have to do another click after I go to the place where I got the notification. ♥Ainali ^talk_{contributions} 18:03, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

@Ainali Thanks for the feedback. Do you still follow in other ways that enable this workflow for you (e.g. Wikifunctions' Project chat, Telegram/IRC, the mailing list, social media)? Or are you suggesting that we need another new distribution system? Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:15, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I follow in almost all other channels, so I won't be missing it. The reason why I wanted it on my talk page, and why I subscribe to other newsletters there, is that it also would expose the news to some other users on Swedish Wikipedia. ♥Ainali ^talk_{contributions} 08:23, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Yeah, that's a great reason to subscribe.

I'm not sure how to balance the conflicting desires of various people, some of whom just want a Notification-ping, some want a brief summary of the content and a link to the full details (the current setup), and some want the full contents directly.

The main reasons we've currently settled on the brief summary method, are that:

(A) [main] the length of each newsletter can vary a lot, and some readers are likely to be frustrated if they received a long issue (like Abstract Wikipedia/Updates/2023-10-04) on their usertalkpage or villagepump,

(B) we usually wait a day or more after the newsletter is published, before announcing it, in order to pause for any translations to come in, so that there's an increased chance that anyone who stumbles upon an announcement (e.g. at another user's talkpage) can click through and see the contents of the newsletter in their own language. (We also tried setting up a chunk-based translatable-announcement - most easily seen in this diff - but that's been challenging to get working smoothly, and to find the best generic "chunk descriptions" for each topic the newsletters can ever cover… hence it has fallen out of use).

In the long-term, we'll probably end up with something much closer to the Wikidata newsletter, but I'm not sure how to best adapt the current system to make the most people happy, whilst also minimizing the complexity (as much as feasible) for the publishing process. Suggestions appreciated! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

FeatureFeed

have you considered setting up mw:extension:FeaturedFeeds for this newsletter so there could be an rss feed, and perhaps syndicate to https://en.planet.wikimedia.org Bawolff (talk) 13:46, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Hiyo @Bawolff. I'm interested, but I'm still trying to understand FeaturedFeeds, after a related question about Tech News a few weeks ago!

If you have recommendations on how to specifically set it up, with minimal new process-steps for us when we (semi-irregularly) publish a new edition, that'd be great!

I.e. AFAICT, there are 2 difficulties: (1) the software expects some kind of consistency to timing (daily, weekly, etc), which we don't have (we usually publish once a week, but the day varies, and sometimes there are 0 or 2 editions a week); (2) It's unpredictable when the RSS will update ("once an hour"), which could mean that it will send the first draft-save the second after Denny clicks "Publish Changes", before it is error-checked, images added, translation markup, etc.

There's also the separate question of: Do people want the RSS to consist of the full page which can be quite long ( e.g.), or do they just want the brief reminders (e.g.)? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Overall, it'd be nice to not complicate it too much more... Thoughts? Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 01:26, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Followup note, phab:T331230 was Bawolff's great idea to possibly solve all this. But code-needed. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 02:20, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

(Edit conflict.)Personally I think the whole newsletter makes sense for the feed. Feed readers may or may not display the whole thing. A main use case would be to show it on https://en.planet.wikimedia.org . Generally how FeaturedFeeds works is there is a MediaWiki namespace page (e.g. MediaWiki:Ffeed-technews-page). It is parsed as if the current time is set to the beginning of the time period (Either week or day) for the first item, beginning of the previous time period for the second item, and so on. Generally it will roll over at the exact start of the time period utc, although in certain circumstances, it could be off by up to an hour (It will also be regenerated at least once per day). Making an edit to the mediawiki namespace page will flush some caches, but not varnish cache. Generally caches will last at most 24 hours. So I guess you could just point it at whatever the latest newsletter is, and as long as the item count is set to 1, it would mostly just work, although the feed might report that an old item is "new" again . Bawolff (talk) 02:32, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

I guess the timing issue comes down to: Given that we don't know what day an issue will be published (until the day itself), what content would we put in the -page source? I.e. Is there some parser function that would automatically catch every new issue, no matter what day of the week it goes out? Or would I need to edit that [new] page every week to manually update it? (that'd be fine, it's an easy edit (if/once I get assigned admin rights). I just want to precisely understand the workflows!) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 02:47, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Global templates (alternative concept)

I posted Global templates (alternative concept). It may be interesting for you. Dušan Kreheľ (talk) 11:40, 11 January 2024 (UTC)