Talk:Tech/News/2020/44

Change tags

@Quiddity (WMF), Whatamidoing (WMF), and Verdy p: "The software would apply the "Reverted" tag to any null edits page actions such as page-protection changes" — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 13:37, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Done Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 16:40, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Reply tool Phabricator task

@Whatamidoing (WMF): You added phab:T266303 to the reply tool item, but that task contains almost zero information. If it’s to be seen by a broader audience, I think it should add value to the Tech News item. Some basic questions:

• The Tech News item says “most Wikipedias”, the Phabricator task says “‘Phase 3’ wikis”. Probably they mean the same, but it’s not the obvious. What does “‘Phase 3’ wikis” mean? All Wikipedias that are in phases 0–2? (What wikis are in phases 0–2?) Or some Wikipedias will still miss the reply tool? Will this contain any non-Wikipedia wikis?
• What does “soon” mean? I know that you don’t know the exact timing for sure until the post-deployment QA is over, but probably you have some idea. Next week? In the next few weeks? Some time in November? By the end of the year?

Thanks in advance for answering these in the task description! —Tacsipacsi (talk) 14:27, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, Tacsipacsi. Peter's supposed to put some content in that Phab task between now and Monday.  :-D

The current idea – subject to change, etc. – is that it will be all the rest of the Wikipedias, except for English, Russian, German, Gan, Inuktitut, Kazakh, Kurdish, Tajik, and Uzbek. (Also maybe Finnish, depending on the outcome of their current discussion.)

"Soon" probably means either next week or (more likely) the week after, but it's not settled. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:51, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

So no real need to change it for this weekly news, given the schedule is still not fixed, and "most" is appropriate (enough fuzzy as it should be) and does not necessarily means "Phase 3" when the deployment will be really scheduled and known. However speaking about it early means that people have a link to see the prototype and possibly discuss some other things or fixes needed before the final deployment. verdy_p (talk) 00:27, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF), Tacsipacsi, Verdy p, and PPelberg (WMF): it'll be monday in a few hours. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 20:16, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Certainly not this monday, the Phabricator task is still open and it depends on a few others tasks still not solved (including some discussions about the format of responses, raised by some Finnish users, which can break the expected format of responses in some talk pages or community pages (including pages that expect one-line responses such as votes: the problem lies in the expected format for signatures and the separation of talks, an issue which only affects regular pages in regular Mediwiki format, and not LiquidThread, not concerned by this change as they create separate subpages for each talk).

Some Finnish users wanted to have blank lines between responses, but this contradicts the most common policies and breaks the HTML semantics. Ther's a solution but this requires some ensapsulation of the full user signature (including custom signatures, with custom links and presentation, and the date) within an element with a CSS class, plus an option for one-line responses (the encapsulation of the last line cannot be done easily with the MediaWiki syntax with ":", which is not stylable by itself, so we would need to encapsulate it within a short inline element such as :<span class="signature">~~~~</span> or :<bdi class="signature">~~~~</bdi>). With the CSS class, we can set a bottom margin of this element, e.g. to "1.2em" to increase the default separation between multiple paragraphs inside the same response (which is only "0.6em" by default). And Finish users would be happy on their wiki, using this custumization which can be applied only on their wiki and only in namespaces where it is wanted (generally not for user talk pages), without applying it to every other wikis.

Another solution would mean adding support of styles/classes/attributes for ":"-indented blocks (i.e. "dt" elements generated by Mediawiki), but it could break existing pages if we used the syntax ":::(attributes)|(text content)" as there are many pages that could contain a regular pipe (|) inside their (text content), unless the Mediawiki parser ensures that only valid attributes (class or style) are included, the rest being left as part of the text content.

This is still being talked (in the Phabricator issue linked) and there's still no solution for short one-line responses (e.g. for votes) which would require a small change in the UI to allow signing at end of line and not on a separate line. verdy_p (talk) 01:48, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

I think that the Finnish editors are looking for a blank line inside the wikitext editors, and I'm not sure that your CSS idea would have any effect there. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:02, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

+1, @Whatamidoing (WMF) – @Tacsipacsi, thank you for asking the questions that are leading us to resolve the ambiguities other people may wonder about upon reading the announcement. Below are some updates since you and Sherry last talked about this.

What does “‘Phase 3’ wikis” mean?

I've made the definition Sherry shared above more explicit in task T266303's now-written description. Note: I have not written out each wiki by name considering the number of wikis we are talking about here. Instead, I've made it explicit "Phase 3" wikis qualify as all Wikipedias except those mentioned in this thread. If you think people would value an explicit list, please let me know and we'll make one.

What wikis are in phases 0–2

I've linked to the wikis belonging to the "Phase 0," "Phase 1," and "Phase 2" groups in task T266303's description. See footnotes i., ii. and iii..

Will this contain any non-Wikipedia wikis?

No. This release will not include any non-Wikipedia wikis. I'm thinking people will understand this line – We are defining "Phase 3" wikis as all Wikipedias EXCEPT the following... (copied from task T266303's description) – as communicating as much. If you think it could be written differently to more clearly communicate this release is limited to Wikipedias, please boldly edit the Phabricator's task description.

What does “soon” mean? I know that you don’t know the exact timing for sure...

On second read, I think that "soon" is a bit too ambiguous. I've boldly edited the draft to make the timing more explicit. See: https://w.wiki/ijJ. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 04:35, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

OK I just fixed the missing terminator for italics, so it would not break the translations before syncing your edit with the additional note about the fact it will be "beta" and "opt-in". On a few wikis it is already deployed and enabled by default (so there's already been tests and no one noticed the problem above, except some Finnish users with their specific requirements. The tool will probably change a bit later to accomodate their demand, but technically the best solution for them may be complicate if this requires changing the Mediawiki parser (which won't occur soon).

So the exact count of wikis where this will be done depends on the comments that this early announcement still allows, it gives the opportunity for more tests and see the possible defects (e.g. with some custom signature formats that people have in their preferences, or for specific local pages with more requirements like voting pages, when votes may still be commented, or other survey pages, and requests to admins, or some pages used to control bots with specific formats they can recognize).

It's true that the MediaWiki syntax for talks is an old legacy, it has used a syntax which was initially not designed for it (definition lists) without providing a real enacpsulation mechanism. It was not really made for threaded talks or blockquotes, or any form of indentation (semantically definition lists in HTLML do not necessarily imply an indented format... That's the reason why the LiquidThread plugin was developed, but it has its own caveats, many caveats). verdy_p (talk) 05:41, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

@PPelberg (WMF): Don't write "Note:" in Tech news. No reader will be aware that the item changed before distribution. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 12:19, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Understood, @Alexis Jazz! For what it's worth, I used "Note" here to communicate something like, "This part you're about to read is a meta-comment." PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 15:56, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

@PPelberg (WMF): There are no meta-comments in Tech news, the general aim is to be informative and write in a consistent and (mostly) neutral manner. (Tech news is easier on the NPOV than Wikipedia though) The fact that another announcement is planned is informative, so it may be in Tech news. Glad you understand. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 22:48, 26 October 2020 (UTC)