Re: [Wikitech-l] Arbitrary Wikidata querying

2016-12-10 Thread Gergo Tisza 
On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 5:30 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:

> A more advanced form of this Wikidata querying would be dynamically
> generating a list of presidents of the United States by finding every
> Wikidata item where position held includes "President of the United
> States". Is this currently possible on-wiki or via wikitext?
>

Not directly, but there are bots which can emulate it, such as Listeria by
Magnus:
http://magnusmanske.de/wordpress/?p=301
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Arbitrary Wikidata querying

2016-12-10 Thread Yuri Astrakhan 
AFAIK, you can query data from Wikidata, but you cannot put it into a page,
unless its a graph. Graphs can do it -
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Graph/Demo/Sparql

As of last Thursday, you can also create a table on Commons Data namespace,
and make a simple Lua script on your favorite wiki to pull that data in and
render it. Since Wikidata is accessible from Lua, you could pull useful
information about each president. I am not sure about the efficiency
aspects here.

WeatherDemo  -- pulls
data from commons Data:Weather/New_York_City.tab
 and
formats it using enwiki module
.  I'm still working on
some fun demos for a big presentation.


On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 8:30 PM MZMcBride  wrote:

> Hi.
>
> If I wanted to make a page on the English Wikipedia using wikitext called
> "List of United States presidents" that dynamically embeds information
> from  and
>  and other similar items, is this
> currently possible? I consider this to be arbitrary Wikidata querying, but
> if that's not the correct term, please let me know what to call it.
>
> A more advanced form of this Wikidata querying would be dynamically
> generating a list of presidents of the United States by finding every
> Wikidata item where position held includes "President of the United
> States". Is this currently possible on-wiki or via wikitext?
>
> If either of these querying capabilities are possible, how do I do them?
> I don't understand how to query Wikidata in a useful way and I find this
> frustrating. Since 2012, we've been putting a lot of data into Wikidata,
> but I want to programmatically extract some of this data and use it in my
> Wikipedia editing. How do I do this?
>
> If these querying capabilities are not currently possible, when might they
> be? I understand that cache invalidation is difficult and that this will
> need a sensible editing user interface, but I don't care about all of
> that, I just want to be able to query data out of this large data store.
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
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[Wikitech-l] Arbitrary Wikidata querying

2016-12-10 Thread MZMcBride 
Hi.

If I wanted to make a page on the English Wikipedia using wikitext called
"List of United States presidents" that dynamically embeds information
from  and
 and other similar items, is this
currently possible? I consider this to be arbitrary Wikidata querying, but
if that's not the correct term, please let me know what to call it.

A more advanced form of this Wikidata querying would be dynamically
generating a list of presidents of the United States by finding every
Wikidata item where position held includes "President of the United
States". Is this currently possible on-wiki or via wikitext?

If either of these querying capabilities are possible, how do I do them?
I don't understand how to query Wikidata in a useful way and I find this
frustrating. Since 2012, we've been putting a lot of data into Wikidata,
but I want to programmatically extract some of this data and use it in my
Wikipedia editing. How do I do this?

If these querying capabilities are not currently possible, when might they
be? I understand that cache invalidation is difficult and that this will
need a sensible editing user interface, but I don't care about all of
that, I just want to be able to query data out of this large data store.

MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikitech-l] Deploying the Linter extension to Wikimedia wikis

2016-12-10 Thread MZMcBride 
Legoktm wrote:
>>Does the extension distinguish between errors and warnings? Are there
>> gradations of errors? For example, deprecated syntax v. invalid syntax?
>
>Not really. Each category has a name like "obsolete-tag" or
>"bogus-image-options", and that's about it.

There's now .

Subramanya Sastry wrote:
>On 10/24/2016 08:42 AM, MZMcBride wrote:
>>Does the extension distinguish between errors and warnings? Are there
>>gradations of errors? For example, deprecated syntax v. invalid syntax?
>
>Technically, there are no errors with wikitext ... but yes, Parsoid
>knows what some of these "errors" are and they are tagged with different
>category names which can be tweaked as necessary. And, other
>deprecations can be targeted and marked up.

I'm not sure what this technically means. There are no errors with
wikitext in what sense?

If I open a  tag and there's no closing tag, is that an error?
What about partial heading syntax (such as "== foo" at the start of a
line) or unclosed HTML comments

Re: [Wikitech-l] Discussion Platform

2016-12-10 Thread Tim Landscheidt 
Cyken Zeraux  wrote:

> Public logging isn't very accessible. When you join in a chat after being
> disconnected (like IRC does all the time), you'd like to look through the
> previous discussions easily.

> […]

For ERC, I have the sniplet:

| (defun erc-cmd-TODAYSLOG nil
|   "Show today's log for current channel in a new buffer."
|   (let*
|   ((ch (erc-default-target))
|(todays-date (format-time-string "%Y%m%d"))
|(url (concat "http://bots.wmflabs.org/~wm-bot/logs/; 
(url-hexify-string ch) "/" todays-date ".txt"))
|(logbuffername (concat "*Today's log for " ch "*")))
| (url-retrieve url
|   (lambda (status logbuffername)
| (let
| ((url-buffer (current-buffer)))
|   (switch-to-buffer logbuffername)
|   (goto-char (point-min))
|   (url-insert url-buffer)
|   (delete-region (point) (point-max))
|   (goto-char (point-min))
|   (insert (erc-controls-interpret (buffer-string)))
|   (delete-region (point) (point-max))
|   (kill-buffer url-buffer)))
|   (list logbuffername

which makes "/todayslog" pop up a buffer with the log for
the current channel and day (there is also
"/yesterdayslog").

However, I consider IRC communications to be transient, much
like conversations in an office.  When one comes back from a
break or holiday, one does not listen to recordings of all
the chit-chat that happened since leaving.  If something im-
portant has been discussed, then it is the duty of those
having discussed it to inform those who need to know in a
condensed and comprehensive manner.  If it was not impor-
tant, well, then it was not important.

Tim


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Re: [Wikitech-l] Discussion Platform

2016-12-10 Thread John 
Depends on how you define easy.
http://bots.wmflabs.org/~wm-bot/logs/%23mediawiki/ is a recording of
everything in #mediawiki by date, oldest at the top, newest at the bottom.
I would consider that fairly easy.

On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 5:39 PM, Cyken Zeraux  wrote:

> Public logging isn't very accessible. When you join in a chat after being
> disconnected (like IRC does all the time), you'd like to look through the
> previous discussions easily.
>
> On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 4:30 PM, John  wrote:
>
> > An issue was raised about only seeing IRC messages while logged in,
> however
> > the WMF does publicly log several of their channels, so that is a moot
> > point
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Discussion Platform

2016-12-10 Thread Cyken Zeraux 
Public logging isn't very accessible. When you join in a chat after being
disconnected (like IRC does all the time), you'd like to look through the
previous discussions easily.

On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 4:30 PM, John  wrote:

> An issue was raised about only seeing IRC messages while logged in, however
> the WMF does publicly log several of their channels, so that is a moot
> point
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Discussion Platform

2016-12-10 Thread John 
An issue was raised about only seeing IRC messages while logged in, however
the WMF does publicly log several of their channels, so that is a moot point
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Discussion Platform

2016-12-10 Thread Cyken Zeraux 
A lot of places are using Discord now, too. It has an offline, mobile, and
web client that are more media based, so there's multiple channels and
support for direct files/images uploads. I think it would make it a lot
easier to actually have a chat platform you can interact with other people
in. The problem being that Roles (how permissions works in discord) would
show different users under that role under the active users list, so it
would be a lot easier to mention various people important to mediawiki.
Some developers may not like that, but from a community interaction
standpoint, it'd be pretty cool.

On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 6:50 AM, bawolff  wrote:

> On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 7:44 AM, MAYANK JINDAL 
> wrote:
> > Hi,
> > The problem is in IRC that it doesn't allow to see previous messages.
> > I mean it only shows messages as long as you are logged in.
> >
>
> This isn't really a new problem. Some people use bouncers [1] to solve
> this. Other people just don't care about messages when they are not
> online (If someone really wants to talk to you asynchronously they can
> wait until you are back online, or leave a message on your talk page,
> or send you an email, or use MEMOSERV, etc). On most Wikimedia tech
> channels you can also find old messages at
> http://bots.wmflabs.org/~wm-bot/logs/
>
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZNC
>
> --
> Brian
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Changes in colors of user interface

2016-12-10 Thread Dan Garry 
On 10 December 2016 at 01:25, Pine W  wrote:

> Surprise UI changes could, for example, result in thousands of dollars'
> worth of instructional videos becoming instantly out of sync with the
> real-world user experience.


Given the incredibly minor nature of this change (as you can see from Amir's
thread on the village pump
),
your example is absurd. Small changes such as these would not even come
close to invalidating instructional videos. If the changes were larger,
then I am sure there would've been significantly more advance notice.
Amir's actions seem perfectly appropriate to me in this case; if anything,
I would say an announcement wasn't even required and that he went above and
beyond in doing so. Let's not punish him for that.

Thanks,
Dan

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Discussion Platform

2016-12-10 Thread bawolff 
On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 7:44 AM, MAYANK JINDAL  wrote:
> Hi,
> The problem is in IRC that it doesn't allow to see previous messages.
> I mean it only shows messages as long as you are logged in.
>

This isn't really a new problem. Some people use bouncers [1] to solve
this. Other people just don't care about messages when they are not
online (If someone really wants to talk to you asynchronously they can
wait until you are back online, or leave a message on your talk page,
or send you an email, or use MEMOSERV, etc). On most Wikimedia tech
channels you can also find old messages at
http://bots.wmflabs.org/~wm-bot/logs/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZNC

--
Brian

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Discussion Platform

2016-12-10 Thread MAYANK JINDAL 
Hi,
The problem is in IRC that it doesn't allow to see previous messages.
I mean it only shows messages as long as you are logged in.




On Tue, Dec 6, 2016 at 6:20 PM, MAYANK JINDAL 
wrote:

> Hi,
> We are using IRC for discussion purpose. How will it be if we change our
> discussion platform?
> Many organizations have switched to gitter that have very user-friendly UI
> and very easy to use.
> Please give a view on my proposal.
>
>
> --
> Kind Regards,
> Mayank Jindal,
> Third year undergraduate student,
> Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
> Mobile : +91- 7076670299 <+91%2070766%2070299> || 8875432718
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
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Mayank Jindal,
Third year undergraduate student,
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
Mobile : +91- 7076670299 || 8875432718
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Introduction for Gsoc 2017

2016-12-10 Thread bawolff 
>>
>
> In regards to 3:
>> 3.  What are the other things that happen apart from GSoC(In case if I wish
>> to contribute even after Gsoc. How is the  culture of this
>> community?
>
> You are welcome to contribute at any time. You do not need to be part
> of a program to do so. The other major outreach programs are GCI
> (happening right now) which is open to high school students, and
> Outreachy, which is similar to GSOC, but only open to Women.
>
> As far as "culture" goes, that's a rather broad question. Can you be
> more specific.
>
> In regards to 4,
>> 4. I am not facing a lot of difficulties in IRC. Sometimes I don't get the
>> reply, sometimes my nickname is unavailable if I get offline for some time
>> and it is not very friendly. Could somebody help me in IRC. I am using mac.
>> My nickname is *mayank_dev*
>
> Whether or not somebody replies to you can depend on a lot of factors,
> such as how specific your question is, if anyone knowledgeable is
> around (This can very significantly with timezone), etc. If your
> nickname is unavailable, I would suggest just chosing a different one.
> Possibly it is unavailable because you are still logged in somewhere
> (most likely), or maybe someone else also uses that nickname. If you
> really want to always have the same nickname always, see the freenode
> ChanServ docs about how to register a nickname.
>
> --
> Brian

Its been pointed out to me that my description of Outreachy was
incorrect. It is open to anyone who is in a group that is
"underrepresented", not just Women. Additionally, unlike GSOC, you do
not need to be a student to participate. For more information on this
program see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Outreachy

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Introduction for Gsoc 2017

2016-12-10 Thread bawolff 
On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 6:50 AM, MAYANK JINDAL  wrote:
> Hi ,
> Hope you are doing well.
> I want to discuss my preparation for Gsoc-2017 in Wikimedia. I am very new
> to this organization and I am facing a lot of difficulties in getting
> Wikimedia workflow.
> 1. I have done open source contributions in past and what I have seen is -
> They have their repositories on GitHub and issues related to that repo. For
> preparing to contribute, we just had to fork their repo and send a pull
> request after resolving the issue. But in Wikipedia, there is a lot of
> hassle(phabricator, gerrit and all).
> 2. For the preparation of GSoC, we need to choose an idea from the idea
> page. Can you please help me in choosing the project?
>I am doing android app developement since 3 years. So I think android
> related tasks would be easy for me to get started.
>Could Someone help me for getting started in android?
> 3.  What are the other things that happen apart from GSoC(In case if I wish
> to contribute even after Gsoc. How is the  culture of this
> community?
> 4. I am not facing a lot of difficulties in IRC. Sometimes I don't get the
> reply, sometimes my nickname is unavailable if I get offline for some time
> and it is not very friendly. Could somebody help me in IRC. I am using mac.
> My nickname is *mayank_dev*
>
> I apologize for my long email. But I am facing a lot of difficulties in
> the community.
>
> Thanks.
>

In regards to 3:
> 3.  What are the other things that happen apart from GSoC(In case if I wish
> to contribute even after Gsoc. How is the  culture of this
> community?

You are welcome to contribute at any time. You do not need to be part
of a program to do so. The other major outreach programs are GCI
(happening right now) which is open to high school students, and
Outreachy, which is similar to GSOC, but only open to Women.

As far as "culture" goes, that's a rather broad question. Can you be
more specific.

In regards to 4,
> 4. I am not facing a lot of difficulties in IRC. Sometimes I don't get the
> reply, sometimes my nickname is unavailable if I get offline for some time
> and it is not very friendly. Could somebody help me in IRC. I am using mac.
> My nickname is *mayank_dev*

Whether or not somebody replies to you can depend on a lot of factors,
such as how specific your question is, if anyone knowledgeable is
around (This can very significantly with timezone), etc. If your
nickname is unavailable, I would suggest just chosing a different one.
Possibly it is unavailable because you are still logged in somewhere
(most likely), or maybe someone else also uses that nickname. If you
really want to always have the same nickname always, see the freenode
ChanServ docs about how to register a nickname.

--
Brian

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Changes in colors of user interface

2016-12-10 Thread Andre Klapper 
On Sat, 2016-12-10 at 12:57 +0100, Andre Klapper wrote:
> > Is there any reason security has been changed on this file?
> 
> I don't understand or see where "security" (?) was changed.

Mea culpa. I should have read all the other messages in this noisy
thread first. :-/

Indeed, "Phabricator keeps files private as long as they are
not associated to any task."

andre
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http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Changes in colors of user interface

2016-12-10 Thread Andre Klapper 
On Sat, 2016-12-10 at 19:49 +1000, K. Peachey wrote:
> On 10 December 2016 at 19:07, Gergo Tisza wrote:
> > 
> > For reference, these are the changes being discussed:
> > https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/F5022813
> 
> Is there any reason this is being discussed on a File compared to a task?

Did you click the link? There is no discussion on a (Phab) File instead
of a task. Tgr only documented what's being "discussed" in this thread.
Tgr could have also posted the screenshot on some random other site.

> Is there any reason security has been changed on this file?

I don't understand or see where "security" (?) was changed. Or how
that's even relevant to this thread.

andre
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Introduction for Gsoc 2017

2016-12-10 Thread MAYANK JINDAL 
Hi ,
Hope you are doing well.
I want to discuss my preparation for Gsoc-2017 in Wikimedia. I am very new
to this organization and I am facing a lot of difficulties in getting
Wikimedia workflow.
1. I have done open source contributions in past and what I have seen is -
They have their repositories on GitHub and issues related to that repo. For
preparing to contribute, we just had to fork their repo and send a pull
request after resolving the issue. But in Wikipedia, there is a lot of
hassle(phabricator, gerrit and all).
2. For the preparation of GSoC, we need to choose an idea from the idea
page. Can you please help me in choosing the project?
   I am doing android app developement since 3 years. So I think android
related tasks would be easy for me to get started.
   Could Someone help me for getting started in android?
3.  What are the other things that happen apart from GSoC(In case if I wish
to contribute even after Gsoc. How is the  culture of this
community?
4. I am not facing a lot of difficulties in IRC. Sometimes I don't get the
reply, sometimes my nickname is unavailable if I get offline for some time
and it is not very friendly. Could somebody help me in IRC. I am using mac.
My nickname is *mayank_dev*

I apologize for my long email. But I am facing a lot of difficulties in
the community.

Thanks.




On Thu, Sep 8, 2016 at 7:36 PM, Andre Klapper 
wrote:

> On Wed, 2016-08-24 at 22:39 +0530, MAYANK JINDAL wrote:
> >  My name is Mayank Jindal. I am third year undergraduate student
> > currently studying at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. I
> > want to take part in Gsoc-2017 from Wikimedia.
> > I have knowledge of C, C++, JAVA, Python, Android app development and
> > Web development and beginner in *Machine Learning, Artificial
> > Intelligence.*
> > I am very enthusiastic to learn new skills which would be required.
>
> Thanks for your early interest.
> Glad to hear you'd like to get involved!
>
> Regarding machine learning,
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Objective_Revision_Evaluation_Service
> might be interesting?
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Revision_scoring_as_a_service
> lists mailing list and IRC channel contact information.
>
> We don't have any information about GSoC 2017 yet but you could get an
> impression by looking at the page for GSoC 2016 at
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2016
> and https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Outreach_programs for general info
> on workflows and expectations for GSoC, Outreachy and other programs.
>
> About technical contributions in general, have you taken a look at
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker
> already? It explains how to set up your testing environment, how to
> find good "easy" tasks to start with, how to check out code via Git,
> how to submit patches via Gerrit, recommendations for communication,
> and best places where to ask any questions you might have.
>
> Hope that helps for the start? If not, tell us!
>
> Looking forward to your contributions! :)
>
> andre
> --
> Andre Klapper | Wikimedia Bugwrangler
> http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/
>



-- 
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Mayank Jindal,
Third year undergraduate student,
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
Mobile : +91- 7076670299 || 8875432718
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Changes in colors of user interface

2016-12-10 Thread Strainu 
2016-12-10 12:48 GMT+02:00 Amir Ladsgroup :
> I just want you to stop there
>
> On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 2:07 PM Strainu  wrote:
>
>> That's one way to put it. I would rather say that we reacted to yet
>> another slip-up in communication from the Foundation.  Why is it so
>> hard for you guys to push the information to wikis?
>>
>> Why is this related to WMF?

For 3 reasons:
1. While MW is open source, what gets deployed on the WMF servers is
the legal and moral responsability of the Foundation.
2. The WMF has an 8-person "Community Liaisons" team that is dedicated
to "inform the communities during the whole process of development of
said software, and facilitate its adoption." [1] For me, that means
that they should be the ones that make sure that changes that impact
million of pages don't get left out, even if the developer forgets to
notify anyone.
3. The average wikipedian does not seem to make the difference between
volunteer developers and employees of the WMF (this is a personal
opinion and I might be wrong).

> Do you really want to compare this to something like
> MediaViewer rollout?

MediaViewer, VisualEditor and many others, yes. But not in the sense
that this was as bad as those, rather that the WMF missed another good
opportunity to establish trust and prepare for the next big feature.

Small, almost invisible changes are the best time to practice and
experiment with notifications and to gauge the community response: how
many communities actually made changes to Common.css? How many needed
to make changes? For the ones that did not make the changes, was it
because they did not have the knowledge or because they missed the
memo? Etc, etc, etc... This way, we (the "tech abassadors"), you
(developers) and them (community liaisons) can all be better prepared
for the next big deployement.

Strainu

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Liaisons

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Changes in colors of user interface

2016-12-10 Thread Amir Ladsgroup 
I just want you to stop there

On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 2:07 PM Strainu  wrote:

> That's one way to put it. I would rather say that we reacted to yet
> another slip-up in communication from the Foundation.  Why is it so
> hard for you guys to push the information to wikis?
>
> Why is this related to WMF? A volunteer developer changed a color and it
got confirmed by another (probably) volunteer. If it wasn't in the Tech
news. It was my fault but what is WMF role and what does "another slip-up"
here means? Do you really want to compare this to something like
MediaViewer rollout?

Best
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Changes in colors of user interface

2016-12-10 Thread Strainu 
2016-12-10 11:07 GMT+02:00 Gergo Tisza :
> For reference, these are the changes being discussed:
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/F5022813
>
>
> 1) Significantly larger changes than this are happening all the time (the
> OOUI-ification of old forms, for example), without anyone noticing,

Agreed. However, these changes do not apply to millions of articles.
It's a question of scale and visibility.

> it's pretty clear people are reacting to the announcement here and not the
> actual change.

That's one way to put it. I would rather say that we reacted to yet
another slip-up in communication from the Foundation.  Why is it so
hard for you guys to push the information to wikis?


>
> There is nothing wrong with not paying attention to something well outside
> your work area, and people should not be excluded from a discussion topic
> just because they are new (or casual) to it, but please consider how it
> creates an unhealthy community dynamic when people are criticized for
> announcing changes which would otherwise go unnoticed.

I don't think an RFC was needed, but:
1. an announcement on this list with a phabricator number would have been nice
2. an announcement *on wiki, before the deployment* was mandatory.

The rest of your mail does not seem related to this particular change,
so I'll respond separately.


2016-12-10 1:43 GMT+02:00 Andre Klapper :
> Regarding a heads-up, would it have helped to have these changes listed
> in https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2016/49 ?

Yes,  with a follow-up in /50. Do note that the text in /50 is
insufficient, you
might want to add something like what Amir said: "in order to keep
consistency between all elements of a wiki page, change such usages in your
Mediawiki:Common.css (for example for infoboxes)." That's because not all
TechNews readers can deduce action items by themselves.

HTH,
Strainu

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Changes in colors of user interface

2016-12-10 Thread Gergo Tisza 
On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 1:17 AM, Amir Ladsgroup  wrote:

> It returns permission error to me
>

Uh, fixed. Looks like Phabricator keeps files private as long as they are
not associated to any task.
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Changes in colors of user interface

2016-12-10 Thread K. Peachey 
On 10 December 2016 at 19:07, Gergo Tisza  wrote:
> For reference, these are the changes being discussed:
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/F5022813

Is there any reason this is being discussed on a File compared to a task?
Is there any reason security has been changed on this file? (It's not
a security or a internal staff matter etc)

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Changes in colors of user interface

2016-12-10 Thread Amir Ladsgroup 
On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 12:37 PM Gergo Tisza  wrote:

> ​For reference, these are the changes being discussed:
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/F5022813
>
> It returns permission error to me


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Re: [Wikitech-l] Changes in colors of user interface

2016-12-10 Thread Gergo Tisza 
​For reference, these are the changes being discussed:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/F5022813


1) Significantly larger changes than this are happening all the time (the
OOUI-ification of old forms, for example), without anyone noticing, so it's
pretty clear people are reacting to the announcement here and not the
actual change.

There is nothing wrong with not paying attention to something well outside
your work area, and people should not be excluded from a discussion topic
just because they are new (or casual) to it, but please consider how it
creates an unhealthy community dynamic when people are criticized for
announcing changes which would otherwise go unnoticed. There are already
too many developers who avoid this list because they find it too stressful
or time-consuming. One of the costs of transparency and open coordination
is that discussions can get easily overwhelmed by a bunch of random people
with strong principles but relatively little idea of what's going on
(that's why wikis are so strict about canvassing, for example); it's a good
mental habit to ask "would I have gotten involved in this discussion
eventually even if it wasn't announced in a mailing list?", and if the
answer is no, consider just moving on.


2) There was once a project to create a free encyclopedia, where every
change had to be discussed and agreed on with half a dozen groups of
stakeholders. It was called Nupedia; it produced a hundred articles in
three years, while its offshoot Wikipedia did well over a hundred thousand.

It probably does not take a thousand times longer to discuss an article
with various gatekeepers than it takes to write it. But it's sufficiently
demotivating that people won't even try; instead they find a project where
their contributions are welcome and not buried in red tape. Software
development is not magically exempt from the same coordination costs that
affect article writing. Please be mindful of unintentionally creating an
unwelcoming environment.

It's not fundamentally different with staff members, either. They have more
time, but that time is bought with donor money, which needs to be spent
responsibly. Designers spending their time videoconferencing with every
interested user on whether they plan to change the shade of the new message
bar to a slightly different yellow some time in the next two years is
probably not what most donors have in mind when they support the movement.


3) When you are asking people to do more early planning and announcement
and discussion, you are asking them to do significantly more work. It's not
a free lunch; they need to cancel some tasks they would otherwise have been
able to do, and spend time writing emails and getting translations and
setting up discussions instead. More discussion means less features.
Sometimes that's a reasonable request; sometimes not. Please consider which
one it is, before asking.

This time it falls squarely into "unreasonable", I think. Exactly what
would an early announcement achieve? Delay producing the videos by half a
year just to make sure the brightness of the ToC border is not 5% off? Or
is "discussion" an euphemism for "veto power" and we should keep our
website less accessible to readers with visual impairments so that the
tutorial video colors are accurate?

Documentation decays; it's a sad fact of life. Developers are acutely aware
of that, since they need to produce and maintain a lot of it. No one likes
it, but there is no reasonable way to prevent it. Halting software
development so that documentation can stay up to date is certainly not one.


4) On a more constructive note, there *is* a reasonable way to reduce
template maintenance burden: make LESS available to template editors so
that variables such as "ToC border color" can be shared between MediaWiki
and userland code. I filed T152832 about that.
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