Re: [Wikimedia-l] Endless drama around solutions to non-problems as misdirection
Hoi, When you talk about respect, it can mean so many things and have different implications. When people argue like the community this and that I do not respect their arguments. The community is often flat wrong and there is no mileage, quite the contrary to respecting the gravitas of someone using it to strengthen an argument. They either agree with a statement and make it their own or the point is not made; a point that can be argued with that person. When there is a need for change, a demonstrable need preferably a need backed by numbers like the need for a discussion system that works on mobiles that deny these numbers, the need for change. I do not respect the arguments by people bemoaning the fact that they will lose their beloved talk pages. The argument is made and, the argument is backed by numbers that increasingly our readers and editors use mobiles and tablets. Ignoring this is irresponsible. This is not a zero sum game. That is not to say that I do not respect the people when they are not making such an argument. I pick my battles, I make the points I make personal and I am honest about them. I make an effort to continuously stick to the point. When people are unhappy about me strongly attacking what is so precious to them, they forget that it is not about them. It is about what prevents us to support all our users. In all this I do not think that the WMF is shitting gold. I have my favourite example of a UI issue that is not worthy of consideration because technically it works. [1] Thanks, GerardM [1] http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.nl/2014/07/mediawiki-media-viewer.html On 8 September 2014 06:02, Wil Sinclair w...@wllm.com wrote: The way I see it, there is something each and every one of us can do to help with attrition right now with no interference from or dependencies on anyone else. We can treat each other with the respect that we all deserve. Before hitting send or Save Page, we can ask ourselves if we've said what we wanted to say in the least confrontational manner possible. Have we kept in mind that we're addressing real people and not 2 dimensional usernames? Have we considered how our points may be taken from a different perspective than our own? I commit to practicing respect to the best of my ability in all of my Wikimedia communications, right here and right now, for this entire list to see. Gerard, will you join me in this commitment? Will anyone else join me in this commitment? ,Wil On Sat, Sep 6, 2014 at 7:53 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, The lack of usability that is inherent in the current tools is enough to drive me away from editing Wikipedia. At to this the atmosphere that is all too often just not interested in anything but vested interests and you have a cocktail that is powerful enough to have me respond to your challenge. Our environment is long overdue on an update and, this is really hard to do. I welcome the much anticipated editor and media viewer. Sure, it is not the finished product yet but it has way more finesse then what we had before. What distracts me most is the constant bickering that suggests that we are not moving forward or that fails to appreciate the extend that we need change in order to remain relevant with our content. We find that new editors are mainly from a mobile environment (i include tablets here) and they are NOT attached to the old ways some aim to have us stick to at all costs. We need to change and our aim should be to remain relevant for the next decennia. Thanks, GerardM On 6 September 2014 10:54, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Where does the idea that user interface changes to the system which has already produced the most monumental reference work in the history of humanity are going to help with its only actual problem, that people aren't sufficiently inclined to stick around and maintain it? If there was any evidence that VE or Media Viewer or Flow will make the projects more attractive to volunteers, I'm sure we would have heard it by now. But there isn't. Nor is there any evidence that any of the several Editor Engagement projects have made a dent in volunteer attrition rates, despite their success in encouraging tiny subsets of very new editors to contribute a few minutes more work. The present set of dramatic distractions from attention to the vanishing volunteer corps only highlights that Foundation leadership has no ability to focus on the only strategic goal they haven't achieved: retaining volunteers. Because it is so much easier to pretend that readers need WYSIWYG or a lightbox or can't figure out how to indent replies; since readership numbers aren't an actual problem (when mobile users are added to desktop pageviews) this guarantees the false appearance of success in the eyes of everyone who doesn't see through the transparent cop-out. Where is
Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow
On 8 September 2014 05:46, John Mark Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: If it is good software, the projects will *ask* for it to be deployed, like they did with LiquidThreads, and users will want to use it on their user talk even if the wider community isnt ready to migrate. This is the key point. Those of us who presently use talk pages to get the work done. What is going to make us *love* Flow, for all its imperfections, and demand to have it for ourselves? What's Flow's killer feature for us? (I asked this before.) - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow
A problem that I would like Flow to solve is the high amount of labor needed to read over a dozen pages across four wikis in order for the reader to access most of the MediaViewer discussions. Pine On Sep 8, 2014 12:22 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 8 September 2014 05:46, John Mark Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: If it is good software, the projects will *ask* for it to be deployed, like they did with LiquidThreads, and users will want to use it on their user talk even if the wider community isnt ready to migrate. This is the key point. Those of us who presently use talk pages to get the work done. What is going to make us *love* Flow, for all its imperfections, and demand to have it for ourselves? What's Flow's killer feature for us? (I asked this before.) - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow
On 8 September 2014 05:54, Marc A. Pelletier m...@uberbox.org wrote: And yet, after over a decade of open-ended design through social convention, the end result is... our current talk pages. Perhaps another decade or two will be needed before that document-centric architecture gives us a half-decent discussion system? Marc, I'm not arguing against having a discussion system. In fact I think having threaded comments happen by default is a great idea that will make the conversation interface far more usable, both on desktop and mobile (I agree with Gerard that the mobile editing experience is dreadful). The problem I see is with having that discussion system as the 'only' option, making refactoring of conversations limited and difficult, and removing the open-ended and flexible platform we currently rely upon, when several important workflows and goals such as accountability and building new workflows for projects are based on the well understood capabilities of a wiki system. The system I envision as a suitable, modern replacement would be based on proven enterprise collaboration platforms like Microsoft OneNote or Atlassian Confluence, which include discussion systems as modules integrated within the platform. I simply can't see the benefit of losing the collaboration capabilities of wiki software in favor of enforced structured discussion, when we can have both. Now if Erik vision for the deeper than I give him credit for, and he is able to build a OneNote-like application on top of the suggested architecture for Flow, I will eat my words with an apology :-) However, that capability of the system should be better explained so that we can understand it and discuss its ramifications. On 7 September 2014 23:53, Diego Moya dialm...@gmail.com wrote: On 09/06/2014 17:06 PM, Marc A. Pelletier wrote: On 09/06/2014 12:34 PM, Isarra Yos wrote: if the designers do not even understand the basic principles behind a wiki, how can what is developed possibly suit our needs? You're starting from the presumption that, for some unexplained reason, collaborative discussion benefits from being a wiki (as opposed to, you know, the actual content). Wikipedia has been built using that platform. I'd say that's a very good reason to trust that the model is at least capable. :-) Very many people, myself included, believe that a wiki page is an *atrocious* medium for discussion. Sure, and I agree there are many way to improve how users are engaged into discussion and to keep it manageable. But what is missing from this conversation is the point that Wikipedia talk space is not *merely* a medium for discussion: there are other vital roles that may be hindered by a radical focus on conversation: tl;dr version: there are times and places that Wikipedia discussion system needs to be a Microsoft OneNote, and Flow is building us a Twitter (minus the 140 characters limit). - The talk space has a strong expectation that it serves as an archive of all decisions taken in building the articles, i.e. to show how the sausages are made. The disembodied nature of Flow topics, which may be shown out of order and distributed to many boards, makes it hard to recover a sequential view of the conversations in order as they happened. - Same thing for keeping user's behavior in check - policy enforcement often requires that the reviewers can see exactly what the users saw when they performed some particular disruptive action, to assess whether it was made in good faith from incomplete information or a misunderstanding. - Comment-based discussion is not the only way editors collaborate; nor discussions are limited to users expressing their particular views at ordered, pre-defined processes. Some fellow users have already pointed out how the wiki page works as a shared whiteboard where semi-structured or free-form content can be worked upon by several editors, and improved iteratively in an opportunistic way. Sometimes, that re-shaping of text is made onto the form of the conversation itself, by re-factoring, splitting, merging and re-classifying comments from many editors. This would be hard or impossible to do if the layout of the discussion is fixed in hardware and comments belong to the poster. - Wikiprojects develop over time new procedures that better suit the workflow of their members to achieve their goals. Their project pages are free-form collages of all the relevant information they require to do their work, plus discussion processes that may involve just its members or any other external participant. As projects cover all the aspects of human knowledge, it would be difficult to provide a one-size-fits-all interface that may cover all their needs - the flexibility to compose new layouts and compilations of content is core to achieve their goals. - There's a sense now that the community owns the content of all pages including talk, and can manage it to their liking. That
Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow
On 8 September 2014 11:44, Diego Moya dialm...@gmail.com wrote: Now if Erik vision for the deeper than I give him credit for, ... that would be: Now if Erik vision for the Flow platform is deeper than I give him credit for... ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
[Wikimedia-l] Language Engineering IRC Office Hour on September 10, 2014 (Wednesday) at 1700 UTC
[x-posted] Hello, The next monthly IRC office hour of the Wikimedia Language Engineering team will be on Wednesday, September 10, 2014 at 1700 UTC on #wikimedia-office. We will be taking questions and discussing about our ongoing work, particularly around the Content Translation project[1], and upcoming plans. Please see below for event details and local time. See you there. Thanks Runa [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Content_translation Monthly IRC Office Hour: === # Date: September 10, 2014 (Wednesday) # Time: 1700 UTC/1000PDT (Check local time: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20140910T1700) # IRC channel: #wikimedia-office # Agenda: 1. Content Translation project updates and plans 2. Q A (Questions can be sent to me ahead of the event) -- Language Engineering - Outreach and QA Coordinator Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow
Hoi, Pine, I would like so many things.. I expect that SUL and more goodliness from this will be a requirement. For me there is urgency in having a discussion system that works for mobiles and templates... Once we have that we either have other priorities or it is a really good idea to be implemented while developers know Flow intimately well.. Thanks, GerardM On 8 September 2014 09:46, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: A problem that I would like Flow to solve is the high amount of labor needed to read over a dozen pages across four wikis in order for the reader to access most of the MediaViewer discussions. Pine On Sep 8, 2014 12:22 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 8 September 2014 05:46, John Mark Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: If it is good software, the projects will *ask* for it to be deployed, like they did with LiquidThreads, and users will want to use it on their user talk even if the wider community isnt ready to migrate. This is the key point. Those of us who presently use talk pages to get the work done. What is going to make us *love* Flow, for all its imperfections, and demand to have it for ourselves? What's Flow's killer feature for us? (I asked this before.) - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow
On 09/08/2014 12:46 AM, John Mark Vandenberg wrote: While it may not be everybody's dream system, talk pages are quite usable, as demonstrated by a lot of people using them every single day. That's... not a demonstration of usability. Like many people, I found myself using some random blunt object not designed for purpose to hammer in a nail at least once; that speaks to the importance of getting the nail in, not the lack of need for a proper hammer. :-) Let's be honest here; I'm /highly/ computer-literate, and I've been using Mediawiki for some 11 years and I *still* find talk pages an annoyance at the best of times and they can be downright painful if there's anything like a large discussion in progress you are attempting to track/participate in. Between edit conflicts, increasingly confusing indentation, signatures that may or may not make separation between commenters clear... It's no surprise that newbies are scared away. Editing articles is already hard enough, anything that provides an extra barrier to participation hurts - especially when that barrier lies in the way of getting /help/. Talk pages, as a mechanism, are lacking every affordance that users expect of a communication medium. And no, that X thousand people have gotten used to their failings does not make them any better for the Y billion people that have not. But don't take my word for it! Find random newbies, and ask them to try the simple task of commenting on a discussion in progress without giving them guidance. They they flail around, or simply give up, remember that it's not /them/ who have failed -- I'm pretty sure they've participated in plenty of other online discussions before. -- Marc ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow
That's not a reasonable task, Marc. Newbies have an equally hard time editing content, too, and even when they succeed, on many projects they're very likely to be reverted and deluged with templated messages in response to a good faith attempt. There is no evidentiary basis to demonstrate that new users have a harder time participating in discussion than they do in content contribution. Independent studies seem to identify the nature of the discussions as being significantly more problematic than the technical means of participating. Nobody is saying that it is easy for newbies to participate on many of the larger Wikimedia projects. There are lots of ways that we can make it easier. The most obvious one is automatic signing of comments, and it is something that we have technically been able to impose for years; sinebot didn't come into existence in a vacuum. Risker/Anne On 8 September 2014 09:58, Marc A. Pelletier m...@uberbox.org wrote: On 09/08/2014 12:46 AM, John Mark Vandenberg wrote: While it may not be everybody's dream system, talk pages are quite usable, as demonstrated by a lot of people using them every single day. That's... not a demonstration of usability. Like many people, I found myself using some random blunt object not designed for purpose to hammer in a nail at least once; that speaks to the importance of getting the nail in, not the lack of need for a proper hammer. :-) Let's be honest here; I'm /highly/ computer-literate, and I've been using Mediawiki for some 11 years and I *still* find talk pages an annoyance at the best of times and they can be downright painful if there's anything like a large discussion in progress you are attempting to track/participate in. Between edit conflicts, increasingly confusing indentation, signatures that may or may not make separation between commenters clear... It's no surprise that newbies are scared away. Editing articles is already hard enough, anything that provides an extra barrier to participation hurts - especially when that barrier lies in the way of getting /help/. Talk pages, as a mechanism, are lacking every affordance that users expect of a communication medium. And no, that X thousand people have gotten used to their failings does not make them any better for the Y billion people that have not. But don't take my word for it! Find random newbies, and ask them to try the simple task of commenting on a discussion in progress without giving them guidance. They they flail around, or simply give up, remember that it's not /them/ who have failed -- I'm pretty sure they've participated in plenty of other online discussions before. -- Marc ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/guidelineswikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow
On 09/08/2014 10:18 AM, Risker wrote: The most obvious one is automatic signing of comments, and it is something that we have technically been able to impose for years; sinebot didn't come into existence in a vacuum. I suppose that's a philosophical divergence between us then - that sinebot even needs to exist to me is demonstration that the system is broken. You say that discussion isn't all that much harder than editing content. Even if I agreed with that (and I do not, edit conflicts in articles are much rarer than on talk pages - and usually easier to sort out), that's not a *good* thing! Participating in discussion should be much, *much* easier than editing articles: encouraging newbies to seek help and participate in the community *before* diving in anything but trivial article edits would be an immensely powerful retention tool! (Which isn't to say that editing articles doesn't *also* need a lot of help - but that's a different project). -- Marc ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow
Well, I think that the article editing project (i.e., VE) has a huge potential for also resolving a lot of discussion space issues. I don't see tacking on yet another UI as being a positive for new editor introduction or retention, and cannot think of another significant site that has two such wildly divergent interfaces (one very flexible and the other very rigid in structure), except perhaps in the mobile vs. desktop situation. I dunno, Marc. There are different expectations about signature, depending on the target group. We still have people being freaked out that article histories contain their username or IP (a form of automatic signature), so I'm not convinced that there's an expectation on the part of new users that anything they write anywhere will automatically be signed. Risker/Anne On 8 September 2014 10:24, Marc A. Pelletier m...@uberbox.org wrote: On 09/08/2014 10:18 AM, Risker wrote: The most obvious one is automatic signing of comments, and it is something that we have technically been able to impose for years; sinebot didn't come into existence in a vacuum. I suppose that's a philosophical divergence between us then - that sinebot even needs to exist to me is demonstration that the system is broken. You say that discussion isn't all that much harder than editing content. Even if I agreed with that (and I do not, edit conflicts in articles are much rarer than on talk pages - and usually easier to sort out), that's not a *good* thing! Participating in discussion should be much, *much* easier than editing articles: encouraging newbies to seek help and participate in the community *before* diving in anything but trivial article edits would be an immensely powerful retention tool! (Which isn't to say that editing articles doesn't *also* need a lot of help - but that's a different project). -- Marc ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/guidelineswikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow
Thank you for this overview and history, Erik! On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 9:49 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi all, And as above, I'm open to us putting some short term effort into talk page improvements that can be made without Flow -- knowing it's still some time out. Is there a good wiki page for brainstorming/discussing these kinds of talk page improvements (that may or may not be part of Flow?) I always find it helpful in these kinds of conversations to try and imagine what concrete changes would help me on a day to day basis, as an editor and discussion participant, since it can be hard to envision what working with a whole new system would be like or to wrap one's head around the whole universe of discussions that take place on talk pages. best, -- phoebe -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers at gmail.com * ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow
Hello, a) This discussion actually belongs to a talk page on Meta or Mediawiki.org, for example :-) b) All my experience in teaching Wikipedia tells me that the talk page system is absolutely outdated and inappropriate. It is, sorry to use this word, *ridiculous* that you have to teach people how to communicate technically in Wikipedia. I never had to explain to someone how to do that on Facebook... As other people have pointed it out already, if you are already accustomed to the Wikipedia user interface for a longer time, you might find it difficult to fully understand what is the problem for newbies. And how big this is a problem, and how important it is to solve this problem. Kind regards Ziko Am Montag, 8. September 2014 schrieb Risker : Well, I think that the article editing project (i.e., VE) has a huge potential for also resolving a lot of discussion space issues. I don't see tacking on yet another UI as being a positive for new editor introduction or retention, and cannot think of another significant site that has two such wildly divergent interfaces (one very flexible and the other very rigid in structure), except perhaps in the mobile vs. desktop situation. I dunno, Marc. There are different expectations about signature, depending on the target group. We still have people being freaked out that article histories contain their username or IP (a form of automatic signature), so I'm not convinced that there's an expectation on the part of new users that anything they write anywhere will automatically be signed. Risker/Anne On 8 September 2014 10:24, Marc A. Pelletier m...@uberbox.org javascript:; wrote: On 09/08/2014 10:18 AM, Risker wrote: The most obvious one is automatic signing of comments, and it is something that we have technically been able to impose for years; sinebot didn't come into existence in a vacuum. I suppose that's a philosophical divergence between us then - that sinebot even needs to exist to me is demonstration that the system is broken. You say that discussion isn't all that much harder than editing content. Even if I agreed with that (and I do not, edit conflicts in articles are much rarer than on talk pages - and usually easier to sort out), that's not a *good* thing! Participating in discussion should be much, *much* easier than editing articles: encouraging newbies to seek help and participate in the community *before* diving in anything but trivial article edits would be an immensely powerful retention tool! (Which isn't to say that editing articles doesn't *also* need a lot of help - but that's a different project). -- Marc ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/guidelineswikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; ?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; ?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow
+1 On 8 September 2014 16:43, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, a) This discussion actually belongs to a talk page on Meta or Mediawiki.org, for example :-) b) All my experience in teaching Wikipedia tells me that the talk page system is absolutely outdated and inappropriate. It is, sorry to use this word, *ridiculous* that you have to teach people how to communicate technically in Wikipedia. I never had to explain to someone how to do that on Facebook... As other people have pointed it out already, if you are already accustomed to the Wikipedia user interface for a longer time, you might find it difficult to fully understand what is the problem for newbies. And how big this is a problem, and how important it is to solve this problem. Kind regards Ziko Am Montag, 8. September 2014 schrieb Risker : Well, I think that the article editing project (i.e., VE) has a huge potential for also resolving a lot of discussion space issues. I don't see tacking on yet another UI as being a positive for new editor introduction or retention, and cannot think of another significant site that has two such wildly divergent interfaces (one very flexible and the other very rigid in structure), except perhaps in the mobile vs. desktop situation. I dunno, Marc. There are different expectations about signature, depending on the target group. We still have people being freaked out that article histories contain their username or IP (a form of automatic signature), so I'm not convinced that there's an expectation on the part of new users that anything they write anywhere will automatically be signed. Risker/Anne On 8 September 2014 10:24, Marc A. Pelletier m...@uberbox.org javascript:; wrote: On 09/08/2014 10:18 AM, Risker wrote: The most obvious one is automatic signing of comments, and it is something that we have technically been able to impose for years; sinebot didn't come into existence in a vacuum. I suppose that's a philosophical divergence between us then - that sinebot even needs to exist to me is demonstration that the system is broken. You say that discussion isn't all that much harder than editing content. Even if I agreed with that (and I do not, edit conflicts in articles are much rarer than on talk pages - and usually easier to sort out), that's not a *good* thing! Participating in discussion should be much, *much* easier than editing articles: encouraging newbies to seek help and participate in the community *before* diving in anything but trivial article edits would be an immensely powerful retention tool! (Which isn't to say that editing articles doesn't *also* need a lot of help - but that's a different project). -- Marc ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/guidelineswikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; ?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; ?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- *Jon Davies - Chief Executive Wikimedia UK*. Mobile (0044) 7803 505 169 tweet @jonatreesdavies Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). Telephone (0044) 207 065 0990. Visit http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/ and @wikimediauk ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow
Facebook? So tell me, how do you explain to new Facebook users about the different levels of privacy? Seems to me that I'm constantly hearing about people having a lot of problems with that, especially since it's supposed to be a key site feature. I'm with you about indenting, it's always been something strange. But signing posts is very natural for a lot of people, and many, many online sites encourage the development of canned signature lines - just as we do with preferences, although we put more constraints on them generally. Indeed, the majority of people in this thread have signed their posts. Indeed, Jon Davies' +1 in response to this post had a 588-character signature line, presumably added to his mail client preferences. Risker/Anne On 8 September 2014 11:43, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, a) This discussion actually belongs to a talk page on Meta or Mediawiki.org, for example :-) b) All my experience in teaching Wikipedia tells me that the talk page system is absolutely outdated and inappropriate. It is, sorry to use this word, *ridiculous* that you have to teach people how to communicate technically in Wikipedia. I never had to explain to someone how to do that on Facebook... As other people have pointed it out already, if you are already accustomed to the Wikipedia user interface for a longer time, you might find it difficult to fully understand what is the problem for newbies. And how big this is a problem, and how important it is to solve this problem. Kind regards Ziko Am Montag, 8. September 2014 schrieb Risker : Well, I think that the article editing project (i.e., VE) has a huge potential for also resolving a lot of discussion space issues. I don't see tacking on yet another UI as being a positive for new editor introduction or retention, and cannot think of another significant site that has two such wildly divergent interfaces (one very flexible and the other very rigid in structure), except perhaps in the mobile vs. desktop situation. I dunno, Marc. There are different expectations about signature, depending on the target group. We still have people being freaked out that article histories contain their username or IP (a form of automatic signature), so I'm not convinced that there's an expectation on the part of new users that anything they write anywhere will automatically be signed. Risker/Anne On 8 September 2014 10:24, Marc A. Pelletier m...@uberbox.org javascript:; wrote: On 09/08/2014 10:18 AM, Risker wrote: The most obvious one is automatic signing of comments, and it is something that we have technically been able to impose for years; sinebot didn't come into existence in a vacuum. I suppose that's a philosophical divergence between us then - that sinebot even needs to exist to me is demonstration that the system is broken. You say that discussion isn't all that much harder than editing content. Even if I agreed with that (and I do not, edit conflicts in articles are much rarer than on talk pages - and usually easier to sort out), that's not a *good* thing! Participating in discussion should be much, *much* easier than editing articles: encouraging newbies to seek help and participate in the community *before* diving in anything but trivial article edits would be an immensely powerful retention tool! (Which isn't to say that editing articles doesn't *also* need a lot of help - but that's a different project). -- Marc ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/guidelineswikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; ?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; ?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/guidelineswikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow
Responding to two comments. Firstly Risker Newbies have an equally hard time editing content, too, and even when they succeed, on many projects they're very likely to be reverted and deluged with templated messages in response to a good faith attempt. There is no evidentiary basis to demonstrate that new users have a harder time participating in discussion than they do in content contribution. I would go further, reverting newbie edits to talk pages is rare. They may occasionally need help with indentation or signing, and if they edit a busy page they may get edit conflicts. But unlike in main space actual reversion is rare. We do need some system to identify newbie queries that have been left longest, as queries on article talk pages can linger for a very long time. But we should not treat the need for improvements on talk pages as being as pressing as the need to improve the experience for newbies in main space. V/E will help a little there, though not till it is ready to be deployed. But there are bigger problems, the amount of edit conflicts suffered by the creators of new articles and the ongoing train wreck with some of the regulars working to the unwritten rule that everything must be verified, while the system doesn't even prompt newbies to add a source. Re Erik's comment I'm open to us putting some short term effort into talk page improvements that can be made without Flow -- knowing it's still some time out. That would be great, there are various Won't fix bugs on Bugzilla that should be easy to fix. Setting : # and * as paragraph delimiters as far as edit conflicts are concerned should resolve a lot of the edit conflicts in talk space. Really low hanging fruit. Regards Jonathan Cardy ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Where should we organize ideas for the Strategic Plan update?
SJ, OK, currently we have mostly the 2010-15 strategy and chapter strategies featured on [[m:strategy]], and some 2015+ strategy on [[m:strategy project]]. I could reorganize these pages, but given the highly visible nature of those pages to internal and external stakeholders in the Strategy update, I would feel more comfortable reorganizing those pages after discussing the design with WMF Communications or someone from the Board in more detail. I'd be happy to have WMF Communications work on this anyway because it might take a few hours to do a good job with the redesign, and Communications might also be good to involve in the design of templates for strategy pages. Katherine, would it be possible to set up a time with you or someone from your team to discuss the organization of those pages? Please contact me off-list. Thanks, Pine On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 7:03 AM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: How about a category on Meta with a set of infobox templates like those on the strategy wiki? With a summary kept updated at [[m:strategy]] On Sep 5, 2014 5:03 AM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Heh. That was not my first time when I started typing my email address and instead Gmail autofilled wikimedia-l. This is what I get for choosing wiki.pine instead of pine.wiki. I need some coffee or more sleep. Anyway, this is what was supposed to go to Wikimedia-l: Do we have a central place for collecting ideas relevant to the strategic plan update? I suppose we could use Idealab but a dedicated space on Meta might be easier for everyone in the long run, or we could re-open the Strategy wiki. Thanks, Pine ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Where should we organize ideas for the Strategic Plan update?
We are planning to open a few pages for comments as we plan for this to be an iterative, participatory process from the ground. Let us know if you'd like to participate in setting up the pages themselves. L On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 3:04 PM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: SJ, OK, currently we have mostly the 2010-15 strategy and chapter strategies featured on [[m:strategy]], and some 2015+ strategy on [[m:strategy project]]. I could reorganize these pages, but given the highly visible nature of those pages to internal and external stakeholders in the Strategy update, I would feel more comfortable reorganizing those pages after discussing the design with WMF Communications or someone from the Board in more detail. I'd be happy to have WMF Communications work on this anyway because it might take a few hours to do a good job with the redesign, and Communications might also be good to involve in the design of templates for strategy pages. Katherine, would it be possible to set up a time with you or someone from your team to discuss the organization of those pages? Please contact me off-list. Thanks, Pine On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 7:03 AM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: How about a category on Meta with a set of infobox templates like those on the strategy wiki? With a summary kept updated at [[m:strategy]] On Sep 5, 2014 5:03 AM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Heh. That was not my first time when I started typing my email address and instead Gmail autofilled wikimedia-l. This is what I get for choosing wiki.pine instead of pine.wiki. I need some coffee or more sleep. Anyway, this is what was supposed to go to Wikimedia-l: Do we have a central place for collecting ideas relevant to the strategic plan update? I suppose we could use Idealab but a dedicated space on Meta might be easier for everyone in the long run, or we could re-open the Strategy wiki. Thanks, Pine ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Feedback with Android on Commons
Yann, The Commons app would need lots of love to continue to be worth advertising as a mainline app. It's not been updated since October, and code rot sets in after a while (I can easily reproduce crashes when logging in with an account that has pre-existing uploads, which it tries to display for convenience but quickly chokes on). With the small app team we have, our focus is mainly on the official Wikipedia apps right now, which are already quite solid and receiving very positive reviews, esp. the Android app. [1] The team is discussing whether the Commons app should be sunset (which would still leave open the option of community maintainership) based on the numbers, and will be posting an update later this week. Erik [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.wikipedia -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Feedback with Android on Commons
On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 11:30 AM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Yann, The Commons app would need lots of love to continue to be worth advertising as a mainline app. It's not been updated since October, and code rot sets in after a while (I can easily reproduce crashes when logging in with an account that has pre-existing uploads, which it tries to display for convenience but quickly chokes on). With the small app team we have, our focus is mainly on the official Wikipedia apps right now, which are already quite solid and receiving very positive reviews, esp. the Android app. [1] The team is discussing whether the Commons app should be sunset (which would still leave open the option of community maintainership) based on the numbers, and will be posting an update later this week. Erik [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.wikipedia Hi Erik, The Wikipedia app description includes Share: Use your existing social networking apps to share in the sum of all human knowledge. Does it support uploading media to Commons? Does it fix the problems with the official Commons app? If so, can they share a library which would allow the Commons app to be more of a specialised front-end to the same functionality that the WMF mobile apps team are developing for Wikipedia? -- John Vandenberg ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow - it does not flow
On Sat, Sep 6, 2014 at 3:33 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: As I wrote to Risker, I think it's worth considering spending some development time on turning something like the Teahouse gadget (which allows one click insertion of replies on the Teahouse Q/A page) into a Beta Feature after some further improvement, to see just how useful it could be for the common case. If there's an 80/20 rule and in 20% of cases it just gives up and edits the section, that might still be a time-saver and convenience. There might even be other relevant gadgets already in some languages/projects -- worth a closer look, for sure. I'm talking about this with the Flow team, but I also want to be conscious of their focus and energy. One possibility is to contract this out to an individual dev to test out the boundaries of what can be done in JavaScript alone -- and make recommendations for any mediawiki/core changes that could help. Since a JS opt-in script can be quickly developed by anyone with talent and motivation there's really no barrier to trying this. If anyone's reading feels they're qualified to take this on and would be interested doing it on a contract, drop me a line offlist. Obviously it's also a great opportunity for volunteer experimentation, as well. I think at this stage we should consider this a research effort. There is some pre-existing work on this, beyond the Teahouse gadget. - Mobile web has a very experimental reply feature on talk pages right now. It doesn't handle the indentation levels, as far as I can tell - it just inserts a new top-level comment. You can turn this on by 1) enabling beta, 2) enabling alpha, 3) logging in, 4) going to a talk page, 5) going to a section. That's a lot of steps, but since it's so experimental that's probably for the best :-) - Gabriel Wicke has done some experimentation with this as well, and is looking if he can dig up the old code for me. If others are aware of relevant hacks/gadgets/user srcipts, please let me know. Erik -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Feedback with Android on Commons
Thanks to all in this thread for raising these issues. A discussion about sunsetting the Commons Android app is ongoing on mobile-l right now. I would encourage anyone who's interested to subscribe and comment. Thanks, Dan On 8 September 2014 18:30, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Yann, The Commons app would need lots of love to continue to be worth advertising as a mainline app. It's not been updated since October, and code rot sets in after a while (I can easily reproduce crashes when logging in with an account that has pre-existing uploads, which it tries to display for convenience but quickly chokes on). With the small app team we have, our focus is mainly on the official Wikipedia apps right now, which are already quite solid and receiving very positive reviews, esp. the Android app. [1] The team is discussing whether the Commons app should be sunset (which would still leave open the option of community maintainership) based on the numbers, and will be posting an update later this week. Erik [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.wikipedia -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- Dan Garry Associate Product Manager, Mobile Apps Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Feedback with Android on Commons
John, Responses in-line. On 8 September 2014 18:41, John Mark Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: The Wikipedia app description includes Share: Use your existing social networking apps to share in the sum of all human knowledge. This refers to the Share functionality which is in the overflow menu. That's kind of functionality is built-in to Android and is super easy to implement. Does it support uploading media to Commons? No. It's in our longer-term plans for the Wikipedia app to do so, but that feature is not planned for any time soon. Does it fix the problems with the official Commons app? No, but it's not intended to right now, per the above. If so, can they share a library which would allow the Commons app to be more of a specialised front-end to the same functionality that the WMF mobile apps team are developing for Wikipedia? All of our code is open source and freely licensed, so anything that we're using is already publicly available and free to use and could be adapted to the Commons app. Thanks, Dan -- Dan Garry Associate Product Manager, Mobile Apps Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Feedback with Android on Commons
As an experienced user, the Commons app is tremendously useful (when it doesn't crash). But as a Commons curator, I see a steady stream of test uploads and the like -- things that are utterly and completely unrelated to our educational mission -- that require a great deal of volunteer resources to process. The vast majority are tagged as mobile uploads. The Commons app gives the user absolutely no idea what Commons is about, or what kind of uploads are desirable. I think that is significant. The UploadWizard on the desktop version of Commons starts off with a cartoon explaining issues like copyright and personality rights, and then guides the user through related questions. Although I have not done a formal analysis, it seems to be overwhelmingly the case that files originating from Mobile uploads are much more often problematic than those originating from the Upload Wizard. I don't think that's a coincidence. It would be really awesome to have the ability for experienced users to use our devices to upload directly -- and even better if it opens doors to new contributors *in a way that meaningfully guides their participation*. But if new contributors are given no guidance, and unknowingly do stuff that puts a high load on our volunteer curators -- is that cost too high? I hope that kind of improvement is part of the discussion. Personally, I'd rather see a revamped app, than that the app just disappears. Pete On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 6:41 PM, John Mark Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 11:30 AM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Yann, The Commons app would need lots of love to continue to be worth advertising as a mainline app. It's not been updated since October, and code rot sets in after a while (I can easily reproduce crashes when logging in with an account that has pre-existing uploads, which it tries to display for convenience but quickly chokes on). With the small app team we have, our focus is mainly on the official Wikipedia apps right now, which are already quite solid and receiving very positive reviews, esp. the Android app. [1] The team is discussing whether the Commons app should be sunset (which would still leave open the option of community maintainership) based on the numbers, and will be posting an update later this week. Erik [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.wikipedia Hi Erik, The Wikipedia app description includes Share: Use your existing social networking apps to share in the sum of all human knowledge. Does it support uploading media to Commons? Does it fix the problems with the official Commons app? If so, can they share a library which would allow the Commons app to be more of a specialised front-end to the same functionality that the WMF mobile apps team are developing for Wikipedia? -- John Vandenberg ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow - it does not flow
On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 6:47 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: - Gabriel Wicke has done some experimentation with this as well, and is looking if he can dig up the old code for me. Very old indeed, but if anyone wants to take a look: https://github.com/gwicke/wikiforum -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Feedback with Android on Commons
On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 12:14 PM, Dan Garry dga...@wikimedia.org wrote: Thanks to all in this thread for raising these issues. A discussion about sunsetting the Commons Android app is ongoing on mobile-l right now. I would encourage anyone who's interested to subscribe and comment. Hi Dam, thanks for your responses. If the Wikipedia app doesnt have Commons upload capabilities, what is the viable replacement app for Commons uploading? -- John Vandenberg ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Feedback with Android on Commons
On Monday, 8 September 2014, John Mark Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Dam, thanks for your responses. If the Wikipedia app doesnt have Commons upload capabilities, what is the viable replacement app for Commons uploading? As I'm sure you're aware, if we were to sunset the Commons app then there wouldn't be a replacement. I would suggest reading mobile-l to see the rationale behind the proposal. I won't repeat it here to avoid duplication of the conversation. Thanks, Dan -- Dan Garry Associate Product Manager, Mobile Apps Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
