FWIW, ironically the tangled discussions about MediaViewer across multiple pages have made me think that having a more organized way to read discussions would be a good idea. My understanding is that this is one of Flow's objectives. If Flow can achieve this in a way that is helpful and non-disruptive then I think Flow may save power users time because we may be able to follow multi-page discussions easily. I would appreciate it if Flow helped with that. Of course, the design, implementation and testing need to be done carefully, and I hope there is heavy community involvement in reviewing Flow long before it gets sent to the largest and most sophisticated wikis.
Pine On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 4:07 PM, Steven Walling <steven.wall...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 1:48 PM, John Mark Vandenberg <jay...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > IMO the WMF should stop focusing on English Wikipedia as a target > > deploy site, and stop allowing its product management team and WMF > > staff in general to be salesman for it - it is scaring the community > > that all WMF staff seem to be so heavily vested in this 'product' as > > the salvation of the wikis. > > > > This is rank hyperbole. > > The MediaWiki deployment train delivers new software to all projects every > week. One stage is to non-Wikipedia projects, which actually get new > software *first.* Then in a second stage is for all Wikipedias > simultaneously. So the default behavior for rollouts, if all you do is > merge your code and wait, is that English Wikipedia gets basically no > special treatment..[1] > > Now, for larger feature rollouts like VisualEditor or MediaViewer, the > testing stage and eventual launch set their own special schedule. We have > used English Wikipedia as a testing ground a lot in the past, which is > natural when you consider a variety of factors.[2] That doesn't mean we > haven't worked hard to test things out with non-English projects. Some > examples: > > -- MediaViewer spent a long time being tested outside English Wikipedia > before it ever touched that project. It started with pilots in non-English > Wikipedias and English Wikivoyage.[3] > -- Flow is currently soliciting editors on non-English projects to test it > out voluntarily on a sub-set of pages. Any projects that want to help shape > the future of this software should pick a discussion space they want to use > for testing and speak up. > -- My team (Growth) has begun waiting for translations of experimental > interfaces, so we can A/B test in many languages simultaneously. We're > about to do this again in this month, by testing task recommendations in 12 > languages right from the start.[4] We've done with other projects as well, > like A/B testing changes aimed at anonymous editors in four languages. > -- The Content Translation project is starting with Spanish and Catalan > Wikipedias.[5] > > After we get past the testing stage, none of this erases the fact that > English Wikipedia is still the largest project by far, and is a major > problem spot to be dealt with regarding issues related to new editor > acquisition and retention. The data clearly suggests that it's a project we > should be focusing on if we want to fix these problems, but we're certainly > not ignoring others. > > 1). wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Deployments > 2). All technical staff and community contributors share English as their > working language. Software gets built in English first obviously, so we > don't have to wait on translations as a blocker for deployment. English > Wikipedia is also our largest project, so we can get larger randomized > samples during A/B tests. Making A/B tests shorter while also retaining > accuracy is good. > 3). https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Release_Plan > 4). > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Task_recommendations/Experiment_one > 5). https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Content_translation/Roadmap > _______________________________________________ > 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>
