That comment may be referring to improving the core uploader so the
extension can be depreciated.

Has UW gone under a code stewardship request?

On Thu, 4 Feb 2021, 8:33 am Strainu, <[email protected]> wrote:

> As the deafening silence of this thread probably shows, a discussion is
> not really possible. The WMF has had 0 interest in making uploads easier in
> the last few years.
>
> To be fair, faced with furios opposition from the Commons community for
> even basic improvements such as allowing imports from other sites except
> Flickr and requests to stop cross-wiki uploads, this decision does not seem
> out of place.
>
> As one of the few people that has enabled UW in another Wikimedia wiki, I
> would like to encourage you to follow on your plan to improve the wizard as
> much as possible. Plans at the WMF change often and not necessarily for the
> better. A responsive design would be awsome news for wikis that need to
> guide their users through the mess that is freedom of panorama.
>
> One thing that puzzles me in that ticket is this phrase from Mark Traceur:
> "It might be better to look at something (slightly) more modern, like the
> upload dialog in core". Does anyone know what that dialog is? AFAIK the
> uploader in core (Special:Upload) hasn't changed in decades, except maybe
> for the look of the buttons. Its usability is rubbish compared to UW. Wikis
> used to (no, actually they still do) customize it using the uselang
> param,which messes with the user's settings. I can't really understand how
> that would be better...
>
> Andrei
>
> Pe duminică, 31 ianuarie 2021, Ostrzyciel Nożyczek <
> [email protected]> a scris:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I would like to uhhh... start the discussion? ask for opinions? about the
>> future of UploadWizard.
>>
>> It is a rather special extension, that was from the start made mostly for
>> Commons' very specific needs and getting it to work anywhere else presents
>> some challenges (some of which I attempt to tackle here
>> <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T256616>). Interestingly, it still is
>> used by many third-party wikis
>> <https://wikiapiary.com/wiki/Extension:Upload_Wizard> and although some
>> of them don't need its full set of capabilities related to describing
>> licenses, authors and sources, there are wikis that do need that. The wiki
>> I maintain, Nonsensopedia, has a Commons-like file description system based
>> on Semantic MediaWiki (see example here
>> <https://nonsa.pl/wiki/Plik:Creative_Commons_evolution.jpg>) and
>> UploadWizard has been a *blessing* for us, greatly simplifying the task
>> of file moderation.
>>
>> Opinion time: Wikis should be *encouraged* to properly describe the
>> authorship of files that they use, to meet the licensing requirements. IMO
>> Wikimedia Foundation as the maintainer of MediaWiki and a foundation
>> dedicated to dissemination of free culture should provide a usable tool
>> for properly describing free multimedia. UploadWizard could be just that.
>>
>> At the same time, the extension has been basically unmaintained
>> <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T261589#6674315> since the Multimedia
>> team was dissolved and I've been rather surprised to discover that patches
>> improving third-party support were met with uhm... very limited
>> enthusiasm? <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T256616#6264584> There
>> are a few obvious features lacking like mobile support (seriously, try
>> opening https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:UploadWizard on a
>> narrow screen device, it's been like this since.. always) and
>> configurability (you have to jump through some serious hoops
>> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:V2at02b7oxy5pkwl> to just add a
>> license; customizing the tutorial is similarly hard).
>>
>> I've been thinking of what to do with the above and I really wouldn't
>> want to embark on something that will be rendered redundant or obsolete in
>> a year, so my question is: are there any plans for UploadWizard? What makes
>> me suspect that things may change is primarily Structured Data on Wikimedia
>> Commons, which in the future will maybe (?) supersede the description
>> system around the {{Information}} template. Are there any rough roadmaps or
>> outlines of anything resembling a plan for that? If Commons was to
>> implement full, structured file descriptions in the upload tool, that code
>> would be probably hardly usable outside Commons, given that Wikibase is not
>> something easy to install or maintain, it is also awfully overkill for the
>> vast majority of applications. In such a situation, would it make sense to
>> consider completely separating the "Wikimedia Commons Shiny Upload Tool"
>> from a more general extension that would be usable for third
>> parties, stripped of any Commons-specific code? A lot of things could be
>> much simplified if the extension was to target just the needs of third
>> parties and not Commons.
>>
>> I ask about this because I really don't see any sort of interest of the
>> extension's *de facto* owner (and that is WMF) in developing it, there
>> are also no public plans for it, as far as I know. Yes, I can make a fork
>> anytime, but first I'd prefer to know if I'm not missing something. Well,
>> actually, I already did make a fork of UW
>> <https://gitlab.com/nonsensopedia/extension-forks/uploadwizard-nonsa> over
>> a year ago, but this particular version of it is tailored for a wiki I
>> manage, making it useless for others. At the time that was the only
>> reasonable way we could get a good upload tool that was capable of properly
>> describing licensing information. I probably don't have to tell seasoned
>> open-source developers why this type of approach is not optimal for the
>> future of the project. :)
>>
>> Any opinions on the topic are very welcome.
>>
>> --
>> Ostrzyciel (he/him)
>>
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