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What we've got here is failure to communicate (some mobile editors you just can't reach)
- Summary of overall issues: User:Suffusion of Yellow/Mobile communication bugs ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 03:08, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
Over a year ago, I reported two problems to the WMF:
(1) Logged-in mobile web editors are not given a very strong indication that they have new messages. There's just a little number in a red circle. It's similar to what many other sites use for "Exciting! New! Offers!" and other garbage. There's nothing to say "A human being wants to talk to you."
(2) Mobile web IP editors are given no indication at all that they have new messages. Nothing. Every template warning, every carefully thought out personal message, and everything else just disappears into a black hole, unless the user stumbles across their talk page by accident, or switches to the desktop interface.
But I get it. Bugs happen. They can be fixed. Instead both problems were marked as a "low" priority.
This is baffling. Problem 1 is a serious issue. Problem 2 is utterly unacceptable.
We are yelling at users (or even dragging them to WP:ANI) for "ignoring" our messages that they have no idea exist. We are expecting them learn without any communication all sorts of rules from WP:V to WP:3RR to WP:MOS that don't even apply to most other sites on the web.
Until they get blocked, of course. What a terrible experience. How are we supposed to gain new users when their very first interaction with a human is being told to f--- off, for "ignoring" a message they didn't even know about?
WMF, please explain to this community why this is a "low" priority. One year is long enough. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:55, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
- I'll just note that a majority of our users are accessing us on mobile so this isn't a niche problem either. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:26, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
- Wow. Neglected high-priority phabricator tickets are nothing new, but this is another level. Jimbo Wales, this deserves your attention. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 08:11, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
- I would like to point out that the majority of messages left to IPs will never reach the user in question anyways, ESPECIALLY on mobile connections. Due to shared ips, the chance of someone else viewing the message before the person you are trying to reach is probably about 50/50. I realise that sometimes leaving a message is effective, but there are serious questions about all the cases where it is simply leaving a very confusing and often aggressively toned message to a completely different user just randomly reading an article at the busstop a month later. What we really need is a completely new way to leave messages to anonymous users. Possibly with some sort of very short lived session or something. But as ip users are more or less stateless (the software concept) right now, that is probably hard to implement. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:26, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
- @TheDJ: I would have no objection to expiring the OBOD if the talk page isn't clicked in a few days. Many messages come only a few minutes after the user makes the edit; most mobile carriers aren't that dynamic. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 17:14, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
- I would like to point out that the majority of messages left to IPs will never reach the user in question anyways, ESPECIALLY on mobile connections. Due to shared ips, the chance of someone else viewing the message before the person you are trying to reach is probably about 50/50. I realise that sometimes leaving a message is effective, but there are serious questions about all the cases where it is simply leaving a very confusing and often aggressively toned message to a completely different user just randomly reading an article at the busstop a month later. What we really need is a completely new way to leave messages to anonymous users. Possibly with some sort of very short lived session or something. But as ip users are more or less stateless (the software concept) right now, that is probably hard to implement. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:26, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
- Equally baffling is that mobile app users do not see any notifications, including no talk page notifications, logged in or out. The link to talk is buried within the settings. Official mobile apps! They don't even see block messages! See T263943 and others. This block review and also this discussion where an editor also tested block messages. The editor was blocked multiple times for something that was not their fault but that of a poorly thought out app. They are not alone. Quote from phab task:
Conclusion: Using the app is like being inside a bubble, without contacts with the exterior. It's no wonder there's so much people complaining here that using the app caused their Wikipedia account to be blocked, for reasons they don't understand.
ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:33, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
- I have filed T275117 and T275118. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:22, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
- I'm always surprised that anyone manages to edit with the mobile interface. As another example, if you're not logged in, there is no way to access the talk page of an article, or even any indication that it exists. If an unregistered user makes an edit and is reverted with a common summary like "see talk", I imagine many will have no idea what's going on. – Joe (talk) 09:39, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
- @Joe Roe: Sorry if this is not the right place, but I'm trying to find out why you can't access an article talk page if you're not logged in (on mobile). This was the only mention I could find. Do you know if this issue is being addressed anywhere? Cheers, Fredlesaltique (talk) 07:50, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
- @Fredlesaltique: AFAICT the talk page link is a feature of mw:Reading/Web/Advanced mobile contributions (see § January 14, 2019 - Getting started with Talk page links), which is currently only available to logged in editors (I don't know why, though). See also phab:T54165, though that doesn't seem very active. – Rummskartoffel 11:30, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
- @Joe Roe: Sorry if this is not the right place, but I'm trying to find out why you can't access an article talk page if you're not logged in (on mobile). This was the only mention I could find. Do you know if this issue is being addressed anywhere? Cheers, Fredlesaltique (talk) 07:50, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
- The mobile web, and mobile apps, appear to be designed for readers and not writers. Having used mobile web occasionally, I think it's usable for logged in editing, but I do have to switch to desktop every now and then. I've used the iOS app only for a test - it is not usable for editing imo. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:55, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
- The number of edits I have made with the mobile web or app interface is most likely less than 50 (out of 13,000). Even for reading, the mobile interface is borderline unusable. I do frequently edit from my 4-inch cell phone screen (in fact, I'm doing that right now)... but I use the desktop version. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 14:04, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
- I agree with Joe and have always found Cullen328 to be a bit of a superhero for being who he is on a mobile device. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:19, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks for the kind words, Barkeep49, but I simply use the fully functional desktop site on my Android smartphone. It's easy. If I was the king of the Wikimedia Foundation, I would shut down the mobile site and apps, because they are an ongoing impediment to serious editing. RoySmith, there is no need to invest more effort (money) on a good editing interface for mobile, because that interface already exists - the desktop site. Just change its name from desktop to universal or something, and the problem will be solved.Cullen328 Let's discuss it 18:34, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
- In some parts of the world, laptops and desktops are common, and people's phones are their second screen. In an environment like that, yes, it makes sense for mobile devices to be thought of as a read-mostly interface. On the other hand, in other parts of the world (particularly India in the context of English language users), mobile is how people access the internet.[1] There's no doubt that building a good editing interface for mobile is a hard thing, but we should be investing more effort there. Poor mobile editing tools disenfranchises a large segment of the world's population. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:41, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
- @Suffusion of Yellow: Thank you for basically expressing exactly the same problem I wanted to. I have blocked a few editors who seem to be editing in good faith but just don't communicate, which eventually end up at ANI and after much agonising, get hit with as friendly a WP:ICANTHEARYOU block as we can muster. In the last instance, Mdd97 (talk · contribs), I specifically made a custom block template that said "CLICK HERE TO READ YOUR MESSAGES" in a way that they surely couldn't miss .... but again, following the block they've not edited again. We have to get to the bottom of this; if it's got to the stage where I've got to block people and the root cause is a software fault, it needs to be fixed. Surely the WMF can't be happy that I've needed to issue blocks on good-faith editors in this manner. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 16:10, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
- To address a reaction some might have, yes, the vast majority of users on mobile are readers, not editors, and no, I wouldn't want the community totally in charge of redesigning the mobile interface, since we'd end up with the phenomenon we have at desktop where e.g. the tools section of the sidebar is visible to every user on every page despite it being of zero use to 99.9% of them. But this request is not just editor-centrism; it applies to users who have already edited and who badly need a notification to help them not get lost. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 18:55, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
- I think the mw:Talk pages project, especially now that they are beginning to work on subscribing to notifications for talk page sections, could be interested in this discussion. Pinging User:PPelberg (WMF) and User:Whatamidoing (WMF). It also touches on UCoC Enforcement, highlighting that there needs to be funding for software dev. in addition to other measures. Pinging User:SPoore (WMF) and User:BChoo (WMF) for want of knowing who to contact regarding Phase 2. Pelagic ( messages ) – (09:51 Sat 20, AEDT) 22:51, 19 February 2021 (UTC) ... Adding User:Xeno (WMF) after seeing section above. Pelagic ( messages ) – (09:55 Sat 20, AEDT) 22:55, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
- Pelagic: Thank you for the ping and highlighting how this is a related need for my current project. I've been following this thread and will be including the comments (and phabricator links - thank you for those!) in my work categorized under important requests for additional human or technical resources to assist with on-wiki workflows. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 15:02, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
Question - Is this something that could be cured by bringing back the "Orange Bar of Death"? Mjroots (talk) 16:31, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
- @Mjroots: the orange bar of death never went away. Last I check, it's still there for non mobile IP editors. That's why they get an indication of new messages. AFAIK, it was never there for the mobile web editor, that's probably part of the problem. Nil Einne (talk) 03:06, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
- What no one has ever told me is why it was left out in the first place. Was it a simple oversight? Did someone have such a little understanding of how the sites work that they thought communication was unnecessary? Some other reason, that I'm not thinking of? This is the most confusing part. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 17:14, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
- This is alarming but not surprising. Since I do a lot of question answering at the Teahouse, I'll point out a random IP's post from yesterday, in the same vein as some of the sentiments noted above: "Also, why don’t they get rid of the mobile view? So terrible!".--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:29, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
- Does anyone with a (WMF) account plan on commenting in this thread? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 17:21, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
- Don't hold your breath. For most WMF employees, commenting on Wikipedia using a WMF account is a quick way to get yourself fired. You might, if you make enough noise, get a department head to respond by saying that mobile users are very important to us and we will do everything we can to address this, up to but not including doing anything differently that we are doing them now. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:39, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Guy Macon: When they did the same thing with desktop IPs, it was fixed within hours of being pointed out. Serious, not rhetorical question: what's changed about WMF culture since 2013? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 17:58, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
- Don't hold your breath. For most WMF employees, commenting on Wikipedia using a WMF account is a quick way to get yourself fired. You might, if you make enough noise, get a department head to respond by saying that mobile users are very important to us and we will do everything we can to address this, up to but not including doing anything differently that we are doing them now. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:39, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
When you spend three times as much money without the actual job you were hired to do changing, you start to focus more on spending all of that money instead of on doing your job. When you hire a boatload of new employees when the current bunch are more that enough to do the job, those new employees find something to do, whether that something needs doing or not. I'm just saying. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:31, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
- User:Suffusion of Yellow broadly you have two factors. Firstly there is little incentive for WMF people engage people here were they will get a bunch of people shouting that them (which is not fun). Secondly there has been a longstanding unwritten understanding that mobile is the WMF's turf while the community has more ownership of the desktop.©Geni (talk) 11:21, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
- Well, imagine this. Someone is standing on your foot. You politely ask them to move off of it. They don't. You repeat your request more loudly. They continue to ignore you. It still hurts. At some point, does shouting and shoving come into play?If WMF doesn't like being shouted at, well—certainly, no one does. But people do not like being ignored either, and doing so is an excellent way to get them started shouting just to be heard at all. Seraphimblade Talk to me 21:42, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
- User:Suffusion of Yellow broadly you have two factors. Firstly there is little incentive for WMF people engage people here were they will get a bunch of people shouting that them (which is not fun). Secondly there has been a longstanding unwritten understanding that mobile is the WMF's turf while the community has more ownership of the desktop.©Geni (talk) 11:21, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
- Action from the WMF! One two three new mobile bugs I discovered while investigating this have been triaged as "low" priority, and a fourth was lowered to "medium", after a volunteer developer had raised it to "high". All without a word of explanation. The first (unparsed spam blacklist messages) isn't a huge deal I'll agree. But why is not telling users why they're blocked or falsely telling registered users that they're blocked personally not a major concern? That's how we lose people. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:55, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
- Can we locally block these apps from editing English Wikipedia? That would force the WMF to fix them. Fences&Windows 00:02, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Fences and windows: Yes, this can be done with the edit filter. It could even be limited to users with no confirmed email address. But there's a catch. The apps don't properly display custom edit filter warnings, either! The iOS app just displays the title of the page where the message is stored. And the Android app doesn't display custom messages at all. The mobile web editor does display messages properly, however. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:10, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
- If this were a lower-priority issue, I would say we should come back in a month and see if the WMF fixed it. But this is such a glaring oversight that I feel this may be the only option if we want to fix this. Question: would this apply to just the app, or to the mobile site as well? —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 15:06, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
- It's app only (the
user_app
variable in the edit filter). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:12, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
- It's app only (the
- Thanks, ProcrastinatingReader. If we prepare an RfC, where would it be held? It would need advertising on cent. Fences&Windows 23:47, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Fences and windows: Any RFC will need some very careful drafting first. If it fails (for any reason) the WMF could interpret the failure as "see the community doesn't really care about this issue". Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:51, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
- We might want to move this thread to WP:VPT; this noticeboard is not widely watched. –xenotalk 23:54, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
- I really don't want to rush into an RFC, though. There are many questions. Should we also disallow mobile IP web editors? Should we disallow edits from users with a confirmed email address? Which bugs, exactly, do we want fixed? How long do we give the WMF to fix them? This is a nuclear option. It should not be taken lightly. But please don't move the whole thread to VPT. It's here so it doesn't get buried in the archives. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:33, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) Two-question RfC maybe? Initial brainstorm - Question 1: consensus 'letter' to WMF requesting resources be allocated to promptly fix the issues. Question 2: if not done within 90 days, mobile apps blocked from editing enwiki by edit filter. Best to move this particular matter to VPI. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:36, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
- It has to be noted though that disallowing edits, if it comes to it, is really not great and rather bitey, as the editors will hardly have any clue what's going on due to EF messages being iffy. Maybe bugging Jimbo and/or Doc James to contact someone in engineering is a viable option? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:43, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
- As I said. Nuclear. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 01:09, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, IDEALAB is the best place (for a new thread). That will discourage any supporting and opposing until we figure just what we're asking for. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 01:09, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
- This needs caution—an overly enthusiastic RfC or proposal at WP:VPI is bound to be voted down and that would cause a lot of people to automatically vote down any future proposals of a similar nature. I'm thinking of masked IPs—any proposal to impede or block such users could easily fail if it appeared to be similar to an earlier idea to block "good faith" users who were unaware that communication was even possible, let alone required. Johnuniq (talk) 08:34, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
- It has to be noted though that disallowing edits, if it comes to it, is really not great and rather bitey, as the editors will hardly have any clue what's going on due to EF messages being iffy. Maybe bugging Jimbo and/or Doc James to contact someone in engineering is a viable option? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:43, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
- We might want to move this thread to WP:VPT; this noticeboard is not widely watched. –xenotalk 23:54, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Fences and windows: Any RFC will need some very careful drafting first. If it fails (for any reason) the WMF could interpret the failure as "see the community doesn't really care about this issue". Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:51, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks, ProcrastinatingReader. If we prepare an RfC, where would it be held? It would need advertising on cent. Fences&Windows 23:47, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
- Can we locally block these apps from editing English Wikipedia? That would force the WMF to fix them. Fences&Windows 00:02, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
- I wish I could say I was surprised by any of this but I've long assumed that something like this was the cause of numerous editors I've come across who display quite clearly that they have never seen their IP/user talk page, and simply have no idea why their edits "aren't going through" (because a human editor keeps undoing them). A thorough waste of thousands of hours of volunteer time, on both ends. There are some countries or regions in which accessing the internet is only financially possible for the everyday person via a mobile phone, so the WMF's inaction here is another built-in systemic bias which prevents some cultures from effectively contributing their knowledge and skills to Wikipedia. — Bilorv (talk) 06:51, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
User:Suffusion of Yellow/Mobile communication bugs seems to be an excellent overview but it would get more attention if it were on phab. I have tried to roughly copy it to https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T278838 which can probably be used as a parent task for all these issues. – SD0001 (talk) 15:04, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
Hi everyone, thanks for raising these issues, and documenting the problems so thoroughly. We're going to get a group of people from the Product department together next week to talk about these problems, and see what we can do about it. I'll let you know what we figure out. I appreciate you all bringing it up. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 22:17, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you, Danny! I look forward to seeing what you come up with. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:55, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
26 April update
Hi everyone, we talked in the Product department about the issues that are being raised in this conversation.
We're currently showing notifications to logged-in editors on mobile web, which appear as a number in a red circle at the top of the page. It's the standard design on mobile that indicates that there are messages for you.
We've been reluctant to do that for IP editors on mobile web, because mobile IPs shift around so much. Desktop IPs can change as well, so there's some risk of not reaching the right person on desktop, but the risk is a lot greater for mobile. People walk around with their phones and move from one wifi or cell tower to another. We haven't wanted to show a message bar to a mobile reader who happens to be picking up the same cell tower or wifi access point as someone who made an edit a year ago.
On the apps, the Android team has released improvements to the talk page experience in February and March. Echo notifications currently exist in the Android app, and user talk pages are also discoverable through the watchlist. Users can access article talk using a dropdown menu at the top right; you can see how this works in this walkthrough gif. There are some further improvements planned, including enabling in-line replies, and building onboarding features to help people discover both the watchlist and talk pages. You can learn more, and ask the team questions, on their Android communication project page.
The iOS team is also looking at improving the talk experience on their app. They're currently in the initial design and technical planning phase for enabling Echo notifications on iOS. Later this year, they're planning to fill in some of the missing collaboration features on the app, including making editing tools and talk pages more prominent.
There are some different things to discuss here, and I'd like to know what you think. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
- What are we doing about the block notification messages and the other edit screen notices?? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:02, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
- @DannyH (WMF):
- About IP users: As myself and others have suggested, there's a solution to the "random unrelated reader" problem: Don't show the alert if the new message is over X days old. Or (if the privacy policy permits) set a cookie anytime they click "publish", and only show any new message alert to people who have edited in the past X days. Or even both. I think most people already understand that messages sent to IP users are not guaranteed to reach the user. But we do expect that when 1.2.3.4 edits Foo, we leave them a message, and then an hour later 1.2.3.4 edits Foo again, that they've seen our message. That's the disconnect between expectations and reality that's been bothering us. You're also making the assumption that users on mobile devices are also on mobile connections. What about the phone user on their home WiFi? That could be stable for months.
- About logged in users: No, the red circle is not (only) the standard "you have new messages" alert. It's also the standard "we have some spammy garbage we'd like to sell you" alert. Of course experienced users know Wikipedia doesn't do that, but inexperienced ones are the people we're trying to reach. As matter of habit, I ignore similar-looking notices on unfamiliar websites.
- About the Android app: Again, what about spam-weary users who have turned off push notifications. With no in-app alert, how are they supposed to know that there is an urgent message on their talk page?
- About the iOS app: If users are currently in a total bubble, why enable editing at all? Why not wait until basic communication features are implemented, and keep the app read-only in the meantime?
- I'm really getting the impression that the WMF thinks that user communication is an afterthought. Y'all didn't just forget one communication-related feature, you forgot most communication-related features. How did this happen in the first place? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:15, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
- @DannyH (WMF): Thank you for your time working on and responding to this. I recognize the difficulties in developing a good software product for the diverse projects that rely on MediaWiki software. However, I am deeply frustrated that this has been allowed to occur. Ensuring that existing community mechanisms for communicating with other editors, especially new editors, continue to function is a bare-bones requirement for any Wikimedia minimum viable product. To paraphrase Risker's related thoughts on Wikimedia software development in a different area: the intention behind a lot of this has been good, but sometimes I think engineers have no idea how our projects actually function and how significant some of these problems are. Frankly, if logged-out mobile editors don't have an interface to see messages, then the logged-out mobile interface should not contain editing functionality. Otherwise, this software is wasting many many hours a day of volunteer time tracking down and reverting and warning (not that they'll see the warnings) and blocking good faith IP users who are oblivious to community norms and this software is wasting just as much time spent by new editors trying to help out but unable to access any feedback about their editing. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 10:01, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
- Let me make more explicit a position that I suspect a broad swath of the English Wikipedia community may support: If the Foundation feels that it is impractical to build a communication system to communicate with logged-out mobile editors, then logged-out mobile users should be required to log in to edit. Wikipedia is a collaborative project; we simply cannot allow users to edit without being able to communicate with them effectively. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 10:05, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
- Absolutely, thank you for the clear description of the situation. I was thinking of going rogue and just blocking any uncommunicative user/IP after a single warning. That would avoid mega-frustration and wasted time and would focus minds on fixing the problem rather than ticking boxes for the number of new edits from new users. Johnuniq (talk) 10:23, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
- Let me make more explicit a position that I suspect a broad swath of the English Wikipedia community may support: If the Foundation feels that it is impractical to build a communication system to communicate with logged-out mobile editors, then logged-out mobile users should be required to log in to edit. Wikipedia is a collaborative project; we simply cannot allow users to edit without being able to communicate with them effectively. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 10:05, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
- @DannyH (WMF): If fixing all the issues is going to take some time, and you don't want to disable editing entirely, can you break the Android app a bit more? See this. Using that hack a message can be conveyed to iOS users but the same can't be done for Android. It shouldn't take long to make the tweak, which would at least allow a custom mechanism to communicate a message to Android editors. Perhaps directing them to login via their browser app, for example. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 03:16, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
Hi everyone, thanks for posting more thoughts. As usual, there's lots to respond to here.
It's true that the apps are late to including talk page features. That's partly because we didn't have a clear strategy for how we could improve talk pages sitewide — we knew that we wanted to improve the usability of talk pages, but the Flow project was not successful, and we knew that we needed to find a new direction. We determined that new direction with the Talk Pages Consultation in mid-2019, and then the Editing team started their Talk pages project to build tools for replying, starting new discussions and being notified when people comment in specific talk page sections. (If you haven't yet, you can turn on the new tools for replying and starting new discussions in the Beta preferences tab.)
As part of that project, the Editing team has developed the ability to break down wikitext conversations into individual comments, and all of that work is now informing the work that both the Android and iOS teams are doing to improve the talk page experience on the apps as well.
Now, one of the things that we do when a product team is working on a feature is to look at both the usage numbers and the revert rate for edits that are made using the feature. If the revert rate is higher than average, then clearly there's a problem with the feature that we need to fix.
Comparing the revert rates across desktop, mobile and apps, we see a similar pattern with both logged-in and logged-out editors. Looking at the last 30 days on English Wikipedia, mobile web edits have a higher revert rate compared to desktop edits. That's true for both logged-in users (10.2% revert on mobile web to 3.7% revert on desktop) and IP editors (35% revert on mobile web to 22% revert on desktop). Edits made through the apps are closer to the desktop revert rate. For logged-in app users, about 6.5% of app edits are reverted, compared to 3.7% on desktop. For IP app users, it's around 24% app edits reverted vs 22% IP edits on desktop. So while every single revert is a waste of time for somebody, we don't see app editing causing significantly more problems than desktop editing, especially compared to mobile web.
As I said earlier, the Android team has recently released improvements for talk pages just last month, and has plans to continue work on it, and iOS will be working on communication features later this year. So while those teams had a late start on these features, they are currently getting attention.
Some more specific points: Suffusion of Yellow, your suggestion about offering a time-limited message is interesting, and started a conversation in a couple of teams, so thanks for bringing that up. For your question about the assumption that mobile devices are used on the go: yes, there are definitely people who use mobile devices on stable IPs. However, it's a lot more likely that any given mobile device will be on an inconsistent IP than a desktop device.
Regarding people who ignore red circles and turn off push notifications, it's true that banner blindness is very strong, and that's a problem for web designers in general. However, we've found that when someone takes a specific step like turning off push notifications, responding with larger and more insistent notifications is not likely to help.
I'm happy to keep talking, if folks have more questions or suggestions. DannyH (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
- Danny, I'm intrigued and puzzled by your statement here. You have people here (and in many previous conversations) expressing frustrations at an inability to communicate with users. Some prior discussions have been about specific editors who have a mixture of constructive and troubling edits which are the kind of editors who can frequently be helped to stop the troubling edits. Your response, if I'm understanding it correctly, is that because there is no difference in revert rates for these editors compared to those on other platforms that the lack of communication doesn't matter. This might be true but would be a radical shift in culture in terms of how we handle disruptive editing and would be at odds with other foundation sponsored initiatives, including obligations to help new users in the UCoC. Can you help me either understand where I am failing to get what you're saying or if I do understand what you're saying how we, as an enwiki community, can square this circle. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:17, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
- Hi Barkeep49: What I shared about the revert rate was in response to a couple of things. First, Johnuniq commented on the fact that I'd only talked about edits from app users, and didn't acknowledge the impact on the editor community who have to clean up a mess. (The part about "ticking boxes for the number of new edits from new users.") It was also a response to the suggestion made in a few places that the apps shouldn't allow editing if the communication features aren't up to desktop standard. My point is that we do try to take the impact on the community into account, by making sure that features that we build don't result in a mess that's noticeably bigger than the mess that already exists.
- But yes, this conversation is mostly about reaching specific editors who might be helped to stop making troubling edits. I agree that the communication features are important, and both apps teams have been and will continue to work on communication features. Some of the problems that we're talking about have already been addressed on Android; I think that in the case mentioned in the thread on Jimbo's talk page, they would have received talk page notifications as of March 30th — but that was sadly too late to reach that user. These conversations have inspired us to talk more about the communication features as a product team, and I appreciate the folks who have brought it up here. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 20:37, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- DannyH (WMF), the desktop site is fully functional on modern mobile devices. The solution to this problem to shut down all apps and sites that are not fully functional, and redirect all users to the desktop site, which should be renamed the "fully functional site". That would save enormous amounts of money and draw a gigantic worldwide pool of new editors into the WMF free knowledge websites. Right now, we are erecting barriers to collaboration with people editing with mobile devices, and that is terribly sad. I speak as an editor who has been editing and more recently administrating with Android smartphones for ten years. 99+% of my edits are on smartphones. The WMF is spending buckets of money on a problem that does not exist, and making matters worse in the process. Cullen328 Let's discuss it
- While this may have been a hypothetical, I would personally oppose such a proposal, solely because while the desktop site is functional on mobile, the text is still really small. The probably-crazy solution that immediately comes to mind is to switch the site skin to the new Responsive MonoBook, because that would display the content at a reasonable size on mobile while presumably allowing IPs to see the Orange Bar of Doom. (I haven't tested this, but I assume it works because unlike Minerva, MonoBook is maintained by the editing community.) Also, there are some plans to make Vector responsive too, but I don't know anything about that. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 22:19, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- At least a couple of us have disagreed with your view a few times, Cullen. The desktop site is not at all well optimised, and the apps are better for reading already. The solution is not to delete everything, rather than fix the issues. It's such an overly simplistic view anyway; compare this to this in terms of page size. I mean, the suggestion just isn't considerate of all the language projects and global users, and is just so unlikely to happen that it distracts from real solutions, which really is to disable editing in the interim / provide a roadmap, or at least allow the community to do that if it wishes to by consensus. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 01:36, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
- DannyH (WMF), the desktop site is fully functional on modern mobile devices. The solution to this problem to shut down all apps and sites that are not fully functional, and redirect all users to the desktop site, which should be renamed the "fully functional site". That would save enormous amounts of money and draw a gigantic worldwide pool of new editors into the WMF free knowledge websites. Right now, we are erecting barriers to collaboration with people editing with mobile devices, and that is terribly sad. I speak as an editor who has been editing and more recently administrating with Android smartphones for ten years. 99+% of my edits are on smartphones. The WMF is spending buckets of money on a problem that does not exist, and making matters worse in the process. Cullen328 Let's discuss it
- But yes, this conversation is mostly about reaching specific editors who might be helped to stop making troubling edits. I agree that the communication features are important, and both apps teams have been and will continue to work on communication features. Some of the problems that we're talking about have already been addressed on Android; I think that in the case mentioned in the thread on Jimbo's talk page, they would have received talk page notifications as of March 30th — but that was sadly too late to reach that user. These conversations have inspired us to talk more about the communication features as a product team, and I appreciate the folks who have brought it up here. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 20:37, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- I agree that just nuking mobile and forcing everyone to use desktop is the wrong solution. What many people don't quite grasp is that not everyone is like them. They assume that because they have a large screen smartphone and a fast connection, then of course everyone does, and if a desktop website works for them then of course it works fine for for everyone else.
- In the real world some people access Wikipedia on old flip phones, satellite phones with huge packet delays, rugged industrial phones with tiny screens, and ancient computers using modems.
- I recently finished a preliminary design for a major toy manufacturer that includes a very low performance web browser with a really cheap display. That one got cancelled (90% of toys that make it to prototype do) but sooner or later you are going to see something similar in the toy aisle at Wal-mart for $29.95 USD. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:02, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
- @DannyH (WMF): is this a joke or am I misunderstanding? You're saying that it's a deliberate design choice that mobile app editors are not seeing the messages being left for them? How do you suggest that we contact CejeroC, or does it not matter that thousands of volunteers' time (both newbie and experienced) are being wasted? — Bilorv (talk) 23:33, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
- Hi @Bilorv: I think that you're misunderstanding slightly. It's a deliberate design choice not to show notifications for IP editors on mobile web, because there's a higher chance that we'll show the notification to the wrong person. It's more likely that a mobile web edit was made by someone who's moving around, so the notification would appear for a random reader who happens to be picking up the same cell tower or wifi access. We are showing notifications for logged-in editors on mobile web, and both logged-in and logged-out editors on the Android and iOS apps.
- CejeroC was an editor on the Android app, which added talk page notifications in some changes made in February-March 2021. This was too late for the people trying to contact CejeroC, unfortunately, but it should be easier to contact Android app editors from now on. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 18:35, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks for the reply, DannyH (WMF). I'm glad that I was misunderstanding, as the other option was deeply undesirable. My new questions are as follows: you're saying that it's a deliberate design choice that unregistered mobile web editors are not seeing the messages being left for them? Where can I see the WMF's data on the percentage of IP talk page messages that would have been seen by someone who was not the intended target, versus the percentage that would have been seen by the intended target? And how should a volunteer attempt to get in contact with an IP editor tagged as making mobile web edits, particularly when the IP has clearly been static for a non-trivial amount of time (based on the length of the editor's contributions)? — Bilorv (talk) 18:57, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
- @Bilorv: I wish we could get data on who sees which notifications; it would make life easier. Unfortunately, we don't know. (There are a lot of stats that are typically collected by other big websites that we don't collect out of respect for users' privacy.) The judgment call that we're making right now is based on our understanding that a large number of IPs move around and are unreachable even on desktop, and that problem is obviously magnified for mobile IPs. For the question of how a volunteer could get in contact with a stable mobile IP editor, one potential workaround would be to leave them a message on the IP's talk page, and then when you revert one of their edits, you put a link to their talk page in the edit summary. That's obviously a hack, but IP editors having a talk page at all is kind of a hack. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
- I don't believe that the users I'm thinking of are aware that there's a page history—in fact, I often see behaviour that makes me think they are going "my edit didn't go through, why is it not there when I look again a few hours later?" after a revert (and I don't think the layout makes the page history obvious). I need to send a big fuck-off banner saying "SOMEONE IS TRYING TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT THE EDIT YOU DID" in order to engage attention. Unfortunately, no such functionality exists. I do appreciate the privacy afforded to readers and editors, but you're making a judgement call based on not very much—certainly not what the community wants—and using a 2001 IP-based system is not the solid foundation for communication that I need. (I understand the WMF is planning to anonymise IPs but not change them as the method of tracking unregistered contributors.) I don't necessarily want us to start tracking people with cookies, so I know every solution comes with a disadvantage, but this situation is honestly ridiculous. So much of my time is wasted with sending out messages to people who will never see it, and the alternative is just undoing what they did without explanation (what message is that to send to a newcomer? How can we get new editors involved by doing that?). — Bilorv (talk) 21:25, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
- @Bilorv: As you say, the 2001 IP-based communication system is very flawed. The big f'off banner doesn't even work for desktop IP editors all too often, because IPs shift around, or just because the person who's making the edits doesn't understand or doesn't respond to talk page messages. For mobile IP editors, you're even less likely to make a connection. I think that if the folks who created MediaWiki twenty years ago were creating it today, they probably wouldn't use IP addresses as the foundation for communication, but this is the legacy system that we have.
- I do think that the work that the Anti-Harassment Tools team is doing on "IP masking" will help with this, especially if we use cookies on mobile devices to associate the device with an auto-generated user name. There's a lot of planning and discussion left to do on the IP masking project, and figuring out how to communicate with "masked" IP editors will be one of many things to figure out. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 22:42, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
- I don't believe that the users I'm thinking of are aware that there's a page history—in fact, I often see behaviour that makes me think they are going "my edit didn't go through, why is it not there when I look again a few hours later?" after a revert (and I don't think the layout makes the page history obvious). I need to send a big fuck-off banner saying "SOMEONE IS TRYING TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT THE EDIT YOU DID" in order to engage attention. Unfortunately, no such functionality exists. I do appreciate the privacy afforded to readers and editors, but you're making a judgement call based on not very much—certainly not what the community wants—and using a 2001 IP-based system is not the solid foundation for communication that I need. (I understand the WMF is planning to anonymise IPs but not change them as the method of tracking unregistered contributors.) I don't necessarily want us to start tracking people with cookies, so I know every solution comes with a disadvantage, but this situation is honestly ridiculous. So much of my time is wasted with sending out messages to people who will never see it, and the alternative is just undoing what they did without explanation (what message is that to send to a newcomer? How can we get new editors involved by doing that?). — Bilorv (talk) 21:25, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
- @Bilorv: I wish we could get data on who sees which notifications; it would make life easier. Unfortunately, we don't know. (There are a lot of stats that are typically collected by other big websites that we don't collect out of respect for users' privacy.) The judgment call that we're making right now is based on our understanding that a large number of IPs move around and are unreachable even on desktop, and that problem is obviously magnified for mobile IPs. For the question of how a volunteer could get in contact with a stable mobile IP editor, one potential workaround would be to leave them a message on the IP's talk page, and then when you revert one of their edits, you put a link to their talk page in the edit summary. That's obviously a hack, but IP editors having a talk page at all is kind of a hack. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks for the reply, DannyH (WMF). I'm glad that I was misunderstanding, as the other option was deeply undesirable. My new questions are as follows: you're saying that it's a deliberate design choice that unregistered mobile web editors are not seeing the messages being left for them? Where can I see the WMF's data on the percentage of IP talk page messages that would have been seen by someone who was not the intended target, versus the percentage that would have been seen by the intended target? And how should a volunteer attempt to get in contact with an IP editor tagged as making mobile web edits, particularly when the IP has clearly been static for a non-trivial amount of time (based on the length of the editor's contributions)? — Bilorv (talk) 18:57, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
- @DannyH (WMF):
We are showing notifications for ... both logged-in and logged-out editors on the Android and iOS apps.
Can you link me to the phab task where the the lack of iOS notifications was fixed? I don't have an iOS device handy and phab:T274404 and its subtasks suggest work is just getting started. Also, the Android app still isn't showing me any alerts for logged-out talk page messages. And least no one has responded to my simple question at phab:T95396. So what have I missed? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:37, 6 June 2021 (UTC)- @Suffusion of Yellow: Sorry, you're correct about iOS. I just checked my own post at the top of the section and realized that I made a mistake when I replied to Bilorv. Android has already made the changes; iOS is getting started on that work. I looked at your question on that ticket, which I think was not the correct ticket for that bug report — it looks like that ticket was closed in May 2020, and may not have been the right ticket anyway. I just asked the PM to take a look at it, and tell me where that report should go; I'll let you know when I get an answer. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 21:06, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
- Ah, I see that you've already made that connection on phab:T276147. At least, I think so. Let me know if I'm not correct. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 21:22, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
- @Suffusion of Yellow: Sorry, you're correct about iOS. I just checked my own post at the top of the section and realized that I made a mistake when I replied to Bilorv. Android has already made the changes; iOS is getting started on that work. I looked at your question on that ticket, which I think was not the correct ticket for that bug report — it looks like that ticket was closed in May 2020, and may not have been the right ticket anyway. I just asked the PM to take a look at it, and tell me where that report should go; I'll let you know when I get an answer. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 21:06, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
- @DannyH (WMF): So I understand there is still a subset of logged-out mobile editors not getting talk page notifications, yet they are still editing? This is unacceptable.
- As has been stated above, if an interface does not have basic communication capabilities, then the interface should not have editing capabilities. --DB1729 (talk) 02:17, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
- @DB1729: I understand your dismay; I agree that communication is essential for productive wiki collaboration. I think that at the root, this is actually a flaw in the concept of allowing people to edit without an account on Wikipedia. Twenty years ago, it may have been roughly accurate to assume that IP addresses were mostly stable, because everybody had a desktop and mostly a dial-up connection, so if you posted a message for a particular IP address then you were likely to reach the same person. Today, the use of laptops at wifi hotspots and phones and tablets using cell service has basically broken that model. A few years ago, we reached the point when mobile pageviews hit 50% of our traffic, and by now the majority of Wikipedia readers are accessing our site with a mobile device.
- I think that your suggestion of restricting IP editing on mobile is an interesting one, and it's possible to argue that that should apply to desktop as well as mobile. But that's a much bigger conversation, and I don't think we'd be able to settle it here. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 21:19, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
- I don't have the data, but edits I make using my phone usually come from the same IP (my home or work wifi) that my desktop edits come from. (I use responsive monobook, so my phone edits count as "desktop"). What's inhibiting communication with some mobile editors is not that their IP changes, it is that the software they use is not fit for purpose. Do you know any of the people who can fix the software? —Kusma (talk) 08:28, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
- @DannyH (WMF): Speaking of notifications Danny, for some reason I never got that ping from your last reply.(ironic) Did you get a confirmation it was sent? Thank you for the reply and for sharing your thoughts. In the meantime, yes I understand the dynamic IP problem, but these users are notified (I hope) when their IP addresses are blocked, are they not? Presumably when they open an edit window? Similarly, a talk page notification could be displayed only when there is an attempt to edit. It could then time-out or become invisible after a set duration, much like I assume a block notice will disappear once the block expires. DB1729 (talk) 15:48, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
#suggestededit-add 1.0
I think it would be a good idea to also bring up what I think is the related issue of the #suggestededit-add 1.0 process, as this seems to a mobile idea. See for example Jomart Allaguliyev (talk · contribs), a new mobile user who has made over 1000 edits exclusively through this process. Most are fine, but some are wrong, and some are almost nonsensical. Sometimes they re-do and worsen their own better work! [2] [3]. They've also a few times made the same edit twice after being reverted [4][5], which feels like something popped up and they simply repeated the action? The only documentation seems to be on Wikidata, so it is unclear how exactly these are happening or where they're happening from. There is an old Phab task (T227623) closed suggesting the process is working as intended. CMD (talk) 02:42, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
- I'm confused about how this is a suggestedit issue. That editor was given exactly one warning, as far as I can tell. If an editor is editing disruptively, the first step is to notify them on their talk page, isn't it? (Also, I have fixed your broken link above.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:26, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks for the fix. The user is not editing disruptively, on the whole. The point is, this user's edits are being solely guided by some program out there providing editing suggestions to new users, provided by WMF, of which there seems to be little documentation. How is it not a suggested edit issue, when any potential disruptiveness would presumably be due to this feature? It would be nice to have documentation. If the edit summaries are automatically generated, why don't they include a wikilink to such documentation? The Mediawiki FAQ states only that it is to "Add short descriptions to articles that are missing descriptions", which is clearly not the case given these are edits to existing short descriptions. CMD (talk) 09:14, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
Another block. Any progress?
[6] Didn't seem like there was any other option. Any progress on resolving these issues? As I requested somewhere, any chance we can break the Android app some more so we can use a hack like Filter 1139 (for iOS) for Android users as well? That hack works due to the fact that iOS edit filter disallows do not parse the page but just display the page title instead. Android unfortunately uses a hardcoded vandalism warning, so this does not work there. It should be trivial for WMF engineers to make Android behave the same as iOS while they do proper fixes. @DannyH (WMF)? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:19, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
- @ProcrastinatingReader: It looks like the fix for edit filter messages on Android has made it to the official (app store) release. So it should be possible to "communicate" with Android users through the filter now. However, links in the edit filter message will open in the browser. And if they're viewing a wiki that isn't their default language, the links will go the wrong language wiki. e.g., if we (on enwiki) send them to Special:MyTalk or WP:EF/FP/R, they might end up at fr:Special:MyTalk or de:WP:EF/FP/R. I don't know if that bug is being actively worked on, but we're getting somewhere. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:34, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
- Suffusion of Yellow I don't know a lot about edit filter, but I (maybe) have an idea for a work around. Can we redefine all edit filter links as fully defined [external links] and explicitly point them to https://en.wikipedia.org/_whatever_ ? Alsee (talk) 12:34, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
- @Alsee: Tested here. That seems to work. The first link (Foo) opens at frwiki (because that's the first language in my settings), but both testwiki:Foo and https://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo open at testwiki. That should work for a filter like 1139 (hist · log) but I don't think we should "fix" the dozens of other messages to work around this bug. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:06, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
- Suffusion of Yellow I don't know a lot about edit filter, but I (maybe) have an idea for a work around. Can we redefine all edit filter links as fully defined [external links] and explicitly point them to https://en.wikipedia.org/_whatever_ ? Alsee (talk) 12:34, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
Some progress - see the latest update at mw:Wikimedia Apps/Team/Android/Communication. Nthep (talk) 21:00, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
Annual Plan Highlights
The WMF has released a set of departmental Annual Plan highlight youtube videos, for those that may be interested. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:53, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
- For those of us who prefer text to videos: what are the highlights of the annual plan? —Kusma (talk) 16:20, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
- User:Nosebagbear: Have the videos also been uploaded to Commons? If not, I think they should be. Not everyone wants to use YouTube for various reasons. DesertPipeline (talk) 13:06, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
- @DesertPipeline: - I don't know if they have been, but they certainly should be, even if our views on private software differ. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:42, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
- I'm fine with using private software as long as it allows you to access things without joining the service, but I think that if (and it's only an "if" for now) this has only been published on YouTube then it's another indication that the WMF view this as just another social media site rather than the unique encyclopedia that it is. Phil Bridger (talk) 15:53, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
- User:Nosebagbear: I mentioned this before, but if you're using "private" to mean "non-libre" – they're two different concepts; private software is software which only certain people have copies of. It may or may not be libre (as in it may or may not give those people the four freedoms). However, services are different – YouTube can't be described as "libre" or "non-libre". Unlike software, services do have a trust requirement. Unfortunately I don't know how that problem can be resolved; but I'm not a computer expert. I doubt there's no solution whatsoever. DesertPipeline (talk) 04:16, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
- @DesertPipeline: - I don't know if they have been, but they certainly should be, even if our views on private software differ. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:42, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
- It seems to all be found at m:Wikimedia Foundation Medium-term plan 2019/Annual Plan 2021-2022 as well. Killiondude (talk) 16:54, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks for that, Killiondude. There's little in the plan that anyone can argue against, because it all seems very "motherhood and apple pie" with few specifics. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:32, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
- User:Nosebagbear: Have the videos also been uploaded to Commons? If not, I think they should be. Not everyone wants to use YouTube for various reasons. DesertPipeline (talk) 13:06, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
A Summary of the 7 Youtube videos
I'll skip a lot of fluff, such as a staff member writing an article. Summary in one line: They continue to struggle to spend all the cash raining down from the sky, they are greedy for more cash, and their war against consensus continues.
Communications Department:
- They are "now beginning" to tell the community they are going to do the things they want to do. Acknowledges the importance of building trust. To achieve this, they are continuing to hire more people to talk more loudly at us.
- They are going to assist other departments efforts to push out the various Movement Strategy items.
- Comment: The Movement Strategy team explicitly refused to allow consensus anywhere into the process. Many or most Strategy items appear to be strongly contrary to consensus. This is growing into a multi-front storm.
Advancement Department:
- Expanded staff for providing Grants
- The WMF cashpile is about to hit $100 Million.
- Commercial-class offerings to bring in more cash.
Chief Technology Officer:
- Better site performance to remote parts of the world.
- Better security/reliability/backups in case anything bad happens.
- Better software documentation.
Talent&Culture (This appears to be the Human Resources department, but with a twist):
- Continue to grow staff.
- Focus: Diversity Equity & Inclusion.
- Celebrate employees as people, and cultivate them.
Finance and Administration:
- This years fundraising was an even bigger windfall of cash than expected, and they had to scramble to figure out how to spend it all.
- They will be focusing on growing the cash stockpile, as well as the Commercial-class offerings to bring in more cash.
- A "key area of focus" will trying to handle the surge of expansion and hiring. Calls this "somewhat new".
- Helping budget managers understand where the money is going.
Legal Department:
- Will be working with people who supported the strategy.
- Working on the Strategy.
Product Department:
- Community Tech (continues as usual), Visual editor (as always), Talk Pages project, Content Translation for mobile (also VE).
- Growth team. New kinds of edits. Not every edit has to be a long-form article. Tools for readers (I don't know what this means). IP masking. "Equitable growth".
- Tools for Campaigns team - they work with organizations that want their content in Wikipedia.
- Vue.js - a software thing that is supposed to be more inviting for new developers.
- "Content refresh" (this appears to be a trending marketing buzzphrase for SEO and maximizing pageviews) - update content display to match expectations of readers, "more readable". Not really clear what that means. Talk Page project. Work on translation for mobile.
Alsee (talk) 11:15, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
- The highlights (of concern) for me are are their insistence on calling Wikipedia works "content" and the "Tools for Campaigns team" thing. Does the latter one mean they're trying to allow native advertising on Wikipedia, or am I misunderstanding? DesertPipeline (talk) 11:55, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
- The campaigns stuff sounds to me more like supporting GLAM and organisations who want to share public domain content. Nthep (talk) 12:29, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
- I wish somewhere up there it said "fix thousands of software bugs", but I guess that would take a few more tens of millions of dollars. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:21, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
- Fixing bugs needs a few well-paid people who know what they are doing, rather than many people who can't get jobs elsewhere "working" on trendy issues. Do you really think that anyone at the WMF is interested in that? Phil Bridger (talk) 17:13, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
- I wish somewhere up there it said "fix thousands of software bugs", but I guess that would take a few more tens of millions of dollars. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:21, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
- The campaigns stuff sounds to me more like supporting GLAM and organisations who want to share public domain content. Nthep (talk) 12:29, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks for the update. I agree with Jonesey95; sufficient money could be diverted to fix software issues such as WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU with little loss. Certes (talk) 18:18, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
- Wow. I don't want to turn this into a debate, but if they are scrambling to figure out how to spend their cash, they should really fix the WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU. It is an issue that is really important, as "transition" to a more mobile-friendly experience is a thing that should be accomplished years ago. It is so concerning that the CTO didn't even touch about mobile issues as it have been discussed many times. SunDawntalk 16:55, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
- They have been too busy with other matters for the last ten years. In 2011 they published their strategy to deprecate wikitext. They hired a ton of HTML devs, they built a new HTML editor (Visual Editor) that has no ability to edit wikitext, they built a temporary hack (Parsoid) to translate Wikitext to HTML and back. The current plan is to kill off our current wikitext engine over this coming year. In one way or another, this has sucked up almost all dev time over the last decade. In fact the Foundation has been running into problems due to an almost complete lack of staff with any competence on our core wikitext engine.(See Constraints and challenges:Unfamiliarity with PHP and MediaWiki internals) This is why thousands of bugs and problems and improvements have been neglected. Alsee (talk) 14:54, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
- MediaWiki was developed for use on Wikipedia but has been adopted elsewhere. (That's the nature of open source development, and is usually a Good Thing.) Although the cash raised from enwp's Donate link alone could fund its development many times over, we no longer get much say in its direction. It's an off-the-peg package that we have to squeeze into rather than the bespoke software we once enjoyed. Certes (talk) 19:47, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
- That's just not true. Almost all development of MediaWiki is driven (and indeed funded) by the Wikipedia use case. It does have to take the other users into account of course, but relatively those other users contribute little code. Wikipedia is the only group who has any say beyond the WMF and the long-time developers I would argue. It's just that once something becomes complex and widely used, any changes becomes very difficult. Not saying that Alsee is right (far from it), but that we are squeezed into a off-the-peg package isn't right either. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:32, 10 August 2021 (UTC)
- MediaWiki was developed for use on Wikipedia but has been adopted elsewhere. (That's the nature of open source development, and is usually a Good Thing.) Although the cash raised from enwp's Donate link alone could fund its development many times over, we no longer get much say in its direction. It's an off-the-peg package that we have to squeeze into rather than the bespoke software we once enjoyed. Certes (talk) 19:47, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
- They have been too busy with other matters for the last ten years. In 2011 they published their strategy to deprecate wikitext. They hired a ton of HTML devs, they built a new HTML editor (Visual Editor) that has no ability to edit wikitext, they built a temporary hack (Parsoid) to translate Wikitext to HTML and back. The current plan is to kill off our current wikitext engine over this coming year. In one way or another, this has sucked up almost all dev time over the last decade. In fact the Foundation has been running into problems due to an almost complete lack of staff with any competence on our core wikitext engine.(See Constraints and challenges:Unfamiliarity with PHP and MediaWiki internals) This is why thousands of bugs and problems and improvements have been neglected. Alsee (talk) 14:54, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
- A long time ago, I had heard some WMF staff members talking about certain articles and topics being exempted from the constraints of WP:V or WP:RS if their notability could be asserted via oral history or word-of-mouth, in order to encourage articles on minority subjects. Is this what they are still pushing for? Is that what they mean by "equitable growth"? WaltCip-(talk) 14:46, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
- @WaltCip: That's part of the Strategy Recommendations: "- Consult with communities and experts to identify policies in Wikimedia projects that act as barriers of access to content related to underrepresented communities (e.g. Notability). - Create pathways to new projects, create new functionalities, or encourage communities to create new policies that address these barriers. The goal is to allow the inclusion and preservation of all forms of human knowledge in all socio-cultural contexts (e.g. encourage refining reliability criteria to provide guidelines to identify reliable sources from oral or non-Western knowledge resources, encourage ensuring that notability criteria are relevant in all contexts)." I think "equitable growth" refers to something else, though. --Yair rand (talk) 22:46, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
- Further background: There was some project where they organized people from some tribe or something, and had them try to write articles. I'm don't think they even had written sources internal to the population, never mind anything resembling Reliable Sources. They got nuked on Notability and Sourcing. The Foundation considers us mean and evil for that. The Foundation Equity-brigade wanted any random-idiot-on-the-internet to be allowed to record "oral histories" spoken by anyone, upload them, and to cite those as sources in articles. By the way, I happen to have an oral history right here - Queen Elizabeth and Albert Einstein are time travelers, and they're Genghis Khan's parents. OH! Another fun detail - they wanted an exemption from our open content licensing - no derivative works. In particular they didn't want anyone outside the population-group to be allowed to change "their" content. Alsee (talk) 23:33, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
- That sounds like a useful project but out of scope for Wikipedia. It might be better as a separate Wiki Oral Knowledge Encyclopedia. Certes (talk) 01:25, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
- That is very concerning in terms of reliability. My extended families do have stories that are transmitted orally, but that does not mean that it is reliable. For instance, even at the same tribe, different storytellers may give different stories. And how do you determine which one is the "right" story? And what counts as oral history? Is tribe rituals an oral history? Or how about fables and stories in the past? How about stories that "I saw it happened and even if it is illogical you have to believe me because I saw it happened." How about stories that are affected by superstition? There is so many that can go wrong there. And how do you determine that a user is for certain belong to some population group? If my grandfather is from tribe X, do I belong to the population-group of X? SunDawntalk 04:55, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
- I am not quite sure why we keep talking about oral histories. Indeed, there are communities where this is important, and which what to solve their (perfectly real) problems by allowing these oral histories as sources. Whereas I personally think this is unlikely to be implemented on any Wikipedia, and still may be implemented as a separate project, it in principle can affect some smaller Wikipedias (and how many of us know what are the policies currently being implemented on the Hausa Wikipedia for a starter?). However, there is no way this can be implemented on the English Wikipedia, and everybody perfectly understands this. I would say even that nobody at the WMF who has ideas about the functioning on the projects wants to implement this, but possibly people would not believe me. It is enough to say however that they (and they here means, well, anyone) just do not have any tools to implement oral histories as reliable sources on the English Wikipedia, irrespectively of what whoever wants. And please do not remind me of UCoC, the oral histories have no relation whatsoever to the terms of use.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:24, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
- Further background: There was some project where they organized people from some tribe or something, and had them try to write articles. I'm don't think they even had written sources internal to the population, never mind anything resembling Reliable Sources. They got nuked on Notability and Sourcing. The Foundation considers us mean and evil for that. The Foundation Equity-brigade wanted any random-idiot-on-the-internet to be allowed to record "oral histories" spoken by anyone, upload them, and to cite those as sources in articles. By the way, I happen to have an oral history right here - Queen Elizabeth and Albert Einstein are time travelers, and they're Genghis Khan's parents. OH! Another fun detail - they wanted an exemption from our open content licensing - no derivative works. In particular they didn't want anyone outside the population-group to be allowed to change "their" content. Alsee (talk) 23:33, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
- @WaltCip: That's part of the Strategy Recommendations: "- Consult with communities and experts to identify policies in Wikimedia projects that act as barriers of access to content related to underrepresented communities (e.g. Notability). - Create pathways to new projects, create new functionalities, or encourage communities to create new policies that address these barriers. The goal is to allow the inclusion and preservation of all forms of human knowledge in all socio-cultural contexts (e.g. encourage refining reliability criteria to provide guidelines to identify reliable sources from oral or non-Western knowledge resources, encourage ensuring that notability criteria are relevant in all contexts)." I think "equitable growth" refers to something else, though. --Yair rand (talk) 22:46, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
- Various WMF execs will be holding open Zoom Q&As about the Annual Plan over the next several days. See m:Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-term_plan_2019/Annual_Plan_2021-2022#Annual_Plan_Conversations. Product and Technology Departments on 28 July at 15:00 UTC, Finance and Administration and Advancement Departments on 29 July at 17:00 UTC, Communications Department on 2 August at 17:00 UTC. --Yair rand (talk) 01:26, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
A Mega Wikipedia is coming (or not) ???
This is not going to happen, at least not in the form you described, but see m:Abstract Wikipedia for something similar. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 11:19, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
As each page is written and updated in a language then logically the amount of information on one page will be different from another.
For this reason, I always do research in Portuguese and, in case I don't solve my doubt, I do it in English afterwards.
So I thought the following: would it be possible to unify the pages written in Portuguese, Spanish and English?
This would massively reduce the number of pages and unify all available information.
Firstly, Brazilian Portuguese would be done with Portugal, United States English, with United Kingdom and universal English, etc.
A second step would be to unite Portuguese and Spanish. The third and last step would be to unite with English.
How to do this? Partnering with Google Translate.
When opening a page (for example: Rio de Janeiro), then the most complete page would appear first (example: Portuguese from Brazil) followed by the second (example: Portuguese from Portugal).
That way the person would complete the larger text with the information from the smaller text below. With the pages in Spanish and English, the same thing would happen.
It would be months before I got users to edit all that and simplify the pages.
And to open the pages, edit and finally unify Portuguese, Spanish and English? It would be simple: when opening the pages, Google Translate would automatically translate all the text into the language chosen by the person.
All finished pages would be saved in English and translated into the language chosen by the site visitor.
This would reduce the number of pages in the database by 90% while keeping the same amount of original information.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Ufrrj99 (talk • contribs) 17:36, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
- Just no.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:45, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
- No. The ptwiki community is healthier. Érico (talk) 18:42, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
- You may be interested in m:Abstract Wikipedia, also known as Wikifunctions. Certes (talk) 18:45, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
Seeking design help for minor edit pop-up box
The RfC at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 179#RfC on limiting minor edits, asking whether minor edits should be restricted to autoconfirmed or extended-confirmed editors, was recently closed. The closer noted that there was "slightly more support" for limiting the box to autoconfirmed editors than continuing the status quo (requiring only registration), and although it wasn't quite enough for implementation, there is clear community dissatisfaction with the present functionality of minor edits. A sidebar I started about the possibility of a pop-up box received general support.
Mostly copying my explanation comment: Part of the issue we have with minor edits is that our definition of minor is not intuitive, and this means that we have to assume that people misusing the box are doing so out of ignorance, which makes it very difficult to do enforcement. One way to address this would be if, the first time an editor checks the minor edit box, a notice pops up with a brief definition of what we mean by "minor" (perhaps similar to the wording at {{uw-minor}}) that the editor would have to okay. This would ensure that everyone making a minor edit can be expected to understand what it means.
Would any of the design folks at the WMF be willing to help put together a prototype of what that notice could look like? That could then be presented to the community seeking consensus for implementation. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:05, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
Request for comment notification
Here is a link to a RFC on Meta concerning all Wikimedia projects. Lionel Scheepmans ✉ Contact (French native speaker) 23:25, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
Board of Trustees election has started
Voting has begun in the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections! Voting ends at 23:59, 31 August 2021 (UTC). Verify your eligibility and vote now: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/vote/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_Elections_2021
-EpicPupper, your friendly local English Wikipedia election volunteer
🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk, FAQ, contribs) 18:32, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
Question: Are there any voter guides or other resources for first-time voters? —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 21:16, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
- I found this Q&A posed to the candidates helpful. (Though, incidentally, I found it a bit surprising that there were no links in the banner or the voting page to this sort of information, and that I had to do a google search to find information about the candidates.) Colin M (talk) 23:36, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
- Hi @Pythoncoder, nice to meet you. I'm actually a first-time voter as well :) I find all the links at [7] helpful, especially the candidate table, Q&A, candidate profiles, general voting information and history, and information on Single Transferrable Vote (the voting format this election uses).
- If it helps, personally, what I did in advance of the election was start a LibreOffice doc, look at the candidate question answers and statements, rank the top 10 of who I like, bottom 6 of who I don't like, and leave the rest in the middle. When voting, I then entered those in and picked randomly for the middle ones. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk, FAQ, contribs) 00:29, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you both so much for these helpful resources! —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 01:13, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
- I'm surprised they don't have a single page that presents basic info on all the candidates. I had to click open 20 or so tabs to see their info. What candidates do you guys like? I am just going to vote for folks that have the most edits on the English Wikipedia unless convinced otherwise. I feel it is important to make sure that our wiki is well represented. Those candidates appear to be Rosiestep, Mike Peel, AshLin, and Discott. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:45, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
- I've taken editing history into account but also looked at the candidates' statements. (Yes, it's a shame that takes so many clicks.) I'm not here to tell anyone which policies to like, but I do suggest you vote for whomever will try to lead the WMF in your preferred direction. I also attached some importance to answers to Community Questions from those candidates who provided them. Certes (talk) 12:12, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
Community questions
Hello fellow editors,
I would like to draw your attention to the complete list of 61 questions which were asked by the Community here. The Election Committee of the WMF selected eleven of these questions which were mandatorily needed to be answered by the candidates in the link given above by Colin M. Some candidates answered the complete list of 61 questions and you can read their views in their questions, however please note there was severe time pressure on the candidates in this election and all candidates were genuinely not able to answer all the questions due to commitments in real life.
Please do go through candidate statements and their answers to the mandatory 11 questions and complete set of community questions before voting. Vote wisely, and Happy Editting. :) AshLin (talk) 06:56, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
Disclaimer: I am a candidate for the Board of Trustees Election and this post is only for information of editors on my home wiki. AshLin (talk) 06:56, 20 August 2021 (UTC)