Talk:Community Wishlist/Wishes/Wikimedia Dashboard

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Dashboard yes – This no (+ low importance)

Dashboards could be useful for Wikimedia projects. However, except for the global watchlist the other components of it don't seem useful.

• What would the clipboard be for? Use a local text editor
• What would the use of having favorites on the page be? Put them on your Watchlist and simply don't check every change. This way you also sometimes see section headers that may be of interest or get reminded about the page when there's recent / lots of activity.
• Even the global watchlist wouldn't be very useful for most contributors on the dashboard I think. a) The global watchlist itself is only used little. b) there are so many Watchlist entries per project that it doesn't help to put them all together c) the dashboard showing separate possibly at first collapsed watchlists per project would be more useful if that's not how the GW would be integrated d) people often have varying Watchlist settings and gadget per project – for example I have this gadget for specifically the Wikidata watchlist to filter out label changes of languages other than a few that I have configured in the gadget

  

• There may be other things a dashboard could be useful for but they aren't specified here in this overly specific proposal. For example, I would suggest that the dashboard is made customizable so people can add or remove or develop components for it that they find useful. Such would currently need a separate proposal but I'm unsure about how useful it would be when there's so many open issues that would be clearly very useful or needed. Maybe a todo list component could be useful but one can also keep it in personal notes (btw I think there's a separate proposal for that and I think it may be neat but compared to other things pretty much lowest importance).
• See the existing dashboard in the screenshot on the right, I think maybe it would be good to expand it or use that code.

Prototyperspective (talk) 13:20, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the thorough feedback @Prototyperspective. If you can think of other dashboard components please add them to the wish description (I have modified the wish). Ideally each component I suggested would have its own wish, but that would be laborious I think.

Addressing the so far suggested components:

• Global watchlist: obviously you are a power watchlist user. Usefulness of the Global watchlist is outlined at w:Wikipedia:Global, cross-wiki, integrated or stacked watchlists. The link to it is Special:GlobalWatchlist (I am sure you knew this but others may not). Regarding your points, if a user purely uses one wiki then the global watchlist naturally defaults to a regular one, no harm there. For new users who may edit primarily on en.wp but occasionally submit a wish on meta or upload a couple of photos to Commons (or use cross-wiki upload and don't actually know what Commons is) it is a productivity advantage. There is no reason why power users couldn't disable the global version and do the local manipulations like gadgets etc, this would be a design consideration and keeping the existing behaviour for power users would increase buy in.
• Clipboard: I am guessing you mostly edit on a computer, local text editor is a pain on mobile. Mobile editing is increasing, particularly in developing countries. If you find an image on Commons, how would you currently insert it to a Wikipedia article? (I am genuinely interested in the answer) Adding it to a Wikimedia clipboard would work with visual editor and source editor alike. You could browse Commons, find the three photos you need for a Wikipedia article, add them to clipboard, change from your phone to computer, paste them in - flexibility, usability. As for clipboarding links, mainly useful for cross-wiki discussions. Visit a Dutch Wikipedia diff, hit copy. Then paste in Meta. The system would be able to add the link easily for you. Similarly useful for adding Wikipedia links to Commons file descriptions. If you want to add a link to a celebrity in Dutch Wikipedia the system takes care of the leading ":nl:" in the wikilink.

Favourites: I currently use a link on my phone's dashboard to w:WP:AWNB (its news and announcements sections transclude so don't show up on the watchlist). I wasn't aware in the Watchlist you can selectively just see the top change for certain pages but all changes for all the others, that is interesting. Anyway, bookmarks/favourites are ubiquitous on the internet and by hosting them on the Dashboard they are in plain sight and available across devices.

As for importance/priority of wishes, we definitely need a system in the Wishlist to address that. Apart from individually discouraging wishes on discussion pages there is nothing. Perhaps each user could rank their top 5 wishes? A separate discussion on wish prioritisation is needed I think - pinging @JWheeler-WMF. Commander Keane (talk) 20:07, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining and also for editing the wish which I think makes it clearer.

• I don't think your reply to my points about the global Watchlist addressed my points but it's quite possible I didn't understand it. if a user purely uses one wiki then the global watchlist naturally defaults to a regular one does it change to that in the dashboard because otherwise the dashboard one would not be used but instead the normal watchlist where again I don't see much use of adding it into a dashboard which was my main point.
• On mobile one would have the commons image open in one tab and copy the file title, in the Wikipedia tab or app one would then insert that title after two square brackets and add |thumb|text]], done. Editing on mobile is a pain but I don't see how that would change that. Ah okay so a key usefulness case of the dashboard clipboard would be sharing things between mobile and desktop. Well I doubt the technical effort and hassle and problems are worth it – you can store it in your notes. As for clipboarding links, mainly useful for cross-wiki discussions. Visit a Dutch Wikipedia diff, hit copy. Then paste in Meta. don't understand that, just ctrl+c and then ctrl+v. Either using the visual editor link paste which converts the link, or leave the link as is (not really an issue), or simply know that the subdomain like meta or nl or en goes before the wikilink.
• I don't know why anybody would view all changes in the watchlist individually instead of one item per page. You could still bookmark the page or have it open in some tab, e.g. a pinned tab or on your new tab page.
• I would oppose 'ranking one's top 5 issues', partly because that's too few. In this case I would point out that it would probably take a large effort to implement this at least as envisioned now while the usefulness is rather minimal and can be substituted with things like a note editor, saved tabs, Firefox sync across device feature, and so on. I think this is something that would be neat to have and interesting to develop for some so it's an interesting idea for a hackathon-type volunteer project but not something lots of resources should be thrown at in the current situation.

Prototyperspective (talk) 21:56, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

I am obviously struggling to explain my ideas properly. I am ready to give up - or explain it face-to-face! I will try. I am suggesting the only way to access the watchlist is through the Dashboard. If you only edit one wiki then a global watchlist would present the exact same changes as a per-wiki watchlist. That is what I meant by default. After considering your use case, tabs at the top of the global watchlist for each active wiki may work better for you (and me) rather than combing all changes.

Yes I watch all changes. Thus I need favourites. Different strokes for different folks.

There is no ctrl+c and ctrl+v on mobile. I don't use visual editor so I may be missing concepts there. Implicit in my proposal was to add "Add to clipboard" button on all relvant pages (not too conspicuously of course).

Your method of inserting an image is the same one I use. It is bloody horrendous for me, I can't imagine what it is like for new users.

Switching tabs on mobile or even apps is terrible.

Well you could rank all 315 wishes if you like!

Certainly it is "a neat to have" wish, yes there are workarounds for everything and I didn't realise the current situation was so dire until about 1 hour ago when I read that Jack can't even provide resources to allow us to add categories to wishes. If this exists as a potential hackathon project I would be satisfied. It is also healthy to discuss this stuff, I am sure I am not the only one with these struggles and ideas. Commander Keane (talk) 22:37, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining. Well I see how favorites would be more useful for you in that case but one can still keep these pages tabs open or pin them or bookmark them and then do something special for these bookmarks. There probably also are addons that enable having favorites like that. You could also put them on a userpage. On mobile one would press and hold to copy and press and select paste to paste. I don't use VE either. I don't think people add files to pages on mobile this often that this would make a noticeable difference even if it's cumbersome since all editing on mobile is cumbersome. Switching tabs and apps can be fairly easy, e.g. just press the switch back and forth button so it switches between the two open apps back and forth. In regards to the current situation I would look here: Category:Community Wishlist Survey results and across phabricator such as how long major issues have remained unsolved. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:01, 21 October 2024 (UTC)