Talk:Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Archive/mw.toolbar zurück

Feedback to the handling of this request

I don't want to interfere with the technical problem solving, so I put it here: The handling of the request, that bothered today a big amount of the power users in de-wp, was on my opinion poor, because You focused on the formalistic side instead of the need of many important users. You set back an urgent problem, because it does not fit in the timeline. You changed edits from people, which I would do as an admin in de-wp only in very important cases, only because You do not like "+1"-comments and bullet points. You stopped with this change also approval comments from other user, that even without adding facts to the discussion, could at least give a feeling, how big and urgent the problem is. As a result the problems looks now belittled.

Yes, the Community Wishlist Survey may not be the ideal way to adress this urgent request. But it would make the users feel much more welcome, to discuss the technical problems and try to help them at first, and put the formalistic topics on second place. Maybe the problem can be solved quickly, so everyone can close this request happily without disturbing Your survey anymore. But to react first deprecating, does only make the people, that are angry about a not well communicated software change, more angry. And it's something, that I witnessed here on meta also in the past, for example when the opposing votes in Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Direction/Endorsement were handled first with deletion and later with outsource, which also seem only to serve the goal, that things look better than the users feel with something. Best regards --Magiers (talk) 21:24, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Hey Magiers. Allow me to deeply apologize for the misunderstandings. Every day during the survey I check every proposal and make sure it follows the format and rules we have laid out. That's my job. I didn't even read much into this proposal, I just saw voting and knew they had to be removed. If I didn't, people would start voting on other proposals, and we'd have a real problem. My removing of the +1's had nothing to do with censoring the community's desires. I can see why this might be interpreted that way, I suppose, but I thought I'd explained myself clearly enough afterwards. When asked I happily added back the list of users who endorsed it, but in a way that did not look like voting. So very sorry for that, but hopefully you see the implications of early voting for people managing the survey.

Anyway, the real problem is not early voting, but that this feature was suddenly removed without enough warning. That's something I (and the rest of Community Tech) had nothing to do with, but I would expect a statement from the responsible management soon. As it turns out, we can restore the old toolbar fairly easily, and it seems this in the works. I am working to ensure it gets resolved as soon as possible. Wikimedia is a large place, so it can be difficult to adequately notify everyone. From the statistics, it appears around 0.03% of active users were using the 2006 editor. I can't really speak for the people who removed this feature, but between the low usage and the maintenance burden of supporting software that's 12 years old, I can see why they removed it. But, I'm not making excuses. The German Wikipedia community should have been better informed, so I have also reached out to my superiors about how to avoid this from happening in the future. No one meant to cause this disruption, that I am sure. Thanks for the understanding, and apologies again! MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 22:17, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

I understand that things have moved forward with this request and thanks to specially You in person for taking the problem serious and even showing up in de-wp to help. I appreciate this. Nevertheless I am glad, that I was offline in the afternoon, because the removal would surely have made me fuming at first... But thanks for Your non-formalistic help. --Magiers (talk) 23:05, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

+1 That was quite not so felicitous and had the same effect as an affront. Chaddy (talk) 01:00, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Yeah I don't know... What am I supposed to do when people start voting on other proposals? Should I have made this one proposal an exception? Others will say "but you let people vote there", etc.? When this happened in previous surveys it quickly grew out of control. That's all this was about; not about dismissing your opinions. All I can do is thank you for letting me present your interest in a different way (via the list at the top). I really hate it was misconstrued as some effort to "censor" your wish, and now I look like the bad guy. Not the intention! :) I guess it boils down to the fact that this proposal didn't need to be voted on in the first place. It was a very urgent issue that needed a very urgent fix, so the survey wasn't the right venue. The intention and process of this survey is fully described at Community Wishlist Survey 2019 (specifically the What happens during the proposal phase? section, which states we are asking for things to work on in 2019).

Anyway, is everything working for you now? DaB. reported that the gadget is in place, but we're still trying to make it work without you having to disable the enhanced toolbar (though I don't know why you'd want both). MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 01:19, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

I don't use mw.toolbar but CharInsert. Sargoth (talk) 12:56, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

The core of this "conflict" is, that the devs are obviously far away from the people, who are actually doing the content work, the work, that really makes the wikiversum attractive for the users. A change at the editing interface has to be discussed with the heavy users of the editing interface, in a language that the authors of content can understand. This change was only discussed in some nerd cirles, the content authors were not involved in the decision, and so the content authors were quite unpleasantly suprised, when some non-authors took the essential tools for editing away without any consultation and former announcements of such far-reaching changes.

There needs to be a clear venue for the evaluation of such Software changes, that is far away from the in-circles of devs and WMFers, someplace where the content editors, i.e. those people, that make the whole wikiverse possible and keep it alive, have the last word on such vital decisions about their tools to work on content. They will never go to Phabricator, or tech-news-announcemnents, probably not even to meta, but they are the people, that the wikiverse lives from, and that have to have the last word on such decisions. The tech stuff is just the support for the content creators. The devs should be mainly a maintenance department, new stuff is seldom needed. As long as prolific content editors are not involved in decisions about the edit UI, in every language, the decisions will again end up in such debacles as this one, where content free devs decided about the usefullness of tools for real editors.

The WMF and ist devs are just a service departments for the content editors, the content editors are the core of the wikiverse, the support agencies like WMF, WMDE etc. should listen to them. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 13:29, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

For me, everything is working with PerfektesChaos's tool (special characters) and DaB.'s Gadget (Toolbar). However, the extension on de permitting individual extra buttons doesn't seem to work (I don't need extra buttons so I didn't try, but users who did try say it's still buggy). There is an ongoing discussion on de about several questions: which solution do we want as a standard for Wikitext editing for the future? There are at least four possibilities and we'd have to decide which one is preferred by the community. And: how could we minimize the misunderstandings that occurred during this software change and during the discussions? There are certainly also conflicting interests between Mediawiki developers and community editors, but there is also the problem that it is very difficult to be sure what exactly we are talking about. This is a communication problem that should be tackled.Mautpreller (talk) 14:40, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

I agree with all of you. It is abundantly clear communities weren't properly notified. The responsible staff are aware of this, so I'll let them come by to respond. In the meantime, I am available to help install the alternatives. @Mautpreller: It looks like the syntax for adding custom buttons has changed, see mw:Contributors/Projects/Removal of the 2006 wikitext editor#Alternatives. It may be possible to install something in your de:MediaWiki:Common.js to make the old syntax still work, but I need an example. Could you link to me someone's toolbar customization code? I'll see what I can do :) MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 16:41, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

editor comments removed by Wikimedia Foundation

The following discussion is closed.

Just for the record: the Wikimedia Foundation removed most of the comments made by Volunteeers, see this diff and later ones. Sargoth (talk) 11:26, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

I did not remove comments, only the +1's. The reasons are stated above (it looked like voting, which would spread to other proposals). When asked I immediately added back the signatures, but without the +1's. I'm not sure what else you want me to do? MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 16:27, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

I'm very honored to be noticed by the owner of both the community wishlist and its talkpage. This comment has obviously not been restored after being deleted by office action. There's no filibuster needed here now, I will not disrupt any other 'community wishlist' by commenting. This thread can be closed. Sargoth (talk) 16:43, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

That was an oversight, sorry about that. It wasn't an "office action" or anything official, just me doing my normal survey management. I am certainly not the owner of the survey, either, but I do maintain the bots, templates, etc. Please, please, continue commenting! :) Apologies again, no harm was intended. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 18:33, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your apology which I accept with great pleasure. See you around Sargoth (talk) 20:22, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Answer to TheDJ

Dear TheDJ, I felt personally attacked by your expression "these people". In my eyes, you are attacking Wikipedians resp. authors, because they are trying to write articles instead of letting you tech-geeks, Wikimedia staff and native meta-wikimedians do what they want regardless of the persons affected by your decisions. I often say to those people: please, do what you want, squander donated money as you please, but do not hemper and hinder the work wikipedians are doing. I don't think this is too much to ask for. Cheers Sargoth (talk) 11:50, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

@Sargoth: If you think 'these people' is hostile, then that is mostly your personal interpretation, as I was pointing out an anomaly. You were coming into a process with the intent to disrupt, in order to make a point. As you can see from my meta contributions I have been very much involved in this process well before 'these people' came blustering in. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:30, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

„You were coming into a process with the intent to disrupt“ - „I have been very much involved in this process“. You're supporting what actually is my point: wikipedia-community vs. meta-community. In the eyes of the meta-community and the wmf, the wikipedia-community is disruptive, even when it comes to the community wishlist. I can only repeat, the community is not hostile if you spent millions on gadgetry with which you have fun as long as it does not have negative impact on editing and creating articles. Also, we're not those people, we're pretty much what the stakeholders get to see. Sargoth (talk) 12:53, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, but this is not nice. I did not want to make something "disrupt". I want something what is disrupt, get fixed. I think this wish is a very big wish. Do you just want to have wishes you like? Then dont ask with banner all over Wikipedias for wishes. My wish is to fix this global. Not only local. --Itti (talk) 13:26, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed.

I have moved this entire thing to WM:FORUM. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:35, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

The following discussion on the process of dealing with community Wishes is open.

Wow, while at first, some people were dealing this urgent wish with unformalistic helpfulness, now User:DannyH (WMF) and User:TheDJ are showing the German community who the boss is ("zeigen, wo der Hammer hängt"). Thanks for this demonstration how community grievances are taking serious. --Magiers (talk) 09:29, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

• 
  How the Community Wishlist sells itself
• 
  What the Community Wishlist looks like

Mal 'nen bisschen runterkommen, und mit Abstand ansehen, würde helfen. Der Ort hier war definitiv der falsche, das hier ist eine eher langfristig angelegt Umfrage nach technischen Wünschen, gefragt war allerdings eine Notfallmaßnahme. Der Umgang der WMF damit lässt zwar i.d.T., wie zu erwarten war, deutlich zu wünschen übrig, es hätte schlicht der korrekte Ort für solche Anliegen genannt werden können und dann eben dorthin verschoben statt hier erst so unwirsch zu reagieren und dann einfach ins Archiv zu verdonnern, sprich die jetzige Lösung im Forum könnte die angemessene sein. M.a.W.: der DJ hat das korrekt gelöst, Danny nicht wirklich.

Was ich allerdings noch immer bezweifle ist, dass sich tatsächlich jemand von den Devs um ein solches Anliegen auf der Seite in einer angemessenen Reaktionsgeschwindigkeit darum gekümmert hätte, ich habe manchmal den Eindruck, außerhalb des nerdigen Phabricators tun die eher nichts. Und selbst da vergammeln sehr einfach umzusetzende Anliegen, die seit Jahren viele nerven, in der Rundablage. Ich bin gespannt, ob auch das hier ausgesessen wird.

Calm down, it's really the wrong place here, the new one in the Forum seems to fit better. The dealing with this by the WMFers was of course substandard as usual, the imidiate mentioning of the correct place for such emergency topics should have been written and the topic moved there, instead of this rude and unhelpful reaction, but that's the communication by the WMF with it's employers, the editors. Let's see whether this is really a good place for such stuff, or whether it's treated with neglect as well, as most valid complaints by editors seem to be treated that don't fit in the preset line of Action preferred by the devs. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 09:57, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, aber nein. Es war kein Wunsch nach einer Notfallmaßnahme. Es ist der Wunsch nach einer tragfähigen, dauerhaften und stabilen Lösung. Problem ist doch, wird solches in den Sprachversionen über "private" Skripte geregelt, dann kommen irgendwann Änderungen, die Skripte laufen nicht mehr und die Antwort darauf ist: es handelt sich um private Skripte, regelt das selbst. Wenn nun aber niemand da ist, der das regeln kann, dann verschwinden gute und Hilfreiche Funktionen und Möglichkeiten. Genau das ist in der Vergangenheit sehr oft passiert und das passiert auch hier. Die Bereitstellung von nutzbaren Sonderzeichen ist essenziell für die Arbeit an einer Enzyklopädie und das gehört zu den rudimentären Funktionen, damit das, was hinten rauskommt, nutzbar für den Leser ist. Das ist hier eben nicht falsch sonden goldrichtig! --Itti (talk) 11:18, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi Magiers and all, I apologize for being so abrupt with archiving the proposal. I wasn't sure where an appropriate place would be for this discussion. It's a worthy discussion, but it was disrupting the Wishlist Survey for a couple of days, and it should be someplace else. The thing that concerned me was Eloquenzministerium's request to turn the proposal into a vote on how the WMF should communicate with the German Wikipedia community, which isn't appropriate for the wishlist survey. I'm glad TheDJ moved the discussion to the Forum, which is a better place for it. As I said over there, if somebody wants to make a new proposal for a gadget that Community Tech could build, then that would be great. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 15:09, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

In a solely formalistic matter, you are right. But most often, you can not interact with other people in a solely formalistic matter. People tend to feel being affronted or not been taken seriously if you do this. It is even worse because this is not the first incident when German Wikipedia community feels passed over by Wikimedia. So in a diplomatic interest it is a quite bad idea to delete half of the comments (that was User:MusikAnimal (WMF), but he implemeted a compromise later on for which I give him credit) and later close and archive this discussion. Chaddy (talk) 19:57, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi Chaddy: The discussion wasn't closed, it was moved to Wikimedia Forum#mw.toolbar back or global gadget as a replacement. I understand that you feel affronted because I'm following the rules of the Wishlist Survey, but the Wishlist Survey is very important to all of the other contributors who are submitting proposals and voting on them. We can't allow the survey process to be disrupted by a protest, even if the people who are protesting feel very strongly about it. It wouldn't be fair. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 22:04, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

What was not fair was the deletion of the tools for the editors without asking them and without telling them beforehand in a manner, that the editors can notice. Phabricator or MW or Tech News are no places for such consultations, that are places far away from the content editors. It's still not really solved, there are just some hacks in some wikis now, that are big enough to make such a noise here, probably lot's of editors are still looking in vain for the much needed tools some know-nothings in San Francisco stole from them. The hostile Phab is closed as done, despite creating such havoc, and I very much doubt that those, who created this havoc by ditching the tools for editors will learn from this disaster they created. I'sd say, without interrupting in this survey here in such a manner nobody would have cared about the mess the devs created, it was just editors, they don't count. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 22:13, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

"The discussion wasn't closed" - [1]. Chaddy (talk) 00:07, 9 November 2018 (UTC)