Mailing List Archive: Wikipedia: Wikitech

Labs site down?

Index | Next | Previous | View Threaded

william at scissor

Nov 18, 2009, 5:42 PM

Post #1 of 10 (1114 views)
Permalink

Labs site down?

Hi! It appears the labs site for FlaggedRevs is down:

http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hurricane_Vince_(2005)

It was also down last Friday:

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21500

And I figure it has been sad for the 5 days in between.

Does anybody know if this is intentional? And if not, what's the best
way for me to help get it back up again?

Thanks,

William

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l [at] lists
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

jake at jakewartenberg

Nov 18, 2009, 5:46 PM

Post #2 of 10 (1064 views)
Permalink

Re: Labs site down? [In reply to]

As a side note, what exactly is holding up implementation of this on enwiki?

---
Jake Wartenberg

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 8:42 PM, William Pietri <william [at] scissor> wrote:

>
> Hi! It appears the labs site for FlaggedRevs is down:
>
>
> http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hurricane_Vince_(2005)<http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hurricane_Vince_%282005%29>
>
> It was also down last Friday:
>
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21500
>
> And I figure it has been sad for the 5 days in between.
>
>
> Does anybody know if this is intentional? And if not, what's the best
> way for me to help get it back up again?
>
> Thanks,
>
> William
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l [at] lists
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l [at] lists
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

william at scissor

Nov 18, 2009, 8:39 PM

Post #3 of 10 (1053 views)
Permalink

Re: Labs site down? [In reply to]

Jake Wartenberg wrote:
> As a side note, what exactly is holding up implementation of this on enwiki?
>
>

That's an excellent question, and one I'm hopefully getting close to
answering. As background, Erik recently brought me on for a few hours a
week to move things along.

Part of the problem is definitely the size and complexity of the
proposed feature set. There are also a number of outstanding questions
about the best user interface, including issues with naming, clarity of
the conceptual model, ease of use, and impact on various audiences,
especially including readers. Plus, the extension is now in production
use on 24 WMF projects, with nearly as many different configurations.

Those are all solvable problems, but resource constraints have kept us
from progressing as fast as we'd like. Happily, the usability folks --
especially Howie Fung -- have had a little time to lend a hand with the
UI issues, and I think we'll shortly have a proposal for something we
can get into production soon. That would include enough measurement that
we can see what the impact is, and provide for quick follow-ups if there
are issues with the first release.

Once I have more solid info, I'll definitely mention it here. But in the
meantime, the labs site being down is definitely holding us up some, so
I'd love to find out how I can fix that.

Thanks,

William

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l [at] lists
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

stevagewp at gmail

Nov 18, 2009, 9:26 PM

Post #4 of 10 (1053 views)
Permalink

Re: Labs site down? [In reply to]

On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Jake Wartenberg
<jake [at] jakewartenberg> wrote:
> As a side note, what exactly is holding up implementation of this on enwiki?

I believe Brion mentioned that his leaving was likely to delay its
implementation.

My personal feeling, from playing around on that site, is that this
feature is nowhere near ready to inflict upon the innocent masses. The
naming is very confusing, the icons are confusing, the mental model is
confusing, and it's really hard to work out what's going on. And
that's coming from a pretty competent MediaWiki user.

I'm not bagging flagged revs...it just needs a lot more usability
work. The name "flagged revs" for a start...

Steve

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l [at] lists
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

p858snake at yahoo

Nov 19, 2009, 4:51 AM

Post #5 of 10 (1047 views)
Permalink

Re: Labs site down? [In reply to]

On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 3:26 PM, Steve Bennett <stevagewp [at] gmail> wrote:
> I'm not bagging flagged revs...it just needs a lot more usability
> work. The name "flagged revs" for a start...
>
> Steve
As per the discussions on en.wiki, I believe we [en.wikipedia] will be
calling Flagged Protection since that is how it is meant to be
implemented for us based on community consensus and that is what it
has been formally called during the numerous voting processes.

-Peachey

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l [at] lists
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

stevagewp at gmail

Nov 19, 2009, 6:23 AM

Post #6 of 10 (1049 views)
Permalink

Re: Labs site down? [In reply to]

On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 11:51 PM, K. Peachey <p858snake [at] yahoo> wrote:
> As per the discussions on en.wiki, I believe we [en.wikipedia] will be
> calling Flagged Protection since that is how it is meant to be
> implemented for us based on community consensus and that is what it
> has been formally called during the numerous voting processes.

Hmm, maybe it's time big complicated intrusive features like this were
designed by BA*, rather than by committee.

I have to admit,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flagged_protection does an
admirable job of explaining it (skip the text, just read the tables),
but it's still complex. Four levels of protection (including
unprotected)...wow.

The fascinating thing will be to see what happens when fully protected
articles become edit-warrable again.

Steve
* Business analyst

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l [at] lists
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

william at scissor

Nov 19, 2009, 8:35 AM

Post #7 of 10 (1046 views)
Permalink

Re: Labs site down? [In reply to]

Steve Bennett wrote:
> Hmm, maybe it's time big complicated intrusive features like this were
> designed by BA*, rather than by committee.
>

I think it's possible to get the best of both worlds. The community has
a lot of expertise in what's going on, what they need, and what the
risks are. But professional software designers have a much bigger
library of potential solutions, plus a variety of skills and hard-won
experience. Not just in designing the software, but planning the
rollout, managing the risks, and working with developers.

Most software is either internal business software, where users are
obliged to put up with almost anything, or consumer-oriented, where
users are mostly uninvolved and fickle. The product management methods
in either of those spaces probably wouldn't work well here: Wikipedians,
as volunteers, can't be ordered around. They also aren't just consumers;
they're a community, one that wants to engage deeply. But I think we can
take tools from both and figure out something that works here.

Are there historical examples of WMF development projects that have gone
particularly well? I'd love to look at them in detail.

William

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l [at] lists
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Platonides at gmail

Nov 19, 2009, 12:14 PM

Post #8 of 10 (1049 views)
Permalink

Re: Labs site down? [In reply to]

Steve Bennett wrote:
> I have to admit,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flagged_protection does an
> admirable job of explaining it (skip the text, just read the tables),

Well, I find misleading the text
> Can edit; a new edit is visible immediately if the previous version is already confirmed

since it isn't clear that such edit is automatically confirmed, and so
no manual confirmation is needed for several of them.

It's clear from the text above, but not so much from just looking at the
table
> that is, if the latest version of a page is confirmed, a new revision
> by an autoconfirmed user is automatically confirmed

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l [at] lists
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

stevagewp at gmail

Nov 19, 2009, 7:51 PM

Post #9 of 10 (1037 views)
Permalink

Re: Labs site down? [In reply to]

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 3:35 AM, William Pietri <william [at] scissor> wrote:
> Most software is either internal business software, where users are
> obliged to put up with almost anything, or consumer-oriented, where
> users are mostly uninvolved and fickle. The product management methods
> in either of those spaces probably wouldn't work well here: Wikipedians,
> as volunteers, can't be ordered around. They also aren't just consumers;
> they're a community, one that wants to engage deeply. But I think we can
> take tools from both and figure out something that works here.

I was hoping that there might be some paid developers working on it,
now that it's become such a high profile featuer. And you *can* order
them around.

But in any case, I don't think that developers would object to someone
telling them which terms to use, how to lay out the GUI etc. (Most
developers I've known are more than happy to abdicate responsibility
for such things.)

> Are there historical examples of WMF development projects that have gone
> particularly well? I'd love to look at them in detail.

The Usability stuff is proceeding very nicely!

Steve

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l [at] lists
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

william at scissor

Nov 19, 2009, 11:05 PM

Post #10 of 10 (1039 views)
Permalink

Re: Labs site down? [In reply to]

William Pietri wrote:
> Hi! It appears the labs site for FlaggedRevs is down:
>
> http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hurricane_Vince_(2005)
>
> It was also down last Friday:
>
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21500
>
> And I figure it has been sad for the 5 days in between.
>
>
> Does anybody know if this is intentional? And if not, what's the best
> way for me to help get it back up again?
>

Hmm... Can somebody suggest the right person for me to ask about this?
This downtime is definitely hampering progress on FlaggedRevs. I'm glad
to do whatever it takes to fix things, but I don't even know where to start.

William

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l [at] lists
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Index | Next | Previous | View Threaded

Interested in having your list archived? Contact Gossamer Threads