IRC office hours/Office hours 2013-11-22

Chat on Beta Features
Friday 22 November 2013
18:00 - 19:00 UTC
[18:00:22] <fabriceflorin>	 Hello everyone! Who is here for the discussion about Beta Features?

[18:01:10] <rillke>	 Hi fabriceflorin! Here for listening ... not much to say, I fear

[18:01:31] <fabriceflorin>	 Today, we'll be talking about Beta Features, a new program that lets you test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released widely. Learn more here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/About_Beta_Features

[18:02:00] <fabriceflorin>	 Hi rillke : It's always a pleasure to meet you! Anyone else here for the Beta Features chat?

[18:02:12] * YuviPanda  waves about�

[18:02:54] <fabriceflorin>	 Hey  YuviPanda, thanks for joining us! Anyone else here had a chance to try some of the new Beta Features? Any first impressions?

[18:04:28] <fabriceflorin>	 For those of you who are not sure what Beta Features is, it's intended to be a digital laboratory where community members can preview upcoming changes and help designers and engineers make improvements based on their suggestions.

[18:05:30] <fabriceflorin>	 Yesterday, we released this program on all wikis worldwide, including these first features:

[18:05:30] <fabriceflorin>	 * Media Viewer - view images in large size

[18:05:32] <fabriceflorin>	 * Typography Refresh - make text more readable

[18:05:33] <fabriceflorin>	 * Near this page -  see what other pages are nearby

[18:05:34] <fabriceflorin>	 * VisualEditor Opt-in - edit pages without having to learn wiki code (see below)

[18:05:35] <fabriceflorin>	 * VisualEditor FormulÃ¦ - edit algebra or equations on your pages  (see below)

[18:05:36] <fabriceflorin>	 (Note that Visual Editor Opt-in is only on a couple hundred sites where it was already available, but not enabled by default.)

[18:06:04] <fabriceflorin>	 Has anyone tried one of these features yet? Was there one you liked more than the others? Why?

[18:07:31] <fabriceflorin>	 Hmmm â€¦ Looks like we have a very quiet session today. I realize it's late for some of you on a Friday, but would love to get a bit of feedback. Anyone?

[18:07:54] <YuviPanda>	 I haven't had a chance to try them yet

[18:07:56] <GerardM->	 I have been wondering about the "near this page" where does it get it its geo references from ?

[18:07:58] <fabriceflorin>	 Hey bawolff, welcome!

[18:08:00] <DarTar>	 I have a question :)

[18:08:09] <bawolff>	 Hi

[18:08:16] <YuviPanda>	 GerardM-: Extension:GeoData, IIRC

[18:08:21] <DarTar>	 I may have already posted it somewhere, but it strikes me that there isn't an option to opt in the same beta feature globally

[18:08:43] <DarTar>	 meaning that if I like feature X and I'm active on N wikis I have to opt in N times

[18:09:06] <fabriceflorin>	 DarTar: Good point, right now you have to opt-in to features one site at a time. Cross-wiki integration is tough.

[18:09:10] <bawolff>	 Woo, global prefs. Wouldnt that be nice

[18:09:20] <greg-g>	 bawolff: get on that

[18:09:32] <Elitre>	 +1 on DarTar, but then, we just miss global prefs, I guess

[18:09:45] <fabriceflorin>	 I think that there are a few initiatives for global preferences already, so I will let those teams chime in.

[18:09:50] <DarTar>	 we have global DBs

[18:10:10] <YuviPanda>	 it's just a matter of writing code, I bet! :)

[18:10:28] <DarTar>	 fabriceflorin: I think it's particularly critical for Beta, more than minor prefs like appearance, formatting one's signature etc

[18:11:03] <fabriceflorin>	 DarTar: Your point is well taken, and we will add it to the list of feature requests for Beta Features.

[18:11:11] <DarTar>	 sweet :)

[18:11:22] <bawolff>	 DarTar: thats been something people have talked about since central auth was introduced. Everyone agrees it would be great, but no one has done it

[18:11:31] <Pyb>	 On Wikimedia Commons, can we see Nearby on categories ?

[18:11:38] <DarTar>	 well, now we have a strong use case

[18:11:47] <Elitre>	 DarTar, I'd object that, since I test things quite a lot now :D , there would be wikis where I don't want to have any particular features on

[18:11:48] <YuviPanda>	 fabriceflorin: is there going to be an effort to move super-common gadgets into extensions deployed via betafeatures? HotCat being an example

[18:12:56] <DarTar>	 Elitre: yes, we should discuss the exact reqs with fabriceflorin and the UX folks

[18:13:06] <fabriceflorin>	 This would be a good opportunity to point out that Beta Features was a bit of a skunkworks effort, which was spread across many different teams: the Design team requested and conceived the program, the Multimedia team took the lead in developing it, with help from the Visual Editor team.

[18:13:19] <fabriceflorin>	 While no particular team had a mandate to start this program, we all felt it was the right thing to do -- and just got it done. Sometimes the best projects come from these kinds of serendipitous collaborations. :)

[18:13:31] <DarTar>	 hear hear

[18:14:01] <fabriceflorin>	 This is a good opportunity to give thanks to some of the folks who contributed to this skunkworks program, across many different teams: Jared Zimmerman, Mark Holmquist, James Forrester, Jon Robson, May Galloway, Keegan Peterzell, and Erik Moeller, to name but a few :)

[18:14:53] <DarTar>	 any plans to use notifications when new beta features become available?

[18:15:32] <fabriceflorin>	 YuviPanda: We would like to help turn some good gadgets into extensions through this program. But we haven't yet figured out how to manage this part of the program, though it's part of the overall goal.

[18:15:36] <jdlrobson>	 �/me waves

[18:15:41] <marktraceur>	 DarTar: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/84625 yes. legoktm was working on it, last I heard

[18:15:58] <rillke>	 Is it possible to activate parsoid at Commons?

[18:16:06] <YuviPanda>	 jdlrobson: GerardM- had a question about where NearBy gets its data from

[18:16:08] <DarTar>	 marktraceur: fantastic

[18:16:22] <fabriceflorin>	 Many thanks to jdlrobson, who created two of the first Beta Features: Typography refresh and Nearby Pages. Way to go Jon!

[18:16:24] <marktraceur>	 rillke: That sounds like a question for gwicke, but I'm not sure it's on-topic here :)

[18:17:03] <fabriceflorin>	 If you haven't tried Typography refresh, give it a test-drive now. You can read more about it here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_Update

[18:17:04] <jdlrobson>	 GerardM-: it uses the mediawiki api that Special:Nearby uses - it gives it the location that it finds on the current page and the api returns pages that are nearby to that location

[18:17:25] <jdlrobson>	 (GerardM- i don't know how much technical detail you want to get into)

[18:17:36] <Samwalton9>	 Nearby Pages was a great idea :)

[18:17:38] <jdlrobson>	 (api provideds by https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Geodata)

[18:17:39] <fabriceflorin>	 jdlrobson: Anything you would like to tell us about Typography or Nearby pages? Why did you create them, and what would you like to hear from your users?

[18:17:54] <GerardM->	 it would be good when all that geo data also exists in Wikdiata

[18:17:58] <fabriceflorin>	 You can learn more about Nearby Pages here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features/Nearby_Pages

[18:18:18] <jdlrobson>	 GerardM-: definitely! :D

[18:18:22] <GerardM->	 reading

[18:18:34] <Elitre>	 fabriceflorin: about Typography, it would be great if we had a full list of what changed. with screenshots, it would be *awesome*!

[18:18:41] <sjoerddebruin>	 Is there progress in adding CirrusSearch to Beta Features?

[18:18:49] <bawolff>	 GerardM: I believe its in a solr db, so someone could just take a dump of it and import

[18:19:28] <fabriceflorin>	 To experience Nearby Pages on the English Wikipedia, enable it in Beta Features, then go to this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco - Click on the blue 'place' icon at the top right of the page.

[18:19:35] <jdlrobson>	 fabriceflorin: well the design team has been wanting to refresh the wikipedia design for some time and i was merely the implementer as I agree that we could make MediaWiki look much more beautiful and thus engage more readers and editors. Putting it in beta though made sense as it's very hard to get a design right first time and it allows us to iterate on it.

[18:20:25] <jdlrobson>	 nearby pages was a pet project - i'm somewhat obsessed with geodata and there are so many interesting ways w���e could use it - i'd love to see a new version of Geohack that is integrated into the MediaWiki experience - think explorable maps etc

[18:20:55] <Pyb>	 what is the goal of Nearby ? As a photographer I don't find it useful. A map showing articles without picture would be great

[18:21:00] <sjoerddebruin>	 GerardM-: Interesting thing for you. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorie:Wikipedia:CoÃ¶rdinaten_niet_op_Wikidata

[18:21:07] <Samwalton9>	 Is Nearby Pages likely to stay as the blue button or will it be integrated somewhere differently?

[18:21:13] <bawolff>	 Jdlrobson: like wikiminiatlas?

[18:21:40] <jdlrobson>	 Samwalton9: I got hardly any design input for nearby pages  - i just wanted to get something out there but there is a lot that could be done to make it look nicer :)

[18:21:47] <fabriceflorin>	 Thanks, jdlrobson ! I am so happy you could get Nearby pages out as a pet project. This is exactly what the Beta Features program was intended for â€¦ to try out new ideas that might not otherwise have seen the light of day. I hope we'll see many more cool features like these crop up through Beta Features, from both WMF and community developers :)

[18:22:28] <Samwalton9>	 Cool :) Just curious.

[18:22:44] <jdlrobson>	 Pyb: agreed on the photography front - I personally find it useful for discovering articles around me that I might not be aware of that possibly I can contribute to. For instance if I'm a new user reading a page about my home town and I discover there is an article about some church there that I have information on maybe that might encourage me to edit it.

[18:23:09] <fabriceflorin>	 For those of you who are new to Beta Features, you can use it by clicking on the small 'Beta' link that shows up next to 'Preferences' in your personal menu when you log in. To test new features, check the items you want in that BetaFeatures section of your user preferences - and click 'Save'.

[18:23:11] <Pyb>	 jdlrobson: ok

[18:23:21] <jdlrobson>	 Pyb: Special:Nearby when it launched to mobile got a lot of people asking us to port it to desktop so there is obviously something there of interest...

[18:23:42] <bawolff>	 Sjoerddebruin: legoktm started a patch for that. I didn't follow how much people have accepted it...

[18:23:52] <sjoerddebruin>	 bawolff: Do you have a link?

[18:24:26] <Elitre>	 well, Nearby on mobile certainly rocks! It's funny when you find places with wrong coordinates just because someone copy/pasted them :p

[18:24:46] <jdlrobson>	 Elitre: once i found a serial killer on Special:Nearby - that was somewhat worrying :)

[18:24:49] <Samwalton9>	 jdlrobson: Might there be a way to make an actual map with markers for article locations?

[18:24:54] <rillke>	 bawolff: In German wikipedia, there is also OSM-integration, see for example https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin and press the icon

[18:24:55] <rillke>	 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/OpenStreetMapLogo.png/17px-OpenStreetMapLogo.png

[18:25:00] <sjoerddebruin>	 Yeah. A map is better.

[18:25:13] <fabriceflorin>	 We invite folks who are interested in helping improve the Nearby Pages features to add their recommendations on this discussion page, so we can collaboratively sort them out and provide a better experience to our users: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Beta_Features/Nearby_Pages

[18:25:13] <jdlrobson>	 Samwalton9: that would be awesome and the mobile team really really really really wants to work on that but we are blocked with having a map server - let me pull up the bug

[18:25:48] <jdlrobson>	 sjoerddebruin: Samwalton9 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33980

[18:25:50] <bawolff>	 Sjoerddebruin: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/95837/

[18:26:18] <fabriceflorin>	 I would like to ask folks who have tried the Media Viewer for their overall impressions. You can read more about it here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer

[18:26:21] <Samwalton9>	 Thanks for the link :)

[18:26:47] <sjoerddebruin>	 I just hate the design of it fabriceflorin.

[18:26:58] <bawolff>	 Jdlrobson: really? Being a map server was one of yhe original big main uses for toolserver

[18:27:19] <fabriceflorin>	 It would be great if you could try the brand new version v0.2 of Media Viewer, which is only available here on MediaWiki.org:

[18:27:19] <fabriceflorin>	 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Lightbox_demo

[18:27:36] <fabriceflorin>	 This new version displays larger images, for a more immersive experience. It is now on MediaWiki.org only and will be released to all wikis in early December.

[18:28:07] <sjoerddebruin>	 Mwah, still looking out of place.

[18:28:38] <fabriceflorin>	 We got a lot of feedback that the images from the first version of Media Viewer were too small, so we are now trying this new new design for v0.2, which we would love your feedback on: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer#Next_Version

[18:29:06] <sjoerddebruin>	 I just love the old way, I think. :P

[18:29:36] <fabriceflorin>	 sjoerddebruin: Thanks for your candid feedback. What do you dislike about the second version of Media Viewer?

[18:30:22] <sjoerddebruin>	 1. I need to scroll for more information.

[18:30:32] <rillke>	 bigger images are good

[18:30:56] <rillke>	 preferrably with a magnifying glass as a cursor so I could quickly zoom-in

[18:31:26] <fabriceflorin>	 sjoerddebruin: If you try the version 2.0, you will see that you can still scroll to reveal the meta-data on this test page for  version v0.2 on MediaWiki.org:

[18:31:26] <fabriceflorin>	 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Lightbox_demo

[18:31:44] <sjoerddebruin>	 Yeah, I donâ€™t wanna scroll.

[18:32:17] <fabriceflorin>	 rillke: We have another design for navigating through extra large images in zoomed in view. I will try to upload it shortly and share it with you.

[18:32:30] <Eloquence>	 sjoerddebruin, you need to scroll in the File: view as well, now ? :)

[18:32:39] <sjoerddebruin>	 Eloquence: I have a large screen.

[18:32:47] <Eloquence>	 *nod*

[18:32:49] <sjoerddebruin>	 I mostly click around the image to go back to the page when using a lightbox.

[18:32:59] <Eloquence>	 Our focus with the media viewer is to maximize screen real estate used for the actual image content

[18:33:01] <sjoerddebruin>	 I canâ€™t do that here.

[18:33:04] <fabriceflorin>	 marktraceur: As the lead developer for Media Viewer, would you like some of your goals for this feature with the group?

[18:33:06] <marktraceur>	 fabriceflorin: To be fair, only ones with weird aspect ratios (like 1:3 or 3:1) (CC rillke)

[18:33:08] <Tpt_>	 fabriceflorin: Is it planned to have a specific support of <gallery> tag that would allow to go to previous and next images without having to close the viewer?

[18:33:31] <Eloquence>	 sjoerddebruin, not everyone will love that much space being used for the image, so that's going to be a bit divisive. but it's a choice we'll likely stick with.

[18:34:19] <marktraceur>	 As for goals - I'm aiming to make this a usable tool for readers to get a more immersive multimedia experience, obviously - to that end, we're making the design slicker as we go, and we're pushing more information into the interface as we improve the machine-readability of Commons metadata.

[18:34:47] <fabriceflorin>	 Tpt_: You read our minds :) Yes, we definitely plan to add next/previous arrows to let you browse through other images for an article, galley or categories, as shown in this mockup: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:Media_Viewer_Desktop_-_Large_Image_Sequence.png

[18:34:49] <sjoerddebruin>	 Commons needs to be redesigned. I like the Wikidata-way of adding metadata.

[18:34:53] <bawolff>	 Tpt_: if we do that, I think it would make sense to do next image on page, not gallery specific

[18:35:18] <marktraceur>	 But I also want this to be the basis for a toolset for editors and other user groups. To *that* end we intend to add more hooking infrastructure, buttons for common tasks for logged-in users, and improve the utility of the information that's currently in the interface for editors.

[18:35:20] <rillke>	 sjoerddebruin: +1 to Commons-re-design

[18:35:25] <Tpt_>	 fabriceflorin, bawolff: Thanks

[18:36:12] <rillke>	 There should be some kind of template that the community could manage to arrange display elements, including the big file and the metadata

[18:36:16] <fabriceflorin>	 rillke: Implementing structured data on Commons is one of our top priorities for next year. We are actively discussing a collaboration with Wikidata to make that happen, hopefully by next summer :)

[18:36:41] <marktraceur>	 rillke: It would be theoretically possible with the hooking infrastructure, though I doubt it would be a template that did it (you'd need to write a gadget or so)

[18:37:10] <bawolff>	 Be interesting to do it as a lua module

[18:37:15] <StevenW>	 One improvement I'd like to see is

[18:37:15] <rillke>	 fabriceflorin: great to see that progress!

[18:37:36] <fabriceflorin>	 I would like to give special thanks to bawolff and tgr for working on the CommonsMetaData extension which makes it possible to display information about each image on Media Viewer. Gergo, would you like to share some of your goals for this extension going forward?

[18:37:39] <StevenW>	 On the lightbox version, have an X close action that is persistent. Not just on hover on the image.

[18:37:50] <marktraceur>	 bawolff: That would be tricky, we'd need to shoehorn in a lot of infrastructure that doesn't seem super necessary

[18:38:04] <sjoerddebruin>	 +1 StevenW

[18:38:09] <Tpt_>	 fabriceflorin: You plan to reuse the complete Wikibase statement model (including rank and references) or to use only a subset?

[18:38:17] <marktraceur>	 StevenW: For mobile users? It also shows up when you click the image, though I'm not sure how to make that discoverable.

[18:38:22] <bawolff>	 Yeah, that's probably pipe-dreamy

[18:38:29] <tgr>	 CommonsMetadata extracts various kinds of data for images

[18:38:35] <marktraceur>	 click or tap, I should say

[18:38:39] <Eloquence>	 StevenW, but it'd be nice to minimize overlap with the image content :(

[18:38:43] <rillke>	 I'd like to thank for the CommonsMetaData feature as this is not only useful for the M.Viewer but also for Communty-Tools

[18:38:58] <fabriceflorin>	 StevenW: You raise a good point about the X close action, which we are actively discussing with our design team. It's a trade-off between providing an immersive experience with no clutter, and giving the functionality users need to get out. I am sure we will find a good solution through usability testing.

[18:39:03] <marktraceur>	 Eloquence: Which is why I asked for a design that didn't have the close button over the image, but alas. :)

[18:39:04] <StevenW>	 Eloquence and marktraceur: I don't mean make the X on the image persist always. I mean move it to the edge of the lightbox.

[18:39:05] <tgr>	 from the file itself, from its categories, from the templates on the description page...

[18:39:16] <StevenW>	 off of the image

[18:39:23] <Eloquence>	 StevenW, *nod*. sometimes edge  of lightbox will be edge of screen though

[18:39:51] <StevenW>	 can't you adjust placement based on screen size?

[18:39:53] <StevenW>	 :)

[18:39:58] * marktraceur  nods at StevenW�

[18:39:58] <marktraceur>	 Ask pginer, I guess

[18:40:05] <marktraceur>	 I'd love to see the lightbox "chrome" be something more static, around the edges, but I'm not sure the current designs work with that. We'd need to rethink some stuff.

[18:40:05] <tgr>	 one of its goals is to support MediaViewer, but it has a proper API, so it might be interesting for the maintainers of other tools/gadgets as well

[18:40:10] <StevenW>	 Yeah, small thing in any case.

[18:40:24] <StevenW>	 I <3 the big images with no File: tabs etc.

[18:40:28] <fabriceflorin>	 StevenW: There are a number of ways to address your concern with the X button, and we'll be exploring these options carefully. They tend to be platform-specific, as mobile devices don't support hover, so I expect we'll end up with different solutions for key platforms.

[18:40:37] <tgr>	 also, we hope that it can eventually help in migrating image data from templates into Wikidata

[18:40:50] <fabriceflorin>	 What do you guys like most about Media Viewer's new version 2? Least?

[18:40:53] <tgr>	 a Commons-specific version of Wikidata, to be more precise

[18:40:55] <StevenW>	 fabriceflorin: makes sense

[18:41:42] <Elitre>	 fabriceflorin: that there's already a version 2!

[18:41:49] <GerardM->	 tgr with a bit of luck the Wikidata team will start developing in six monthes

[18:42:07] <rillke>	 I like the bigger image.

[18:42:21] * marktraceur  mumble grumble 0.2�

[18:42:23] <fabriceflorin>	 Thanks, tgr -- do you think the CommonsMetaData extension could be used to migrate unstructured Commons metadata into structured data fields?

[18:42:55] <tgr>	 it could be used, sure

[18:43:11] <tgr>	 whether it will be the best tool for it remains to be seen

[18:43:15] <fabriceflorin>	 Elitre: Yes! marktraceur has already pulled off a cool version 2 of  Media Viewer, but it's only on MediaWiki.org now:

[18:43:16] <fabriceflorin>	 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Lightbox_demo

[18:43:27] <GerardM->	 there is already a lot of usable stuff in the Creator and Institution namespaces in Commons

[18:43:35] <fabriceflorin>	 This new version displays larger images, for a more immersive experience. It is now on MediaWiki.org only and will be released to all wikis in early December.

[18:43:55] <marktraceur>	 Really the only big change is the UI redesign, but we're hoping to stuff more delicious features into it in the next release also.

[18:44:01] <Elitre>	 fabriceflorin: I know Fabrice, and that's what I like, that there's already a new version :)

[18:44:06] <GerardM->	 linking to these would help a lot

[18:44:07] <tgr>	 but that is one of its goals, even if not the primary one, so if someone is involved in data migrations and has suggestions on how to make it more useful in that regard, that will be much welcome

[18:44:19] <marktraceur>	 (like image bucketing a la this RFC: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Standardized_thumbnails_sizes)

[18:44:24] <fabriceflorin>	 You can preview it by looking at these mockups: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer#Next_Version

[18:45:00] <fabriceflorin>	 Elitre: Yes, many thanks to Eloquence for pushing us to start on the next version right away :)

[18:45:20] <rillke>	 marktraceur: As long as the background is semi-transparent, turning-off gif-animations could be useful :)

[18:45:49] <fabriceflorin>	 After you have tested this new version v0.2, we would be grateful if you could give us more feedback on this page:

[18:45:50] <fabriceflorin>	 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer

[18:45:54] <marktraceur>	 rillke: Ugh, good point - I think we'll "just" solve this by changing the background to opaque ASAP.

[18:46:21] <GerardM->	 fabriceflorin: will those tags be Wikidata items ?

[18:46:48] <fabriceflorin>	 marktraceur: Yes, our lead designer Pau Giner is recommending that we use a dark opaque background for the Media Viewer, going forward.

[18:46:53] <marktraceur>	 Yup

[18:46:59] * marktraceur  acutely aware�

[18:47:01] <GerardM->	 it would help make them useful in all languages

[18:47:25] <Elitre>	 fabriceflorin: I am not sure how many people are already aware of v0.2 - of course, it's linked in the documentation, but still... Probably it already covers some of the concerns that people express for the current one. Should we link it also at the top of the feedback page for BetaViewer, if it isn't already?

[18:47:32] <fabriceflorin>	 GerardM-: Yes, the plan is to work with Wikidata to implement individual tags that can be intersected to search for relevant images more precisely.

[18:48:34] <fabriceflorin>	 Elitre: We had hoped to include v0.2 at launch, but couldn't get it done in time, so decided to release Beta Features with v0.1,  and give everyone a nice holiday gift in early December with the new version :)

[18:48:36] <Elitre>	 fabriceflorin: also, silly question on the way. Can Echo be included in BetaFeatures so that anything new about it can be tested in that environment?

[18:48:55] <Eloquence>	 marktraceur, fabriceflorin agree that opaque background would probably be an improvement

[18:49:10] <Eloquence>	 the semi-transparent thing IMO gets more in the way than not

[18:49:10] * marktraceur  blames the designers for everything�

[18:49:13] <Eloquence>	 :-)

[18:49:30] <fabriceflorin>	 Elitre: Echo is now launched everywhere, so it is no longer Beta. But if we were to do it again, we would definitely use Beta Features to introduce it.

[18:50:05] <liangent>	 hm I'm late, but I feel it difficult to find source code for each beta feature

[18:50:16] <liangent>	 for example, where's Nearby's source?

[18:50:18] <Eloquence>	 Beta Features works well for some things, but for something like Flow it's hard since you can't really have  a talk page in both beta and non-beta states if they're fundamentally different.

[18:50:22] <fabriceflorin>	 Eloquence: Yes, I agree that the translucent background was not ideal, and was against it from the start. We live and learn, and pay tuition :)

[18:50:30] <rillke>	 Version 0.2 should probably indicate, if it's default one day, that there are information at the bottom that aren't visible and that one has to scroll. Perhaps something that tells about that once per user. Still missing buttons for re-using this file quickly in compliance with the license

[18:50:33] <liangent>	 they're usually not listed on Special:Version

[18:50:48] <Elitre>	 fabriceflorin: I see. I thought that new notifications developed from now on would still need to be tested before prime time, that's it.

[18:51:03] <Eloquence>	 liangent, beta features are proprietary and patented until they go out of beta

[18:51:07] <Eloquence>	 just kidding!

[18:51:14] <GerardM->	 :)

[18:51:23] <fabriceflorin>	 rillke: You make an excellent point. Our designer Pau Giner is working on adding some affordances to make it more clear that there is more information below the image.

[18:51:41] <fabriceflorin>	 Eloquence: Hehe :)

[18:51:42] <rillke>	 "Learn more on Wikimedia Commons" link goes to mediawiki.org

[18:52:16] <rillke>	 Can you make (just this one) linking directly to Commons?

[18:52:55] <Eloquence>	 liangent, Nearby is part of the MobileFrontend extension

[18:53:03] <fabriceflorin>	 Overall, we think that Beta Features can give our users more control over their experience, as well as encourage them to join more reasoned conversations like this one during feature development, while reducing the stress for everyone.

[18:53:28] <fabriceflorin>	 We're very hopeful about the potential of this tool for enabling more effective collaborations between foundation and community members. What are your thoughts? Do you think that it will help?

[18:53:31] <bawolff>	 Well I'm glad its in a logical place...

[18:54:42] <fabriceflorin>	 rillke: Good point. The 'Learn more' link should go to whatever file repository the file is stored in. I think we have a bug for it already, but will make sure to increase its priority.

[18:54:47] <liangent>	 Eloquence: well it's supporting a desktop feature now then.

[18:54:52] <Eloquence>	 liangent, yep :)

[18:55:08] <Eloquence>	 liangent, https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/92002/

[18:55:27] <Elitre>	 fabriceflorin: it's good that there's a centralized place to give feedback about features. that will help the team a lot!

[18:56:08] <liangent>	 Eloquence: is it tightly coupled to mobile features, or why isn't it living in a standalone extension

[18:56:18] <Eloquence>	 mobile supporting desktop! cats and dogs living together!  I want a world where I can eat a sea otter without getting sick!

[18:56:28] <fabriceflorin>	 We haven't talked about Visual Editor and its role in Beta Features, but I wanted to let you know that James_F|Away and his team will be adding new experimental features regularly through this program, such as this cool VisualEditor FormulÃ¦:

[18:56:29] <fabriceflorin>	 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Beta_Features/Formulae

[18:56:33] <bawolff>	 Liangent: some people would expect it in the geo extension

[18:56:51] <liangent>	 bawolff: I guess this makes more sense :)

[18:57:06] <bawolff>	 But that'd be craziness!

[18:57:10] <Eloquence>	 liangent, it's pretty strongly based on the mobile nearby code right now. :)

[18:57:18] <fabriceflorin>	 To be clear, Visual Editor is only incorporated as part of Beta Features on a couple hundred sites where it was already available, but not enabled by default.

[18:57:46] <fabriceflorin>	 You can read more about Visual Editor Opt-in here:

[18:57:46] <fabriceflorin>	 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Beta_Features/General

[18:58:14] <liangent>	 Eloquence: then refactor all geo/nearby code out, and make mobilefrontend depend on it

[18:59:07] <fabriceflorin>	 To follow up on our earlier discussion, we plan to have a mix of large and small Beta Features in coming weeks, from VE to Nearby, so that people can take their pick, test the feature of their choice, and give us feedback throughout development.

[18:59:24] <Eloquence>	 liangent, jdlrobson  would appreciate some help figuring out the best long term architecture, I'm sure :)

[18:59:24] <fabriceflorin>	 OK, folks. Any final questions before we wrap up?

[19:00:21] <Elitre>	 not from me. Thanks and happy weekend everyone...

[19:00:26] <Elitre>	 :)

[19:00:28] <fabriceflorin>	 We really appreciate your joining this chat, and invite you to leave more feedback on each feature's discussion page -- as well as on this general discussion page about Beta Features:

[19:00:28] <fabriceflorin>	 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:About_Beta_Features

[19:00:50] <liangent>	 fabriceflorin: I'm not sure whether this has been mentioned or not: are we doing A/B testing in these features?

[19:01:47] <jdlrobson>	 liangen it could be useful for all nearby code to be moved to Geodata yes. It's just not a high priority right now as the code base is still changing rapidly and having code in two places might make iteration on these features difficult

[19:02:11] <fabriceflorin>	 It's always a pleasure meeting you guys, and I'm very grateful to rillke, liangent, GerardM-, Tpt_, sjoerddebruin for your good insights!

[19:02:30] <liangent>	 fabriceflorin: and the real world issue: some users reported bugs due to some beta features, but I don't see those features enabled for me by default

[19:03:08] <fabriceflorin>	 We thrive on feedback, and really appreciate hearing from you all. Let's continue this discussion onwiki, on our mailing lists and in future chats.

[19:03:19] <liangent>	 jdlrobson: :)

[19:03:54] <bawolff>	 Liangent: we haven't had major problems with that in regards to gadgets

[19:04:14] <bawolff>	 I doubt beta features will be much worse

[19:04:31] <liangent>	 we have. zhwiki's Twinkle conflicts with Nearby

[19:04:34] <liangent>	 I don't know why

[19:04:36] <fabriceflorin>	 Also, if anyone here is an active contributor of multimedia content or tools, we still have a few seats left on this Dec. 4 roundtable discussion over Google Hangouts -- sign up there if you would like to participate: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Roundtables/Roundtable_5

[19:05:10] <bawolff>	 Liangent: oh well. Maybe people jusy don't cc me on those bugs ;)

[19:06:17] <rillke>	 I still think these opt-ins were quite an improvement over the for-all-by-default

[19:06:30] <liangent>	 I guess I need to tell them (or in village pump): try to disable beta features before reporting bugs in the future

[19:07:06] <rillke>	 liangent: Or you provide a button invoking a script disabling all of them at once.

[19:07:23] <fabriceflorin>	 liangent: We only do A/B testing on critical features, because A/B tests are still labor-intensive for us. But we will do usability tests on a number of features, which will provide invaluable information. But even the feedback we collect from IRC chats like this one -- and onwiki discussions are invaluable to us. Thanks so much for taking the time to help us improve these features!

[19:07:54] <bawolff>	 Rillke: of course it remains to be seen which features get the beta treatment and which don't

[19:08:55] <rillke>	 yeah, this deserves careful a careful decision ;-)

[19:09:51] <liangent>	 fabriceflorin: that question is about my next message: "and the real world issue: some users reported bugs due to some beta features, but I don't see those features enabled for me by default"

[19:10:21] <rillke>	 BTW, thanks for involving the community @whomever is responsible for that.

[19:10:43] <fabriceflorin>	 liangent: Yes, you make a good point. Do you have a recommendation on how we might solve that?

[19:11:03] <liangent>	 and please do tell local gadget developers about any A/B tests in the future, or it silently introduces different environments between developers and users, which may cause errors in gadgets

[19:11:36] <liangent>	 fabriceflorin: hm? solve what

[19:11:47] <fabriceflorin>	 rillke: You're very welcome. We plan to involve the community a lot more in coming months and am so glad you are joining these chats. I am just now uploading some mockups to address a question you posed. Will post a link in a couple minutes.

[19:11:52] <liangent>	 betas causing conflicts?

[19:12:32] <rillke>	 liangent: mw.log('I am a problem caused by beta'); hehe

[19:13:54] <liangent>	 mh one more point: betafeatures introduce a constant difference in web pages between users, which makes local development more difficult

[19:14:08] <fabriceflorin>	 rillke: Here is an example of the affordance which Pau Giner is considering for letting people know that there is more meta-data below the image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MediaViewer-MetaData-Panel-Example1.png

[19:14:12] <liangent>	 for example, I fixed this using CSS rem unit today: https://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Vector.css&diff=29287367&oldid=28254844

[19:14:35] <liangent>	 because #bodyContent now has different sizes (0.8em and 0.9em)

[19:15:02] <liangent>	 and sadly *rem is not supported in older IEs, but I have to use it to fix the issue

[19:15:28] <fabriceflorin>	 The proposal is to have the meta-data panel scroll up when you scroll or click on the meta-data strip at the bottom of the image, as shown here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MediaViewer-MetaData-Panel-Example3.png

[19:15:32] <tgr>	 liangent: as do gadgets, preferences, personal js/css files...

[19:15:39] <fabriceflorin>	 rillke: What do you think of this design proposal?

[19:17:05] <tgr>	 would be nice to be able say "give me the page as user X sees it"

[19:17:19] <rillke>	 fabriceflorin: Looks exciting!

[19:17:22] <tgr>	 although probably problematic from a privacy point of view

[19:20:13] <fabriceflorin>	 rillke: Glad it works for you. I'll pass this on to Pau Giner, who's on his way back from India and couldn't join today's chat. Rest assured that if that approach doesn't hold up in usability tests, we will keep trying until we get it right. The Media Viewer is very important to us, because it heralds a new way to help users learn through images and sounds, if it better fits their learning style. I wish you could join one of our

[19:20:13] <fabriceflorin>	 roundtables so we could discuss with you more how we hope to expand this tool into a new layer of media-rich information on Wikipedia.

[19:22:35] <liangent>	 Eloquence: sorry but where's the code for "Typography refresh"?

[19:23:13] <liangent>	 Eloquence: https://git.wikimedia.org/blob/mediawiki%2Fextensions%2FVectorBeta.git/1b2cf508ece0f3097f15019a1d5b5a1680528812/VectorBeta.hooks.php adds a module skins.vector.beta, but this extension didn't implement it

[19:24:07] <rillke>	 tgr: That's an excellent idea. How about a tool that strips personal information and provides the user-information as a JSON-Dump as one-click export so it could be attached for example, to bug reports?

[19:24:33] <rillke>	 Currently, I am sending users to https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:User_scripts/Diagnostic&withJS=MediaWiki:Diag.js for example

[19:24:39] <bawolff>	 Traditionally all prefs were considered private

[19:25:00] <tgr>	 rillke: question is, how much of the preferences should be considered a personal information

[19:25:04] <bawolff>	 Other than gender

[19:26:17] <tgr>	 i wouldn't mind if all of it except the username/password became public, but i doubt that will ever happen

[19:26:53] <rillke>	 tgr: E-Mailaddress should be also not published.

[19:27:14] <tgr>	 yeah, email/password is what i had in mind

[19:27:23] <tgr>	 username is of course public

[19:28:04] <liangent>	 tgr: and watchlist token

[19:29:44] <tgr>	 that too

[19:30:16] <fabriceflorin>	 rillke, bawolff, tgr, marktraceur : What are your thoughts about Pau's proposed approach for dealing with special image sizes in Media Viewer: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Media_Viewer_-_Image_Sizes_Spec.pdf

[19:31:08] * bawolff  s thoughts is it would be better as a wikipage :)�

[19:31:23] <tgr>	 hard to say without seeing it in practice

[19:31:32] * bawolff  puts away snark and reads�

[19:32:06] <tgr>	 it is easy to come up with designs which look great on the drawing board

[19:32:20] <tgr>	 but it sounds like a sensible starting point

[19:33:55] <bawolff>	 Yeah I'd agree

[19:34:30] <bawolff>	 Although it seems odd that wide media is handled differently then tall media

[19:34:55] <bawolff>	 I think both should be handled the same way

[19:35:33] <tgr>	 liangent: re debugging, if the user trusts you, you could ask for a log of the page loading, many modern browsers have some sort of support for that

[19:35:45] <tgr>	 of course that can be very private information

[19:35:53] <tgr>	 but very useful

[19:36:30] <tgr>	 e.g. in chrome you can save the page as a HAR archive, and you can play that back in a different browser

[19:37:31] <tgr>	 loads the exact same files, with the exact same timing - great for debugging intermittent issues

[19:37:43] <liangent>	 tgr: I'm not aware of that. where's this feature?

[19:37:52] <tgr>	 the downside is that it includes session cookies and whatnot

[19:38:24] <tgr>	 f12, network tab, right click somewhere

[19:40:35] <liangent>	 tgr: hm just a json

[19:40:38] <liangent>	 how to replay it?

[19:41:37] <liangent>	 opening it doesn't work

[19:41:41] <tgr>	 not sure actually, i usually just need to inspect it

[19:41:47] <tgr>	 and use http://www.softwareishard.com/har/viewer/ for that

[19:42:26] <liangent>	 well I found http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8806625/is-it-possible-to-run-a-har-archive-on-google-chrome and https://code.google.com/p/web-page-replay/

[20:49:23] <marktraceur>	 For you lurkers, I could use help fleshing out https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours/Guidelines

[21:41:58] <Base-w>	 hola

[21:42:20] <Base-w>	 what is irc of sage ross of wmf?

[21:42:56] <marktraceur>	 ragesoss: ^^

[21:45:54] <Base-w>	 ragesoss could you explain what are these copies of wikipedia articles and pages in ns0 with one word for?

[21:47:11] <Base-w>	 they seems weirdly when you dont know the purpose of them

[21:47:22] <marktraceur>	 Base-w: Have an example?

[21:47:57] <Base-w>	 Oh i havent said where

[21:48:03] <Base-w>	 in outreachwiki

[21:48:13] <marktraceur>	 Again, can you link to an example?

[21:48:20] <Base-w>	 https://outreach.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Boldness&action=history

[21:48:51] <Base-w>	 https://outreach.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Emphasis_(typography)&action=history

[21:49:16] <marktraceur>	 Base-w: Looks like he's testing https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Guidedtour-tour-sandbox.js

[21:50:18] <Base-w>	 probably

[21:51:18] <Base-w>	 but there is a question if its really needed to put testpages in ns0

[21:51:20] <Base-w>	 im just afraid that these pages could be forgotten after testing

[21:51:47] <marktraceur>	 *shrug* maybe put something in the gadget talk page

[21:52:20] <Base-w>	 and would be added to other weird pages)

[21:53:29] <Base-w>	 If he dont answer here to tomorrow (me from cloud is watching here as Cladis)

[21:53:50] <Base-w>	 then i'll try talk page)

[22:00:21] <ragesoss>	 Base-w: hi!

[22:00:46] <ragesoss>	 yes, I'm developing a guided tour on outreach because I have admin rights there.

[22:01:01] <ragesoss>	 Once I'm finished, I'll delete them.

[22:01:50] <Base-w>	 Ragesoss, Ok, no problems then, thanks for reply

[22:10:24] <Base-w>	 Ragesoss, ah and when you make gadget's core dont forget to make it's messages localizable :)

[22:11:21] <ragesoss>	 Base-w: do you have an example I can follow for that? It's not a gadget, but rather uses the guided tours extension.

[22:11:41] <ragesoss>	 I copied most of the code from The Wikipedia Adventure

[22:16:08] <Base-w>	 ragesoss i'll try to find some examples tomorrow

[22:16:19] <Base-w>	 as im now from a phone

[22:16:40] <ragesoss>	 Base-w: cool, thanks.