User:DannyH (WMF)/Commons Flow export

Please do testing at Commons talk:Flow/tests.

No consensus to enable beta function of Flow on own talk page

Feedback here, or at Talk:Flow on MediaWikiwiki, about bugs and feature-requests, is appreciated. (Board description edited by Yann (talk),   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me}, Trizek (WMF) (talk), Steinsplitter (talk), Quiddity (WMF) (talk), FDMS 4 , DannyH (WMF) (talk))

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.

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categories

(Topic title edited by Trizek (WMF) (talk), FDMS 4 )

Both Flow categories this page currently is in are wrong, in case nobody noticed. FDMS 4 22:18, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

That's a bug related to wikidata, and is being worked on right now: phab:T108467 blocked by phab:T108467. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:48, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

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Category in French?

(Topic title edited by Trizek (WMF) (talk), Yann (talk))

I see a category (non existent, obviously) Page de discussion fonctionnant avec Flow below. Why that? How to remove it? Yann (talk) 22:18, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't appear possible to edit the categories on the page. I wonder if that is a feature or a bug. I suppose we could create the category... WJBscribe (talk) 22:39, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

I see that it is not possible to edit the categories on the page. And that's why I am asking. Otherwise I would have remove it myself. ;) Yann (talk) 22:44, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

That's a bug related to wikidata, and is being worked on right now: phab:T108467 blocked by phab:T108467. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:47, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

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The discussion above 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.

RESOLVED:

A place to enter a discussion summary was requested. In regular discussions this happens through an edit summary. In Flow the mark as resolved function can be used for this purpose. Dschwen (talk) 22:12, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

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No summary?

(Topic title edited by Dschwen (talk), Yann (talk))

One important issue is that there is no possibility to add a summary. Yann (talk) 22:47, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

This one is complicated! I think I've covered everything, below, but might have missed something (existing, or needed). Feedback appreciated.

Doing a Moderation action in Flow (hide/delete/suppress) does ask for an edit-summary.

In Flow, history pages (for the board and the topics contained within) currently show an automatic excerpt of the post. e.g. this board

Making a standard post (either the initial topic creation, or a reply) does Not ask for an edit-summary. This is on purpose, because the vast majority of edit-summaries in discussion pages just say "reply" or "comment" or equivalent, e.g. - the exceptions to this, are often missed/unseen by anyone who simply followed a link to the discussion page (or other arrival routes) rather than via their watchlist. Hence the existing edit-summaries are an unreliable communication channel.

The existing wikitext documentation either doesn't advise what to do on talkpages ([m:Help:Edit summary m:Help:Edit summary]) or suggests adding an excerpt of our post ([:en:Help:Edit summary en:Help:Edit summary]). It also notes that anyone using a __NEWSECTIONLINK__ to add their new topic to a wikitext page, will not be asked for an edit summary at all (and all that is shown in the history page is "Title (new section)").

There are feature-requests for a few changes:

• phab:T59894 - Flow: Editing existing content should give the editor a dialog requesting an edit-summary
• phab:T64750 - Flow: Use automatic edit summaries in board header when applicable
• phab:T93977 - (add the auto-excerpt that is currently seen in history, to the special:contribs, watchlist, and recentchanges entries) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:32, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

It depends. On talk pages, summaries are not very important, but they are very important on forums like Admin Notice Board, Village Pump, etc. So until Flow is only used on talk pages, no summary is a minor issue, but we can't use it on forums until such a possibility exists. Yann (talk) 19:21, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Please could you elaborate on which types of edit summaries (using specific examples) might be considered very important in COM:AN and COM:VP (and any other locations, at any wiki)?

(keeping in mind, the situations where Flow already does (or already plans to) ask for an edit-summary)

From my own experience, and from looking around for specific examples of this, I've only seen edit-summaries on noticeboards/discussion-pages that were either: (1) unnecessary ("reply to Alice", etc), or (2) should have been placed in the discussion itself to assure that everyone actually saw it. The only exceptions to this, seem to be instances where moderation was occurring (which Flow already asks for a edit-summary of), or where someone was editing the content written by someone else (which Flow plans to add).

Thanks! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Quite easy: if a fellow admin answers a topic one of the Admin Boards with a summary "Done", I don't care to read it. However if the answer is "Need further input" or equivalent, I do. This saves me a lot of time. Yann (talk) 19:54, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I think we are not talking about edit summaries here, but about marker templates to highlight answers, such as  Done and header/footer templates that summarize a !vote etc. Dschwen (talk) 20:29, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I think Yann does mean edit summaries - so he can see on his watchlist whether his input is or is not needed without needing to visit the page... WJBscribe (talk) 23:37, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I mean. For the rest, all templates are available. Yann (talk) 07:00, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the details. I'll follow-up on this when the team has another round of feed (RC/watchlist/History/contribs) improvements.

For this particular use-case, it also somewhat hinges upon how each community uses the "Mark as resolved" feature (in the topic's "..." action-menu). A few wikis have been using it a lot (e.g.

and partially at ), and if that becomes a successful local 'pattern', then any "unresolved" topic would be what you are looking for in your watchlist. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:36, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

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The discussion above 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.

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New topics are at the top?

(Topic title edited by Diego Moya (talk), Trizek (WMF) (talk), WJBscribe (talk))

I suppose it's not that significant, but having newer topics at the top, not the bottom, may take some getting used to... WJBscribe (talk) 22:52, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Could it be an option? Yann (talk) 19:23, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

There are some additional ideas around this (see phab:T99875 ("Advanced filtering on a Flow board (advanced search panel)") for details and mockups), but those will take a significant amount of time to be developed.

It could be an option in the existing dropdown sorting menu, to display the oldest topics at the top, but the nature of the infinite scroll means that on highly active pages, the newest entries would be very far down. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:34, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I would really like to see this behavior kept. There really is no good usability reason to have to scroll down to the end of a page to see new topics. Sometimes old conventions have to go if it improves the design. Dschwen (talk) 20:23, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Dschwen, though "recently active topics" might be an even better default than "new topics" … El Grafo (talk) 12:44, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

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RESOLVED:

@Dschwen: had vision issues and did not notice the prominent Thank link in Flow discussions. Dschwen (talk) 22:14, 19 August 2015 (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.

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Thanking in Flow

This should probably be on the Mediawiki:Flow page, but is the ability to send thanks for specific flow comments/revisions planned? I frequently see questions answered where I really appreciate the answer, and I'd like to be able to use the thanks feature to signal that. Dschwen (talk) 20:40, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I thanked you for you message. ;) Did you see it? Yann (talk) 07:02, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Yeah I did. Now I have to figure out how to do this... Hm, where is it?! I do not see it on the History page. OMG. Was I totally blind?! I see it now. Dschwen (talk) 21:28, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

There's also the "Thank" button directly next to the "Reply" button, directly within the Flow topics. :-) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:28, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

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The discussion above 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.

RESOLVED:

The auto-generated pagename used by some templates within a flow discussion is a cryptic alphanumeric string that should not be exposed to the users. This issue is now tracked on Phabricator. Dschwen (talk) 22:13, 19 August 2015 (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.

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What about Templates?

(Topic title edited by Dschwen (talk), El Grafo (talk))

Let's see if this works: Adding a simple template without parameters:

Welcome to Wikimedia Commons, DannyH (WMF)!

First steps tutorial Our first steps tour and our frequently asked questions will help you a lot after registration. They explain how to customize the interface (for example the language), how to upload files and our basic licensing policy (Wikimedia Commons only accepts free content). You don't need technical skills in order to contribute here. Be bold when contributing and assume good faith when interacting with others. This is a wiki. Getting help More information is available at the community portal. You may ask questions at the help desk, village pump or on IRC channel #wikimedia-commons (webchat). You can also contact an administrator on their talk page. If you have a specific copyright question, ask at the copyright village pump.

Goodies, tips, and tricks Put Babel boxes on your user page so others know what languages you can speak and indicate your graphic abilities. You can find the files you have uploaded in your Uploads. Please sign your name on Talk pages by typing ~~~~. To link to an image page without embedding the image, type: [[:File:Foo.jpg]], which produces: File:Foo.jpg. You may enable gadgets (custom features) for your account. There are several tools to upload files. Have you edited Wikipedia before? This guide might be useful. Made a mistake? Do you want to have a file renamed or moved? Use the move link and wait for an authorized user to rename it. Do you want to have your recently uploaded picture removed? Tag it as {{speedy|reason here}}. For more information read the deletion guidelines.

El Grafo (talk) 15:12, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Broken: should be something like Welcome to Wikimedia Commons, Flow!

instead of Sn6grtdjn70cisb7 El Grafo (talk) 15:25, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Filed as phab:T109373. Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:27, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Adding one with parameters: {{Tl|1=Welcome}} → {{Welcome}} → seems to work El Grafo (talk) 15:14, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't notice Commons talk:Flow/tests until now. Is there any way to move topics? El Grafo (talk) 15:28, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Not yet. That's phab:T88140 Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:26, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

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RESOLVED:

At the moment, Flow is in maintenance-only mode. Communities can request Flow on their wiki; no consensus to enable beta function of Flow on own talk page has been reached on Commons. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:07, 1 June 2017 (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.

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Priorities for the Collaboration (Flow) team

(Topic title edited by Trizek (WMF) (talk), Quiddity (WMF) (talk))

Hi everyone, here's a copy of the message from Dannyh:

I want to let you know about some changes to the plan for Flow development. I'm going to post the official message about it below, but here's what's important for Commons:

We're going to stop active development on Flow after September, so the team can work on a Workflows feature. There are a couple Flow feature changes coming this month, including an opt-in Beta feature so that people can turn Flow on for their own user talk pages. Then in October, we're going to focus on Workflows. Flow is still going to be supported and maintained.

Here's the longer message, and I'm happy to talk if you want to know more.

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While initial announcements about Flow said that it would be a universal replacement for talk pages, the features that were ultimately built into Flow were specifically forum-style group discussion tools. But article and project talk pages are used for a number of important and complex processes that those tools aren't able to handle, making Flow unsuitable for deployment on those kinds of pages.

To better address the needs of our core contributors, we're now focusing our strategy on the curation, collaboration, and admin processes that take place on a variety of pages. Many of these processes use complex workarounds -- templates, categories, transclusions, and lots of instructions -- that turn blank wikitext talk pages into structured workflows. There are gadgets and user scripts on the larger wikis to help with some of these workflows, but these tools aren't standardized or universally available.

As these workflows grow in complexity, they become more difficult for the next generation of editors to learn and use. This has increased the workload on the people who maintain those systems today. Complex workflows are also difficult to adapt to other languages, because a wiki with thousands of articles may not need the kind of complexity that comes with managing a wiki with millions of articles. We've talked about this kind of structured workflow support at Wikimania, in user research sessions, and on wikis. It's an important area that needs a lot of discussion, exploration, and work.

Starting in October, Flow will not be in active development, as we shift the team's focus to these other priorities. We'll be helping core contributors reduce the stress of an ever-growing workload, and helping the next generation of contributors participate in those processes. Further development on these projects will be driven by the needs expressed by wiki communities.

Flow will be maintained and supported, and communities that are excited about Flow discussions will be able to use it. There are places where the discussion features are working well, with communities that are enthusiastic about them: on user talk pages, help pages, and forum/village pump-style discussion spaces. By the end of September, we'll have an opt-in Beta feature available to communities that want it, allowing users to enable Flow on their own user talk pages.

I'm sure people will want to know more about these projects, and we're looking forward to those conversations. We'll be reaching out for lots of input and feedback over the coming months. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:25, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm a bit surprised by this after all the "opt-in for beta testing now available" discussions, but it might actually be the right thing to do. Looking forward to share some ideas (e.g. some kind of polling/voting mechanism could be useful), please keep us updated. El Grafo (talk) 13:31, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

To clarify: Starting in October, Flow will be maintained; it's not being abandoned. Further work on the discussion system will need to be driven by communities voicing their desire for further work on it.

As a pattern that we're all familiar with, it's more likely that people will comment when they have negative or critical feedback, particularly at a centralized forum. While it's helpful to point out things that are not user-friendly or frustrating to use, it's also helpful for the team to know what is going well - so we can do more of it. I’d like to encourage people to speak up (here or onwiki) when there's positive feedback as well – this goes for article-editors as much as software-developers. There are people on many wikis who have been happily using Flow, but they haven't gone out of their way to broadcast that information off of their usual home wiki. What do you like about this software? Is it headed in the right direction, even if it doesn’t seem complete? Are there things about it that the Collaboration team could continue to focus on in the future?

See also, the threads on wikitech-l and on wikimedia-l, for additional discussion.

Hope that helps. If you'd prefer to give feedback in a centralized location, please post at [mw:Topic:So4pui07y03ibgqq mw:Topic:So4pui07y03ibgqq]. Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:08, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi everyone, I want to clarify what the shift in priorities for the Collaboration team means for this wiki . We’ve heard from people, on- and off-wiki, who are concerned that our team shifting to the Workflows project means that the Flow extension is done, and that your interest in using Flow on this wiki is going to leave people with a system that will become obsolete. I totally understand that concern -- the message I left here a couple days ago didn’t really make it clear, and I’m sorry about that.

Workflows is the project that we talked about at Wikimania this summer. ([mw:File:Workflows - Collaboration team 2015 (revised).pdf Here’s a link] to an updated version of the slides that we used.) Workflows are multi-step wiki discussions that end in a decision -- processes like Articles for deletion, Featured article nominations, or Administrators’ noticeboard requests. They all involve structured discussions, but each process is different, and every wiki has their own version. At Wikimania, we talked about this as the project that we were planning to work on starting early next year.

When it got to budget and planning time for the Foundation, we had to assess the relative value of the work that we were doing. What we ultimately decided was that starting on Workflows now was going to have a greater positive impact than making more discussion features. So the Workflows project moved from "3 to 6 months from now" to next month.

While we’re working on that, the opt-in Beta feature for Flow will give people the opportunity to use Flow on their user talk pages, and that will help to keep interest in the discussion features alive. The Beta feature will be available on any wiki that wants to use it. It’s our team’s responsibility to maintain the feature, which means fixing bugs and making sure that the people who use it continue to have a good experience with it.

When it’s time to evaluate our progress in the future, the experiences that users have with the Flow opt-in feature will help to inform the choices that we make.

I hope that helps people understand what’s going on; I’m sorry that we dropped surprising news on you earlier this week. Is there anything people would like to know about what we’re planning? Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:03, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

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The discussion above 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.