Re: [Wikitech-l] English Wikipedia Homepage Framework

[Brian Cox]

I wonder if there would be demand for a modernized equivalent of
browsershots.

And yes it would be exceedingly useful.
On Apr 15, 2014 2:54 PM, "Erwin Dokter"  wrote:

> On 15-04-2014 23:29, Steven Walling wrote:
>
>>
>>  zhwiki main page is already div-based :)
>>>
>>
>> Not surprising. zhwiki has one of the best-looking Main Pages around. :)
>>
>
> Hmm...
>
> They copied Pretzel's 2013 MP proposal and removed all the fluff. It's
> basically two floating column divs. My design uses flex boxes... now
> _that's_ sexy!
>
> But yes, being able to test in all browsers would be awesome. Browsershots
> isn't much help anymore.
>
> Regards,
> --
> Erwin Dokter
>
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] English Wikipedia Homepage Framework

[Erwin Dokter]

On 15-04-2014 23:29, Steven Walling wrote:



zhwiki main page is already div-based :)


Not surprising. zhwiki has one of the best-looking Main Pages around. :)


Hmm...

They copied Pretzel's 2013 MP proposal and removed all the fluff. It's 
basically two floating column divs. My design uses flex boxes... now 
_that's_ sexy!


But yes, being able to test in all browsers would be awesome. 
Browsershots isn't much help anymore.


Regards,
--
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Re: [Wikitech-l] English Wikipedia Homepage Framework

[Martijn Hoekstra]

On Apr 15, 2014 11:30 PM, "Steven Walling"  wrote:
>
> On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 1:47 PM, Liangent  wrote:
>
> > zhwiki main page is already div-based :)
>
>
> Not surprising. zhwiki has one of the best-looking Main Pages around. :)

It would be great if it were possible if some wmf effort could go in to
this. Going in there and asking where we could use help would be a nice
step in the perceived situation where the wmf forces things on the
projects. Offering help with browser testing as well as offering tips on
the design (but not pushing them) could win many friends.

Obviously, everybody will hate any and all change,  but that's a different
issue.
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Re: [Wikitech-l] English Wikipedia Homepage Framework

[Steven Walling]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 1:47 PM, Liangent  wrote:

> zhwiki main page is already div-based :)


Not surprising. zhwiki has one of the best-looking Main Pages around. :)
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Re: [Wikitech-l] mGerrit - Gerrit for Android

[Liangent]

I'm more eager to find a good bugzilla app :) I can find a few on Google
Play, but is there a best one to recommend?
On Apr 14, 2014 6:58 PM, "Sam Reed"  wrote:

> As we all know, Gerrit doesn't have the best interface, but even more so,
> it's not very mobile friendly. There is however mGerrit [1] for Android
> which does a nice job.
>
>
>
> Also, we're not in the list of default "supported" Gerrit instannces (yes,
> I
> know WikiMedia is in CamelCase, this is already reported and fixed
> upstream).
>
>
>
> If you've any issues with the software emailing the developer directly is
> quite good at yielding responses.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Sam
>
>
>
>
>
> [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jbirdvegas.mgerrit
>
>
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposed body font stack for Latin

[Steven Walling]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 12:08 PM, Gergo Tisza  wrote:

> > Are you volunteering to build such a survey tool? ;-)
> >
>
> Will see if I find the time. "Survey" probably gives the wrong idea here,
> it is really just an overlay with two buttons, more of an interactive A/B
> test. Could be probably cobbled together from GuidedTours and EventLogging.


A similar toolkit that is extremely well-designed is Polar (polarb.com), if
you're looking for inspiration.
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Abandoning -1 code reviews automatically?

[S Page]

On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 1:37 PM, Marcin Cieslak  wrote:

> I agree that -1 is practically a death penalty to a change.
> But that's not a positive development, because
> even a mild -1's completety discourages anybody to post
> a positive review (I wonder how many +1 or neutral
> comments were posted *after* some of the WMF reviewers
> posted a -1).
>

That seems dramatic and hasn't been my experience. A -1 does mean others
will be less likely to review, but it doesn't discourage positive comments
about the change. Often people will -1 a beneficial change because they see
how it can be improved further, but the answer is to respond to their
comment with "I've filed bug N for that suggestion", and invite them to
remove the -1.

-- 
=S Page  Features engineer
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Re: [Wikitech-l] English Wikipedia Homepage Framework

[Liangent]

zhwiki main page is already div-based :)
On Apr 16, 2014 4:34 AM, "Jon Robson"  wrote:

> PLEASSE! :D
> This would help the mobile version a lot.
>
> On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 1:25 PM, Derric Atzrott
>  wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I just wanted to make everyone aware of a discussion going on at the
> English
> > Wikipedia.  They are discussing changing the Main Page, not visibly, but
> just
> > changing the page from a table based layout to one that is a little bit
> more
> > modern.  The discussion can be found here:
> >
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Proposal_to_implement_new_framework
> > _for_main_page
> >
> > One of the things that came up during the discussion was testing the
> framework
> > with a wide variety of browsers.  A lot of the opposition to it that I
> could see
> > came from the lack of testing.  I feel like I remember us discussing here
> > previously a framework for testing stuff across many browsers.  If we
> have
> > something of the like here, I think that it could be well deployed to
> help them
> > out.  No reason for them to re-invent the wheel or do all of the testing
> > manually.
> >
> > Thank you,
> > Derric Atzrott
> > Computer Specialist
> > Alizee Pathology
> >
> >
> >
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>
>
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> * http://jonrobson.me.uk
> * https://www.facebook.com/jonrobson
> * @rakugojon
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] English Wikipedia Homepage Framework

[Jon Robson]

PLEASSE! :D
This would help the mobile version a lot.

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 1:25 PM, Derric Atzrott
 wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I just wanted to make everyone aware of a discussion going on at the English
> Wikipedia.  They are discussing changing the Main Page, not visibly, but just
> changing the page from a table based layout to one that is a little bit more
> modern.  The discussion can be found here:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Proposal_to_implement_new_framework
> _for_main_page
>
> One of the things that came up during the discussion was testing the framework
> with a wide variety of browsers.  A lot of the opposition to it that I could 
> see
> came from the lack of testing.  I feel like I remember us discussing here
> previously a framework for testing stuff across many browsers.  If we have
> something of the like here, I think that it could be well deployed to help 
> them
> out.  No reason for them to re-invent the wheel or do all of the testing
> manually.
>
> Thank you,
> Derric Atzrott
> Computer Specialist
> Alizee Pathology
>
>
>
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* http://jonrobson.me.uk
* https://www.facebook.com/jonrobson
* @rakugojon

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[Wikitech-l] English Wikipedia Homepage Framework

[Derric Atzrott]

Hello,

I just wanted to make everyone aware of a discussion going on at the English
Wikipedia.  They are discussing changing the Main Page, not visibly, but just
changing the page from a table based layout to one that is a little bit more
modern.  The discussion can be found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Proposal_to_implement_new_framework
_for_main_page

One of the things that came up during the discussion was testing the framework
with a wide variety of browsers.  A lot of the opposition to it that I could see
came from the lack of testing.  I feel like I remember us discussing here
previously a framework for testing stuff across many browsers.  If we have
something of the like here, I think that it could be well deployed to help them
out.  No reason for them to re-invent the wheel or do all of the testing
manually.

Thank you,
Derric Atzrott
Computer Specialist
Alizee Pathology



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Re: [Wikitech-l] Another Wikipedia design concept

[Erik Moeller]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 8:47 AM, Nathan  wrote:
> In the comment thread at the bottom someone gave him a heads up about the
> fonts controversy, hopefully he doesn't get totally discouraged from
> MediaWiki design studies after reading it ;)

I actually think it's interesting that he independently picked a mixed
serif/sans-serif approach (going a step further than we did and
turning all headlines serif). This is also true for other redesigns
such as the recent "more readable Wikipedia" design:
http://weare1910.com/sites/default/files/project/wikipedia_new_desktop_full.jpg

Of course there are lots of issues with it - it's always a lot easier
when you don't have to design with reality as a constraint :)

Erik
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VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposed body font stack for Latin

[Gergo Tisza]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 10:12 AM, Steven Walling
wrote:

> Are you volunteering to build such a survey tool? ;-)
>

Will see if I find the time. "Survey" probably gives the wrong idea here,
it is really just an overlay with two buttons, more of an interactive A/B
test. Could be probably cobbled together from GuidedTours and EventLogging.


> When it comes to using a survey to catch problems early and gauging
> preferences, a survey still very much suffers from the self-selection bias
> that all opt-in options have. It's just the name of the game. When you move
> something from opt-in to opt-out you reach a wider audience and encounter
> new complaints/questions/bugs.


You can survey the opt-out audience before actually enabling any changes;
that is a good way of catching those bugs without actually causing them.
Of course, that point is moot now, and the refresh seemed like a simple
change without the benefit of hindsight.

Still, it might be useful to run such a survey (or surveys) even now:

   - Which fonts users would prefer is mostly based on educating guesses
   now. Complaints and bugs are much more heavily self-selected than a survey
   (especially a super-short one-click survey), so even though the results
   would still be slanted towards more active users, you would get a better
   picture of severity.
   - There is a lot of uncertainty about how widespread certain bugs are
   (e.g. ClearText issues); showing an affected text and asking "Does this
   look good to you?" is an easy way to get data about that.
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposed body font stack for Latin

[Martijn Hoekstra]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Steven Walling wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 9:59 AM, Gergo Tisza  wrote:
>
> >- instead of guessing about user preferences, you could just create a
> >simple survey which shows them the same text with two different font
> > stacks
> >side by side, and ask them which is more readable. This is good for
> > making
> >aesthetic decisions more objective, and also for catching weird issues
> > with
> >old machines, CJK fonts etc: you can add a comment field to the
> survey,
> > and
> >if the browser is sufficiently modern to support canvas elements, you
> > can
> >even save a snapshot if the rendered text; you can skim through the
> > survey
> >replies which are different from what you have expected, and look for
> >display problems.
> >
>
> Are you volunteering to build such a survey tool? ;-)
>
> We don't have a powerful/easy to use/not annoying/privacy-respecting survey
> tool that can do side-by-side comparisons. This is why the feature was
> launched using Beta Features for five months first. Putting out in opt-in
> mode and gathering feedback via the channels we have now is the most
> efficient way to make a change that doesn't have a big WMF team assigned to
> like Multimedia or VisualEditor.
>
> When it comes to using a survey to catch problems early and gauging
> preferences, a survey still very much suffers from the self-selection bias
> that all opt-in options have. It's just the name of the game. When you move
> something from opt-in to opt-out you reach a wider audience and encounter
> new complaints/questions/bugs.
>

What would be a good design for such a survey? Would it be a good idea to
ask surveyees which scripts they regularly read, and for each of those
scripts prepare a bit of text, including hard parts (combining characters
and the such), style it with fontx, sans-serif, and ask questions about the
qualities we are looking for?

If so, what would be the questions to ask? When I read the former tests,
base questions seem to be

* How would you rate the readability of this font?
very/completely unreadable - somewhat unreadable - not specifically
readable or unreadable - well readable - very well readable
* How would you rate the neutrality of this font? (I don't really know what
this means exactly, so a different phrasing is probably better, maybe
something like "do you think this font has a specific style", where less is
better?)
Very neutral/not a specific style at all - somewhat neutral/no of a
specific style - not neutral or non neutral/not much of a specific style -
somewhat non-neutral/a somewhat specific style - very non-neutral/a very
specific style/you just showed me papyrus
* Does this font look authoritative?
Very authoritative - somewhat authoritative - neither authoritative nor
non-authoritative - not very authoritative - not authoritative at all/I
just told you you're showing me papyrus
* Does this font seem to render correctly?
yes - no

Is testing like this a road we want to go down at all? If so, is this
specific format a good idea? Can we improve this idea to make it good?

I don't mind making this in the weekend if it is a good idea.

--Martijn



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[Wikitech-l] Tomorrow: RfC review on reducing image quality on mobile

[Sumana Harihareswara]

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Architecture_meetings/RFC_review_2014-04-16

Wednesday at 2100 UTC, we're discussing
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Reducing_image_quality_for_mobile
, Yuri's and Max's RfC. We also have room for one more if someone wants
to bring something up; if Guillaume or Andre can come, maybe we can talk
about Phabricator.

http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/?qm=1&lid=2759794,5128581,5391959,2147714&h=2759794&date=2014-4-16&sln=23-24

Amsterdam: 11pm
New York: 5pm
San Francisco: 2pm
Sydney: 7am Thursday

The time may change slightly depending on Ops and Tim.

-- 
Sumana Harihareswara
Senior Technical Writer
Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposed body font stack for Latin

[Steven Walling]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 11:23 AM, David Gerard  wrote:

> > We don't have a powerful/easy to use/not annoying/privacy-respecting
> survey
> > tool that can do side-by-side comparisons. This is why the feature was
> > launched using Beta Features for five months first. Putting out in opt-in
> > mode and gathering feedback via the channels we have now is the most
> > efficient way to make a change that doesn't have a big WMF team assigned
> to
> > like Multimedia or VisualEditor.
> > When it comes to using a survey to catch problems early and gauging
> > preferences, a survey still very much suffers from the self-selection
> bias
> > that all opt-in options have. It's just the name of the game. When you
> move
> > something from opt-in to opt-out you reach a wider audience and encounter
> > new complaints/questions/bugs.
>
>
> ... so the answer to "what user testing did you do, where are the user
> test results" is "we didn't"?


A survey and a user test are not the same thing. "User test" is also
slightly too generic for me to understand what you're asking. Are you
asking if we did scripted usability tests? Or are you asking if we ran an
A/B test with users?
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposed body font stack for Latin

[David Gerard]

On 15 April 2014 19:40, Bartosz Dziewoński  wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Apr 2014 19:12:29 +0200, Steven Walling
>  wrote:

>> When it comes to using a survey to catch problems early and gauging
>> preferences, a survey still very much suffers from the self-selection bias
>> that all opt-in options have. It's just the name of the game. When you
>> move
>> something from opt-in to opt-out you reach a wider audience and encounter
>> new complaints/questions/bugs.

> How is self-selection bias relevant here? People who are not interested in
> taking surveys won't take the survey, of course, but I don't see how that
> diminishes the value of the results one might get. I quite like this idea.


Indeed. Even a user survey with a known bias is better than pure praxeology.


- d.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposed body font stack for Latin

[Bartosz Dziewoński]

On Tue, 15 Apr 2014 19:12:29 +0200, Steven Walling  
wrote:


Are you volunteering to build such a survey tool? ;-)


Is the Foundation unable/unwilling to allocate resources towards that? I mean, 
so far it looked like everyone is treating the typography refresh seriously :)



When it comes to using a survey to catch problems early and gauging
preferences, a survey still very much suffers from the self-selection bias
that all opt-in options have. It's just the name of the game. When you move
something from opt-in to opt-out you reach a wider audience and encounter
new complaints/questions/bugs.


How is self-selection bias relevant here? People who are not interested in 
taking surveys won't take the survey, of course, but I don't see how that 
diminishes the value of the results one might get. I quite like this idea.

--
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposed body font stack for Latin

[David Gerard]

On 15 April 2014 18:12, Steven Walling  wrote:

> We don't have a powerful/easy to use/not annoying/privacy-respecting survey
> tool that can do side-by-side comparisons. This is why the feature was
> launched using Beta Features for five months first. Putting out in opt-in
> mode and gathering feedback via the channels we have now is the most
> efficient way to make a change that doesn't have a big WMF team assigned to
> like Multimedia or VisualEditor.
> When it comes to using a survey to catch problems early and gauging
> preferences, a survey still very much suffers from the self-selection bias
> that all opt-in options have. It's just the name of the game. When you move
> something from opt-in to opt-out you reach a wider audience and encounter
> new complaints/questions/bugs.


... so the answer to "what user testing did you do, where are the user
test results" is "we didn't"?


- d.

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[Wikitech-l] Info session: Wikimedia Hackathon 2014

[Quim Gil]

Info session: Wikimedia Hackathon 2014

Thursday, April 24 at 17:00 UTC.

Overview of the Wikimedia Hackathon 2014 (Zürich, May 11-13), travel tips,
and answers to your questions via hangout or #wikimeda-dev IRC channel in
Freenode.

All participants are invited. The video of the session will be available.

https://plus.google.com/events/cj4okkse0n8ealb7mntrc4458a8

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Z%C3%BCrich_Hackathon_2014

-- 
Quim Gil
Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposed body font stack for Latin

[Steven Walling]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 9:59 AM, Gergo Tisza  wrote:

>- instead of guessing about user preferences, you could just create a
>simple survey which shows them the same text with two different font
> stacks
>side by side, and ask them which is more readable. This is good for
> making
>aesthetic decisions more objective, and also for catching weird issues
> with
>old machines, CJK fonts etc: you can add a comment field to the survey,
> and
>if the browser is sufficiently modern to support canvas elements, you
> can
>even save a snapshot if the rendered text; you can skim through the
> survey
>replies which are different from what you have expected, and look for
>display problems.
>

Are you volunteering to build such a survey tool? ;-)

We don't have a powerful/easy to use/not annoying/privacy-respecting survey
tool that can do side-by-side comparisons. This is why the feature was
launched using Beta Features for five months first. Putting out in opt-in
mode and gathering feedback via the channels we have now is the most
efficient way to make a change that doesn't have a big WMF team assigned to
like Multimedia or VisualEditor.

When it comes to using a survey to catch problems early and gauging
preferences, a survey still very much suffers from the self-selection bias
that all opt-in options have. It's just the name of the game. When you move
something from opt-in to opt-out you reach a wider audience and encounter
new complaints/questions/bugs.
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposed body font stack for Latin

[Steven Walling]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 3:47 AM, Martijn Hoekstra  wrote:

> According to
>
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh/Font_choice#Body_font_evaluationDejaVu
> sans scores 0 out of 10 points for "readability,
> neutrality, and "authority" (does the font look like it conveys reliable
> information)." Apparently the font is not readable, neutral or authoritive
> at all, and completely unsuitable for the website. If it is in fact almost
> completely unreadable it seems reasonable to override it, even if it is the
> system default, but I have the feeling that there may be some hyperbole in
> that table.
>

I marked that font test page as outdated. It's not updated for the new font
stack, and to be honest I don't think that just asking a random assortment
of people to vote on readability is really how we should evaluate our
options.

If you're designing in a vacuum, DejaVu Sans might be perfectly fine. But
it was not proposed or included in our font family settings because it's a
different style of sans than Helvetica (incl. Neue), Arial, Roboto (on
Android), and the other fonts specified. DejaVu, as well as its predecessor
Bitstream Vera, are humanist sans-serifs.[1] This style of sans has much
more personality to it, which isn't necessarily desirable if we want very
neutral typography. From a purely functional perspective, a more humanist
sans is less readable for very large text blocks because it is less uniform
in appearance between letterforms. (This is why, for instance, if you're
reading these long email threads in Gmail, Google sets Arial.)


> That said, with
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61470 it seems a terrible
> idea to have Helvetica Neue in the font stack.
>

Helvetica regular also has problems in this regard. Other Mac fonts, like
Lucida Grande, are worse in other ways. None of them are perfect. Hence the
comments in the FAQ at mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh in answer to
"Is there a perfect font that meets our readability needs in all scripts?
Do we think this is it?".

Steven

1. More about this at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sans-serif#Classification
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposed body font stack for Latin

[Gergo Tisza]

On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 6:54 PM, Steven Walling wrote:

> On Wikitech-l, Design-l, and in the extensive documentation on
> mediawiki.org,
>  people have laid out highly objective rationales for why each font and the
> associated type sizing, spacing, leading, and more were selected to be
> harmonious with each other.


 While I do not want to belittle that effort at all, I think at this stage
the discussion might benefit more from data than from rationales. There was
a lot of guessing about the availability and readability of certain fonts;
to a large extent, this could be measured:

   - you can create a font with zero-width characters, download it as a web
   font, set up a staging area somewhere outside the viewport, fill it with
   some text, set "font-family: testedFont, zeroWidthFont" on it and query the
   width. This is a fairly reliable way of testing for the presence of a font
   name (although not the font itself, since the OS might match a different
   font to the name - but at least it tells you which font name on the stack
   is matched). Do this for all the fonts in the stack, report the results
   (together with browser, OS and location) back with EventLogging, and you
   will have a good idea of how widely each font is supported, and how that
   correlates with OS, wiki language etc. (There are more direct methods with
   Flash, but the browser support for it is worse.)
   - the same width-measurement trick can also be used to tell apart fonts:
   for example if the same string has the exact same width in Helvetica and
   Arial, the OS is faking Helvetica. (It might be even possible to build some
   sort of font fingerprint by specifying all CSS properties relevant for text
   layout in absolute sizes, and measuring the width of a few different
   strings on a reference machine. This could be used to identify fonts on the
   user's machine, although with all the subtle differences in font display
   that depend on browser and OS, this might not be useful in practice.)
   - instead of guessing about user preferences, you could just create a
   simple survey which shows them the same text with two different font stacks
   side by side, and ask them which is more readable. This is good for making
   aesthetic decisions more objective, and also for catching weird issues with
   old machines, CJK fonts etc: you can add a comment field to the survey, and
   if the browser is sufficiently modern to support canvas elements, you can
   even save a snapshot if the rendered text; you can skim through the survey
   replies which are different from what you have expected, and look for
   display problems.
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposed body font stack for Latin

[David Gerard]

On 15 April 2014 17:24, Brian Wolff  wrote:

> Really a 0? What would comic sans get?


High scores for readability! It's also well-known to be very business-friendly.


- d.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] [teampractices] RfC on Product Management Tools and Development Toolchain

[Steven Walling]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 9:19 AM, Dan Andreescu wrote:

> I had volunteered my team to try it out for one of our projects, but I've
> been hesitating until we have a blessed version.


+1 for Growth.


-- 
Steven Walling,
Product Manager
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposed body font stack for Latin

[Brian Wolff]

>
>
> According to
>
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh/Font_choice#Body_font_evaluationDejaVu
> sans scores 0 out of 10 points for "readability,
> neutrality, and "authority" (does the font look like it conveys reliable
> information)." Apparently the font is not readable, neutral or authoritive
> at all, and completely unsuitable for the website. If it is in fact almost
> completely unreadable it seems reasonable to override it, even if it is
the
> system default, but I have the feeling that there may be some hyperbole in
> that table. That said, with
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61470 it seems a terrible
> idea to have Helvetica Neue in the font stack.
>
>

Really a 0? What would comic sans get?

--bawolff
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Re: [Wikitech-l] RfC on Product Management Tools and Development Toolchain

[Dan Andreescu]

Andre,

It's my understanding that the current Phabricator instance is temporary.
 Indeed, it includes mostly jokes and throw-away testing tasks, comments,
boards, etc.  Could we stand up an instance to which we would potentially
migrate to?  We would have to reserve task ids 1-10 to allow us to port
from Bugzilla, but do we have any other blockers?

I had volunteered my team to try it out for one of our projects, but I've
been hesitating until we have a blessed version.

Dan


On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 8:02 PM, Andre Klapper wrote:

> Hi,
>
> as previously announced [1], we've been facilitating a collective review
> of Wikimedia's current product management tools and development
> toolchain.
>
> The most popular idea at the moment is to consolidate Wikimedia's
> product management and infrastructure tools (such as Bugzilla, Gerrit,
> RT, Mingle, Trello) into all-in-one Phabricator. We have therefore put
> together a Request for comment to bring this up for wider discussion.
>
> This discussion affects anyone who deals with bug reports, feature
> requests and code changes in Wikimedia, so it's critical that you test
> Phabricator for your own use and make your voice heard in the RFC:
>
>   https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Phabricator
>
> We're compiling a list of Frequently asked questions at
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Phabricator/FAQ ;
> You're welcome to add more and help answer them :)
>
> We'll host a few IRC discussions while the RFC is running to help answer
> questions, etc. Our tentative times and dates are at
>
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Requests_for_comment/Phabricator#IRC_discussions
>
> Thank you for your input!
>
> Guillaume and Andre
>
> [1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-March/074896.html
>
> --
> Andre Klapper | Wikimedia Bugwrangler
> http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/
>
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Another Wikipedia design concept

[Nathan]

In the comment thread at the bottom someone gave him a heads up about the
fonts controversy, hopefully he doesn't get totally discouraged from
MediaWiki design studies after reading it ;)
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Another Wikipedia design concept

[Chad]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 8:21 AM, Chad  wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 7:50 AM, Risker  wrote:
>
>> I thought it looked like one of those pesky commercial travel sites; it
>> might be the subject matter, but it just looked so void of content that I
>> was convinced it was trying to sell me something.
>>
>>
> I do think it's a little light on content too (at least for my tastes).
> But I like the
> overall direction it goes in. Unsolicited redesigns are seldom used
>

Strike that "Unsolicited redesigns..." bit. Half-finished thought that
wasn't
100% relevant.

-Chad
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Another Wikipedia design concept

[Chad]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 7:50 AM, Risker  wrote:

> I thought it looked like one of those pesky commercial travel sites; it
> might be the subject matter, but it just looked so void of content that I
> was convinced it was trying to sell me something.
>
>
I do think it's a little light on content too (at least for my tastes). But
I like the
overall direction it goes in. Unsolicited redesigns are seldom used


>  On 15 April 2014 10:47, Magnus Manske 
> wrote:
>
> > Well, it does away with most of the infobox data and those pesky language
> > links...
> >
>

I imagine the author probably hid the language links in one of the various
menus.
Definitely minimalist, but doesn't help highlight that we've got other
language
projects :)

As far as infobox: I think the right area with the picture and population
and
national anthem is a good area for iteration. It's a little light on info
like Risker
says, but I think you could add more info there without necessarily
cluttering
things.


>  > I like the three-column layout (obviously; [1]), and the map/timezone
> > display is nice.
> >
>

+1.

-Chad
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Another Wikipedia design concept

[David Gerard]

Could you or your friend please post
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unsolicited_redesigns to the
thread? Designers generally do better with a spec ;-)

On 15 April 2014 15:29, Derk-Jan Hartman  wrote:
> A friend of mine just spotted this:
>
> http://dribbble.com/shots/1508672-Wikipedia-concept
>
> For inspiration and discussion :)
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Another Wikipedia design concept

[Risker]

I thought it looked like one of those pesky commercial travel sites; it
might be the subject matter, but it just looked so void of content that I
was convinced it was trying to sell me something.

Risker


On 15 April 2014 10:47, Magnus Manske  wrote:

> Well, it does away with most of the infobox data and those pesky language
> links...
>
> I like the three-column layout (obviously; [1]), and the map/timezone
> display is nice.
>
>
> [1]
>
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_three_column_CSS_Barack_Obama.png
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 3:29 PM, Derk-Jan Hartman <
> d.j.hartman+wmf...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > A friend of mine just spotted this:
> >
> > http://dribbble.com/shots/1508672-Wikipedia-concept
> >
> > For inspiration and discussion :)
> >
> > ___
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> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>
>
> --
> undefined
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Another Wikipedia design concept

[Magnus Manske]

Well, it does away with most of the infobox data and those pesky language
links...

I like the three-column layout (obviously; [1]), and the map/timezone
display is nice.


[1]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_three_column_CSS_Barack_Obama.png


On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 3:29 PM, Derk-Jan Hartman <
d.j.hartman+wmf...@gmail.com> wrote:

> A friend of mine just spotted this:
>
> http://dribbble.com/shots/1508672-Wikipedia-concept
>
> For inspiration and discussion :)
>
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-- 
undefined
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[Wikitech-l] next steps: RFC on a grid system for responsive, consistent UI

[Sumana Harihareswara]

Pau Giner has updated his RfC

with more detail, and has submitted a patchset to Gerrit
 so that the discussion can
get more specific. Also see the example implementation
. Please comment!

Excerpts:

> There are many kinds of grids with different properties. Considering 
> the MediaWiki context, the most relevant properties considered for a 
> grid system are: Optional, Nestable, Proportional, Responsive and 
> Semantic

> The proposed grid system uses style classes following the 
> breakpoint-proportion format (e.g., desk-two-thirds, palm-one-half) 
> to indicate the layout of elements in a specific screen size

> The grid system will be supported as a set of LESS mixins and
> variables. This means that, the grid classes will not be exposed to
> the generated CSS. That will (a) lead to smaller and more semantic
> CSS and HTML, (b) reduced dependency with the grid concepts used and
> their implementation, and (c) avoid grid classes to be used out of
> their intended target (UI as opposed to user-generated content)

Thanks, Pau!

-- 
Sumana Harihareswara
Senior Technical Writer
Wikimedia Foundation

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[Wikitech-l] Another Wikipedia design concept

[Derk-Jan Hartman]

A friend of mine just spotted this:

http://dribbble.com/shots/1508672-Wikipedia-concept

For inspiration and discussion :)

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Is there a way to visualize where come from editors of a specific page?

[Theopolisme]

You can definitely get this data for *anonymous* editors based on IP
address,
and there are several visualization tools that already do something similar
to this --
real-time visualization of edits to *all* Wikipedia articles.

Just a quick Google search found [1], but I'm sure there are several.

It seems like you could probably take this a step further and generate
charts
that use the current revision and match added text to editors (already done
by various services) and then, for all IP edits, calculate their locations
(could
be on various levels) and display them in a graphic form weighted by amount
of content currently in the article and based on the number from different
countries,
perhaps.

This would obviously be external from Wikipedia, though. Seems kind of
intriguing,
and I might just take a look into it at some point, unless any of y'all
already know if
this has been done previously...

Cheers,
Theo

[1] http://rcmap.hatnote.com/#en



On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 2:19 AM, Nuria Ruiz  wrote:

> Adding analytics list to make sure everyone in the team sees this thread.
>
> >Is there a way to visualize where editors of a specific page come from?
> I assume you mean if this data is available to the general public. By
> reading the couple links you posted seems like the consensus was that this
> data is too private to be made public and thus, it is only accessible
> inside WMF or to users with CheckUser rights.
>
> As far as we know nothing has changed in this regard so this type of
> "geo-data" is not available to general public.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 8:15 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo)  >wrote:
>
> > Recent discussion on the topic:
> > * http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/analytics/2013-
> > August/thread.html#857
> > * http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.analytics/103
> >
> > Nemo
> >
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-- 
*Theo (User:Theopolisme on Wikipedia)http://enwp.org/wiki/User:Theopolisme
*
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposed body font stack for Latin

[Martijn Hoekstra]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 12:55 AM, Isarra Yos  wrote:

> On 13/04/14 14:12, Martijn Hoekstra wrote:
>
>> But same as the original font stack, the question remains - for everything
>>> but mac, what is this supposed to solve? What is the purpose of
>>> even having helvetica and arial there when they're already the defaults
>>> on
>>> their respective systems, and when on other systems they would likely be
>>> far worse than the defaults? And for linux, either they'll already be
>>> using
>>> nimbus sans (if they even have it), or it's not going to be what their
>>> renderers are optimised for.
>>>
>> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh/Font_choice/Test tells
>> me
>> Linux now often gets DejaVu as default sans, and I understand we would
>> rather force Nimbus if it is available as it is deemed better. Also, free
>> font up front.
>>
>> --Martijn
>>
>
> Deemed better? Better how?


According to
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh/Font_choice#Body_font_evaluationDejaVu
sans scores 0 out of 10 points for "readability,
neutrality, and "authority" (does the font look like it conveys reliable
information)." Apparently the font is not readable, neutral or authoritive
at all, and completely unsuitable for the website. If it is in fact almost
completely unreadable it seems reasonable to override it, even if it is the
system default, but I have the feeling that there may be some hyperbole in
that table. That said, with
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61470 it seems a terrible
idea to have Helvetica Neue in the font stack.


> But that's what I'm saying - if the configuration is optimised for dejavu
> sans, nimbus won't be better at all even if it is a better-engineered font
> (doubtful, though, it being an arial clone from what I understand). Letters
> will be too close together, sizes and hinting will be off, and that's not
> even going into the whole rabbit hole of messing with what people are used
> to, which seems to be the single biggest determining factor as to what they
> find easy to read once the basics are covered...
>
>
> -I
>
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[Wikitech-l] Branch REL1_23 created, 1.23.0 release in 6 weeks

[Markus Glaser]

Hello everyone,

this is to announce the REL1_23 branch for the upcoming MediaWiki 1.23.0
release was created. The release is scheduled for 6 weeks from now, no
later than May 29th.

In order to facilitate this, please make sure anything you want in 1.23
is ready within a week. The first release candidate will be published on
April 24th. We'll probably do a couple merges from the WMF branches in
the process of making release candidates, but I'd like to have any major
changes in within the next week.

During the period leading up the release, please consider using the
"critical" severity level ensure any release critical bugs are logged
and tracked.

In addition, please look over
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.23 and help update it since
it will be used in our release announcement.

Thanks,

Markus
(Release Management Team)
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposed body font stack for Latin

[K. Peachey]

On 12 April 2014 05:49, Steven Walling  wrote:
>
>  > I'd like to test this locally on the English Wikipedia, and I am quit
> > confident this makes everyone happy because 1) every OS should end up
> using
> > a native font, and 2) it "promotes" a free font at the beginning of the
> > stack (not a high priority in my book though).
>
>
> Why don't we test this on Beta Labs and Mediawiki.org first instead of
> using
> enwiki as a guinea pig? We can make you a sysop there.


MW wiki is a content wiki first and foremost, not a test bed wiki, First
level testing should take place elsewhere.
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Is there a way to visualize where come from editors of a specific page?

[Nuria Ruiz]

Adding analytics list to make sure everyone in the team sees this thread.

>Is there a way to visualize where editors of a specific page come from?
I assume you mean if this data is available to the general public. By
reading the couple links you posted seems like the consensus was that this
data is too private to be made public and thus, it is only accessible
inside WMF or to users with CheckUser rights.

As far as we know nothing has changed in this regard so this type of
"geo-data" is not available to general public.





On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 8:15 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:

> Recent discussion on the topic:
> * http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/analytics/2013-
> August/thread.html#857
> * http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.analytics/103
>
> Nemo
>
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