Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-02-27/Technology report
Responsive content on desktop; Offline content in Android app
CREDIT showcase (Community, Reading, Editing, Discovery, Infrastructure and Technology) is a monthly live-streamed meeting that demonstrations developers' recent work, such as new gadgets, experiments and independent projects. It is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, with presentations from Wikimedia Engineering teams or individuals. The following highlights have been taken from the February's CREDIT showcase, which is available in full on Commons (WebM video) or on YouTube.
Responsive content for narrow and wide-screen displays
Derk-Jan Hartman (User:TheDJ) has written some CSS styling rules that makes Vector, the default desktop skin, adapt the display of content for both narrow and wide displays. These changes include limiting the width of content, adjusting the font size, and for wide screens, moving images and infoboxes into sidebars. The responsive content CSS is available on-wiki for users to install and test.[1]
On-wiki translatable training modules
Sage Ross has developed a framework for presenting community built training modules. The modules are designed to present "bite-sized" bits of information in a way that is easy to learn - a slideshow to navigate through, without lots of distracting links that on-wiki content usually has. The slide contents are pulled from wiki pages, which makes them editable and translatable.
Offline content in the Android app
Random locale for Android app developers
Stephen Niedzielski demonstrated a small change in the developmental version of the Wikipedia Android app – a randomised locale is chosen when the first time the app launched after installation. This ensures single-lingual or even bilingual developers experience "a little bit of what the rest of the world sees" in one of the almost 300 languages other than English (or their preferred language). This makes developers less likely to be completely unaware of issues in other locales.
In brief
Newly approved bot tasks
- JJMC89 bot (task 9) – Replace BSicon redirects inside route diagram templates with the redirect target.
- Dexbot (task 10) – Change old JSTOR links to the new style
- Ramaksoud2000Bot (approval) – Tags files that were uploaded using the File Upload Wizard with the "I haven't got the evidence right now, but I will provide some if requested to do so" option with {{di-no permission}} and notifies the uploader.
- BU RoBOT (task 30) – Replace deprecated parameters of {{Infobox AFL biography}} with new numbered parameters to improve accessibility.
- PrimeBOT (task 10) – Replace deprecated parameters in template call of {{Infobox television episode}}
- AnomieBOT (task 77) – Create Template:POTD protected/YYYY-MM-DD two days before the corresponding date, in time for it to be transcluded onto WP:Main Page/Tomorrow.
- DatBot (task 7) – Update WikiWork factors
- BU RoBOT (task 32) – Mark non-free use images as having a rationale if they have a completed rationale template.
- Yobot (task 48) – Fix external links with double prefix
- BU RoBOT (task 34) – Tag articles for WikiProject Canadian football as identified by a consensus of project members.
- AnomieBOT (task 76) – Archive expired peer reviews.
- ArmbrustBot (task 6) – De-tagging of categories listed on Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working/Retain and adding {{old cfd}} to the talk page (if necessary)
- Community Tech bot (task 3) – Update popular pages reports for wikiprojects
- BU RoBOT (task 33) – Converts deprecated task forces in {{WikiProject Central America}} to the new country WikiProject templates
- Yobot (task 50) – Convert internal links written as an external link
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community: 2017 #6, #7, & #8. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available on Meta.
- Problems
- The block log sometimes showed blocks as being much longer than they were. This has now been fixed. (Phabricator task T156453)
- The Firefox add-on Firefogg can cause problems with the Upload Wizard. This will not be fixed, because Firefox will not support Firefogg in the future. The Upload Wizard will no longer work with Firefogg. (Phabricator task T157201)
- Tool Labs and Wikimedia Labs databases will be under maintenance on 15 February. This will start at 17:00 (UTC) and last for about six hours. Some tools could have problems during or after this. (Phabricator task T157358)
- Recent changes
- Wikimedia pages will now be better at showing pictures when you share them on social media. The descriptions will be different too. You can see an example of before and after. (Phabricator task T157055)
- The TwoColConflict extension is a new way to solve edit conflicts. It makes it easier to copy and paste the relevant text to the text field. It came to Meta and German Wikipedia recently (week of 13 February). It is also available on MediaWiki.org. It will come to more wikis later. (Meta page)
- The edit summary box is now a little bit bigger. This is to make it follow the Wikimedia design guide. (Phabricator task T152025) You can make your edit summary box smaller again by adding code like
#wpSummary { padding: 0.2em !important; }
to your CSS (the number can be adjusted until it looks right for you). There are some changes to the OOjs UI. Some old functions will not work anymore or not work as they used to. This could be a breaking change. (Wikitech mailing list)
EventStreams is a new way to show activity on Wikimedia wikis. For now it works with the recent changes feed. It will do more things later. It will replace RCStream. Tools that use RCStream should move to EventStreams before 7 July. (Analytics mailing list)
The Developer Wishlist is a list where developers prioritize tools they need. The voting closed at 14 February 23:59 (UTC), and the results are available on MediaWiki.org. This process is only for developers.
- Changes this week
There has been a problem where the CSS of gadgets has been loading twice. The Gadgets extension has two new options:
type
andpeers
. Thetype
option solves this problem. You can usepeers
to create gadgets with more than one style module. Read more about type and peers. (Phabricator task T42284)OAuth will handle blocked users in a more consistent way. (Phabricator task T156803)
- Future changes
- Page Previews (formerly called Hovercards) was turned on for logged-out users on the Catalan, Greek, Russian, and Italian Wikipedias in the middle of February. It will be updated on 23 February to fix many bugs, and it be deployed to more wikis in March and April. Page Previews shows readers a short part of a linked article when they rest their mouse pointer on the link. This is to help them understand what it is about without leaving the article they are reading. (Phabricator task T156290, rollout plan on MediaWiki.org)
Tidy will be replaced later this year (see previous Signpost coverage). Instead, the HTML 5 parsing algorithm will be used to clean up bad HTML in wikitext. This will cause problems on a number of wikis. They need to be fixed first. You can see if your wiki still has something to fix here for one of the HTML problems. This list does not cover all problems. You can read about more problems. (Phabricator tasks T89331 & T134423)
- Review
- You can read the 2016 product summary from the Wikimedia Foundation Product group to see what they did with things they said they would work on in the annual plan.
Installation code
- ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
mw.loader.load( '/w/index.php?title=User:TheDJ/responsiveContent.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css', 'text/css' ); // Backlink: [[User:TheDJ/responsiveContent.css]]
Discuss this story
Regarding this "Android" business, I have been complaining at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/App lately. There was no intrinsic reason why Android logos should have been banner ads on the Type II diabetes article (they did respond by changing that to a phone), nor was I ready to put up with direct links to the Google Play Store in their proposed sidebar version (which they seem to be responding to). But this article is still continuing an idea that they have, that because they somehow have a version that works "all in one" in some kind of Google format, they should be pushing that company. I say no. It is entirely possible to download Kiwix (which is actually a Firefox knockoff) and view their ZIM archive files, or any ZIM archive from Wikipedia, without reference to Google hardware or software of any kind! There are even said to be other ZIM readers in development, and I see all such options as opportunities that should be pursued to ensure platform independence long term.
Yeah, yeah, they tell me they have 100,000 Google/Android downloads, of which 60,000 are still running (Google keeps track...). They tell me they get rave reviews. They know that Google owns the eyeballs of the captives of its phone, and with a simple sacrifice of earth and water we can have that power behind us. But -- this is Wikipedia! With them and now even with you, whether accidental or well-meaning, I'm getting a strong feeling of encroaching commercialization and control and the loss of the independence we should treasure. I want our site and our content, online or offline, to be a free and independent resource and not an ad or feature for any company. Wnt (talk) 02:18, 28 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Our goal is not perfection, it is good enough. If we required perfection before doing anything Wikipedia would not exist. This app is not perfect either. We would love to see app versions for all systems. We; however, have limited numbers of volunteers and programmers (we would love more people to join us). We have thus prioritizing the biggest bang for the effort with the priority being those who need this content most (ie those in the developing world). This is why iOS was less of a priority.
Our work was also a proof of concept. The two step solution has existed for a much longer time than the one step solution; however, uptake of the two step solution was much lower. A one step solution has resulted in much greater up take which provides evidence that a one step solution is important. You say you "can't see any reason why anyone should care", I have evidence that they do.
By the way a number of offline medical apps based on Wikipedia content existed on the google play store before we created ours. People who wanted the app had to either pay for it or the app was full of adverting. The apps had very old versions of WP and did not contain pictures. Our apps are completely free, do not contain advertising, and are open source. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:46, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]