Notifications/Meeting notes/Office hours 2013-01-08
IRC chat log with Kaldari, Fabrice Florin and other team members, to talk about Echo, our new notifications project, held on #wikimedia-tech on January 8, 2013 at 11am PT.
[10:49am] fabriceflorin: Hey kaldari, bsitu, lwelling, krenair, werdna, matthiasmullie, chrismcmahon and others: Look forward to our chat about Echo in 10 minutes.
[10:49am] werdna: ah
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[10:49am] werdna: the email said wed jan 30th
[10:49am] werdna: I assume that was an error
[10:49am] werdna: shouldn't it be in #wm-dev or so?
[10:50am] werdna: #wm-tech has generally been an ops channel
[10:50am] RoanKattouw: It's also not even a Wednesday
[10:50am] RoanKattouw: > The meeting will be in #wikimedia-tech on Tuesday, January 8th at 11am
[10:50am] RoanKattouw: > PST (19:00 UTC).
[10:50am] RoanKattouw: is what I got
[10:50am] werdna: Where: #wikimedia-tech
[10:50am] werdna: When: Wed. Jan. 30 at 11am Pacific Time
[10:51am] werdna: from [ee] Echo IRC meeting reminder
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[10:51am] fabriceflorin: Sorry for any confusion. We are planning on two different IRC chats: one today and another on Jan. 30th. See the top of the Echo project hub: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo
[10:51am] kaldari: oops
[10:52am] fabriceflorin: Also, if anyone on this channel is just getting the news now, we invite you to check this testing page for tips on how to check the current version of Echo: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo/Testing
[10:53am] werdna: I got some "your page was linked" notifications today
[10:53am] werdna: nice idea, guys
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[10:54am] fabriceflorin: Werdna: Regarding the location, Kaldari thought we would reach more folks on #wikimedia-tech, rather than #wikimedia-dev, but either way works for me in the future.
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[10:54am] werdna: nod.
[10:54am] kaldari: werdna: some people have complained about getting to many, so we're going to limit it to content namespaces only
[10:54am] werdna: mm
[10:55am] kaldari: but right now it works for any links
[10:55am] werdna: email notification might be excessive, you might want to tweak the default notification types for that event.
[10:55am] werdna: how did the base object model hold up for all these new use cases btw?
[10:55am] kaldari: yeah, some of them we're going to make opt in, but that one will probably be opt-out
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[10:56am] kaldari: werdna: pretty good actually...
[10:56am] werdna: yay
[10:56am] Krenair: hey
[10:56am] kaldari: werdna: the only thing we had to change was splitting out separate messages for the flyout, but the object model is pretty much intact
[10:57am] fabriceflorin: werdna: good point about tweaking the default notifications so people don't get too many emails. One of the challenges for this project is figuring out how to serve both new users (our primary target for the first release) and experienced users (our target for the next releases). We're primarily relying on preferences for now, but are also thinking that a clever bundling algorithm could help as well.
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[10:57am] fabriceflorin: Hey Krenair, good to meet you here!
[10:57am] werdna: RoanKattouw: wat betekent 'eerlijk'? Ik heb het op mijn champignons van Albert Heijn gelezen, en ik heb me vergeten…
[10:57am] kaldari: werdna: we're in the process of abstracting out all the mysql related stuff so it'll be ready for the new job queue system, so that might change a few things as well
[10:57am] RoanKattouw: werdna: Honest
[10:58am] werdna: kaldari: nice!
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[10:58am] werdna: RoanKattouw: thanks!
[10:58am] RoanKattouw: werdna: In de context van eten, waarschijnlijk "fair trade"
[10:58am] werdna: ahhh
[10:59am] RoanKattouw: ("vergeten" is not a self-referential verb, but otherwise that sentence was perfect)
[10:59am] werdna: Het Nederlands gebruikt altijd woorden opnieuw (I realise that the word order is completely off on that sentence)
[10:59am] werdna: reflexive is what we say in English. Thanks!
[10:59am] RoanKattouw: Reflexive, yes
[10:59am] RoanKattouw: That's what I meant
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[11:00am] kaldari: werdna: when did you learn dutch?
[11:00am] fabriceflorin: werdna: I did not know you spoke dutch. Impressive!
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[11:00am] werdna: fabriceflorin, kaldari: I am trying my best!
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[11:01am] fabriceflorin: BTW, if there are any french people on this channel, I'm happy to translate any terms that are confusing during this chat ;o)
[11:01am] kaldari: ok, guess we can start. I was thinking we'll do it office hours style, i.e. mostly answering questions...
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[11:01am] werdna: I can generally go to the bank and not make an utter fool of myself in it, but socialising properly is still a bit of a challenge. As usual I am having trouble understanding fluent fast speech.
[11:01am] kaldari: but first I have a question...
[11:01am] • aude waves
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[11:02am] werdna: RoanKattouw: That reminds me, any suggestions for Dutch shows to watch to practice my listening? Preferably something available with subtitles
[11:02am] RoanKattouw: werdna: Do you know about teletext 888?
[11:02am] werdna: I don't have a TV
[11:02am] RoanKattouw: Right
[11:02am] kaldari: We need to create a documentation for developers page on Mediawiki.org for developers. Where is the best place to create that? Like Manual:Extension:Echo? or should it be Extension:Echo/Developers?
[11:02am] werdna: maybe there's some Dutch version of iPlayer
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[11:02am] werdna: RoanKattouw: >> PM
[11:02am] RoanKattouw: Well generally the only time Dutch is subtitled on Dutch TV is when people speak Flemish or Frisian
[11:03am] Krenair: kaldari, I don't think it matters to be honest.
[11:03am] • aude confused to see "new messages" and the "my notifications" thing on mediawiki.org
[11:03am] kaldari: or maybe more generic: Manual:Notifications
[11:03am] chrismcmahon: kaldari: AFTv5 might be a good model http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ArticleFeedbackv5
[11:03am] fabriceflorin: Sounds good. To give newcomers a quick overview, Echo is a new notifications system we're developing at the Wikimedia Foundation's editor engagement team. It gives MediaWiki and Wikipedia users quick updates about actions that affect them. These notifications can help users become more aware of events that relate to them and take quick action if they want to. You can read more about it on this project hub: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo
[11:03am] Krenair: It can always be moved later.
[11:04am] aude: will things be integrated better or what?
[11:04am] • hashar sends kudos to the Echo developers. Thanks for your hard work guys!
[11:04am] bsitu: kaldari: Extension:Echo
[11:04am] • aude realizes there's no liquid threads on most wikipedias
[11:04am] kaldari: aude: Yeah Echo and LiquidThreads are a slightly awkward combination
[11:05am] fabriceflorin: hashar: Thanks for your kind words! We look forward to expanding Echo with your help. Note that this software is still in early beta, so please be gentle ;o)
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[11:05am] aude: kaldari: or are tehre any parts or features of liquid threads to incorporate into echo?
[11:05am] werdna: but seriously kaldari and team have taken my fun little start and turned it into something really nice!
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[11:06am] fabriceflorin: If you are new to Echo and would like to check it out, we recommend getting started on this testing page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo/Testing
[11:06am] kaldari: aude: we're going to focus more on getting Flow to work well with Echo, since that will be replacing LiquidThreads
[11:06am] aude: kaldari: ok
[11:06am] werdna: flow will be built on lqt as far as I know though
[11:06am] werdna: well, not quite
[11:06am] werdna: flow will be built on something that I started writing to replace lqt
[11:06am] werdna: so not on lqt at all
[11:07am] kaldari: werdna: I'm not sure how I feel about writing the code before we've designed the feature, but oh well
[11:07am] werdna: worked ok for echo!
[11:07am] kaldari: seems kind of anti-Agile
[11:08am] fabriceflorin: Has anyone tested Echo already? How did it work for you? What do you like or not like about this early beta software?
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[11:08am] aude: fabriceflorin: is that the notifications thing?
[11:08am] kaldari: yes
[11:08am] aude: ok
[11:08am] aude: it's nice
[11:09am] lwelling: Code then design does not sound anti-agile, it sounds post agile. So agile it's gone onto be something else
[11:09am] fabriceflorin: aude: Yes, Echo is the new notification system we're building for MediaWiki and Wikipedia users.
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[11:09am] bawolff: fabriceflorin: Its spamming me about things I don't care about
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[11:09am] kaldari: lwelling: lol
[11:09am] chrismcmahon: kaldari: I'm a veteran of the Socialtext wiki and their notifications system "Signals". Signals was explicitly based on Twitter's model, except that it had an object model of "People" and "Pages", among which "Signals" were sent. Does Echo have such a model, or are Echo msgs. more ad hoc?
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[11:10am] bawolff: "Someone has cross referenced a page you created" (Even though I'm pretty sure I didn't create "Extension:AJAX_Poll" and even if I did, I don't care when people link to it
[11:10am] fabriceflorin: Echo is now in early beta, and is only being tested on MediaWiki.org. Next month, we expect to make a first experimental release on the English Wikipedia as well. So far, we have focused on core features, and only have a few notifications available for talk page messages, edit reversions, page reviews and page links.
[11:10am] werdna: Echo has Subscriptions (which aren't used at the moment atm), Events and Notifications
[11:10am] lwelling: bawolff, would fewer of the same type be interesting, or do you jsut want to turn it off?
[11:10am] aude: bawolff: true
[11:10am] werdna: an Event is created, and refers (optionally) to a page, an agent and the event details
[11:10am] kaldari: Right now, all Notifications are treated the same, but we're considering splitting off Talk related notifications into a separate feed or flyout
[11:10am] werdna: a Notification associates an Event with a User
[11:10am] aude: for mediawiki.org, it work's well as i don't have many watchlisted pages
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[11:11am] fabriceflorin: bawolff: Good point. We should probably exclude extensions from the page link feature, as this is primarily intended to identify cross-references between articles.
[11:11am] aude: nor edit that much to be reverted
[11:11am] bawolff: lwelling: I might be interested shortly after the page was created, or if its not a very popular page
[11:11am] lwelling: eg I get that "blah linked to your page" repeated 20 times is not interesting. Would the same data condensed be interesting ie "blah and 19 other pages linked to your page"
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[11:11am] werdna: rollup is on the roadmap afaik
[11:11am] bawolff: fabriceflorin: Well an extension page on MediaWiki is basically equivalent to a content page on Wikipedia
[11:12am] kaldari: bawolff: Yeah, that one is a bit buggy at the moment, but we're deploying some fixes for it later today
[11:12am] aude: or what about articles i created like 8 years ago!
[11:12am] • aude still get notifications for them
[11:12am] aude: ?
[11:12am] werdna: aude: that's a feature for me
[11:12am] kaldari: aude: yes. Is that good or bad?
[11:12am] bsitu: aude: yes
[11:12am] aude: depends how active one is
[11:12am] werdna: I'm now getting notifications for [[Extension:AbuseFilter]]
[11:12am] werdna: and as a result I am now reading conversations about AbuseFilter
[11:12am] • aude has created 100+ articles (not thaaaaaaat many), but also talk pages, etc.
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[11:13am] werdna: a big thing though is that that's more of a 'watchlist' type event
[11:13am] • aude thinks some wikipedias are much more power editors than i
[11:13am] werdna: but unfortunately watchlists are broken
[11:13am] kaldari: aude: we're going to restrict it to only content namespaces
[11:13am] werdna: so… watcha gonna do
[11:13am] fabriceflorin: bawolff: Good point. Note that if you are getting too many notifications of a particular type, you can turn them off on this preferences page: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo
[11:13am] aude: kaldari: ok
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[11:14am] bawolff: aude: No kidding, I imagine there are wikipedians who have created tens of thousands of pages
[11:14am] kaldari: the link notification may be one that we need to provide an explicit preference for, and perhaps only turn it on my default for new users
[11:14am] kaldari: my=by
[11:14am] werdna: great idea for a notification though
[11:14am] werdna: I love it
[11:15am] fabriceflorin: kaldari: yes, it's becoming pretty clear now that we may need different defaults for new users and power users.
[11:15am] bawolff: kaldari: Maybe even turn it off automatically after users have created X many pages
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[11:15am] aude: kaldari: that would be good
[11:15am] bawolff: I agree that for the newbies, its a great idea. makes them feel their contribs are useful, etc
[11:15am] kaldari: bawolff: possible, although some people might wonder why they stopped recieving it
[11:15am] aude: for a new user, it might be a nice reminder to get a notification
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[11:16am] fabriceflorin: bawolff: Good idea. One of our biggest challenges is finding a way to inform you of important events that affect you, but doing it without spamming you. It's a very tough issue, which will require a number of solutions, from preferences to bundling.
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[11:16am] kaldari: are any of the mobile developers here?
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[11:17am] lwelling: I think that some power users would appreciate vanity notifications, if we can compress the detail so it is not a wall of single data points. Knowing that 100s of people continue to edit pages you created could be motivating if you don't have to see a row for each time
[11:17am] bawolff: On a similar note, doing a "someone has used your image" would probably be appreciated by many people (Esp. if you can do it cross wiki with commons)
[11:17am] Reedy: kaldari: #wikimedia-mobile
[11:17am] aude: lwelling: might be a difference also between emailnotifications and ones when you come to wikipedia
[11:17am] lwelling: new users need detail, to show them the place is full of live people and things are happening and encourage them to be more active
[11:17am] • aude wouldn't mind notifiations *on* wikipedia as much
[11:18am] Susan: kaldari: Re: page placement on mediawiki.org, if you screw it up, someone will fix it.
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[11:18am] kaldari: true
[11:18am] Susan: I believe new users need further cowbell.
[11:18am] lwelling: aude true, even a daily summary email with those stats would not be very interesting to read every day if they are pretty constant
[11:18am] kaldari: I think we'll just take bsitu's suggestion and add it as a section to Extension:Echo for now and then split it off when it gets too big.
[11:19am] fabriceflorin: lwelling: Good point. If we can make the software more aware of your history, we could possibly reduce the frequency for notifications after you have received a certain number for a particular page. That's going to be one of the challenges in designing an intelligent bundling feature.
[11:20am] kaldari: awjr: Does the mobile team have any interest in using notifications?
[11:20am] awjr: kaldari very much
[11:20am] awjr: kaldari, sorry i haven't been following along - but you are referring to echo, right?
[11:20am] kaldari: awjr: we could use help figuring out what API features would be necessary to support it on mobile
[11:20am] awjr: oo
[11:20am] kaldari: awjr: yes
[11:20am] aude: what's the timeline for deploying echo to a wikipedia?
[11:21am] awjr: kaldari we should definitely talk
[11:21am] kaldari: aude: hopefully within a couple months
[11:21am] lwelling: Making it perfect for everybody is obviously impossible. Even a power user who does not want background noise might be interested that something has been mentioned in the media, or had a disaster or something and page activity has exploded
[11:21am] aude: ok
[11:21am] fabriceflorin: One thing that frustrated me over the holidays is that I got almost zero notifications, even though I'm relatively active on Mediawiki. Nobody was leaving messages on my talk page or reverting my edits, which were the only two notifications we had. Now that we have added page links, I'm happy to know how other people are using my pages.
[11:21am] Susan: How is tracking page links, BTW?
[11:21am] Susan: Using the pagelinks table?
[11:22am] Susan: is it *
[11:22am] bsitu: Susan: yes
[11:22am] Susan: That's binary though.
[11:22am] kaldari: Susan: basically. it uses a hook that is triggered when the links are added to the pagelinks table
[11:22am] fabriceflorin: However, this feature is limited to a page you started -- and sometimes I want to know more about a page I didn't start, but which I am actively editing. I know the watchlist is supposed to help with that, but it's a bit of a firehouse for me on en-wiki. So what I'm hoping for is notifications for "pages that I edit frequently", rather than just pages I started.
[11:23am] Susan: So if a page is already linked, you won't receive a notification about a new link.
[11:23am] lwelling: Getting bundling/rollup right early (or erring on the too conservative side) is vital. If we annoy poeple they will turn it off and will not come back in 3 months to see if it is better now. If we send people too few they're more likely to stick with it as it gets more useful
[11:23am] kaldari: susan: correct
[11:23am] fabriceflorin: aude: We are hoping to make a first experimental release on the English Wikipedia in February.
[11:23am] Susan: kaldari: Lame.
[11:23am] sumanah: I know I just joined -- it would be great if https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Roadmap mentioned when Echo's going to roll out to other wikis
[11:23am] aude: oooh
[11:23am] kaldari: susan: well, only if it's already linked from that exact page
[11:23am] aude: about the same time as wikidata is enabled there
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[11:24am] kaldari: Susan: being linked subsequently from the same page will not create a new notification
[11:24am] sumanah: ok, added to [[Roadmap]]
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[11:24am] aude: we are providing "notifications" in recent changes (and will be watchlist and other places) when the associated wikidata item changes in a relevant way
[11:24am] aude: e.g. changing interwiki links
[11:24am] Susan: kaldari: Right. It's a bit annoying.
[11:24am] fabriceflorin: lwelling: Yes, I think you are right that it's better to start with too few notifications than too many. But we also don't want to completely ignore the new users. So there needs to be a few notifications to help them through their critical first steps, at the time when they need the most encouragement.
[11:25am] Susan: kaldari: I wrote a similar script a few years ago. To watch mentions of my username.
[11:25am] aude: but same time, trying not to overwhelm people
[11:25am] tewwy: sumanah: I imagine that will be a function to how well it does on mw and enwiki guinea pigging.
[11:25am] Susan: But it only works on first link on a page.
[11:25am] tewwy: sumanah: There is no cross wiki notification in the case of the first iteration of Echo so it has limited utility
[11:25am] sumanah: also added to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editor_engagement/Echo#Timetable
[11:25am] kaldari: Susan: we have a 'user mention' notification in the works that will do basically the same thing
[11:25am] fabriceflorin: Aude: yes, it's a very fine balance. Like a tightrope act. ;o)
[11:25am] aude: fabriceflorin: absolutely
[11:25am] kaldari: Susan: i.e. if someone links to your username in a discussion, it'll let you know
[11:26am] kaldari: but that's one isn't deployed yet
[11:26am] Susan: kaldari: Depending on the LQT model, a new page might be more common. But as it is, you won't get a mention notification for a second or third link.
[11:26am] aude: we are hiding the wikidata changes (will be batching them) but people can see them like bot edits if they want
[11:26am] aude: if people like them, we can do more
[11:26am] Susan: kaldari: It's kind of a nasty false negative.
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[11:26am] Susan: kaldari: Because users will start to assume that the notifications are reliable...
[11:27am] kaldari: Susan: the user mention one will work differently that the page link notification
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[11:27am] Susan: Oh, all right.
[11:27am] bawolff: Wait, so if I start talking behind Susan's back, he will get a notice?
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[11:27am] Susan: Maybe!
[11:27am] aude:
[11:27am] sumanah: hi AnjaJ_WMDE!
[11:27am] bawolff: that will be interesting
[11:27am] tewwy: bawolff: Only if you link them in the talk, and that change isn't deployed
[11:27am] kaldari: If you link to her user page, yes
[11:27am] Susan: That requires a lot of pieces to be in place.
[11:28am] Susan: Like working notifications.
[11:28am] • aude can no longer talk aobut people behind their back
[11:28am] Susan: And a link or some other symbol.
[11:28am] kaldari: bawolff: unless people think this is a very bad idea
[11:28am] aude: mention people on ANI!
[11:28am] AnjaJ_WMDE: hi sumanah
[11:28am] fabriceflorin: sumanah: Thanks for the pointer to the Roadmap. We can definitely update it once we have completed our quarterly planning session next week. Right now, we expect to have about three different releases over the next six months, as we develop all the core features. These releases will be primarily on MediaWiki and Wikipedia. So full support for other projects is likely to come a bit later.
[11:28am] Susan: kaldari: It'll be fine.
[11:28am] tewwy: bawolff: It'd have more utility if there was Flow using Visual Editor so right now that feature is of limited utility with Echo
[11:29am] tewwy: and just Talk pages as it stands
[11:29am] Susan: AFTv6 will solve talk pages.
[11:29am] kaldari:
[11:29am] tewwy: (the idea being visual editor could make linking other people in a discussion easier (like pattern @ completion in twitter clients), and flow would have a clearer idea of "who are the participants, what is the thread" that user talk doesn't)
[11:29am] sumanah: fabriceflorin: I've updated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editor_engagement/Echo#Timetable and https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Roadmap -- feel free to add more details when you have them
[11:29am] lwelling: Given the audience here is bigger than the people who usually talk about Echo, and it seems like some people are not excited about all the initial notification types, are there things that you really would like to be notified about, that you think should be added early?
[11:30am] sumanah: a Wikipedian using a photo I uploaded on Commons
[11:30am] fabriceflorin: The first release we're working on focus on new editors, our primary target, because these new users need notifications more than power users. In future releases, we will shift our focus to active or very active editors, as well as new accounts that have just registered but not edited.
[11:30am] aude: lwelling: i say just take baby steps
[11:30am] tewwy: fabriceflorin: You can modify it any time except wednesday mornings when Roadmap gets batch edited
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[11:30am] Isarra: Many wikis would find it useful if there were just more filtering - not necessarily if it was linked in an article, but if it was linked on speficially afd or something...
[11:30am] • aude likes being notified when someone edits my talk page, but i already get that
[11:31am] kaldari: sumanah: that would be a good notification for the Multimedia team to create using the Echo hooks
[11:31am] • aude responds quicker
[11:31am] fabriceflorin: tewwy: Thanks for the tip about the roadmap page. I will add it to my monthly to-do list.
[11:31am] kaldari: when is the multimedia team starting up anyway?
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[11:31am] tewwy: kaldari: They are starting hiring now.
[11:31am] aude: if my photo i uploaded gets used, that would be cool to know
[11:31am] tewwy: kaldari: or rather, RobLa has already started.
[11:32am] tewwy: aude: Hmm you uploaded to commons and linked to from enwiki or dewiki?
[11:32am] sumanah: yeah. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings mentions the multimedia openings
[11:32am] aude: tewwy: sure
[11:32am] sumanah: (please help us find engineers: http://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=oj40Wfw3&c=qSa9VfwQ )
[11:32am] kaldari: sumanah: yay
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[11:32am] Susan: Another multimedia team? This time not grant-backed?
[11:32am] aude: my picture is being used on wikipedia is cool
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[11:32am] aude: although, that can get to be too much for power users
[11:32am] sumanah: I'd like to be notified when: Someone I care about has been blocked
[11:32am] tewwy: aude: Interesting, they could use echo hooks for that, but I think those cases would have to be deferred from being done inside the echo release itself.
[11:33am] kaldari: especially if you created the barnstar image
[11:33am] tewwy: aude: Its a good idea
[11:33am] sumanah: when: a page I helped curate has made it to Good or Featured
[11:33am] Susan: kaldari: I have a bug about adding a page.page_creator field.
[11:33am] fabriceflorin: Here is a list of notifications we are working on for our first release. Which of these are most interesting to you and people in your community? http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo/Feature_requirements#Sample_Notifications
[11:33am] aude: tewwy: ok
[11:33am] • sumanah looks
[11:33am] • aude curious about the hooks and will have to take a look
[11:33am] kaldari: sumanah: we have that one on the drawing board
[11:33am] kaldari: good and featured promotions that is
[11:33am] aude: oh, when my featured article will be on the main page
[11:34am] • aude would love to know, but afraid i've missed some of them
[11:34am] Susan: That's an extreme edge-case.
[11:34am] sumanah: kaldari: "This notification occurs when a page you started is Today's Featured Article" -- is that it?
[11:34am] Susan: 99.999999999% of users don't write a featured article.
[11:34am] aude: heh
[11:34am] kaldari: aude: the main two hooks to use are BeforeCreateEchoEvent (for declaring your notifications) and BeforeFormatEchoNotification (for defining them)
[11:35am] kaldari: aude: we'll be creating some detailed documentation for them soon
[11:35am] aude: kaldari: thanks
[11:35am] sumanah: kaldari: I'm thinking not a page I *started* but a page I worked on and especially a page I curated via Curation Toolbar.
[11:35am] fabriceflorin: sumanah: We have some of the notifications you asked for here. They are now listed as infrequent, given our current focus on new users, who are not likely to get rated or featured right away. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo/Feature_requirements#Infrequent_Notifications
[11:35am] kaldari: aude: we'll have some examples to look at as well
[11:35am] sumanah: I'd like to know when it moves up to C-class, B-class, Good, and above.
[11:35am] aude: or my page got nominated for deletion
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[11:36am] aude: or moved, perhaps
[11:36am] kaldari: aude: we actually have that, but not on mediawiki.org
[11:36am] Nemo_bis: Susan: this? https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo/Feature_requirements#Started_Page_-_Today.27s_Featured_Article
[11:36am] aude: ok
[11:36am] sumanah: okay, so, should I put my other suggestions in a backlog at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo/Feature_requirements (for curators)?
[11:36am] lwelling: sumanah how noisy is that? Do borderline pages swap between B and C every hour for a while till and obvious trend emerges?
[11:36am] kaldari: since mediawiki.org doesn't really have a deletion process
[11:36am] fabriceflorin: sumanah: Yes, these are features for more advanced users, which we plan to tackle in the second release. Right now, we are focused on new users, as shown in this slide deck: https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/presentation/d/1sL2HRe5O_5aKCr-tnmkppSFPiJ3L5fpHZMiDvNHMpkY/edit#slide=id.g61f66db2_1_39
[11:36am] tewwy: fabriceflorin: Yes she was looking at that and suggesting we add "Edited Page - Today's Featured Article" or "Curated Page - Today's featured Article"
[11:36am] Susan: Nemo_bis: "Infrequent" is generous.
[11:37am] Nemo_bis: Susan: meaningless? for featured articles it also makes little sense to notify the editor who started it
[11:37am] Susan: Right.
[11:37am] bsitu: aude: there are two ways to set up extensions to work with Echo, one way is through the hooks kaldari mentions, the other way is through $wgExtensionFunctions
[11:37am] Nemo_bis: or "highly misleading and disruptive"
[11:37am] tewwy: sumanah: I suggest you add them if you don't see them on the list
[11:37am] aude: bsitu: ok
[11:37am] sumanah: tewwy: if you're talking about what *I* suggested, I'm not JUST interested in when the article becomes TODAY's featured article, but when an article gets promoted in quality status
[11:37am] fabriceflorin: But we are also planning to provide a public API, hopefully by the end of this quarter, so that other developers could expand on some of the basic notification framework we are now working on.
[11:37am] Susan: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo/Feature_requirements shouldn't mention "Wikipedia."
[11:38am] aude: sumanah: sure
[11:38am] Susan: That needs to be beaten out of Wikimedia Foundation employees.
[11:38am] tewwy: sumanah: There is "Started Page - Marked as reviewed"
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[11:38am] Nemo_bis: Susan: are other projects in the plan? /me lost some backscroll
[11:38am] aude: or it gets nominated as a featured article
[11:38am] sumanah: lwelling: I think that kind of churn is rare (churn between B and C ratings for instance).
[11:38am] Susan: Nemo_bis: They should be.
[11:38am] • aude knows i can come and help that way
[11:38am] aude: although concerned about fan voting
[11:38am] Susan: Most pages are never re-assessed.
[11:38am] aude: featured articles are !vote
[11:38am] Nemo_bis: Susan: aaah, should. I assume they arent.
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[11:38am] Susan: Even a single assessment is often difficult.
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[11:39am] aude: when a featured article gets nominated to be de-moted
[11:39am] aude: de-featured
[11:39am] kaldari: Susan, fabriceflorin: changed 'Wikipedia' to 'MediaWiki'
[11:39am] • aude has no idea if some of my featured articles got de-moted, but suppose someone would be polite to leave me a talk page note
[11:39am] tewwy: kaldari: I did
[11:39am] Susan:
[11:39am] sumanah: lwelling: Not sure whether you read the Signpost. Every week, 5-20 articles, about the same number of lists, and about the same number of media files get promoted to Featured. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-12-31/Featured_content "Good" status is also relevant and is also something to take pride in; there may be more activity there, but it's not a very churn-y process for any 1 article
[11:39am] tewwy: kaldari: It was a good point so I just made the change
[11:40am] lwelling: sumanah, thanks. I was trying to figure out if it was easy. If we can just react to the cahnge and notify people it seems easy. If we'd need to store history to make sure we did not bug them about repeats it would seem much harder
[11:40am] Nemo_bis: aude: are you assuming that "someone" should be an extention?
[11:40am] fabriceflorin: Which brings me to an important question for this group: what would you expect from a public notifications API? we want to make it easy for developers to expand our notifications framework, but we also need to develop a set of policies governing their use, to prevent folks from spamming our users. It's going to be a challenge to find the right policies to support both goals. Has anyone here had experience developing public API's for similar projects? Any tips or pointers?
[11:40am] Nemo_bis: aude: because I've no idea why it shouldn't, any sort of process can involve notifications to involved users and there are dozens or even hundreds of them
[11:40am] sumanah: fabriceflorin: have you reached out to toolserver-l yet? the people who use our APIs most?
[11:40am] Susan: Hmmm, that's a bit misleading.
[11:41am] Susan: Most Toolserver folks use the replicated databases.
[11:41am] aude: Nemo_bis: a person notifying me is better but automatic noficiations would be good too
[11:41am] aude: a person could say why, etc.
[11:41am] Susan: Otherwise there's little point in using the Toolserver.
[11:41am] tewwy: aude: If "someone" does leave a note, you get a talk page notification, but in the future we'd prefer if someone uses the API to send a notification directly instead of via talk page side effect
[11:41am] bawolff: hmm, I wonder what the users would think about notify on someone being blocked
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[11:41am] aude: tewwy: not sure about that
[11:41am] Nemo_bis: tewwy: what do you mean?
[11:41am] fabriceflorin: sumanah: not yet, I am just starting the process of thinking about the API. Initially, I had thought that we would develop it in the second quarter, but we are now thinking this is something that should be done sooner. Do you know anyone with experience in this field that we could talk to?
[11:41am] bawolff: (sorry, my window was scrolled up, that was from a long time ago)
[11:42am] sumanah: fabriceflorin: wikitech-l.
[11:42am] aude: when i am more active, i'll be watching other people's talk page
[11:42am] Susan: fabriceflorin: Twitter.
[11:42am] sumanah: fabriceflorin: that's seriously the first place to go
[11:42am] DaBPunkt: Susan: some tools have a fallback and use the API when the database is unreachable or too old
[11:42am] Nemo_bis: bawolff: seems on topic right now
[11:42am] tewwy: aude: Currently if anything leaves a talk page note, there is a talk page notification https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo/Feature_requirements#Talkpage_Message
[11:42am] sumanah: fabriceflorin: with a cc to mediawiki-api (another list)
[11:42am] aude: if i see they get a talk page note, i might be curious
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[11:42am] Susan: DaBPunkt: Sure. And nearly everyone uses the API to edit.
[11:42am] Nemo_bis: tewwy: are you saying that's wrong?
[11:43am] tewwy: aude: but ideally those sort of messages (done by software or by bot) should be sent as direct notifications "Your article was promoted…" The issue that fabriceflorin brings up is how do we expose an API but prevent abuse?
[11:43am] aude: tewwy: sure
[11:43am] tewwy: aude: Obviosuly if we only do it through hooks, abuse is minimized but if we do it through API…
[11:43am] aude: already, we have stuff like bots
[11:43am] bawolff: Hmm, I wonder if it would be possible to send notice when something is nominated for DR. would need to let users (admins) send messages as DR is a social process that varries a lot
[11:43am] aude: admins
[11:43am] aude: ways to restrict certain stuff to trusted users
[11:43am] bawolff: (by DR I mean AFD. we call it DR at wikinews)
[11:43am] Susan: tewwy: Abuse would a good thing in this case, surely.
[11:44am] Susan: It's surely better than non-use.
[11:44am] aude: or Susan's EdwardsBot
[11:44am] aude: not everyone can setup mass notifications with Susan's bot
[11:44am] Susan: Access lists? Bleh.
[11:44am] aude: heh
[11:44am] werdna: I would say you have to make people subscribe to the notifications
[11:44am] werdna: it seems fair
[11:44am] Susan: Better metrics and throttling.
[11:44am] aude: Susan: sure
[11:44am] Susan: werdna: All of them?
[11:45am] tewwy: aude: Yes, we have bots currently. That's the current ecosystem, so we should support it (which is why talk page notifications was one of the first supported in Echo), but ideally we should allow a notification to be more specific and less generic than "<someoen> posted on your <talk page>"
[11:45am] Susan: People should subscribe to subscriptions.
[11:45am] kaldari: yeah, we would definitely need some throttling
[11:45am] werdna: depends on the type
[11:45am] Susan: Like newsletters and such.
[11:45am] werdna: I suppose deletion stuff shouldn't
[11:45am] aude: tewwy: sure
[11:45am] werdna: hmm this is complicated, turns out
[11:45am] Susan: werdna: Are you back?
[11:45am] aude: if notifications are private, is there a log of these actions?
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[11:46am] aude: maybe people abusing it can be spotted?
[11:46am] Susan: Spotting the abuse isn't the real problem. It's difficult to un-ring a bell.
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[11:46am] • aude nods
[11:47am] Nemo_bis: tewwy: I don't understand, what messages to users on public processes should be private and why?
[11:47am] tewwy: Susan: That is the question. Right? Right now you could theoretically spam by editing their talk page (with or without echo), but an open API allowing arbitrary messages? A bit too much… at the minimum it'd open echo to abuse due to phishing attacks
[11:47am] fabriceflorin: A lot of the feature ideas I am hearing about in this chat seem to be aimed at more advanced users. We have a preliminary list of such notifications in this document. If you scroll down to the end, you will see a lot of notifications highlighted in yellow, which may address some of your suggestions. We are planning to work on these notifications in the second quarter of this calendar year. https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AookVJK45wXddHJ3anhPLXJyNFJRM0N2YUdGREdEdlE#gid=0
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[11:47am] Susan: tewwy: An open API allowing arbitrary messages is what we have now.
[11:47am] Nemo_bis: fabriceflorin: actually the audience proposed to remove one feature for super-advanced users like the featured article notification
[11:47am] Susan: tewwy: You don't even need to login.
[11:47am] Susan: log in
[11:47am] lwelling: API abuse scenarios seem obvious. What sort of use cases are there for valid external use? Beneficial bots?
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[11:48am] tewwy: Nemo_bis: I'm not saying it should be private I'm saying that the message someone receives is somewhat generic "message on talk page" when we should be allowing for a more specific message for the event the bot is servicing "your article was reverted"
[11:48am] Susan: lwelling: User scripts.
[11:48am] fabriceflorin: Nemo_bis: Thanks! Great minds think alike … We were also thinking that one might be overkill.
[11:48am] Susan: lwelling: Apps.
[11:48am] Susan: lwelling: Bots.
[11:48am] kaldari: Susan, tewwy: I imagine we would need to limit it to a specific user right
[11:48am] Susan: The ability to notify a user?
[11:48am] tewwy: Susan: But just one example. If you can format the notification style then someone can forge a notification to look like another and phish. It'd have to be limited in some fashion right there.
[11:49am] Nemo_bis: tewwy: so why should less likely cases not handled by the extension become private notifications?
[11:49am] Susan: tewwy: I'm sorry, phish for what?
[11:49am] tewwy: lwelling: #1 would be valid bots. We have bots that service everything from signpost subscriptions, cross wiki notifications, language notifications, etc.
[11:49am] werdna: WP credentials?
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[11:49am] Susan: tewwy: Bot_s_? Heh.
[11:49am] lwelling: susan, so rate limiting API use by default, and allowing admins to increase the limit for known trusted apps/scipts/bots would be reasonable
[11:50am] Susan: I think there's only one bot at this point.
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[11:50am] tewwy: lwelling: Alos there are a lot of gadgets users use that handle article curation and the like
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[11:50am] Susan: lwelling: I suppose. But user scripts are run by a user.
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[11:50am] tewwy: lwelling: (semiautomatic bots? :-))
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[11:50am] Base: hi
[11:50am] Susan: werdna: To what end? Wikipedia credentials are largely useless.
[11:50am] tewwy: Nemo_bis: I'm not following you. Walk me through a scenario.
[11:50am] Susan: If not wholly.
[11:50am] fabriceflorin: I know that Facebook is not very popular in the MediaWiki and Wikipedia communities, but they have some pretty useful guidelines for developers using their Notifications API here. We're looking at it closely, to help inform our next steps: https://developers.facebook.com/notification-guidelines/
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[11:50am] tewwy: Nemo_bis: I think I lost you.
[11:51am] kaldari: Would it make more sense to create a new user right for sending notifications via the API or should it use one of the existing user-rights/groups?
[11:51am] lwelling: kaldari, that's needed so you can turn some users off, right?
[11:51am] Susan: kaldari: I guess you'd have to debate whether there's a good reason to not use "edit".
[11:51am] kaldari: yes
[11:51am] Base: how throw api get a list of allpages where also avalible timestamps pf their first revision?
[11:52am] Base: *of
[11:52am] tewwy: fabriceflorin: Facebook requires an each app to register a API key so they can rate limit even if it's abused
[11:52am] tewwy: Lucky them
[11:52am] Susan: Base: Not possible in a single query, as far as I know.
[11:52am] Susan: You'd have to get a list of all pages first.
[11:52am] kaldari: Susan: I assume we would at least want to limit it to logged in users
[11:52am] Susan: Then query first revision timestamp.
[11:52am] Susan: kaldari: Maybe. The current model doesn't.
[11:52am] Base: Susan: do 1000s queries?
[11:53am] Susan: Base: Depending on the wiki, it'd be million of queries.
[11:53am] Nemo_bis: tewwy: aude said something about receiving a notification on some event not covered by Echo; you replied that such a notification shouldn't be a normal talk message but something else which apparently is private: why?
[11:53am] Susan: millions
[11:53am] Base: Susan: nice…
[11:53am] Base: any other methods?
[11:53am] kaldari: Nemo_bis: I think he's just referring to message that wouldn't be of interest to the public
[11:53am] Susan: There are database dumps.
[11:53am] Susan: In XML or SQL format.
[11:53am] tewwy: Nemo_bis: I meant that initially things not covered by notifications in the current ecosystem are covered by writing to the users talk pages and the user receiving a generic talk page notification
[11:53am] fabriceflorin: tewwy: Yes, Facebook tracks whether or not notifications sent by third parties using their API are meeting certain thresholds in terms of clickthrough. This document offers more details. I suspect that it may inspire our next steps as well: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/app-notifications/
[11:54am] Susan: http://dumps.wikimedia.org
[11:54am] kaldari: Nemo_bis: Like "Hey! A new issue of the SignPost was published!"
[11:54am] werdna: nice research fabriceflorin
[11:54am] lwelling: if the valid use case is open ended script/bot/app use, then I think the only ways to deal with it are some combination of rate limit, apply for expicit permission and ban misbehaving users.
[11:54am] Susan: kaldari: Lowercase P, BTW.
[11:54am] Susan: "Signpost"
[11:54am] Susan:
[11:54am] tewwy: Nemo_bis: But that ideally it'd be nicer if an open API or some such allowed the bot/whatever/someone to send a specific notification rather than a generic talk page notification
[11:54am] kaldari: Nemo_bis: we don't actually need to spam everyone's talk page for that
[11:54am] Nemo_bis: kaldari: what happens if that's a talk page message?
[11:54am] Base: dumps… ah
[11:54am] tewwy: Nemo_bis: Rollup could be done to make sure the user isn't spammed with redundant notificaiton
[11:54am] Susan: kaldari: Need to? But some people really do prefer it.
[11:54am] kaldari: Nemo_bis: then you get a notification as normal
[11:55am] Susan: kaldari: Just as some people prefer the actual newspaper over a Web site.
[11:55am] Nemo_bis: tewwy: so it's only about notifications that are sent equal to multiple people?
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[11:55am] fabriceflorin: werdna: Thanks! I also found the Android Notifications guidelines helpful: http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/notifications.html
[11:55am] tewwy: Nemo_bis: For instance if your page is reverted and there is a talk page notification for a template, it should appear only as the page is reverted.
[11:55am] kaldari: Susan: sure, it would depend on how they choose to subscribe to the information
[11:55am] lwelling: Facebook though only allows notifications to users from apps that the user has explicitly subscribed to though
[11:56am] kaldari: Nemo_bis: it's about notifications that are transient mostly
[11:56am] Susan: "only"
[11:56am] Nemo_bis: tewwy: ah, so it's about talk page messages following to actions like rollback or deletion?
[11:56am] Nemo_bis: kaldari: what does transient mean here?
[11:56am] tewwy: Nemo_bis: So initially, the signpost update (for instance) is handled by the current bot that writes to ppl's talk pages, but eventually it'd be nice if we could surface a specific notification for it instead of generic one
[11:56am] Susan: lwelling: "Notifications" in this context is very murky. Facebook certainly allows messages (inbox and Wall) from others...
[11:56am] fabriceflorin: In coming weeks, we will start working on feature requirements for this proposed API, and would love any recommendations that you guys might have. What are some of the best practices for notifications APIs? What are do's and don'ts? What are constraints of our own MediaWiki system? Please send me as much useful info as you have!
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[11:57am] Nemo_bis: tewwy: this makes sense but I'm a bit worried by the other example
[11:57am] tewwy: Nemo_bis: And expose to the bot an API so it can send a notification instead of trying to notify people through a side effect through a talk page (if it wants to write to the talk page ALSO, that's fine too, there should be some way to tag the talk page update as being related to the other notification so the user only receives the more specific one)
[11:57am] fabriceflorin: FYI, here is the proposed timeline of what we hope to accomplish this quarter, for those of you who find it interesting: https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aq_75_5y5sKWdF9xOUZJSGFMN2pTVHhaTEdNa3ltLVE#gid=0
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[11:57am] kaldari: Nemo_bis: like 'Your name was mentioned in this discussion' for example. There's not really much of a need to archive that for posterity
[11:57am] Nemo_bis: tewwy: while as far as I understand there's no discouragement of normal talk page messages not related to already-notified actions
[11:57am] Nemo_bis: kaldari: ok thanks
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[11:58am] tewwy: Nemo_bis: There'd be no discouragement of current community accepted modes of notifications. That would be wrong.
[11:58am] sumanah: fabriceflorin: you'll be putting that timeline onto mediawiki.org sometime this week or next? after the planning meeting?
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[11:58am] Susan: fabriceflorin: As annoying as wikimarkup is, that page should be on a wiki... heh, beaten by Sumana.
[11:58am] tewwy: Nemo_bis: THough we'd like if Echo can service those things in a manner that's more normalized/consistent
[11:58am] fabriceflorin: We're approaching the end of our scheduled chat, and I would like to ask if there are any important questions that we haven't covered yet.
[11:59am] kaldari: time to wrap this up
[11:59am] lwelling: Nemo_bis, currently you go to this page https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Notifications to see all your own notifications. In terms of openness would it be better if it was a public per user page, say https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User_notifications:LWelling ?
[11:59am] sumanah: fabriceflorin: is someone going to send a summary of this meeting to wikitech-l?
[11:59am] Nemo_bis: tewwy: tewwy ok, so "the more specific one" is the "manual" one?
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[11:59am] tewwy: Susan: If only visual editor had table edit
[12:00pm] Base: may be stupid question but why there are no such posibility as I want in API? it eats too much resouses?
[12:00pm] Susan: tewwy: The top five Web site in the world was built without VisualEditor. You'll live.
[12:00pm] Nemo_bis: lwelling: if it's something of public interest, ie not a private message from a user (will those exist?) nor a transient notification as defined above by kaldari, it should all be public
[12:00pm] fabriceflorin: sumanah: Yes, we will update our product plan after next week's quarterly planning meeting. I am planning to start updating it after that, as well as publish a blog post outlining our next steps, by the end of the month.
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[12:00pm] sumanah: fabriceflorin: Glad you had these office hours. Thanks!
[12:00pm] Nemo_bis: lwelling: and I also don't see why it shouldn0t be on talk so that e.g. another user can comment it
[12:00pm] kaldari: Base: Could you clarify your question? What feature do you want in the API?
[12:00pm] chrismcmahon: tewwy: http://ethercalc.net/ just sayin'
[12:01pm] tewwy: Nemo_bis: If the bots intent is just to notify the user that a signpost was updated then it should be able to go directly to Echo and tell it to deliver without having to use a side-effect of talk pages triggering notifications
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[12:01pm] aude: thanks for answering our questions!
[12:01pm] Nemo_bis: tewwy: yes, except for that case I meant
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[12:01pm] Base: kaldari: 21:51:51 - Base: how throw api get a list of allpages where also avalible timestamps pf their first revision? 21:52:16 - Susan: Base: Not possible in a single query, as far as I know. You'd have to get a list of all pages first.
[12:01pm] Nemo_bis: tewwy: I did get your ppoint about mass-notifications, I swear
[12:01pm] tewwy: Nemo_bis: But if the bot wants to make that public on the users talk pages, of course that shouldn't be prevented. But then we don't want the user to see two notifications for a single update (2 = talk page notification + sign post notification)
[12:01pm] Susan: Signpost
[12:01pm] tewwy: Nemo_bis: Ahh great, sorry I tend to repeat myself.
[12:02pm] tewwy: Susan: Autocorrect. I use the dreaded Macintosh
[12:02pm] Nemo_bis: tewwy: no, there were too many exceptions in my sentence
[12:02pm] fabriceflorin: sumanah: You're very welcome! We plan to have another chat like this next Wed. Jan. 30 at 11am PT. In the meantime, I encourage everyone to test Echo and send us more feedback. The best place to get started for that is our testing page: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo/Testing
[12:02pm] Susan: tewwy: I noticed your ellipsis. You can disable that.
[12:02pm] sumanah: Next Wed Jan 30? Do you mean the 16th?
[12:02pm] Susan: I think making notifications public early would help...
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[12:03pm] kaldari: Base: for all pages? That would be a very expensive query
[12:03pm] fabriceflorin: Thank you all for your good insights! You have given us a lot to think about. Should we publish the log of this chat somewhere on MediaWiki? I usually post office hours chat on that site, but maybe this one should be posted here? Or is that overkill?
[12:03pm] tewwy: chrismcmahon: Does it output wikimarkup? Then we can convince fabriceflorin to put his timetables on wiki
[12:03pm] sumanah: yes
[12:03pm] Susan: kaldari, tewwy: Is there a reason Special:Notifications/Jimbo_Wales doesn't work?
[12:03pm] sumanah: post the log someplace on mediawiki.org - I'm in favor of that, fabriceflorin
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[12:03pm] chrismcmahon: tewwy: it was developed for the Socialtext wiki, then went on OLPC, now it's generic
[12:04pm] kaldari: Susan: right now Notifications are private like watchlists, but maybe they should be public
[12:04pm] Susan: kaldari: As Tim and others have noted, starting public and later going private is much easier than the reverse.
[12:04pm] Susan: Vastly easier.
[12:04pm] aude: kaldari: at least a log, like available to checkusers
[12:04pm] fabriceflorin: sumanah: Right now, we've scheduled Wed. Jan. 30 at 11am PT with Qim, so we would like to stick with that date. Our plan is to have monthly chats like that, or whenever we have key milestones to discuss.
[12:04pm] aude: or admins
[12:04pm] Susan: Transparency will reduce spam.
[12:05pm] Base: kaldari: may be do limitation 500pages or 50. it is better than 1…
[12:05pm] sumanah: I was confused because of the phrasing "next Wednesday"
[12:05pm] fabriceflorin: tewwy: If you can point me to a wiki tool that works as well as Google docs, I'm happy to start using it. Haven't found one yet
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[12:06pm] fabriceflorin: sumanah: No worries, sorry for any confusion
[12:06pm] Susan: Manually editing wikitables is healthy.
[12:06pm] sumanah: fabriceflorin: if you can make it so a search on mediawiki.org also searches the Google Docs you're using, I'll be more ok with your use of GDocs
[12:06pm] Susan: It builds character.
[12:06pm] tewwy: I'm a little worried. notifications are transient and private so that in effect reduces the desire for anyone to spam since it's not permanent/stored/searchable
[12:06pm] aude:
[12:06pm] fabriceflorin: Susan: My main constraint right now is time. I'm working on the character in a separate track ;o)
[12:06pm] Susan: tewwy: It's difficult to prevent abuse if it's unknown.
[12:06pm] aude: tewwy: not sure
[12:06pm] kaldari: Base: you can get the latest revision for a list of pages, but not the first (at least from a single API query)
[12:07pm] tewwy: so there is that tradeoff. Also there's the interaction of if we implement watchlist notifications then having those notifications appear publicly sort of makes them de facto public
[12:07pm] kaldari: Base: That might be a nice feature to add to the API though
[12:07pm] tewwy: fabriceflorin: VisualEditor will cure all our ills… someday
[12:07pm] Susan: tewwy: Watchlists being private was never really a great idea...
[12:07pm] tewwy: fabriceflorin: But Susan would probably say learning wikitext builds character
[12:07pm] kaldari: Susan: that's debatable
[12:08pm] Susan: tewwy: Many people say that exposing new users to the tools they'll need later is desirable.
[12:08pm] Susan: Such as wikitext.
[12:08pm] fabriceflorin: Thank you all for this great feedback. It's really inspiring to brainstorm with peers like you. I look forward to our next discussion at the end of the month. Take care!
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[12:08pm] tewwy: Susan: I haven't thought that through, but if it is public then the community has a duty to police it, and I don't want to create undue burden on the community is all.
[12:08pm] Susan: tewwy: That's one of the reasons people don't like LQT. It masks wikitext from users.
[12:08pm] Susan: tewwy: Notifications can be transient and public.
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[12:09pm] Susan: I don't think those two traits are incompatible
[12:09pm] Susan: .
[12:09pm] ^demon: Indeed--RecentChanges comes to mind.
[12:09pm] Susan: Quite.
[12:09pm] tewwy: Susan: I understand what you are saying, all I'm saying is I haven't fully processed the implication
[12:09pm] ^demon: Ability to hide *really bad* things, but otherwise they drop out of the public eye after $someTime.
[12:09pm] Susan: And RecentChanges is the number one way that spam is combatted.
[12:10pm] Susan: tewwy: I forgive you.
[12:10pm] tewwy: Susan: Private seemed reasonable at the time because the first notifications considered (and rejected for first implementation) were things like watch list notifications. Also the current notifications in the system (talk page updates, e-mail notifications) were already private
[12:10pm] Base: kaldari: ah I need first now
[12:10pm] kaldari: Susan: if we make notification public it will likely turn into AFTv5
[12:10pm] Susan: kaldari: How so?
[12:10pm] fabriceflorin: FYI, I will post a log of this chat on MediaWiki later today, for the record. We will share that link on the main Echo page: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo/
[12:10pm] kaldari: i.e. we'll have to add 500 new features for flagging, oversighting, etc.
[12:10pm] tewwy: Susan: Now that Echo's requirements have changed, to be honest, we haven're really considered the possibility of a public notifications page.
[12:11pm] Susan: Why would you have an e-mail notification... isn't that the point of using e-mail?
[12:11pm] aude: stuff like mentions.... those for example are public on twitter
[12:11pm] Nemo_bis: lwelling: I suppose you plan to exclude redirects from the things one should be warned about links to?
[12:11pm] aude: no harm
[12:11pm] fabriceflorin: Bye for now! Thanks again, you guys ...
[12:11pm] kaldari: Susan: we already have email notifications
[12:11pm] Nemo_bis: lwelling: or maybe links in general, looks silly to be notified of something as trivial and obvious as linking
[12:11pm] aude: people can use email for private notifices
[12:12pm] Susan: kaldari: I'm saying I don't understand the point.
[12:12pm] aude: notices
[12:12pm] Susan: kaldari: What are you notifying with e-mail notification?
[12:12pm] kaldari: Susan: what website on the internet doesn't offer email notifications?
[12:12pm] Susan: kaldari: I thought you were talking about notification in a different sense.
[12:13pm] kaldari: Susan: eh? maybe I'm misunderstanding you
[12:13pm] Susan: > Also the current notifications in the system (talk page updates, e-mail notifications) were already private
[12:13pm] tewwy: aude: The idea behind echo is to separate the event from the delivery. In MW current the responsibility for delivery of notifications are dependent at the time of event creation. Echo seeks to separate those into distinct parts and (for example) afford the user some control on how they choose to be afforded the delivery of the notifiation
[12:13pm] Susan: The term "notification" is getting more and more murky.
[12:13pm] kaldari: all of the Echo notifications will optionally support sending emails
[12:14pm] Susan: A user doesn't need a notification, for example, about the use of Special:EmailUser.
[12:14pm] tewwy: aude: so the software at one points says "the notification happened" and the software at another point figures out how to deliver that to the user and how to format it (for instance: mobile push? e-mail? web notification?)
[12:14pm] Susan: Which is how I read "e-mail notification."
[12:14pm] Susan: Compare: talk page notification, which comes from using ?index.php?action=edit.
[12:14pm] tewwy: OIC
[12:14pm] tewwy: "email notification" is not an notification on email event, it means delivery of a notification through e-mail
[12:15pm] tewwy: if the user sends an e-mail there is no event triggered so no notification is in the system
[12:15pm] Susan: But the user is still notified.
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[12:16pm] tewwy: Umm, how so? If I use Special:EmailUser, then there is no explicit hook to trigger a notificaiton
[12:16pm] Susan: The user receives an e-mail.
[12:16pm] tewwy: but emailing a user a notification is one of the ways Echo can deliver a notification to the user (via email)
[12:17pm] Nemo_bis: "was linked by Shirayuki from this page: [[]]" – known bug?
[12:17pm] tewwy: for instance, a page marked for deletion.
[12:17pm] Susan: tewwy: The terms "notification" and "e-mail" had meaning behind them before Echo existed.
[12:18pm] tewwy: Yes it does
[12:18pm] kaldari: we are using the word notification in the same sense as most websites, Facebook, Google, etc.
[12:18pm] kaldari: not in the generic sense
[12:19pm] kaldari: ok, going to get some lunch
[12:19pm] tewwy: Susan: There was a page werdna wrote a while ago where he made the distinction between events, notifications and the like.> I think it got overwritten
[12:19pm] tewwy: What's left of it is here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo#Nomenclature
[12:19pm] bsitu: Nemo_bis: not for [[]], could you file a bug for that?
[12:19pm] sumanah: bye kaldari
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[12:20pm] Nemo_bis: bsitu: ok
[12:21pm] Susan: Nemo_bis: Your comment at https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/43668 is circular.
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[12:23pm] Nemo_bis: Susan: how so?
[12:23pm] Nemo_bis: bsitu: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43743
[12:24pm] Susan: Nemo_bis: Reedy marked bug 43668 as a blocker of 43668?
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[12:25pm] Nemo_bis: Susan: that's called a typo, not a circular comment
[12:25pm] Nemo_bis: copy and paste fail if you feel ungenerous
[12:25pm] Susan: Nemo_bis: It was a bit circular when I clicked the bug link.
[12:25pm] Susan: Maybe oval.
[12:27pm] Reedy: Comment # 5 on bug 43668 from Nemo
[12:27pm] Reedy: Reedy, why did you mark bug 43668 as blocker?
[12:27pm] Reedy:
[12:27pm] Nemo_bis: hmpf
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[12:27pm] Susan: Reedy: We already went through this.
[12:27pm] Susan: Reedy: #OLD
[12:27pm] Nemo_bis: <--- FAIL
[12:27pm] Nemo_bis: satisfied?
[12:28pm] Susan: Have you adorned a scarlet letter?
[12:28pm] Nemo_bis: hmm let's see if I have one here
[12:28pm] Nemo_bis: there's a greenpeace sticker which is mainly red
[12:28pm] Susan: I didn't realize this was "office hours" until it was nearly over, BTW.
[12:29pm] Susan: I thought people were just unusually chatty today.
[12:29pm] Nemo_bis: haha
[12:29pm] aude: heh
[12:29pm] Nemo_bis: that was the trick of doing it on this channel
[12:29pm] Nemo_bis: tricking people in IRC office hours against their will
[12:29pm] Susan: It worked.
[12:29pm] fabriceflorin: One last note about Echo: We're looking to hire a software engineer to build new notifications and editor engagement tools with us. It's a great team, fascinating work, and a wonderful cause! If you're interested or know someone who might be, contact kaldari or tewwy. Here's the job description: http://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=ovvXWfwD&c=qSa9VfwQ