Topic on Extension talk:MassMessage/Flow

So the format for entries in a recipient list ({{#target:Project:Noticeboard|en.wikipedia.org}}) differs from that used for EdwardsBot/Global Message Delivery.

For those recipient lists that use the Target template on Meta, Kunal appears to have just fixed this, thankfully, by editing that template (after this issue had earlier today caused me to abandon an attempt to migrate from GMD to MM with one of the messages I'm sending out regularly). This fix hopefully enables most of the existing recipient lists under m:Global message delivery/Targets to be used for both MM and GMD. But if I'm informed correctly, there are a lot of other recipients lists around which don't use the Target template and will therefore be broken, e.g. the Signpost's or that of the Bugle. Also, I seem to recall that EdwardsBot can take a category as recipient list.

I had been under the impression that backward compatibility with EdwardsBot/Global Message Delivery was a development goal for MassMessage, but maybe I haven't been following the discussions closely enough.

Regards,

The parserfunction is one of the few places where backwards compatibility was broken. The main design constraint for this was supporting global messages in a not-super-complicated way.

External links and interwiki links didn't work cleanly, so the easiest way to have users add structured data to a page was with a parser function. For local deliveries we could have added in allowing "User:"/"User talk:" links to work, however it would be a weird user experience if that worked on enwiki, but you had to use a special format to make it work on Meta. The parser function also enables us to display errors if a user provides invalid input.

For migrating existing lists, it should be possible to fix most of them with a simple find/replace regex. Ideally there should be some kind of wrapper template so that in case the backend does switch in the future, migrating will be less painful.

OK, these sound like good reasons - I'm unfamiliar with the problems that ruled out interwiki links as solution, but I'm not questioning the decision to go with the parser function. And I don't have strong feelings about the category feature (never used it myself).

My main point is that the need for this conversion work and (possibly) the removal of the category feature should have been communicated more clearly when announcing MM as a replacement for GMD and EdwardsBot, redirecting pages etc.

And +1 for the wrapper template idea.

I was a bit surprised that I had not included the category feature, so I looked and it seems like MZ removed it about a year ago, which is why it never got into my list of features for MassMessage.

The category feature got removed because it was a maintenance burden and it had little use. It's probably a reasonable enhancement request for MassMessage, but we'll need to think carefully about the user interface and a few other components.

I've filed bugzilla:57473 for the category support.

Parser functions generally use {{foo:bar}} (or {{#foo:bar}}) while MediaWiki page templates generally use {{foo|bar}}. It's a subtle distinction, but it was unavoidable breaking change given outside constraints. Interwiki syntax would've been nice to use, but it presents a lot of headaches when trying to pull the data out.

As Lego notes, a simple find and replace should be fine for local lists. An edit or two to m:Template:Target will likely suffice for global message delivery. Fortunately only two wikis will need any help and I hope anyone who gets stuck will know to ask for help at m:Talk:MassMessage.

See also m:Talk:MassMessage#MessMessage not working for the Signpost. Regards,