Topic on Extension talk:Wikibase Repository

Document special pages?

7
197.235.65.167 (talkcontribs)

It appears that special pages introduced by this extension aren't documented at all, e.g. stuff like Special:GoToLinkedPage , and others. This is in contrast to most other extensions such as Extension:CentralAuth , Extension:Linter. That special page wasn't documented even on wikidata.org.

197.235.65.167 (talkcontribs)
Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE) (talkcontribs)

What exact kind of "documentation" do you have in mind?

197.235.55.43 (talkcontribs)

At this point any documentation would be better than the status quo. There was zero documentation on gotolinkedpage, until recently added to a FAQ on wikidata. It was not even clear where to add such documentation considering that not a single page on mediawiki.org seems to have a mention of wikibase special pages.

So basically, any documentation on the purpose and usage instructions. While most of those are only relevant to wikidata others are relevant elsewhere :

The word "entity" might be understood by wikidata editors, and software engineers, but it is jargon, and the special page above doesn't have a single link to an explanatory note.

Side note: It appears that several people have asked for existing functionality exactly because it isn't documented, e.g.: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T176317, https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T202299and probably others.

Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE) (talkcontribs)

Thanks for bringing this up. However, I'm afraid I can't really tell what the question or suggestion is. Special pages typically don't exist in isolation, but make sense in a particular context, for particular use cases. The first line on each special page should explain what it is for, and ideally provide a link either in the text or via the question mark icon in the top right corner. If this is missing, please feel free to suggest improvements, ideally as a Phabricator ticket or on the talk page of d:Wikidata:WikiProject Documentation.

197.235.77.164 (talkcontribs)

The suggestion is simply to add some basic documentation on wiki about it. The simplest case would be a simple listing of the special pages along with a brief description of what they do, e.g.:

Page Description
Special:One The one ...
197.235.77.164 (talkcontribs)

Pages like https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:AvailableBadges, and https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:RedirectEntitydon't have much description even in the special pages themselves. So context is definitely missing there.

It seems that some extensions have a mention of special pages in Module:Extensionjson all that would be needed would be a simple description of each. Long term, it would probably make more sense to have a parserfunction that pulls this information from the extensions, that way it would never get out of sync with the deployed code...

Anyway, thanks for the links.

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