User talk:PPelberg (WMF)/Flow

In the past few years, I have noticed that while using the mobile desktop view in creating an article or expanding an existing page. There seems to be a bug that wiped out some text or a paragraph from the existing content which makes the editing using a mobile desktop view tedious.

Furthermore, in some cases, the text might be invisible but when you publish changes you will discover it exists thereby duplicating the text. I have over time alternated between VisualEditor and Source to ensure there are no mixed-up text or paragraphs before publishing final changes.

I thought I was the only one experiencing the challenge until Jesse from the Ghanaian community asked (on the Africa Wikimedia Technical Community WhatsApp group) if we could share the challenges we as African face while editing with our mobile device to share with the Wikimedia Editing Team. After sharing my experience as stated above, I discovered that it resonates with all Wikimedia editors across African countries and perhaps the world in general.

Regards

hi @Atibrarian – the issue you're describing sounds disruptive and frustrating...thank you for taking the time to share it with me here 🙏🏼

A few of follow up questions for you:

1. Is it possible for you to share a link to a diff where you experienced this issue?
2. Do you recall the issue you described occurring after doing something specific? If so, can you please share those actions/steps with me so that I can try to reproduce the issue?
3. What is the browser and operating system of the device you were using when you experienced this issue?

ThankS follow the follow up questions.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aliyu_Usman_El-Nafaty&diff=1128497472&oldid=1128496751&diffmode=source
2. I think this is peculiar to smartphone editing. In trying to use a backspace key on my smart phone, large text disappears and/or wiped out. At some point i contemplated makng a video (screen recording) of my experience.
3. i mainly make use of Google Chrome, Android 8.1.0

Kind regards

Hello Peter!

The graph you've shown in a comment is very useful: phab:T255785#6241517

I wonder how that can be accessed? The link above seems to ask for credentials.

hey @Aron Manning, right?

To access Superset (the tool I used to generate that graph), you'll need to be added to either one of the following groups: wmf or nda.^[1]

---

1. "To access Superset, you need wmf or nda LDAP access. For more details, see Analytics/Data access#LDAP access.

If you have that access, you can log in at superset.wikimedia.org with your developer shell username and password."

The username/credentials are from your wikitech: account. If that doesn't work, then it means that you need to get (legal) approval. Some of the information in that system is protected on privacy grounds.

Thanks, @Whatamidoing (WMF)! I'm only interested in the usages stats. Signing legal documents is not really in my interest ;-)

hello

Would it be possible that when you're hovering over the three dots that stand on the right top of comments here on Mediawiki talk pages, when you get the tooltip, the comment which you're acting on also gets highlighted? It would make it easier for the eyes to see where you're acting on.

Wasn't sure where to exactly ask for this.

Talk:Structured Discussions is probably the right place, but since Flow isn't under active development, it probably doesn't matter where you post it.

Hello!

I can't be 100% sure and I lack the courage to replicate the procedure currently to test it out because I'm not a regular on that page but when I created a thread here, I wasn't auto-subscribed. Is that maybe because the request goes through that template first? (Click the big blue button.) Is that intended?

hi @Klein Muçi! When you started a new discussion on meta:Talk:SWViewer, do you remember if you used the New Discussion Tool or the WikiEditor?

I ask because if you used the WikiEditor to start a new discussion, that would explain why you weren't auto-subscribed.

Note: you asking this question was the prompt I needed to update the help documentation :)

Auto-subscription is lacking from WikiLove-started sections in SqWiki as well. You can try that yourself by going at whatever user page in SqWiki, pressing the red heart and following the procedure however you want.

(This isn't a big deal though.)

...WikiLove-started sections in SqWiki as well

@Klein Muçi can you share a link to a page that contains the kind of section you're describing above? My first instinct was to visit your user page, but I didn't see anything after a quick glance :)

Hello! As I found out during these days, the problem is the same in both cases and goes beyond auto-subscription. Neither of the discussion tools' features (auto-subscription, auto-signing, etc.) works when you use extensions or templates to start the discussions. Take a look at this conversation here and you'll see the details of what I mean together with an existing phab ticket that tackles with the problem partially.

To put it simply, if you use extension like InputBox (which is what I used in meta:Talk:SWViewer), WikiLove, etc. to start a new discussion, all the aforementioned features are lost. At least in the first post, then in the following answers the normal workflow returns and the tool functions normally.

To put it even more simply, "make discussion tools compatible with extensions that start discussions like InputBox, WikiLove, etc."

Hi, PPelberg (WMF) having received your message on my userpage on the en:wikipedia, I noticed I cannot edit Topic on Talk:Talk pages project. Should I react on your userpage then? Thank you for your time. ~~~~

hi @Lotje – thanks for taking the time to ask! I assume you're asking where to respond to the question in the most recent Editing Team newsletter about memorable talk page experiences?

If so, the best place to react is by adding a reply to this thread: Topic:V8d91yh8gcg404dj

Please let me know if you have any other questions...

@Lotje thank you for sharing your experience! I moved the comment you posted to have its own reply...I hope that was ok :)

Hi! Can you mark Help:DiscussionTools for translation, so I can translate it into french, please?

Regards,

Peter doesn't have the necessary user rights. I've marked it up, and it's ready for you to translate now.

Thanks @Whatamidoing (WMF). Did you see my questions on fr-wp? I don't mean to insist (nothing urgent), just checking if you saw it.

(Sorry for squatting your talk page, Peter.)

Hi, please see this ticket: phabricator:T282846 Thanks.

@Martin Urbanec (WMF), Peter will probably see your ping on Phab, but as a general rule of thumb, as long as the wiki doesn't use a million templates (like the English Wiktionary) or use Extension:Proofread Page (the Wikisources), then the Editing team doesn't object. You should wait for an official reply, but I think you could safely start writing your patch while you're waiting. :-D

@Whatamidoing (WMF) Thank you very much for the information. Replying for my volunteer account, as I don't work on this ticket in my WMF contractor capacity.

Hi, For a reason I do not understand this Sophivorus: Hi! Wouldn't it be nice to add a [thank button next to the [reply] button] showed up in my notifications. What's really weird is that I already see a thanks button there, but not a reply button

Sophivorous marked the thread as resolved, which removes the reply options in Flow. (It's similar to those colored boxes that the English Wikipedia puts around "closed" discussions.) If you want to re-open the thread, then click on the three dots ••• menu next to the thread's star, and re-open in.

@Whatamidoing:

Thanks for both your replies to random questions I asked. Since I know you are truly interested in feedback:

I have the memory of a flea, and have after years of using the wiki-text developed a method (that I am still working on) of how to find answers to questions that I asked on various wmf-wikis and received good reponses for. So the problem I have now, is how to find my way back to these two answers you just provided, when the road-marks around here keep changing. I got here now by using my notifications at the top of the page, but I understand from another thread I have participated on in the last month or so that notifications are not maintained and are being deleted (I think the last number I heard was anything older than 2,000).

I sure hope I made sense because if you answer me later , I may not see your response. thanks again for all the great work you do around wmf.

BTW I just clicked on the ... and nothing hppens

When you click on the ••• menu (the one just under the star, not the ones next to each message), you should see a dropdown menu that says "History, Permalink, Edit the topic summary, Reopen the topic". Clicking the last item re-opens the topic.

Thanks for persisting @Whatamidoing (WMF). I already forgot what my initial problem was but, I think, I refreshed my memory after checking the thread above, and I see what you mean today. By tomorrow I'll probably forget again, but maybe others will remember if they are interested.

Much appreciated.

I happened to run into old discussion and saw you insert text from a previous post using Green text at: https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Topic:Vu677lvei5djiprb&topic_showPostId=vujqrrp6lhr6hidt#flow-post-vujqrrp6lhr6hidt

I liked this so much I decided to see how you did it, so clicked the View history tab on top of the page to locate your edit but, lo and behold, your edit was made on September 17, 2020 but the history goes back only to 18 September 2020. Is there a way to go further back than that? Thanks in advance,

Also in case this is of interest to you @PPelberg (WMF), I have just clicked on the history of another page where I had contributed content just before, and had to edit it for an obvious mistake ,which I would have detected had I had the option of previewing it, but the history does not show any of my recent coontributions.

He used the {{Tq}} template to make the text green. You can see this in the wikitext if you click the three dots menu ••• at the top of his individual comment, and switch to the wikitext mode (pencil icon next to the blue Reply button) if you're in the visual mode. Flow is not in active development, so I don't think that previews will be added.

@Whatamidoing (WMF) Re template:Tq :

I was hoping to find your answer again when the need arose on another wmf-wiki. Unfortunately it appears not to exist there. Some day maybe the wmf will put a package together of all useful templates with documentation for those wikis that don't have the manpower to write/document/maintain/export templates.

Thanks

I think the thinking has been going the other direction (for simpler uses, like text formatting): Instead of spreading templates, why not make things easier to do in wikitext?

@ Whatamidoing (WMF)

Do you mean Structured data across Wikimedia?

No, that's something else. To use the template we're talking about ("Tq"), the thinking is more like: Why should anyone have to use a template for that? Why not use the existing works-everywhere <mark> tag (which highlights: example) or create a class (similar to the "class=wikitable" that we put at the start of all tables) that works everywhere?

I always thought the use of html tags was discouraged on wmf-wikis?

The software doesn't care, and most editors don't usually care for most syntax, either. I wouldn't recommend it for tables (before wikitext tables were created, using HTML codes was the only way to create a table, and it is very ugly), and I'd expect editors to swap out bold and italics, but for the most part, I don't think people care.