User:Pelagic/sandbox/j/2019/08

August 2019

Thursday 22

Dang cat

Cat is trying to walk all over my Padd, I mean iPad, again. Like he does any morning that I wake early. It's not feeding time yet. He's happy enough to sit on my chest, as long as I'm not reading or writing.

The Machine Stops

The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster. Mentioned by [find user] at User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_169. Must be out of copyright in some jurisdiction, as it's available archived online for free. So much like our modern world a century after it was written, but also a metaphor for Wikipedia! 04:58 (UTC +10)

Tuesday 20

MW UI & interaction efforts

Not in order.

Athena
Winter 2014?
Flow (Structured Discussions)
Echo (Notifications)
Visual Editor
2016 wikitext editor?
2010 wikitext editor?
Vector 2010

Under the hood

mw:Manual:ContentHandler
Parsoid
big list of components

Open tabs

Iridescent's summary, attempting to explain to WMF contacts why people are upset about the Fram issue. Tue 20
Argh, had some stuff here that I lost due to a page reload again.
- To do: refind the part where Gerda said she'd rather be told to f-off than be labelled "toxic". 04:30 Thu 22 (UTC+10)

Filtering and searching

Edit Review Improvements/New filters for edit review
Wikipedia:Teahouse#Can I filter an Article's Revision History by section?
T26269 Filter revisions by creator in action=history
T12788 Filter page histories by user, or contributions by title - despite title, the description targets Special:Contributions.

Sunday 18

New user talk UI?

Some talk pages seem suddenly different on Minerva+mobile. Need to check desktop. Noticed at User:EllenCT and User:Schazjmd e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:EllenCT#/talk/16 , https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Schazjmd#/talk

Editing this page, I also see a hash-slash path in the URL: …j/2019/08/18#/editor/all. Perhaps #/editor has been like that on mobile for a long time and I haven't paid attention? On desktop I'm used to seeing ?action=edit.

To do: check WP:VPT and catch up on developments at new talk pages consultation.

Feedback Request Service

Ellen had this notice “Let's talk about talking” in Feb, maybe via FRS? I should consider subscribing.

to do

Oops

Accidentally created a page in mainspace instead of user. Used Thank feature, follow-up to do:

Thank at my talk and/or Schazjmd talk?
Saving bacon box.
Teahouse etiquette question.
Are thanks and wikilove the same thing? Do search.

Atandrus' Observations

Read User:Antandrus/observations on Wikipedia behavior yesterday. There's some great quotable material there that could be used in wiki-discussions. (Noting it here so I can re-find the page later.)

to do list numbers for items that grabbed my attention

Dammit

Shit! Shit, shit, shit shit, SHIT!

Was doing a largish edit using VE+Timeless+iOS, and LOST THE LOT when Safari decided to reload the page.

Instead of holding gabfests where people propose throwing the notion of an encyclopedia out the window, couldn't the WMF invest into creating software that saves the state of your editing session?

Surely editing on an older, second-hand, or low-spec device isn't just a first-world problem?

Organising my user space, other things to try or consider

Whereas this area of dated entries is about noting things down as they occur for later reference, the following areas would be about drawing together that material.

A general subsection for thoughts, ideas, and nascent essays.
- Is there any point separating them into types when they are still at the early inception stage? Probably not.
- What to call it? "thoughts", "ideas", "rough", "incubator"? Maybe user/sandbox/ideas or user/incubator. (A sandbox is a thing, as is an incubator. On the other hand, sandbox/ideas would fit alongside sandbox/notes.)
An area for ongoing lists that are being developed (but are at the very incomplete stage).
- If not in the Sandbox, would it go in the Incubator or beside it?
- If the page title starts with "List of..." then does it need a separate place in the tree? (Compare naming of lists in Article space.)

I like the idea of physical metaphors such as Sandbox and Incubator (maybe notes can go into "Notebook"), but initially I might stick to putting stuff under sandbox. Sandbox/ideas and sandbox/lists don't even need to be pages, they can just be names and still work with prefix search. Conversely, my sandbox is already a mess, more like a litter tray.

Instead of (or in addition to) relying on subpage structure to organise things, I could make a separate topic-based index/catalogue/inventory. Would require a lot of manual maintenance.

Redirects and subpages

If User:Pelagic/sandbox/test/source is a redirect to User:Pelagic/sandbox/test/dest, then will a non-existent User:Pelagic/sandbox/test/source/subpage do anything special in relation to User:Pelagic/sandbox/test/dest/subpage? In other words, can you relink a whole subpage tree with one redirect? 13:16 (AEST)

Nope. I kinda expected that wouldn't work. 13:29 (AEST) 03:29 (GMT)

Monday 12

Branding

"the Wolff Olins team explained that the best brand architecture for brand awareness and impact is to lead with Wikipedia instead of leading with Wikimedia"

"One trustee pointed out that there may be PR baggage accompanying the Wikipedia brand, given how the project has been criticized for its lack of diversity"

https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Minutes/2018-11-9,10,11

Diversity

Interwiki links

To do: fix up raw links (here and recent contribs) with proper interwiki prefixes. Help:Interwiki linking. Most likely to use are m: mw: wmf: phab: occasional w: q: b:

Note the disadvantages further down that page, e.g. linksearch.

Thursday 8

Open tabs from laptop

23:05

Deep subpages test

If I create a sub-sub-page, does it automatically create the parent pages?

This: User:Pelagic/sandbox/j/2019/08/08
Parent: User:Pelagic/sandbox/j/2019/08
Grandparent: User:Pelagic/sandbox/j/2019

05:34

Nope, they are redlinked. 05:48

And not listed in the breadcrumbs at the top of the page. 05:51

When does the day start? revisited

“Well now, you didn't wake up this morning 'cause you didn't go to bed
You were watching the whites of your eyes turn red.
The calendar on your wall is ticking the days off …”

So if I don't go back to sleep, then when does the new day start? Around 5 or 6 am seems a reasonable cutoff. Even though it's before sunrise (at this latitude and time of year), it feels like a new day.

05:43

iOS app

I was looking at the Special:Tags page: surprised and excited to see "iOS app edit" listed. When did they add editing to the app?

Went to store, hit Download … "Unable to purchase. Wikipedia is not compatible with this iPad. Ok." Sad now. 06:25

Edited Wikipedia:Sandbox thus via app on iOS 12. 07:54

Wednesday 7

Aaaarrrrrgh

Transcluding a subpage with headings worked fine for display and TOC. But mobile edit did not work as expected.

Tapping the pencil next to the section header resulted in a spinning wait-petal, but no editor. Long pressing and opening in a new tab resulted in a weird hybrid mobile—desktop screen with the parent page's code rather than the child's.

Is it because I'm using an old tablet, or is this use case just broken on mobile?

08 03:45 (AEST), 07 17:45 (UTC)

Have taken screenshots, need to edit and upload them.

Also to do: post about this to VPT? When I get a wikt:round tuit?

Addendum: yes, Desktop view with Timeless skin works fine (still on tablet). Need to test with Minerva in Desktop mode.

Aside1: how to indent with Visual Editor? There's no tab key on iOS touchscreen keyboard, and I can't see an option in the VE toolbar. Never mind, found it on the bullets drop-down. Aargh! Drop-down doesn't work on Safari iOS9 + Desktop mode + Timeless + VE. The italic item works fine. Italic via iPad native formatting also works!

Aside2: VE toolbar is a awarkwardly placed below the floating header in Timeless.

More aargh

I have top-section editing turned on in preferences, which is great on desktop. But on mobile, I can't do a whole-page source edit.
Also on mobile (Minerva skin), categories are not displayed. This doesn't generally bother me on EN-WP, but it makes Commons hard to use.

08 04:22 (AEST)

When the day ends

It's 2:30 am. Sometimes I wake at stupid hours of the night / early morning and can't get back to sleep for 2 or 3 hours.

Being after midnight, it's technically a new day (Thursday 8), but it feels like part of the night before. I tend to reckon my days starting from sunrise or when I get up in the morning.

Reverse or forward chronology

Reverse date order seems a good way to have the fresh stuff on top and the stale stuff further away down below. But then should sections within a day be top-posted in reverse time order? Within a single editing session, it feels more natural to just keep writing forwards and adding sub heads as I go. Perhaps each session within a day should get its own "piece".

Subpage structure

If I do this as a single flat page, it's going to get very big very quickly. From the start, I've been considering how to split this into subpages. One a month? One a day? If I transclude, does it bring across the subheads into the ToC?

Untitled section

[1] Comment by Jorm at Athena skin discussion. "Regarding Vector's tabs (and Monobook's, actually, before it): I actually find the opposite to be true with regards to new users trying to understand what is going on. I've heard varying comments from users (many of whom say that they can't even find the edit button). They see links that may or may not be tabs (since the UI isn't very clear on that fact). This is further compounded by the fact that it appears that there are two tabs active at the same time (because the "sub-tab" metaphor isn't well-described)." 07 06:27 (AEST)

Tuesday 6

Still closing tabs

Building Communities with Software Joel Spolsky, 2003.
It's not Just Usability Joel Spolsky, 2004.
- "My goal today is to talk about the next level of software design issues,

after you’ve got the UI right: designing the social interface."

Discussions: Flat or Threaded?. Jeff Atwood, Coding Horror, 2006.

08:10 (AEST), 22:10 (GMT)

Strange and Maddening Rules Joel Spolsky, 2013.
- "One thing I’m very concerned about, as we try to educate the next generation of developers, and, importantly, get more diversity and inclusiveness in that new generation, is what obstacles we’re putting up for people as they try to learn programming. In many ways Stack Overflow’s specific rules for what is permitted and what is not are obstacles, but an even bigger problem is rudeness, snark, or condescension that newcomers often see."

08:18 (AEST)

Monday 5

Too many tabs

Was looking at requirements to generate ping (any link to the user page works, doesn't have to come from {{ping}} or {{u}}). Was also starting to look at the history of Echo. Compare the old Template:Talkback.
Version says MW runs on [2] (fork of MySQL?) MariaDB
[3] phab:T8455 mw:Extension:StringFunctions String Functions extension.
- Requested in 2006, performant version completed 2009, sysadmins refused to enable through to 2014, eventually rendered moot point by addition of Scribunto and Lua.
Wikipedia:Controlling search engine indexing - User and Draft namespaces are NOINDEXed. Magic words and templates and robots.txt and edit filters.
WP:VPP/Archive 93#Convert Village Pump to Wikia Community Forum software
A Wikipedian Signature Art Gallery
Wikipedia talk:Flow
You Only Need to Test with 5 Users Nielsen, 2000.

22:17 (AEST) 12:17 (GMT)

Noticed just now on same page as one of the above: wp:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 93#New Optional Dark Skin for Wikipedia (2012). Has a list of links to previous dark-mode discussions. Also link to the a skin.
mw:Design/Archive/Athena
- Primary (content/talk) and secondary (view/~~edit~~/history/more) page selectors permanently available at bottom of viewport in a section called the "sliders".

Sunday 4

2019-08-04

Pavlova

As an Australian, I was greatly pleased to find that pavlova made it onto the list of Lamest Edit Wars!.

And Julia Gillard is the vehicle by which religion in infoboxes makes it to the list? I'm tempted to add that to my history list, even though it about people not countries.

20:26 (AEST), 10:26 (GMT)

Timestamps

13:50 (AEST), 03:50 (GMT)

Sure, I could type the time by hand. Is there an easier way? Just happens I was reading about Parser Functions yesterday.


Code	Ref	Example	Pros	Cons
`~~~~~`		03:50, 4 August 2019 (UTC)	Easy to remember and type. Don't need to add `subst:`.	UTC, prefer local. Verbose format, prefer ISO style.
`{{subst:CURRENTTIMESTAMP}}`	mw:Help:Magic_words#Date_and_time	20190804035051	No-punctuation, maybe useful for unique anchors.	Don't usually need seconds.
`{{subst:CURRENTTIME}}`	ibid.	03:50		UTC, prefer local (or both) for some situations.
`{{subst:#time: Y-m-d}}` `{{subst:#time: F Y\|+10 hours}}` `{{subst:#time: l j\|+10 hours}}` `{{subst:#time: H:i\|+10 hours}} (AEST), {{subst:#time: H:i}} (GMT)`	mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions##time	2019-08-04 August 2019 Sunday 4 13:50 (AEST) 03:50 (GMT)	Flexible. Doesn't rely on templates.	Long if hand-typing. Have to remember format codes.
`{{subst:time\|AEST}}` `{{time\|AEST\|24\|hide-refresh=yes}}` `{{subst:time\|AEST\|24\|hide-refresh=yes}}` `{{safesubst:time\|AEST\|24\|hide-refresh=yes}}` `{{subst:time\|AEST\|dateonly=yes\|hide-refresh=yes}}`	Template:Time	11:18, 30 October 2024 AEDT [refresh] 11:18 AEDT 11:18 AEDT [refresh] 11:18 AEDT [refresh] 11:18, 30 October 2024 AEDT [refresh]	Easy time zone entry. Automatic DST. But if I'm subst'ing I could always hand-type the +10 or +11.	Some parameter combinations don't seem to work with `subst:`. Verbose if adding `hide-refresh` by hand.

Rationale

01:27, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

"Dear diary,..."

This is not a blog nor a general-purpose journal. It's just a list of wiki-related notes in reverse chronological order.

Why? I often find myself wanting to note things down. Maybe it's a newspaper article that could be used to expand an existing content page. Maybe it's tips and tricks to remind me how to do stuff (useful templates, syntax hints). Maybe it's related to discussion about policies, guidelines, platform dev and all the meta stuff. Or maybe it's something on-wiki that I liked or made me go "WTF?".

And where do I put it? Everywhere! If I'm on my iPhone or iPad, I might paste it into Apple Notes (synchs to cloud, available on web). Elsewhere maybe a note in a private Blogger board (not usually, that's more for non-wiki stuff, and it's a pain to edit on mobile). Or somewhere in Sandbox or my user-space (easy to get to, already wiki-formatted).

One of the barriers I've found to saving notes is the mental burden of organising them. What subpage or section should I use? So the thought is to sidestep that by just using date order initially. I can always copy content into more structured spaces later. A lot of key WP processes, noticeboards, and workflows are organised by date, so it's not without precedence.

Saturday 31

Thursday 29

Sun 25 to Sat