User talk:Okeyes (WMF)/Archive 8

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Who Should I Contact?

Hi, do you happen to know who is in charge/developed Wikipedia:Notifications. I would like to talk to someone regarding integration with Wikipedia:Good articles.--Dom497 (talk) 03:17, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

@Okeyes (WMF):--Dom497 (talk) 12:49, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) @Dom497:, I believe that the developers are closely monitoring Wikipedia talk:Notifications, and you might get the best response there since multiple people in the know may see and respond. :) If you want to talk to somebody specifically or if you don't get a quick response there, you can try User:Fabrice Florin (WMF). --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:55, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

I'd start with Fabrice; the person monitoring Notifications is me (and I'm a bit busy on...something called the VisualEditor. Can't be important ;p.) However, I can give a schpiel in advance:

At the moment, Echo's functionality is deliberately very general and not tied to community-developed workflows. This is intentional; we need to build software that works on all our projects, and such workflows may or may not exist. Where they do exist, the things they hook off are usually templates and workflows which may exist differently, or identically but under different names, or etc, etc. It's very difficult to make software based on it scale.

What we're looking to do as part of Flow is build a workflow language - something universally accepted by MediaWiki that allows a user to declare "for process X, which hooks into [extension], the pertinent template is Y. You add that, which sends out a notification. If it is removed, another notification should be sent. This notification contains the text of Z." or suchlike. I'm summarising (probably quite badly) but that's the gist of it. Once we have a way of using this - of having user-defined contributions to how our code functions - we'll be able to look at things like Echo/GAN integration. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:59, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Ok, thanks! :) --Dom497 (talk) 12:59, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

@Okeyes (WMF): Just out of curiosity, when do you guys plan to have that done by?--Dom497 (talk) 13:46, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

"Not within the next 6 months, but soon-ish". It's the thing we're switching to very soon, but it's kind of a sizeable project - replacement of talkpages is the core goal. I'd say it'll be stable within a year and a half, being pessimistic :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:47, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

That's pessimistic? Wow. (Sorry for random TPS commentary) --Onorem (talk) 13:51, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, year and a half after starting it. Thinking on it harder, it'll probably take longer just because we're looking at deliberately elongating the process to allow for more experimentation and more community involvement, sooo... Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:55, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for the jab. I really do appreciate your talent and what you've been able to do, even if I think it'd be better applied on other projects. There's a good chance that I'm still going to be an ass, but I hope you'll be willing to take it in stride as you work on trying to make improvements to how everyone can use the site. --Onorem (talk) 14:06, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, I'm quite happily transferring away from this role (hopefully in the next couple of months...although they've been saying that since March). Whoever my replacement is, please try to be less of an ass to them? ;p. It's not about taking it in stride or not - it's about avoiding contributing to an unpleasant and toxic environment that makes well-intentioned staffers want to simply leave. In my experience being rude to people is an excellent way to ensure they're less enthusiastic about involving the community in the future, which is a pity because community involvement is (I believe) what we need, in all our decisions. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:15, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to see that response. I'm obviously on the other side and think the failure was from the development side as much as the community side...but ok. Ignore my comments and I'll try to ignore the next staffer who doesn't care. Sorry for the attempt at an olive branch. --Onorem (talk) 14:19, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Oh, no, we're in perfect agreement; I think with both Echo and the VE, there have been problems that stem from a failure at our end to take the community into account - we learnt of the problems with Echo, but were unfortunately unable to put a lot of the solutions into practise with the VE because the VE was developed concurrently, rather than sequentially. Hopefully Flow will solve for them, and we'll, at the very least, screw up in new and hitherto undiscovered ways instead of the same-old ;). I'm just saying that community frustrations are understandable, and should be voiced. But at the same time, coming on too strong - actively being offensive, rather than simply pleading the case (and I'd note here that I'm not talking about you particularly - in fact, you're not one of the editors in my mental "comes on too strong" basket) makes things more difficult. There are a lot of staff at the Foundation who want community involvement, and a lot who want to ensure that the original vision for software is followed to a T - which isn't a bad thing, in moderation. When the staffers who want more community involvement need to convince the others that the delays and the additional features (or the removal of planned features) are justified, and that taking the community's views more into account is important, it's an argument made more difficult if editors are actively offending. Staffers are humans; they have an instinctive desire to avoid unpleasantness. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:23, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Visual editor and English Wikinews

Hi. We chatted on IRC in #mediawiki-visualeditor ^connect on I think Saturday about implementation and English Wikinews. Community wise, we have been working on Wikinews:Visual Editor with feedback for the VE team to know where are biggest concerns are, extensions that need to be considered, our more important templates, etc. If you have time, can you comment on the talk page or update the page itself to explain how things will work related to visual editor, explain what areas we will need to work on fixing template wise to insure functionality, what the tech team will fix and a timeframe if possible? If you cannot address these issues and some one else from the VE team could, passing it along would be much appreciated. :) --LauraHale (talk) 06:52, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

I'll leave the comments I've got. As said, the deployment to sister projects is quite some time away and will hopefully involve a wider discussion with the devs beforehand that can surface these issues. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:37, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Admin status

A friendly heads-up that you need to update your user page. Best regards, —Tim /// Carrite (talk) 20:47, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

I would suggest you edit your talk page in a way you wish it to be regarding your admin status. Its highly inappropriate for people to be doing it for you so I've reverted to allow you to edit it as you wish.Blethering Scot 13:30, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Enabling article feedback tool en masse

Is there a quick way of saying 'all articles I create or have created enable article feedback on'?--Launchballer 10:36, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Afraid not :(. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:14, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks so much

Thanks for all that you do for us. You are greatly appreciated! Mugginsx (talk) 11:33, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:37, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Page Curation

Hi. thanks for Wikipedia:Page Curation. im sysop and active in fa.wikipedia, i want to add Page Curation on there. this is possible? we use Twinkle on fa.wiki too. thanks Darafsh Kaviyani (Talk) 20:55, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

At the moment, it's not generalisable to non-enwiki projects, I'm afraid :(. I think we're going to work on that as our next-but-one project. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:11, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

OK, i hope you work on it as soon as possible. thanks for respond ;-) Darafsh Kaviyani (Talk) 03:19, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

I hope so too! Of all the things I've worked on so far, Page Curation was my favourite. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:13, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

• Oliver, could you please give me a link to where the code for the Curation Tool flyout is located at Wikimedia Repositories. Thanks. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:05, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Flow and WP:VG

Some casual discussion on Twitter happened about the possibility of WP:VG being part of the test group for the new Flow software; I think it'd be great. I'm posting this here for transparency's sake, obviously, but I'll still consult WT:VG before confirming anything. ;) ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 17:17, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Awesome; we're enthusiastic about it at our end :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:36, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Seems most are in favor of it happening. Yay! ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 03:10, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

AFT

Hi Oliver, have you got any idea how this happened. From memory all I did was open the page and copy the URL, I don't remember doing anything else? Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 11:23, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Bah; no idea, I'm afraid :/. @Fabrice Florin (WMF): any ideas? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:18, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

xLinkBot no longer running, since Oct 10th

Hello, I saw that you had posted something awhile back about xLinkBot being down. It is down again... User_talk:Versageek#xLinkBot_no_longer_running_since_Oct_10th. Versageek has not responded to my note; they are the official owner of the bot, although Dirk Beestra is the developer who works on the Perl code. I have hesitated to contact Dirk directly, because his userpage says Status==Wikibreak, and I don't want to increase his wikistress inadvertently. But I would like to see xLinkBot functional again, it stops over 100 external links per day, typically, which means over 1500 shoulda-been-stopped WP:ELNO items have likely been added to wikipedia. Anyhoo, I'm not sure what the best move is here; since I'm not an admin I cannot look into the problem personally. Maybe the bot is purposely out of service, for some reason? If you have time, please check on this situation. Contact me over on my enWiki talkpage if you need something. Thanks 74.192.84.101 (talk) 05:26, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

certificates for Java code

If I understand things right, Oracle's recent changes in Java requires programs to purchase a code security certificate. See here for more details. Certificates run around $200 a year, which can be prohibitively expensive for some volunteer developers. This sounds like a good idea to use some of WMF's "vast money reserves". Some programs are WP:WPCleaner and WP:STiki. Where/Who do I go to? Bgwhite (talk) 20:08, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Hmn; that's an interesting question! @Qgil: this the sort of thing your team is involved in? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:35, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

From what I can make out[1] the change means the end user need to accept a dialog when an unsigned applet is run. While annoying it does not mean developers have to buy a certificate.--User:Salix alba (talk): 23:23, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Salix alba That is partially incorrect. For right now, the user can accept the dialog. However, the warnings and docs clearly say "in the future" you won't be able to run the program at all without a proper certificate. For example, see the warning message received for WPCleaner. Bgwhite (talk) 08:26, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

talkpage stalker swoops in to comment... Rather than using the 'official' Oracle JRE, why not use OpenJDK + IcedTea plugin, which is the implementation used on Linux distros et cetera? Just because WMF is infinitely rich, and of course omniscient via wikipedia, does not mean Oracle should be rewarded for their policy-change to begin charging annual fees to use GPL software. What, are the wikimedia server-farms running Oracle Enterprise Linux, when CentOS is available gratis? That would make little sense. (And of course, if paying the money is to be avoided long-term, maybe the tools should be ported to some programming language besides Java.) Hope this helps. Ping me on my talkpage if you have questions about this suggestion, or whatever. Thanks for improving wikipedia. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 05:19, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for asking about funding for certificates for existing tools. I think I finally managed to use a certificate provided by Certum for free to open source developers who request them. The certificate is only valid one year, which is not very nice (you can get 3 to 5 years validity for commercial certificates, but I don't want to spend that kind of money for a tool I develop for free): I hope I can renew it next year.

I'm looking for some people to test this new version, currently available only as a test version here: http://site4145.mutu.sivit.org/WikiCleaner/WikiCleanerTest.jnlp. I'm interested to know what the result is for various users (ability to trust once and for all the application, java version, os, ...).

Self-signed certificates are still considered valid with the constraint that the user must accept it every time (not very user friendly). But warning message says that this won't even work in future versions of Java.

Using an other JRE is indeed an option, but it requires more tweaking for each user to install WPCleaner, so it's not either the best solution for the average user. I don't want people to have to install several things just to try WPCleaner.

--NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 11:07, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi, paying for a Java runtime license is indeed a weird case in the Wikimedia context. Recommending free alternatives (at least as in beer) is what we are doing with all the functionality exposed to end users. As free software developers, are you happy about this change of licensing? I suppose Oracle will announce a date of end of validity of the current setup, if they ever want to set one. If you are still using their Java runtime then we can discuss. In the meantime it sounds more sensible to recommend that you go for a free (as in freedom) Java runtime or a different framework. I understand that a rewrite is not an ideal situation. Have you considered proposing such project at mw:Mentorship programs/Possible projects? Currently we are looking for projects and mentors for mw:FOSS Outreach Program for Women.--Qgil (talk) 20:22, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi, this is not a change in Java licensing (runtime is still free), just a change in how Oracle implementation is dealing with self-signed applications distributed through Java Web Start, or with applets. Current Oracle implementation forces users to say they trust the application each time they are running it if the application is not signed with an certificate coming from a known certificate authority.

I only deliver a software written in Java, so the choice of the Java runtime is up to each user: they can use an other distribution than the one provided by Oracle if they want, but it may require more steps on their end to install it correctly.

Currently, it seems to work with the certificate provided by Certum, so I will go with this option. If new releases of Java give me trouble, I will come back ;-)

Just a question: would it be possible for WMF to provide trusted certificates for developers who contribute to MediaWiki ecosystem ? I don't know if it's possible and how it works to be able to produce trusted certificates for a company. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 10:19, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Flow interviews

Hi, I see you pinged me about the Flow survey, and I figure it was in regard to being an interviewer. Sorry, but I'm going to decline (largely because I take extremely large pains to protect my privacy), and that's why I'm responding to you here. I don't have any particular opinions to offer about survey design. But I wish you good results, as always. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:26, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

That's fair; thanks for taking the time to drop me a note :). Had any luck testing Flow so far? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:33, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, haven't tried. (I've got some personal stuff going on that limits how much time I can devote here.) --Tryptofish (talk) 22:36, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough; hope it clears up in a positive way, whatever it is. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:56, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Flow

I haven't played with it and probably won't have time to, but I'm generally agreed that the things you, Salvidrim!, Sven and Quiddity are asking for are things people are going to want. - Dank (push to talk) 11:09, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Cool; thanks for validating them :). We're going to put in a few more weeks of work before having the should we/shouldn't we deploy-to-your-wikiproject conversation, so hopefully we can fit them in. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:50, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Great, thanks so much for working on that. - Dank (push to talk) 17:31, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

An idea that cropped up on my talk page

Hi Ollie,

Would you please take a look at User talk:Cullen328#Unproductive severity of the policy enforcement and an idea to relax it and see whether the new user has a useful idea? As I see it, there would be some kind of automated bot review of a proposed username during the registration process, with a warning if a potential problem was detected. Your thoughts, pro or con, would be appreciated. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:13, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Mobile disclaimer

Hi Oliver. Would you like me to chime in on this discussion? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 09:43, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Could be totally helpful :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:12, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

WikipediR

I see you're the author/maintainer of WikipediR. Just want to let you know how convenient and useful it is. Thanks. Andrew³²⁷ 04:15, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

(From my other account, since I did it largely in my spare time) @Andrewman327: aw, thanks! Y'know, this is the first piece of feedback I've received on it through my talkpage. Can I ask if you can see any improvements I could make? At the moment I'm thinking on login support for higher API limits, as a big thing. Any bugs you've spotted? Any API parameters or functions you wish were supported that aren't? Ironholds (talk) 05:26, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Good Humor
	hai ScarletTailNekoMataChan231577 (talk) 20:58, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Suggestion about a user experience issue

Oliver, I have a suggestion, which may be about page Curation, but if not, the issue is something that I still think you should review.

I saw several items in the CSD log. One is List of Afghanistan ODI wicket-keepers. It is my current opinion that this should not be a CSD (discussion here), but I want to emphasize that the point I am about to make is valid whether or not the CSD is valid.

This edit is what prompted me to look into the Page Curation tool, and to contact you. It appears the nomination was done using Page Curation, it may be the notification was done using Twinkle, or manually.

Checkout what the editor's page looks like: here

Even if those notices are valid, how discouraging. If they aren't valid, even worse.

My simple suggestion: If an editor needs to notify another editor about an issue involving more than n pages (where n might be two or three, but might be one), the editor should leave a single notification, with a bulleted list of relevant pages.

Obviously, this could be implemented manually, but it doesn't sound like a hard task to automate.

Let me know if my suggestion isn't clear, and a mockup of a possible result page would help.

I should close by noting that while I am no longer an active New Page Patroller, I have seen the Page Curation tools, and think they are a great step forward. Kudos to the developers.--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:42, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

That would require the software to have advanced notice of what pages the user wanted to mark for deletion/maintenance/whatnot, however, which the current workflow is not designed around - it's designed for linear rather than grouped patrolling. I imagine that if/when flow is deployed it will become possible to (for example) check if the page already contains a speedy deletion notice of the same class from within N days of [current timestamp] and insert a simpler message if so, but at the moment talk pages are just a mass of wikimarkup; detecting PC notices would be...non-trivial :/. Ironholds (talk) 17:39, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

I understand. Should this be passed along to the Flow people now, or later?--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:52, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Probably later; no plan survives contact with reality, so what they're actually working on may be very different - and I know the job of building a discussion system on its own is a ton of work, so this'll probably not be highly prioritised if it's brought up before they've got the basics done :). Ironholds (talk) 19:42, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

AirGo Design Wikipedia Page Creation / Edits

I'm an office of the company who has been tasked with the creation of our Wikipedia page. I'm attempting to answer some of the legitimate remarks of the editors. I find their tone quite arrogant and officious, and was told that creating the page was a conflict of interest and that we didn't establish "notability." I mentioned to the last editor, Cgt, that we certainly do have several references from the press and tech industry awards to back up our "notability." My question is where do we put these citations to establish that so as to claim our bona-fide Wikipedia page? ∼∼∼∼mpvenables — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mpvenables (talk • contribs) 00:46, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

@Mpvenables: I'm a researcher rather than a community liaison or assistant; if you have questions I'd suggest sending them to answerswikimedia.org, who can place them more accurately. But as a general point, the Wikimedia Foundation does not involve itself in decisions around content, I'm afraid. Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:06, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Follow-on readership statistics question

Suppose you had 10 hours of undistracted work in a pleasant environment, and were assigned to improve the deprecated page views in the Quarry database, because you wanted to help your grateful and appreciative editor community. How would you go about doing that? EllenCT (talk) 14:16, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps there is a way to replace the zeros in the new articles with small integers, say 1-5, 1-10, or 1-20, which would (1) preserve recoverable properties of the existing deprecated historical snapshot of cumulative views, (2) vastly increase the extent to which the rank orderings match the zeros representing articles created after the historical snapshot, and (3) not disclose data with the granularity that I must assume you have concluded could be used for some kind of abuse, given the enthusiasm with which you announced the compilation of the new pageview statistics compared to the reluctance to which you seem to be willing to apply them? EllenCT (talk) 20:59, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

If I was able to do that, I'd ignore quarry entirely and stick a RESTful API online; this is what analytics engineering is doing. There's no abuse worry, and I have no "reluctance" about applying the data - I am not, however, working on that project. I work for the Search team, post organisational reorganisational management bruhahah. I'd recommend subscribing to the analytics mailing list if this is a thing that interests you, because that's where they're discussing the API they're working on. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:01, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, that is encouraging. I had no idea you got reassigned to a different project. I love Quarry and I don't want to have to program in HTTP transactions instead of just storing SQL queries if I can avoid it. So, what happened to the final results of your viewership statistics work? Is it in a public archive? Where is the analytics mailing list? EllenCT (talk) 21:41, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

The final result was a pageview definition we can use for ongoing calculations; that's now implemented in our data store, and is producing data, Analytics just hasn't managed to build something capable of surfacing it yet :(. The mailing list is here! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:43, 15 June 2015 (UTC)