Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Archive/Add more gadgets to Preferences/Gadgets

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Add more gadgets to Preferences/Gadgets

NoN Outside the scope of Community Tech / does not require engineers

  • Problem: There are many "gadgets" (user scripts and like) that are useful but very hard to find.
  • Who would benefit: Everyone.
  • Proposed solution: There are many gems that most people are not aware of because few even realize there is stuff besides the Preferences/Gagets menu. My best idea right is from the end-user perspective. The easiest way for most end-users to find gadgets is to go to Preferences/Gadgets and read through it or CTRL+F for specific keywords. Yet that list has only a small fraction of user scripts and like, plus it does not explain how gadgets can be added there (also please note that right now, clicking the help button on English Wikipedia in the Preferences/Gadgets takes one to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Preferences#Gadgets but that section is empty). This needs to be streamlined, and here my solution is the creation of project-specific as well as meta noticeboards for adding gadgets to Preferences/Gadgets (and linking said noticeboard from Preferences/Gadgets). Local noticeboard for different projects would make the final call, while the meta would be a way to highlight useful gadgets to people who otherwise wouldn't know it. For example, if I create a cool gadget on pl wiki, I probably don't feel like mentioning it on dozens of other wikis. But I could submit it to the pl wiki gadget noticeboard, and the meta (that process could be automated too, through some bot...). Even if the meta idea is too complex, this proposed process should help to populate the Preferences/Gadgets with useful stuff. Right now an average user, like myself, has no idea why a useful gadget X is not included in preferences, or how to ask for it to be included in it. Finally, each gadget description page should contain a template with information on whether that gadget has been reviewed for inclusion in the Preferences/Gadget or not yet, with a corresponding category for approved, rejected, and pending gadgets. Within a few months, this would allow the community to review each and every user script and like for inclusion.
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: Piotrus (talk) 04:26, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

  • A single searchable and categorized library of gadgets and scripts would also be incredibly useful (like an app store, but for Wikimedia tools). Ɱ (talk) 05:48, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Piotrus: In my personal opinion, the proposal summary is unrelated to the problem description here? Adding more and more usually does not solve problems; instead it will create more maintenance issues and rotten code that someone needs to maintain (and often nobody volunteers). If your proposal has to do with discoverability of existing gadgets that sounds personally very valid to me, but the proposal summary doesn't express that. :) --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 13:50, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    It is not so much an issue of lack of maintainers for gadgets (well, kind of, but not the issue Piotrus is talking about here) as it is that the gadget experience is really bad for casual gadgeters. Once you have a script as a gadget, then you have to go through the rigmarole of getting interface administrator or you have to have someone update the script for you. That's not really great. (I know there are technical issues related to that like the perennial sane code review Phab issue that was supposed to be solved At Some Point by Gadgets X.0, but Gadgets X.0 is on hold right now and Gadgets 2.0 moreover seems to have gotten a bad case of requirements creep.) Also you have to sell a community on adding it as a gadget through pre-use as a script most-usually, which is itself a pain because now we're advocating for people to use a script that way. (I assume this is partially due to discoverability at least but also concern about maintenance also I suppose.) In general, I do agree that this issue is mostly social in nature.
    The one idea I've add regarding gadgets that I think would make them easier to find is to deprecate or change the scope of the Gadgets tab to "Miscellaneous" and to integrate the other gadgets into the other preference panes. This would be one tweak to discoverability that might be considered in the context of this request.
    Basic changes like "change the help link to a local link where we can point to other scripts collections" might be a good one too, as below with 1234. --Izno (talk) 18:28, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    I read "you have to go through the rigmarole of getting interface administrator or you have to have someone update the script for you" and audibly sighed. I should really apply for that user right one of these days. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 06:48, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Would a link to en:Wikipedia:User scripts/List from the preferences be good enough to fulfill this proposal? Script developers are quite often not administrators, and moving their code to MediaWiki namespace is not optimal if they work on their code a lot. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 17:20, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Most editors who manage a gadget maintain a separate beta script for testing anyway, so whether they work on the gadget a lot is kind of immaterial. --Izno (talk) 18:29, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    This is enwiki sloution only. And other 200+ projects will have no benefit.
    See also quite similar last year proposal. JAn Dudík (talk) 19:48, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Which? Changing the help link to point to a local page? I guess it is, but making that an editable message (is it maybe already?) means any wiki can change it. --Izno (talk) 19:56, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Link to local page shoul be fine, if this page have some content. User scripts/List (Q96781348) exists only on two wikis, some page about user scripts is on ~25 wikis. Maybe 30 biggest projects have some experenced users. And many of these scripts are wiki specific and does not works on other versions. Some works, but when imported from other wiki, cannot be localised. JAn Dudík (talk) 13:09, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    @1234qwer1234qwer4: While this does not address all the issues, it would help. Overall, I think the gadget page should be integrated with that list since they serve similar purpose for most end users (i.e. they are a list of helpful tools). --Piotrus (talk) 09:12, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • After discussing this proposal with the team, we feel there's not much Community Tech can do here. Longer-term, it seems Toolhub will be the formal answer to tool/gadget discoverability, which appears to be in development. In the meantime, nothing is stopping the community from making a centralized venue to share user scripts and gadgets. Thanks for participating in the survey, MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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