Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Archive/Need for a dev, specialized on wikisource interface... at least part time

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Need for a dev, specialized on wikisource interface... at least part time

NoN Does not require engineering resources

  • Problem: many recent evolutions are incomptatible with wikisource interface, or broke the "proofreadpage" tools... Problem is that, even on big ws projects, there is generally only 1 technical volunteer admin, part time, with less and less free time (I think of @Tpt (fr) ou @Samwilson (en) or @Alex Brollo (it)) - and it is very difficult to have problems fixed, since the specific wikisource structure is difficult to comprehend.
    • examples are VisualEditor (still completely breaking Proofreadpage), Zoom recent changes, Syntax colorisation - that completely inhibits scripts that we can't do without..., recent break of Hocr (shared script), etc.
  • Who would benefit: All wikisource communities.
  • Proposed solution: Have a specialized dev', devoted (part time) to specific wikisource problems, to avoid the total breakdown of wikisource tools...
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets: T224355,
  • Proposer: Hsarrazin (talk) 19:02, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

  • Hello and thanks for taking the time to write this proposal. We reviewed this proposal as a team and have determined that this is out of scope for our team because it does not ask for specific tool changes and asks for people resources. While we agree sincerely that wikisource should be better resourced, we have to archive due to the rules of what qualifies as a proposal. Thanks again! Regards, NRodriguez (WMF) (talk) 00:45, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • This doesn't really express a specific wish of a problem or improvement to make very well/at all. What is most problematic right now? --Izno (talk) 02:41, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The most problematic is that, often, the main tools of Wikisource (e.g. Proofreadpage) are modified without warning our interface admins, except via the tech news, which contains very brief and cryptic summaries of the modifications — remind that our interface admins are not coding experts! Moreover, even when these modifications succeed in solving some issue, they also often have "side effects" that developers have not foreseen, but that everyday contributors would have seen. For example, when the OCR tool was implemented on Wikisource (which is a great improvement, asked here in 2020, and I thank the Community Tech for that!), its button partly hid the scan in edition mode; another example, the zoom command have been modified recently, but it triggers bad highlighting in the scan; etc. etc. To avoid that, we would like our interface administrators to be informed with human-readable summaries when important modifications are made, and, before implementing them, our community to be invited to participate to the tests. This could be made by a specialised developer, which has thorough knowledge of Wikisource functioning. This proposal is relevant here, because the biggest modifications are often made to solve a problem raised during a Wishlist Survey (cf. the precited example of OCR tool). — ElioPrrl (talk) 13:40, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Yeah, this is still out of scope for CommTech then. Izno (talk) 19:27, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I guess you’re right but what solution do you propose when a page no more behaved as it used to. There is no revert button to regain the features we’ve lost last december or when something like Code Mirror is deployed and years after each time a newcomer asks for help to solve a sudden problem, the first thing to check is if he activated the Syntax colorisation or when an api like #wpTextbox1 is not adapted to the Page Namespace and breaks an important tool. Protection of the Wikisource environment may be out of scope but, in a user perspective, it will remain a priority. --Denis Gagne52 (talk) 18:31, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I totally agree with what ElioPrrl and -Denis Gagne52 said. --Zyephyrus (talk) 15:34, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

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