Talk:Tech/News/2014/22

"Items of little importance"

@Odder: This is the second time I've added a change to the Tech News because it will break things for people if they don't fix their stuff that uses it, and the second time you've removed it because you don't think people will be interested. If anyone complains to me that they didn't get notified, I'll point them at you. Anomie (talk) 13:30, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

This is a culture of accountability! If you mean the API change, I believe that's what mediawiki-api-announce is for. Any reason to believe the established API communication process is not working? If yes, have you opened a discussion on it? Have you tried mwgrep redirect or something? --Nemo 13:42, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

And it was announced on mediawiki-api-announce. But not everyone is subscribed to that list, even though it's recommended for anyone using the API. In particular, I suspect gadget and user script authors probably never bother to subscribe. And a change like this is something where IMO it's best to make sure the word gets out. Anomie (talk) 13:32, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi @Anomie! I understand that you might feel a little irritated to see me remove an item that you added — especially since I also removed a message you wrote for Tech/News/2014/07 earlier this year — and I'm sorry for that.

Tech News is targeted at a specific audience, ie. at the average Wikimedia contributor, which means that we often do not feature many important technical changes that are likely to affect only a very small subset of Wikimedia editors, for instance bot owners. The API change, while important for people who use the API or clients that make use of it, is just a side issue for the audience we are trying to reach with this publication (and is perhaps too technical to understand for many of them). That said, I'd like to make it clear that each and every contribution to Tech News is warmly welcome and appreciated and that I will be very happy to see you involved in the future. odder (talk) 18:49, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

on-topic (appeal) - please explain better	!
I disagree Odder, that API is not just for Bot, it is used in Wikipages themselves, that use {{FULLURL:pagename|action=edit&redirect=...}} to build specific page editing templates (for example to create new sections in a talk page, or to prepend and append some wikicode such as formattin wiki code or template transclusion within the edit form) !!! And notably this API change affects most of these links that don't have one the specified optional parameters along with "action=edit".... "action=edit" is a very basic API used in lots of pages, even if ths is through some templates (but there are lots of templates using this type of internal wikilinks that can only be safely written with query parameters by using the FULLURL parser function. Bots are NEVER using the the "action=edit" API !!! Only wikis are using this API themselves within clickable links. This action)edit is so ,uch i,portant that it is documented for all wikimedia editors. This API is in fact used by all human Wikimedia users editing pages... except bots that use something else to submit their pages more directly without requesting an edit form !!!! Why is this change important: because this affects talk pages assoxiated to redirected pages (e.g. mutliple subpages such as translations pointing to a common talk page or talks pages associate to an data table editale separately in a subpage from the main page transcluding it but that has been protected or would be too complex or too large to edit with that extra data table; this also affects pages like votes, discussions about new proposals, requests for assistance. community portals, competitions, content projects on a complex topic requiring the reorganisation of a specific set of pages, working plans, scheduling and sharing TODO lists.) Many of these pages are small projects (compared to the ikis hosting them) that don't have lot of technicla people. Most of tem do not use any bot but need a way to create some edit links for specific sections of pages with some minimal common markup to ease their most repetitive task with less work. And users submitting these changes are not all tech-savvy (they won't read the API wiki, most of them don't know what is a bot) verdy_p (talk) 07:05, 25 May 2014 (UTC) @Verdy p: You're confusing index.php's action=edit with the API's action=edit. index.php's action=edit doesn't even recognize a "redirect" parameter. Anomie (talk) 13:32, 27 May 2014 (UTC) I'm not off-topic, or you are creating the confusion yourself by not explicitly explaining the difference between "action=edit" and "action=edit" !!! There's no need to hide this in a collapsible box when you have not explained what you want and you are confusing things much more... Clearly I don't understand your issue Anomie; links with "action=edit" are definitely not used by bots but only by users! verdy_p (talk) 14:57, 27 May 2014 (UTC) You're missing the point; they're not referring to parameters of index.php, but of api.php. See mw:API:Edit#Editing_pages. Bots and gadgets might use this, but human users would not. PiRSquared17 (talk) 14:59, 27 May 2014 (UTC) Please review the edit history, Verdy p. I did not say you were off-topic or hide your post. That was someone else. I merely pointed out that a discussion about the API's action=edit should not be confused with index.php's action=edit. Anomie (talk) 13:52, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

@Odder: I find it odd that "Tech News" isn't intended to tell people about technical changes that will break things. Anomie (talk) 13:32, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Anomie: "Tech News" is intended to tell Wikimedians about technical changes that are likely to affect them. That has always been the scope of this newsletter; it is a limited scope, but in order for Tech News to remain readable and useful for its target audience, editorial choices need to be made. Tech News unfortunately can't be the magic answer to the "I wasn't notified" problem for editors, developers, bot owners, script authors, etc. all at once; It only attempts to solve this problem for regular Wikimedians, because they're usually the ones who are disconnected the most from the development process.

With that in mind, and more generally speaking, it doesn't mean that we can't improve communication channels for announcements like this API change. For example, there are VisualEditor and Wikidata newsletters for users specifically interested in these topics, and who want more information on these topics that what Tech News sometimes provides. If the mediawiki-api-announce isn't sufficient to reach power editors, template and script authors, bot owners, etc., I could imagine a newsletter going into more details than Tech News can when it comes to changes to parser functions, magic words, Lua functions, API changes, etc.

Eventually, we'll probably want to consolidate these newsletters in some way; not their content, but maybe their subscription system, so it's easier to subscribe to topics you actually care about without getting too much spam. But that'll take some time.

Hope that helps; guillom 14:11, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

It doesn't really help. All these newsletters require people to subscribe in order to see stuff. This Tech News is pushed out to Village Pumps. Anomie (talk) 13:53, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

If you want to use MassMessage to distribute copies of mediawiki-api-announce messages, it will be very easy for you to get the necessary permissions. Again, it's the API maintainer's job to figure out API changes communication. :) --Nemo 14:27, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Anomie: Tech News isn't pushed out to Village Pumps; it's only delivered to people who have subscribed to it, just like any other newsletter. A few wikis have chosen to subscribe community pages to Tech News, but that was opt-in; most Tech News subscribers are individuals. Those wikis could just as easily choose to subscribe to a tech newsletter for power users / tech-savvy Lua scripts maintainers / bot owners, etc. to be delivered on [[Talk:WikiProject JavaScript]] or similar pages. guillom 18:14, 28 May 2014 (UTC)