Talk:Toolhub

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2018
2021

Should 'repository' always be Git?

Currently, the docs say that the 'Repository' key is for the "Git repository where the code lives", but there are a bunch (mainly gadgets and user scripts, from what I can see, but also some Github org URls) that are not Git repos. Should the docs be updated, or are these tools using the wrong field for their source URLs?

Some examples:

• https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TMg/autoFormatter.js
• https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Serhio_Magpie/instantDiffs.js
• https://github.com/Wikidocumentaries

—Sam Wilson 13:42, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

You are correct that repository could be many things other than a git repository. In the API docs we say "A link to the repository where the tool code is hosted." instead of the "Git repository where the code lives" description in the toolinfo.json documentation. -- BDavis (WMF) (talk) 15:40, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

I made an attempt at more expansive description on-wiki. Samwilson, are there other places you have seen that we should fix as well? -- BDavis (WMF) (talk) 16:03, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

@BDavis (WMF): Brilliant, thanks! No, nowhere else that I've seen yet, but I'll keep an eye out. (I'm working on phab:T307174 so am poking around toolhub data a bit this week! It's very cool.) Sam Wilson 23:20, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Feedback about toolhub

I created manually an entry about the ISA Tool https://toolhub.wikimedia.org/tools/isa

To replace the automatic https://toolhub.wikimedia.org/tools/toolforge-isa (which is not satisfactory in my view)

Then I further tested the system when I created a new public list https://toolhub.wikimedia.org/lists/62

Overall, it was fairly fluid.

I met five issues though...

1 bug

When I tried to enter "Wikimedia Commons" or "Commons" or "commons" in the tool appropriate field
More information > For wikis... I kept getting the following return

Oops! An error occurred in for_wikis: Enter a valid value conforming to the JSON Schema.

So at the moment, I can not mention on which wiki the tool is working.
Either it is a general entry bug.
Or for whatever reason, the code for WikimediaCommons is none of the three listed above.
If this is so, most "regular" wikipedians will have no idea what should be the right code for Wikimedia Commons to enter (add Help ?)

How to add Hashtags ?

I wanted to add hashtags to help the user better find the tools. I could not find to which line I could add hastags. I have various options for "languages", "sponsors", "technology used", "wikimedia projects (bug)... but there is no line allowing to add more generic tags.

Lost edits when edit rejected

When I edited the tool entry and when I edited the list, I ran into situations where the plateform refused my edits (such as the one case mentionned above when I wanted to add "Wikimedia Commons"). Each time... all my edits were LOST. I had to enter all of it again. Very very annoying. Outcome is that we should save after each individual change to avoid losing time and repeating action

I thought adding tools to lists was quite awkard.

It is a bit confusing that the automatic system propose a list that provides first the "title" and second in parenthesis the "tool short name". In particular since in many cases, the "title" sucks a bit (I guess because it comes from the toolforge automated import system). For example, if I type "Liste" with the intent to find « Listeria", the dropdown menu will suggest

• enwiki-ahbura-anrfc-lister (ANRFC lister)
• mm-listeria (Listeria)

Which is largely counter intuitive when someone types "Liste"
And whilst it is confusing with only 2 entries, it becomes quite ugly with a display of 10 options.
Solution ---> it would be a good start to start by displaying in the dropdown the short name first (which users know well) and second the more complete title name (which they usually will not know)

Failing to add some tools to Lists

Last.... I tried many times to add this tool to my brand new List. https://toolhub.wikimedia.org/tools/xtools-ec
It short name is "XTools Edit Counter"
One would assume that starting to type "XTools" would do the trick. But no. When I type XTools, I get a list of 6 tools... none of which appear to be the one I am interested in (their short name and their title names do not fit). All of them are "XTools-something" or "XTools something". But "XTool Edit Counter" does not get proposed. I tried capital and non capital. No difference.
I then entered entirely "XTools Edit Counter" and entered.
I got a message telling me that "No Tool named XTools Edit Counter" can be found.
However, when I entered "Xtools-ec » (which is the tool title name), I finally got the tool proposed.
So it means the system recognising/searching the tool on the Create/Edit a List system, is not based on the Tool short name... but is based ONLY on the Title name. This is absolutely not user friendly, in particular since nearly all tools were automatically imported from Forge with weirdo titles...
This is a bit unexpected by the way, since the search from the main page is clearly digging in both Short Name and Title Name (I can find the tool by typing "XTools Edit Counter" from the main page search box. It simply does not work when adding tools to lists).

I hope this helps

Anthere (talk) 15:23, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

1 bug

When I tried to enter "Wikimedia Commons" or "Commons" or "commons" in the tool appropriate field...

This field expects hostnames like commons.wikimedia.org, en.wikipedia.org, etc as it's inputs. I'm wondering if you noticed the help text that appears below the field when you give it focus:

"A string or array of strings describing the wiki(s) this tool can be used on. Use hostnames such as `zh.wiktionary.org`. Use asterisks as wildcards. For example, `*.wikisource.org` means 'this tool works on all Wikisource wikis.' `*` means 'this works on all wikis, including Wikimedia wikis.'"

-- BDavis (WMF) (talk) 18:34, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

How to add Hashtags ?

I wanted to add hashtags to help the user better find the tools.

Currently there is a possibility to add "keywords" when using the API directly or submitting a toolinfo.json to be read by the web crawler. We have not exposed keywords in the UI primarily because this field is deprecated and will be removed in the future. These are being deprecated because in practice it turns out that everyone picks slightly different words which makes them not very useful for grouping or discovery.

We are working on T308030 which will eventually introduce a number of new fields designed for "tagging" things based on shared vocabularies which we hope will fix the problems of free form keywords.

-- BDavis (WMF) (talk) 18:36, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

Lost edits when edit rejected

When I edited the tool entry and when I edited the list, I ran into situations where the plateform refused my edits...

I thought all of our forms only cleared on success, but it sounds like that is not correct. This is very much worth filing a bug report about in our Phabricator project. It would be helpful to have details like which editing actions you were trying, the error messages you saw, and maybe even screenshots of the results to help us reproduce the issue and find a fix.

-- BDavis (WMF) (talk) 18:38, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

Clearance of forms (both tool and list) reported here : https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T308282 Anthere (talk) 19:02, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

I thought adding tools to lists was quite awkard.

It is a bit confusing that the automatic system propose a list that provides first the "title" and second in parenthesis the "tool short name".

We have a recent change to this display behavior based on similar feedback from Huskey. That change is deployed to https://toolhub-demo.wmcloud.org/ but not yet deployed to the production server. Would you mind taking a look at the demo server and seeing if you like the new behavior better?

-- BDavis (WMF) (talk) 18:41, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

Failing to add some tools to Lists

I tried many times to add this tool to my brand new List. https://toolhub.wikimedia.org/tools/xtools-ec

Interesting. I expected the search to be the same in adding to the lists and searching from the main screen, but I can recreate exactly what you describe. I think the difference is not actually in the backend search, but in how searching works while in the form widget used to add tools to the list. I created T308277 to track this bug.

-- BDavis (WMF) (talk) 18:43, 12 May 2022 (UTC)