User:Pythoncoder/sandbox

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Canned decline rationale for WP:SOLUTIONS

This article contains a lot of uses of what are either chemistry terms or marketing buzzwords, and Wikipedia only likes to see the first one in articles.

This article contains a few uses of what are either chemistry terms or marketing buzzwords, and Wikipedia only likes to see the first one in articles.

Stuff the Wikimedia Foundation has screwed up

Maybe I'll develop this into a Signpost op-ed or something. 'Til then I'll leave it here.

2017 Wikitext editor: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_138#Proposal_to_submit_blockers_on_replacing_our_wikitext_editor
ACTRIAL (2011): This started in 2011 with a proposal to limit article creation to autoconfirmed users. The result of this was that this should be done on a trial basis, with a subsequent discussion setting the trial length at six months. In 2011, implementation of the trial was blocked by the WMF. 6 years later, in July 2017, they reconsidered and agreed to implement the trial. An RfC started in March 2018 determined that this requirement should be implemented permanently. Since this time, the speedy deletion rate of new pages has decreased dramatically, without a proportional increase in poor quality Articles for Creation drafts. Conclusion: Sometimes you don't know how something will go until you try it. Other times, it's obvious from the start.
Article Feedback Tool (2011): Allowed readers to give feedback on articles; included checkboxes to tick if you were an expert, as well as if you wanted to sign up for an account. Users were divided as to its effectiveness. It was disabled in 2013 after an RfC. Conclusion: This one wasn't as much of a screw-up as some other stuff on this list, but it nevertheless shows that consultation with the community at every step of the way is important.
Fundraising messages: Messages displayed on fundraising banners have been criticized by Wikipedians for suggesting the WMF has a more urgent need for funds that it really does. Conclusion: Transparency and honesty are key if you don't want to face the wrath of the Wikipedia community.
Liquid Threads (2006): A predecessor of Flow (see below). It had even more problems than its successor and never went anywhere. Conclusion: Wikipedia is not a forum.
Knowledge Engine (Wikimedia Foundation) (2015): A Wikipedia-based search engine that the WMF received a grant to develop. Received criticism because of the lack of community input on the project. Conclusion: Wikipedia is not a search engine.
Media Viewer
Mood Bar (2011): An addition to the interface that allowed users to say how editing Wikipedia made them feel (happy, sad, or neutral) and why. It didn't really change anything in terms of user experience, and was deactivated in 2017. Conclusion: ☹️
Structured Discussions (Flow): Makes talk pages more forum-like. Deployed to EnWP, then disabled at the community's request. Despite accusations of voter canvassing on the WMF's survey, wikitext talk pages still proved to be more popular. Conclusion: Wikipedia is still not a forum.
VisualEditor: A What You See Is What You Get-style editor for pages developed by the WMF. Initially, it was criticized by some users for being buggy and having an overly aggressive rollout. These problems led to 2 large RfCs. The first one focused mainly on principles. Its main conclusions were as follows:

VisualEditor is a good idea in theory, but, as currently deployed, it is not a useful feature.
Buggy software should not become the default until it reaches a certain level of development.
VisualEditor should have a way to be turned off fully, easily, and without continuing to leech resources.

The second one focused on specifics of deployment on EnWP. The main conclusions were as follows:

When a new account is created, the preference should be set to disable VE ("opt-in").
When an editor is editing anonymously, VE should not be presented by default. There should be a link to switch between the two when editing.
Editors should make the explicit choice to become beta testers, therefore the preference state for existing accounts should be changed.
VE should support basic wiki markup shortcuts, like '''bold'''.
VE should be labelled as "beta" software.

While this RfC was going on, the WMF made several improvements to the editor, as well as implementing some community requests, such as the "beta" label, but not others. Ultimately, the WMF declined to make VE an opt-in system, citing the negative effect on the beta testing. While their efforts at compromise are admirable, they still did not follow the consensus as determined by the RfC. This forced admins to take matters into their own hands, editing the sitewide common.js page to disable the VisualEditor by default. After this, the WMF relented and turned off VE the way they did on the German and Dutch Wikipedias.

"~~Wakanda~~ Wikipedia forever": After the WMF got bored of using personal appeals from Jimbo Wales for fundraising, they decided to use the new slogan of "Wikipedia forever". Look, Black Panther was a great movie, but "X forever" only works for Wakanda. Anything else, it just sounds silly. Conclusion: Come on, you can come up with better fundraising slogans than this.