Wikinews:Water cooler/technical/archives/2013/March

Turning off Reader Feedback

Hey all :).

So, Wikinews currently uses the "Reader Feedback" extension - although I'm not sure how you've integrated it - which, as you will have noticed, is pretty outdated. To try and cut down the sheer number of extensions we have deployed and the amount of code we have to maintain, we're essentially marking ReaderFeedback as 'too out of date' and withdrawing it from Wikimedia wikis. For those of you who use the tool, I apologise, but it's currently ~3 versions out of date and we can't maintain support for things indefinitely.

What I can offer, if you guys are interested, is Version 5 of the software. This is a substantial departure from Version 2 in a couple of ways; first, it asks readers to submit comments, not just ratings - the idea is that they can produce tangible suggestions on how to improve articles. Second, after readers have provided comments it presents them with a 'call to action' that invites them to edit. If you want to try the tool out, we have a testing page up with the latest prototype here. Any and all feedback on if this tool is a good idea for this project or not is welcomed :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:12, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the removal of ReaderFeedback, I'm okay with this. I'm not sure we are getting much benefit from the ReaderFeedback extension, so it's probably sensible to turn it off.

As for turning on AFT5, I'm not sure that's a good idea. The problem is that it's designed around the assumption that the reader is going to be able to help improve the article. That works for Wikipedia, but on Wikinews, the point at which most readers are reading it, the article is published and beyond clarifications and typo fixing, we don't really want them "improving" the article but instead creating their own articles. —Tom Morris (talk) 17:53, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree; let it drop. It'd be nasty to invite people to edit pages they can't edit, and from what I've heard, the sort of tangible suggestions one gets tend not to be useful suggestions. --Pi zero (talk) 19:15, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

It can provide some benefit on Wikipedia, but as you frequently point out, the model of Wikinews is very different than the Wikipedia model. —Tom Morris (talk) 21:20, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I too would support dropping it. We have a comments page that is much better integrated, and one some level might actually be a better model, than the current reader feedback tool for Wikipedia for audience engagement. Reader Feedback tool serves no useful purpose here. --LauraHale (talk) 09:09, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Account creation

If I create an account, will it be only for this Wikinews, or will it be one of those Wikimedia-wide accounts? Is there any way to disable it from creating an account like that, and have it be just for Wikinews, or this specific language Wikinews? Just Zis Guy You Know 08:11, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Afaik, a newly created account is unified by default, these days.

Why would you want to create an account on Wikinews only? --Pi zero (talk) 18:49, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Because it’s annoying as fuck to be logged in to one or more other Wikimedia projects, working on completely unrelated items, and then have suddenly have the edits that you were working on under long-established accounts assigned to this new name on the old project, or have to separately relog in on every single one (and log out of your new account, then log back into it if you want to continue after you're done with the other edits) every time you happen to have several tabs open (I’m sure I’m the only one that works like this).

Hate it, hate it, hate it. E Double 19:31, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't follow what you mean.

Keep in mind, for perspective, that on Wikinews we're very sensitive to anything at all like sockpuppetry. Individual identity is central to the way we do things here, so we have zero tolerance for those who don't play straight with us. Some of us don't publicly connect our on-wiki identity with our real-world identity, but we're very careful to have just one on-wiki identity each, and very careful about COI. --Pi zero (talk) 20:19, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

You have one account for Wikinews. But there’s nothing unseemly about being User:Billy-bob on Wikipedia, User:Billy-joe on Commons and Growphilous P. Fremschlowder III on Wikinews.

What if you’re a Chinese Wikipedian, and your name on Chinese Wikipedia is 菲 and on English Wikipedia is Faye; you don’t necessarily want the same name for both, even if it’s available on the other. Even assuming users can read the same alphabet, maybe you're Billy on en: and Guillaume on fr: and like using the name people call you in that language. If, then, you go to Wikinews and create a third account that inhibits use of all others, it’s really, really tedious. Back in Black 20:56, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

If you have multiple accounts and are using one of them on Wikinews, use {{doppelganger}} on the user pages of the ones that aren't your primary account here. --Pi zero (talk) 21:05, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

One cannot log into Wikinews with e.g. a Wikiquote or Commons account Nosehairs the Friendly Shellfish 04:28, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

One can with a unified account, though. --Pi zero (talk) 04:46, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

User CSS help request

Hi. Could someone help me fix my CSS to hide {{Social bookmarks}} (it's not currently working) in the same way that I've managed to get my Commons CSS to block commons:Template:Share? Thanks! It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 14:44, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

• I'm curious. Why do you want to hide the social bookmarks template?
• The difficulty appears to be in the first part of your CSS code, the "selector" which says which elements are to be hidden. For the Commons CSS that works, the selector is

div.template_share

That selector says, select all <div> elements that belong to class "template_share". The reason it works is that the template creates a <div> element that does in fact belong to class "template_share". If you look at the source code of that template, you'll see where the html markup explicitly does this.

However, the Wikinews template doesn't create an element with a unique class that could be used this way. It does, however, create an element with id "social_bookmarks". The selector for that would (I think) be

#social_bookmarks

--Pi zero (talk) 16:44, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, it worked, thanks! I want to do it because I don't like those share-on-site-x link things. Now, how would I hide the social media buttons on {{Main headlines}}? Again, I've tried one way on my CSS but it hasn't worked. Thanks again. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 19:20, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Changing article titles

Can someone please enlighten me on how I go about changing the title of my article? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Uow.k (talk • contribs) 01:08, 28 March 2013

Until your account is four days old, you'll have to ask someone to please do it for you. I think it's four days. After that, your account is "autoconfirmed", and there will be... iirc... a pulldown menu toward the right side of the top of the page window. --Pi zero (talk) 01:16, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah. Across the right side of the top of the window, it says read, edit, view history, then there's a star (that's for toggling whether the page is on your watchlist), and then there's (once you're autoconfirmed) a pulldown menu whose only option is "move". --Pi zero (talk) 01:19, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to close all language Wikinews

Please see Wikinews:Water_cooler/policy#Proposal_to_close_all_language_Wikinews. -- Cirt (talk) 01:12, 29 March 2013 (UTC)