Talk:Gather

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Pau's comments
From : 21:06:31 I think Pau raised some good issues about the collections/page list feature on the mailing list today. 21:11:51 pau said, eg: "I was wondering if collections would work cross-language (that is, based on Wikidata IDs). That would allow people to consume lists in different languages regardless of the language of the creator of those lists and would simplify the life of users participating in multiple wikipedias. On the other hand it would require to deal with articles missing in the local language (e.g., fallback to another language? ask users to translate i 21:32:56 pau actually made a suggestion of that form as well: 21:33:02 Considering that articles are living entities, it would be interesting to surface some updates about the content included in a collection. This is something that already happens in the watchlist, but I was thinking about something more focused on readers where I could view that an article was added to a list on interesting architects, or some piece of information was added there.

Can we have a copy of this conversation/of Pau's email? --Nemo 11:02, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I just sent a copy over. It's essentially what cscott pasted verbatim. Jkatz (WMF) (talk) 20:53, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Schema
In the draft schema, I only see things that an on-wiki list page can already do, except the "private" flag which you don't plan to use by default. If you don't need other data, I suggest to keep using on-wiki pages, to that you'll be compatible with Extension:Collection. If you need other stuff which can't be added there, please point it out and at any rate use another name for this thingy. --Nemo 11:10, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I believe we are prototyping this on wiki pages, but in the form of a json blob. Another name has been chosen, at least for the project: Gather. We might still call the feature Collections, since 99.9% of readers are not aware of the extension named collections. Jkatz (WMF) (talk) 20:53, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Watchlist wishlist
As per the discussion on Wikimedia-L this week, I'd like to know if this project is going to help fix some of the longstanding requests for watchlists (see Watchlist wishlist). It seems that many of the things that are asked for over there are related to what you're doing here. Personally - I would REALLY like to be able to group my watchlist so I can collect different kinds of articles that I watch into "folders" for easier management. Equally, I would like to be able to follow someone else's watchlist folder (if they chose to make it public). This seems to be a similar functionality to what you're looking at doing here, with the difference being that I'm thinking about it from an editor's needs in mind, while this project (as currently written) seems to be focused only on readers.

On a related note, can you tell me how the Gather extension, differs from the collecting tools in the Education extension, the Book extension, and the core feature of categories? This might be useful to add to some kind of FAQ. Wittylama (talk) 18:39, 4 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi Wittylama. To your first point/concern, you are right.  This should do a lot of what you are looking for, but is aimed more towards readers. The current idea is that you will have a watchlist, which is private, has recent changes, email notifications and other features.  You can also have other lists, which are lists of articles with names, but do not have these editor-oriented features. To the extent that you would like more watchlists in order to bookmark articles, collect articles you have started,written, etc, this will help you.  To the extent that you want to track recent changes, it will not.  To the specific issue of multiple 'watchlists' with that specific functionality, I recommend supporting this proposed approach to this rfc.


 * To your second question, we have examined all of these and decided against building new functionality into these existing features for now. One big reason for this is that we want to experiment with different features and experiences as quickly as possible--this is facilitated by building something light-weight from scratch as opposed to modifying something that already exists and which people rely on on a daily basis.  Regarding functionality and how it differs, it is most closely aligned with user-moderated books. One reason we are not simply porting that to mobile is to escape the mental model of a "book" and the limitations that imposes on the concept of collections.  For one thing, it hinders people from creating lists like "Top 10 most influential philosophers" or "The pages I contributed to and am most proud of".  All of the other features you mention are comprehensively driven by the community.  Because each list is not exhaustive, there is a possibility of using popular lists to promote meaningful content.  It's nice to know the full list of statisticians is there, but I might want to find a subset that have been picked out by a human for one reason or another.  This is truly for different users, for a different use cases, and we are building it as an experiement, so we have different technical needs. Does that answer your questions, create new ones?  Let me know. Jkatz (WMF) (talk) 20:42, 4 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the quick reply Jkatz (WMF). I feel similarly uneasy as others on this talkpage about the "starting from scratch" approach that's being taken with Gather, this may make it easier for you to iterate, but it also means that the WMF is increasing the number of somewhat-working extensions that eventually get abandoned when a new shiny thing comes along to play with... I'll take 1 fully functioning extension over 5 "experimental" extensions any day. I also wish to express my dismay that Yet Another Feature That Appeared Out Of Nowhere™ is being prioritised over features/improvements that have been requested frequently over a long period. That doesn't mean that Gather is a bad idea - but that the WMF only ever appears to work on "new" ideas that have originated "in house" rather than taking suggestions from the community on what should receive [some] prioritisation for new features.


 * To your first answer - From an editor's perspective, I do think the ability to create a personalised list (e.g. "articles I want to work on", "articles I wrote) that can be shard - or even better, embedded - would be quite fun. Many (most?) experienced wikipedians have lists of article titles on their userpage that they wish to highlight. Equally many wiki-projects have lists of articles they wish to give attention to (as good, or also bad, quality). This tool could facilitate that kind of sharing. However, the fact that this tool doesn't intend to have any editor-specific features (like the watchlist does) reduces the functionality to merely'' sharing/highlighting [not that sharing is bad, just limited]. As for the phabricator and RfC links you gave me - as a non-technical user I have no idea what they mean.


 * To your second answer what you're describing sounds exactly like what the Special:Book tool does, just for mobile. A person manually selects a series of articles, as many as they want, puts them in a sequence they like, gives the collection a name, and presses save. English Wikipedia already has over 26 thousand user-created collections like this (obviously many of them would be people 'testing' the book tool etc. but the system works. Other than you're working for mobile only, what difference would there be in Gather from me creating a Book in that system and calling it "Top 10 most influential philosophers" or "The pages I contributed to and am most proud of" (your examples)? Wittylama (talk) 17:02, 5 February 2015 (UTC)


 * These are very legitimate concerns, and if I were you I would probably be asking the exact same questions.
 * On experimenting with new rather than fixing old. This is a balance every organization/movement has to achieve.  I agree with you that the ground is littered with abandoned projects and as an organization, we are trying to get more serious about cleanup.  If and when we decide that Gather is a winning feature, we will revisit how to best fold it in to existing features or fold existing features into it.  Since we live on the internet and the paradigm is shifting constantly, I believe it is not enough to fix existing projects and maintain status quo--we always have to be experimenting with new features and new directions.  Not every team, all the time, but that is what my team is tasked with right now.
 * On building products that come from in-house rather than only building what editors ask for. This is also a balance.  Again, most of our engineers are working on editing tools and improving our infrastructure.  But the majority of our users (readers), the people whom all of us ultimately serve also have needs and these needs are not often voiced.  So while some teams work on editing features and infrastructure, my team is experimenting for readers.
 * As far as the Book tool goes, while you are correct that it does technically most of what we are looking for, it is built with a different use case in mind and this has technical implications. I spoke to one of the current maintainers of that code, C.Scott, and he thought it would be a mistake.  Another employee, when asked if he thought the extension should be adapted for something similar said "only given Extension:Collections a cursory thought, it's pretty funky, JS-based, and geared towards pediapress rendering. ".  Gotta run.  Thanks and please keep questioning!  Jkatz (WMF) (talk) 17:48, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

STOP NOW
In case it's not clear, let's try a concise header. This proposal is nowhere near being designed, let alone implemented or deployed. 187716 is ridiculous. --Nemo 21:21, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi Nemo. It sounds like you are frustrated.  I am sorry. Understanding that this is intended to be a prototype for rapid testing and iteration, can you provide some specific areas where you feel the design is lacking for the stage we are in? In doing so, please refrain from unhelpful insults like 'ridiculous'  (perhaps you meant 'grossly insufficient')--my team is working hard and in good faith.  Jkatz (WMF) (talk) 22:59, 4 February 2015 (UTC)