MediaWiki Stakeholders' Group/TechConf Input/Future

Collaborative editing
Collaborative editing is the feature that is missing from MediaWiki.

A lot of effort has been put into the Visual Editor so it opens up MediaWiki's power to more people. The missing feature, now, is collaborative editing. With the common use of tools like Google Docs or similar tools, the absence of collaborative editing in a tool whose whole purpose is to collaboratively record and refine knowledge is unacceptable.

☠ MarkAHershberger ☢ (talk) ☣ 19:58, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Endorsements

 * ☠ MarkAHershberger ☢ (talk) ☣ 19:58, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
 * PhotographerTom (talk) 01:44, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
 * --Krabina (talk) 11:47, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Susannaanas (talk) 08:58, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
 * RichardHeigl (talk) 12:11, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:38, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Nischayn22 (talk) 08:36, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * --Felipe (talk) 07:34, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
 * 11-G3n (talk) 11:37, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
 * cscott (talk) 20:54, 16 August 2018 (UTC)
 * MarcvHoof (talk) 14:07, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Tenbergen (talk) 16:04, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Tfellows (talk) 19:06, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Comments
True collaborative editing would be great as long as it doesn't come with additional requirements that make mediawiki less possible to run in a shared hosting environment. Alternatively, even if there were just much more noisy warnings if a page is currently being edited by someone else, that would be great. I get that we would not want someone to be able to block edits to a page by forever remaining in edit mode, and there may be other malicious ways in which a feature that actually blocks concurrent edit attempts could go wrong. But it would be nice if I had a big red message if I tried to edit something someone else currently is attempting to edit. Maybe this is more of an issue in an enterprise setting, but I have had users complain bitterly when their items get overwritten by someone who is editing at the same time. Tenbergen (talk) 16:17, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Extension Package Manager
I consider a package manager for extensions to be a big need to easily installing and updating them. Especially now with the move to extension registration it would make the process of making this sort of utility easier. I am against using Composer due to the numerous bugs and issues that it has.

Alexia E. Smith (talk) 22:27, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Endorsements

 * Alexia E. Smith (talk) 22:27, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Egel (talk) 07:34, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
 * --Krabina (talk) 12:05, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Sam Wilson 01:35, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Econterms (talk) 00:06, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:38, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Nischayn22 (talk) 08:37, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Tenbergen (talk) 16:04, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Tfellows (talk) 19:06, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Comments

 * What bugs are there with using Composer to install extensions? (I mean, for those extensions that support it; obviously most do not.) Sam Wilson 01:35, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
 * 1.) Both the Composer and Packagist sites set precedence on IPv6 which means if your corporate network or ISP have bad/broken IPv6 routing it requires manual workarounds to get past. 2.) Attempting to "composer update" only a single package will many times end up installing or updating unrelated packages.  3.) When composer runs into a minimum stability conflict it spews out useless errors that make debugging the issue incredibly difficult.  4.) MediaWiki ships with its own composer.json which will unintentionally overwrite local changes when updating MediaWiki.  Alexia E. Smith (talk) 19:44, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I am using mediawiki on shared hosting. Having to get additional tools working means that some shared hosting options won't be able to handle this. I think this should be an integrated tool. Tenbergen (talk) 16:06, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Visual diffs
This would be a WYSIWYG-style display of a page diff. I'm aware that a visual diffs solution already exists, but from what I understand it's only available as a preview option within VisualEditor. It would be great to have it available in the standard page history view, even if it required VisualEditor to be installed. I've heard this feature requested by a few different MediaWiki admins.

Yaron Koren (talk) 03:09, 6 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Update: as someone notes below, the "VisualEditor diffs" solution can also work for regular history page diffs, and is already a beta feature on Wikimedia wikis (including this one). The documentation doesn't say that at all, as far as I can tell... anyway, I'm very glad to hear that this feature is getting implemented. Yaron Koren (talk) 13:38, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Endorsements

 * Yaron Koren (talk) 03:09, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Bryandamon (talk) 05:31, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:38, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Nischayn22 (talk) 08:37, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * 11-G3n (talk) 11:38, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Comments

 * On Wikimedia wikis as Beta Feature. --wargo (talk) 06:56, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Boilerplate templates in VisualEditor
Would it be possible to choose from a number of Boilerplate templates when creating new pages when in VisualEditor? It is very helpful as a writer to be able to start with something rather than a blank page. I know the option is available in Enhanced editor through Extension:MultiBoilerplate. Ideally the editor could customize which templates he would have as options to not make the drop down list too long.

PhotographerTom (talk) 21:45, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Endorsements

 * PhotographerTom (talk) 21:45, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:38, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Comments
Indeed, it could be very helpful and supportive for creation if the VisualEditor would be accompanied with a user friendly template choice. Either a full template or with partial template elements which can be dragged, adapted and dropped in place. MarcvHoof (talk)

Boilerplate templates would be nice in the regular editor, even, not just the visual editor. Tenbergen (talk) 16:07, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Easier creation and editing of ImageMaps
Using the VisualEditor in enterprise wikis lowers the barrier to entry and allows much greater adoption within the company, yet there are still some features that are difficult including the ImageMap extension. Allowing users to create and edit ImageMaps directly from the VisualEditor would be a welcomed feature. Additionally, it would be nice to figure out a solution for the "Mystery meat navigation", perhaps a toggle to display the clickable areas. The following websites can be used to create ImageMaps and might be used as a reference:
 * http://maschek.hu/imagemap/imgmap/
 * https://www.image-map.net/
 * http://www.image-maps.com/

Bryandamon (talk) 19:41, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Endorsements

 * Bryandamon (talk) 19:41, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:38, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Job queue reports and management
There is mention of the job queue, above. Using extension Cargo I often launch jobs, e.g. to create an underlying table or a mass-search-and-replace-of-text, and it can take a long time to run (weeks, mysteriously) and some jobs seem not to finish. So I would like to get a report that lists jobs, especially those a user explicitly started, when they started, and when they finished. This might be a naive request. I do not know what information is already in the MediaWiki system about them. Some new calling back-and-forth may be necessary to give any more detailed update than that. -- Econterms (talk) 00:17, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Endorsements

 * Econterms (talk) 00:17, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:39, 14 August 2018 (UTC)