User talk:Fabrice Florin (WMF)

Article_feedback/status
Moin Fabrice, thank you for the updat. May I suggest that you address the oversight and legal issues raised in relation to the planned deployment on de.wp before you roll it out on the project. Your contribution from February 21 does not elaborate the point sufficienty - as both the reply to it on the feedback page (where I also summed up a point I came across off wiki) and the state of the Germans Adminnotice discussion since then indicate. Thanks & best regards, --Jan eissfeldt (talk) 16:49, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Testing Echo
Kudos to Fabrice Florin, User:Kaldari, User:Bsitu, User:Lwelling, User:vibhabamba, User:Okeyes_(WMF) and User:DarTar for all your fine work on Echo! Fabrice Florin

Also, tip of the hat to fictional user User:Johnny Demo for helping us demo this tool ;o)

Fabrice Florin (talk) 21:27, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

International projects
Hello, I read you plan to "Deploy Echo on international projects this summer".[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3ANotifications&diff=559464858&oldid=559349702] I often read you saying "international projects" or even "foreign projects", but I don't find this term in our glossaries; it would be helpful if you defined it, or chose another term, because I have absolutely 0.0 idea what it means. Cheers, Nemo 09:27, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Nemo! I really appreciate your bringing this up. Sorry if I'm using the wrong terms. What I meant to say was 'Wikipedia projects that use languages other than English' -- such as the French or German Wikipedias. What would be a good term to use to describe these projects, in your opinion? Thanks again for helping me with this, I'm still getting up to speed on the many Wikipedia practices and policies ... : ) Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 17:22, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi, usually we talk either of "language editions" of a project (e.g. en.wiki) or of "multilingual projects" (e.g. Commons, Meta; sometimes also "global"); "international" is not used because most of our projects are, ideally all of them.
 * "Wikipedia projects that use languages other than English" are not a thing, so they'd just be "non-English Wikipedias" or "[all/whole] Wikipedia". Other examples: "All non-Wikipedia sites", "non-English projects" (everything but en.wiki, en.quote, en.wikt, en.*) etc. --Nemo 18:35, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Nemo! I will use the terms you propose above going forward: it was really helpful to get your clarifications on the differences between "language editions", "multilingual projects" or "non-English Wikipedias", for example. Much appreciated! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 19:11, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

svwiki confirmed(?) för Echo
Hello! You changed the status for swedish Wikipedia to confirmed for the Echo release at August 20. How did you come to that concusion? At the village pump the discussion have not yet led to a result. Regards /Rrohdin (talk) 18:57, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

AFT5 for en:Wikivoyage
Hi Fabrice, To what extent can AFT5 be customized for a project such as Wikivoyage? Pbsouthwood (talk) 10:14, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi, Pbsouthwood, it should be fairly easy to set up Article Feedback v5 in its current form on Wikivoyage -- and we'd be happy to install this experimental tool for you, if you like. Before we do, check out this release plan for more info on what's involved. As for custom features, we can't develop them for you because we've moved on to other projects. But if you have a good developer that's familiar with MediaWiki, it should be possible to customize the tool. If you can give us an idea of what you have in mind, developer Matthias Mullie and I can give you a sense of what it would take. Cheers! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 22:56, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi Fabrice, We have no developers that I know of, and the current AFT5 is too broken for me to suggest inflicting it on WV. If it is not being supported/developed I would rather not have it. Cheers, Pbsouthwood (talk) 08:20, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your candid feedback, Pbsouthwood! I appreciate your looking into it and your thoughtful response is very helpful to us. However, I don't think that it's fair to characterize this tool as 'broken', as it is being used extensively by many editors on the French (and English) Wikipedias, who have found it valuable. It it true that we are not prepared to put more development resources behind it at this time, but that's an entirely different statement. All the best. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 18:35, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi Fabrice, I am one of the users on English Wikipedia. It is useful, but marginally tolerable, with so much that could be improved. Broken, malformed, unsuited for its purpose, take your pick. It is not possible to conveniently keep track of feedback on the articles one watches, it invites unhelpful feedback, and cannot be user-customized. How else would you describe it? Cheers, Pbsouthwood (talk) 20:36, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Notifications German Wikipedia
Does this mean it is also deployed on German Wikipedia on the 22nd or not. Greetings --Saehrimnir (talk) 10:42, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Hello Saehrimnir, thanks for your inquiry about the proposed release of Notifications on the German Wikipedia. I have asked TMg if he would be willing to start a discussion with the German community about joining our worldwide release on October 22nd. Once that discussion has started, we will be able to determine if an October 22 release date makes sense, based on community feedback. Though it is possible to postpone that date, if necessary, we are recommending that the German Wikipedia join this final release, because we will have very limited resources for special releases after that date. For now, we recommend that the community start work on translations and related tasks, as outlined in this release checklist. For more info about this project, I invite you to read this recent blog post. Please let me know if you have any other questions or comments. Cheers :) Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Fabrice Florin (WMF) I made an comment on the German Villagepump on Friday and no big outrage yet. The discussion here suggests that the effects can be hopefully be handled. But The outreach to the German community still needs much improvement because this Villagepump announcement should have happened already a Month a go and maybe a site notice. --Saehrimnir (talk) 15:02, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Dear Saehrimnir: Thank you so much for posting this message and making this breakthrough possible! Based on the favorable community response so far, and subject to confirmation by our local team, we are prepared to deploy Echo on German Wikipedia tomorrow, Oct 22 -- or in coming weeks, if the community wants more time. Do you think we should include the Thanks notification or not? Also, would you be interested in helping us translate the Help FAQ in German? We also have some other tasks that are needed for this release. If you would like to help with the translation and socialization, I can put you in touch with Jan Eissfeldt and Denis Barthel, who are working on these tasks. Thanks again for facilitating this, very much appreciated! Look forward to a successful launch as soon as the community is ready :) Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 07:16, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry I might not have time for helping with the translation but de:Hilfe:Echo is already quiet extensive. The thanks notification should be included definitely because as you know one of the major concerns was that new authors don't get positive feedback but only negative because one gets notified of rollbacks but not flagging.--Saehrimnir (talk) 15:52, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi Saehrimnir, I wanted to let you know that we decided not to deploy on the German Wikipedia today, because we did not feel confident that the community would accept it without more socialization. Given the concerns raised by several community members, we didn't think we had enough positive feedback to support deploying it today (despite your great announcement), and wanted to avoid a possible conflict with the community. We also wanted to make sure that we had fully completed our checklist and thoroughly tested the extension in German before deploying it. As a result, we are now planning on deploying on German Wikipedia the week of Nov. 18, before the upcoming editor conference. Thanks again for your help in introducing this project to the community, which is much, much appreciated! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 20:44, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Multimedia meetings and feedback...
Hi, you appear to lead Multimedia team. Its weekly meetings happen over Hangouts which are a rather large barrier for community to participate, partly due to lack of desire to interact that closely where it is not needed. Could you please do them in an IRC channel instead (without public logging), it's an interactive chat medium and you still can do note-taking as desired.

In particular I noticed that the WMF people appear to not respond at this feedback thingie and I think I would make use of collaboration in a chat medium in long term.

--Gryllida 14:00, 30 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Dear Gryllida: Thanks so much for contacting me about our work on Multimedia. You are welcome to join us during office hours on our #wikimedia-multimedia IRC channel to discuss features in development by our team. However, our weekly team meetings are not public, so that we can focus on key issues in a small group, for practical reasons. On the other hand, we host public IRC chats on a monthly basis, and are planning to have another one in mid-February, once we have released the updated beta version v0.2 of Media Viewer. We will announce that event next week on our mailing list and project hub, most likely for the following week.


 * Sorry if we haven't been more responsive on the Media Viewer discussion page in recent weeks: we have all been busy improving the product, based on earlier community feedback. Starting next week, we will participate more actively on that page, as well as archive comments which have now been addressed, to reduce clutter. For now, I have posted a general project update to let folks know what has been improved and what we're working on next.


 * I would also like to take this opportunity to thank you for your good insights so far! Your comments are really helpful to our team, and we look forward to improving the product together based on your feedback. Keep in mind that even if we don't always respond right away to your suggestions, we are reading your comments and considering every suggestion carefully. :) Enjoy the rest of your weekend! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 22:11, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much. I should've guessed the channel name, surprisingly.
 * I observe the channel logs link in its topic, which, contrary to what you say I think, appears to log everything; that came slightly unexpected. (I don't like logging peoples' opinions, rather, my previous experience with Mozilla's Live Chat feature made me used to the habit of processing a chat and performing only actionable bits — filing bugs, expanding knowledge base or documentation — in public, without publishing the log itself; not logged channels tend to have more relaxed atmosphere and people don't have to ‘censor’ themselves.)
 * I appreciate your development focus. Hopefully other things — such as simply logging in Smiley.png — would be doable in a dialogue, without leaving an article. That's a good experience. Gryllida 10:12, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

'Paper Edit' or 'EDL' -- Idea for a way to edit video on Wikipedia
So today I was inspired, and thought I'd share this thought:

What if there was a way to write a text document on Wikipedia/Commons that functions as an Edit decision list for video?

Here's my idea:

You create a document (like a timed text document for subtitles), and then type in the timecode when you want a movie file that already exists on commons to start and stop. Professional video editors some times do this on paper where it is known as a Offline_editing. Then do that again for another file and and another and another. Every time the user presses save, a new video file could be generated in the commons servers, based on this edit decision list.

code could look like:

1 File:example.webm 00:00:20:00 --> 00:07:38:11

2 File:example_2.webm 00:00:09:10 --> 00:00:15:12

3 dissolve File:example_3.webm 00:00:09:10 --> 00:00:15:12

advantages are that you don't need a fancy computer to edit video (since it's just text) and you don't need video files stored on your computer, just like how in wikimarkup you just say the code of the file you want as a photo, and where you want it placed, etc in this scenario, you are just typing out where you want video to start and stop. Disadvantages are that you cant see how it looks until you hit save, and it's a slow process.

for edits with files with different frame rates or aspect ratios, the user could be prompted after hitting save that the files being created require one aspect ratio, and that the files dont fit will be letterboxed, interlaced, etc.

Dissolves, sill image handling, etc. could be added later.

Let me know your thoughts on this :)

Victorgrigas (talk) 00:36, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Reverting without using Talk
You reverted an image and caption here. Reverting without using (or at least checking) the Talk page isn't good. The caption on the image is incorrect, and your revert put the image into conflict with the page text. Alsee (talk) 15:39, 2 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Alsee, sorry for not responding sooner: I have been traveling in Europe for the past week and did not have time to respond to your note until now. I see that you edited the Media Viewer survey results page again to present an independent interpretation of the approval ratings, based on weighted results — and that you have removed our finding that a ‘majority of global users find Media Viewer useful’, based on unweighted results.


 * I am not comfortable with this edit, because it unfairly favors another interpretation of the data over our original interpretation, when both are reasonable ways to analyze the data. So I have updated the survey results to present both weighted and unweighted approval ratings, in order to strive for a neutral point of view and present both sides of the analysis. And to avoid confusion, I have removed both your graph and ours, inviting readers to read the text notes instead. This seems like a reasonable compromise to me, don’t you?


 * More importantly, I have noted that these approval ratings should not be cited as conclusive evidence for this optional survey, as they are subject to self-selection bias, as explained in detail in these research clarifications. Keep in mind that the primary purpose of the survey was to collect user comments to improve the tool -- not to use approval ratings as a definitive measure of success. Though these ratings can point to some informative trends, they are not very reliable because the survey was not mandatory.


 * So I encourage all parties in this discussion to refrain from citing these approval ratings, particularly given that they are for a much older version of the software, which was very different than the new version. The new behavioral metrics we have been citing in our more recent updates are much more reliable, and we would recommend focusing our discussions on this new data instead. Thanks for your understanding. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 22:43, 9 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Hey Alsee: I have also added the same clarifications in this talk page for the survey results, and recommend that you respond to them on that page, to keep all discussions in the same place. I would be grateful if you could use the ping feature, so that I receive a notification, as I will not have time to check that page while I'm traveling. Thanks. 23:05, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

No reaction on MV decline
Dear Mr. Florin,

repeatedly, last time at Extension_talk:Media_Viewer/About, you received many comments which declined media viewer completely. There is no sign that the foundation or you in person took note of that. One could regard that as a very harsh style of communication, but taking into account that this is not the first time the foundation did, friendly spoken, not even take note of opinions from the community, this is much worse. On the small scale, you could think about ways to make the media viewer into an additional tool, which from wikis would be possible if any image had a small link named "gallery" which opened a way improved version of media viewer to quickly view all images of the article. A click on the image should always open the classical commons file page. But I think MV even is not ready for that. On the big scale, the foundation, in my opinion, has to think if it still acts in the sense of its donors. In my opinion, it only does if it supports the communities and stops pushing them around, because only the communities can keep the content in shape. If it does not, it will weaken or lose the communities, the content will degrade in quality and, in the very long term, WMF wikis will cease to be relevant. This ultimately will stop the WMFs fundings. I don't want to see this happening, but I see declining numbers of editors for more than 5 years, while the combined size of articles still grows. If that does not change, it eventually will stop working.

Best regards, --193.18.240.18 11:49, 25 November 2014 (UTC)