Topic on Template talk:Main page

Syncing "News" block with our social media?

9
Qgil-WMF (talkcontribs)

I edited the Subject of this thread because the original proposal has changed--Qgil

The "New opportunities" block is between empty and outdated. Maintaining it properly takes time and dedication. In the meantime we have sorted out our social media channels, and there are updates almost every day. So I was wondering... could we make a change, and get the feed of the @MediaWiki identi.ca timeline automatically syndicated?

The block could be called "Community" or "Social media" and the four services currently supported and this page could be linked from there.

One thing is whether you like the idea and another point is how this should be implemented. Please discuss.

This post was posted by Qgil-WMF, but signed as Qgil.

Qgil-WMF (talkcontribs)

The New opportunities block has been updated and looks good. Thank you!

This proposal makes still sense for the News block. It is only listing releases, when the last ones are alredy listed in their own block. What do you think?

If the automated RSS thing is a problem then I could start updating those news manually and see how does it look like, but before doing that I'd welcome more opinions.

This post was posted by Qgil-WMF, but signed as Qgil.

Qgil-WMF (talkcontribs)

Done. I'm not fully convinced about this format giving so much relevance to the date but I wasn't able to come up with better alternatives. It's good enough for now.

This post was posted by Qgil-WMF, but signed as Qgil.

Qgil-WMF (talkcontribs)

To give you an idea, the news we would have published since Jan 1 could have been:

This post was posted by Qgil-WMF, but signed as Qgil.

Qgil-WMF (talkcontribs)

Tomorrow I will update Template:MediaWiki News and therefore the mediawiki.org homepage with the list of news above - unless someone stops me with a good reason.

This post was posted by Qgil-WMF, but signed as Qgil.

HappyDog (talkcontribs)

More frequent manual updates are a great idea, but there are some considerations to be thought through if you decide to automate this.

Primarily, you'll need to consider i18n. Presumably the news feed is available only in English? If so, will we still be able to offer translated versions of the feed and how do you think that could be managed? Some languages are actively translating the news feed (Template:MediaWiki News/fr for example) so thought should be given to how this would work if the feed was automated. Also, and regardless of whether it is manual or automatic, we need to consider what impact a large increase in frequency will have on the translating process. If the translations can't keep up and things are too often out-of-sync, it may be better for non-English pages to have a current feed in English than an out-of-date feed in the correct language, but this is something that should be discussed with the users of those other languages. I would recommend contacting any active translators to gauge their opinion beforehand.

Also, consideration should be given to what happens to the old content of that template (which shouldn't simply be lost, imho), and in particular the impact it will have on News which also transcludes it (as well as other, less prominent transclusions, such as Developer hub/ru). If you're updating it manually, you should be moving old news into the 'Older news' section once you no-longer want it on the home-page, but how will it work if this is a live feed?

Just some things to consider before diving in - I am all for improving the timeliness and variety of our news feed!

Qgil-WMF (talkcontribs)

Ah, good points. We can forget about the implications of automation for now since I have no idea how this would work, and nobody else is interested so far. Not a big deal, as it takes me an extra minute to include the News template in the round.

As for translations... I guess translators can just decide? They might even start thinking about adding news relevant in their own languages.

I'm for starting in English and see how translators react. The worst that could happen is that they keep translating only when a new MediaWiki release comes = no loss. I have left a notice at the template's discussion page that I guess translators are watching.

This post was posted by Qgil-WMF, but signed as Qgil.

Frug~mediawikiwiki (talkcontribs)

Thank you for clarifying the homepage. The setup is far better than it was before. More frequent updates would be appreciated, since many of the pages are difficult to find, assuming one even knows they exist.

This post was posted by Frug~mediawikiwiki, but signed as Frug.