Talk:Phabricator/Archive 1

See also related subpages. 

Documenting our usage of Phabricator

In relation to the Phabricator RfC and http://fab.wmflabs.org , we are starting to see useful questions and answers about the way we use the Phabricator tools. Let's update this outdated page documenting here the good practices. The discussion about Wikimedia Phabricator yes/no still must go to Requests for comment/Phabricator‎.--Qgil (talk) 15:36, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Test instance or not

«!NOTICE! This is a test install, be prepared to lose data or manually migrate to the future real instance at a later date. This instance is not meant for long term use.»[1] but then it's said to be ok for posting important/production information. Who's right? Please update the notice if things changed. --Nemo 07:10, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

It can be used for "real" data by those willing to be guinea pigs, however everybody should be aware that some data still could get lost (though daily backups are in place, so in worst case you lose 24h). And it's correct that the specific Labs test instance is not meant for long term use - the production instance will be. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 11:46, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

I think the warning is fine to make sure that testers know that they are testers. However, "or manually migrate to the future real instance at a later date" could be removed because it is inaccurate. We are planning to migrate the valid projects to the production instance.--Qgil (talk) 21:46, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

fab.wmflabs.org down for migration

Summary: fab.wmflabs.org will be taken down this Monday 8th 18:00UTC. Locally save tasks or workboards that you might rely on for the week. Verify your email address in fab.wmflabs.org if it's not already. The intention is for the Phabricator production instance to be available by Sept 12th.

The Phabricator instance on fab.wmflabs.org has been used over the last few months for both real and test data. On Mon, Sept 8th 2014 18:00UTC this instance will be made unavailable to migrate content to the upcoming production instance on phabricator.wikimedia.org. The Labs instance will not come back online in the same form, if at all.

We take the Labs instance down because we cannot make the Labs instance read-only while dumping its data. Neither can we easily display a banner on all pages warning you to not make any changes which would get lost anyway.

Tickets from the following projects are marked for migration:

• Analytics-EEVS
• Architecture
• bugzilla-migration
• Chemical_Markup_for_Wikimedia_Commons
• Code_review_in_Phabricator
• Community-Engagement
• dev.wikimedia.org
• googlelogin
• Growth
• Human_Resources
• Language_Engineering
• logstash
• phabricator
• phabricator-request-project
• Release_Engineering
• rt-migration
• Triagers
• Trusted_User_Tool
• UI_Standardization
• UploadWizard_Refactoring
• Upstreaming_to_Phabricator.org
• Wiki-Release-Team
• Wikimedia_Phabricator_Day_1
• wikimedia_phabricator_maintenance
• wikimedia_phabricator_rfc

Some metadata for tasks associated with the above should be populated in the new production system -- if the account used in fab.wmflabs.org has a verified email that is also verified in the production instance. If you are using an email but have not verified it to the Labs instance you can go here: http://fab.wmflabs.org/settings/panel/email/ and choose "verify". An email will be sent with a link.

If you do not have a verified email address yet, or for some reason cannot verify an email with the Labs instance the relevant content (tickets, comments) will still be migrated. However, it will not be associated automatically with any new account in the production instance.

For questions catch us (chasemp and andre__) on Freenode IRC or drop into the #wikimedia-devtools ^connect channel.

Thanks,

Phabricator Team

The FAQ

Just a heads up, I intend to keep the /FAQ, but actually bringing the answers to the wiki pages that should have them. You may expect to end up seeing a bunch of questions with links as replies. We are starting to accumulate duplication and dispersion, and we haven't even started properly with the on-wiki documentation.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 21:36, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

"Not done"?

"Automatic redirects from Bugzilla reports to Phabricator tasks" is marked as "Not done". Does this mean "won't fix", or it is just to say that work hasn't been started on this? I consider this, or something similar (e.g. a link from the header of each Bugzilla bug to the relevant Phabricator task) a blocker for the migration. This, that and the other (talk) 08:08, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

"Not done" means not set up yet. We also consider it important. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 09:29, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Also, if you ckick the link, you will see that it is marked as "Ready to Go" in the Bugzilla-Migration dashboard. All tasks in this project are blockers for the Bugzilla migration.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 10:12, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Why Wikitech accounts?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T16
Resolved

"you need to login with your wikitech.wikimedia.org account"

Can anyone tell me why creating a wikitech account is necessary for access to Phabricator? Is this always going to be required? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:15, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

SUL login isn't ready yet. (which is one of the reasons registration is not open in general). You be able to link both SUL and LDAP (wikitech) accounts to phab accounts. And then you can login to phab accounts using any linked account. --Jeremyb-phone (talk) 19:42, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Let me be slightly clearer: Why specifically Wikitech and not one of the many other projects where people are more likely to have accounts? Why not Foundation.wiki, or Meta, or Mediawiki, or Office.wiki? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:36, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

There are SUL and LDAP authentication providers available. LDAP technically already works in Phabricator and LDAP is used in Wikimedia for wikitech and Gerrit, but we cannot yet enable LDAP in Phabricator for everybody due to file storage stuff to sort out. For SUL (which means OAuth) we cannot enable that yet either for everybody, but for other reasons. Do Foundation.wiki, or Meta, or Mediawiki, or Office.wiki use LDAP? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 21:01, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Uhm, I realize my last sentence might come across as unfriendly (I am sorry for that) but it was meant as an honest question, as I simply don't know for some of these aforementioned wikis. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 21:06, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't know anything about their setup. I know that only 3,840 accounts exist at wikitech (including 72 blocked accounts), and only about 40% of them have ever made an edit there. That's not very many, so it means that most users will encounter account creation hassle. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:51, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): aren't our replies clear? By the time registration is open to users, Wikimedia SUL will be enabled, and 99,999% of Wikimedia users have a Wikimedia account by definition (and the remaining 0,001% should get one). :) If Wikimedia SUL goes down for whatever reason, the few people able to do something about it will have surely a wikitech-LDAP account, so they will still be able to operate. In the strange event that Wikimedia SUL was down for several hours (did this ever happen?), users could still create an account in wikitech to login to Phabricator and deal with the crisis. You can forget about wikitech-LDAP. We were hoping to enable Wikimedia SUL this week, and if we don't succeed we really really hope to have it available next week.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 06:44, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Qgil-WMF, you have explained very clearly why it is highly desirable to have a second system for logging in. Why this one in particular was required now has not been addressed. Perhaps the answer lies in André's still-unanswered question about whether MediaWiki can do LDAP? Are SUL and LDAP mutually exclusive? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:17, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): LDAP is supported out of the box by Phabricator, and it was simple to connect it to Wikitech's LDAP backend. MediaWiki OAuth provider for Phabricator (the enabler of Wikimedia SUL) has been developed by us, and our plan still today is to have it accepted in Phabricator upstream before deploying it, a task that they started but haven't completed. We might change the initial plan and enable it before upstream merges it, see the discussion in T368. If you want to test Wikimedia SUL in another Phabricator instance, try it here.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 18:41, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Qgil-WMF, you have apparently chosen wikitech because it has an "LDAP backend". Here is my specific and still-unanswered question: Does MediaWiki.org also have an LDAP backend? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:16, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): mediawiki.org has only Wikimedia SUL, no LDAP. wikitech.wikimedia.org and gerrit.wikimedia.org share the same LDAP backend.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 19:58, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): see the discussion and conclusion at task T16. Long story short: we want everybody to login with Wikimedia SUL, and have Wikitech's LDAP as a backup just in case SUL goes down for some reason. It is just a temporary circumstance that today LDAP is ready and SUL is not. This will be fixed soon, see task T346 and related tasks (remarkably T368 Upstream mediawiki oauth provider, the current blocker).--Qgil-WMF (talk) 07:13, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): You can now log in to https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/login/ with your MediaWiki.org account (if you have a global account this is the same as your username/password on other wikis). If logging in via MediaWiki.org, first click the sunflower button. Mattflaschen (WMF) (talk) 00:44, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Bugs - report it where? - Bug tracker from sidebar

The mediawiki:Sidebar entry "Bug tracker" redirect to this page (and so do bugs). Where do I exactly find the bugs of mediawiki (core)? Is it on this list: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/query/all/ ? Christian75 (talk) 17:43, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Try reading the opening sentences on the page... --110.149.124.128 04:55, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Migration oddity for files

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T89690

Background, on c:File:Starred icon.svg I've added links to F11581 and F11583. These files were allegedly created by bzimport on Sat, Nov 22, 1:59 AM. Looking at phab:T56307 I think these files were submitted by MGalloway on 2012-11-22 (two years ago), i.e., the timestamp without year is misleading. –Be..anyone (talk) 20:21, 12 December 2014 (UTC) (broken link fixed as suggested by Jokes Free4Me below, thanks. –Be..anyone (talk) 00:12, 7 April 2015 (UTC))

@Be..anyone: Actually, now that the time-stamp includes the year, it seems to show they were "Created: Nov 22 2014", so i'm thus curious how could you tell from phab:T56307 (which is what i found at Starred icon.svg -- Note that the T567307 you mentioned doesn't exist) anything about 2012 or MGalloway? -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 20:31, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

I think you are running into phab:T89690 here which will get fixed next time we pull a newer version from upstream. For the time being, either use a URL parameter like https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T56307?before=33 or see https://old-bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=54307 . --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 11:51, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Beats me, I can't reconstruct what I thought four months ago, but IIRC I was very sure that 2014 was wrong. And I wouldn't make up credits out of thin air, but admittedly nothing supports MGalloway at the moment. –Be..anyone (talk) 00:34, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Ah, I am sorry. If you really refer to the aspect of the attachment author, I am afraid this data was not migrated from Bugzilla. (Initially I thought that you refer to undisplayed data in the task itself.) --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 09:59, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Ping/Notification not working. Bug report but don't understand how/where?

I work mostly on Commons and the English and Swedish Wikipedia and my main user page is at Commons Goran_tek-en. I do work as graphic and thereby different Requests on the Graphic_Lab pages of the wikis. I'm very depending on that I get a notification when someone edits a Request I'm working on or Pings me to get my attention.

My problem is that even though I have checked the box Watch this page or someone Pings me I don't get a notification all the time. Most often NOT.
When I look at my Watchlist I can see pages that I haven't got a notification on email from as my Preferences says. Ping doesn't either give me notification by email most of the time. MarkAHershberger recommended me to report it on "phabricator" but I don't understand how or where. To be sure to reach me please use my user page at Commons as above. Thankful for help. --Goran tek-en (talk) 19:19, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Phabricator Labs Login OAuth

Hi,

In my Oauth managed connected applications list I see both "Phabricator Labs Login" and "phabricator-production".

I presume that I only really need "phabricator-production", and "Phabricator Labs Login" can be removed, but I'd love a confirmation.

It also makes me wonder: If an OAuth application becomes obsolete, can it remove itself from the grants list somehow?

(Tagging CSteipp.) --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 09:19, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

An OAuth admin can revoke any apps that are no longer being used, but I think the labs login is still being used by the team deploying phabricator for testing. CSteipp (WMF) (talk) 19:34, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Email problem

When signing up for Phabricator I accidentally listed the wrong email, and it wasn't an old email address of mine, it was one named similarly with one I actually have (I use like three gmails) Anyway, since it's still waiting for me to "verify" it, it won't let me do anything. What can I do? --AmaryllisGardener (talk) 17:54, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

AmaryllisGardener: Hi, is it possible for you to access https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/settings/panel/email/ and remove one of your addresses, or add another one? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 06:35, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

@AKlapper (WMF): Nope, I can't access any URL on Phab right now, the "Must Verify Email" comes up. --AmaryllisGardener ^talk 23:17, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Hmm. https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/settings/panel/external/ ? If all goes wrong someone with shell access could try to delete that account in Phabricator I guess. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 04:44, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

@AKlapper (WMF): I'm getting the same "Must Verify Email" error upon clicking that. --AmaryllisGardener ^talk 18:02, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Alright. I've created phab:T87608 for that because I myself don't have shell access (required for deleting a user). --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 21:11, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

It's been resolved, and now I've created my account again with the right email address, thank you! --AmaryllisGardener ^talk 22:55, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

@AKlapper (WMF): I have the exact same problem. I tried to click on phab:T87608 for if ever, but it still gives me the same message. Wouldn't it be possible to have a generic solution to this ?-- Camion (talk) 09:11, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

@Camion: Please ask on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Phabricator/Help about this. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 15:51, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Labs instance

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T88272
Resolved

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T88346

Is the Labs instance still available, or does the page need updating in this regard? Nurg (talk) 21:51, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

I get an error on https://phab-01.wmflabs.org/ today, but it was alive recently, I merged some dummy tasks in this sandbox. If it is now gone for good the main phabricator: page (section "Migration completed") should be updated. –Be..anyone (talk) 23:41, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Works again for my 2014 test account not affected by phab:T88346. –Be..anyone (talk) 04:59, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Data about Phabricator

Strictly speaking about Maniphest, is there data about the transition from Bugzilla? How many users were retained, how many were "lost", how many new users are there? Evidence that people are finding it easier to use and are indeed using it more? Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 12:23, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Elitre (WMF): Latest numbers for created accounts and active users in Phabricator can be found in the monthly statistics emails. "Evidence" is pretty hard to define, but comparing the number of active users per month, see the graph on mw:Community metrics. Bugzilla had 20022 registered accounts in the end. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 12:35, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Quick question

Where would I go to request the creation of a new syntax for displaying images? I was wondering if a parameter could be created that would display an image flipped vertically or horizontally, with out having to upload a separate file.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 14:18, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

You can file a task against the Phabricator project (like this); it then gets discussed whether this is a feature wanted for the Wikimedia Phabricator, and if so, Andre or Quim will file tasks with the upstream developers or someone might develop a local hack. --Tim Landscheidt 16:10, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

TriiipleThreat: If this refers to a feature for displaying images in Phabricator itself, Tim's link is correct. If this refers to a feature for displaying images in MediaWiki, please see How to report a bug. In any case, it would require a convincing use case how and why such a feature would be useful. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 16:38, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

This is in reference for displaying images across Wikipedia, Commons, etc.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 16:56, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Then your request is about MediaWiki, the software behind those sites. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 17:49, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

So I should propose this new function at How to report a bug?--TriiipleThreat (talk) 17:57, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

How to report a bug explains the steps how to propose this new function in Phabricator. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 18:37, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 18:40, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

You can flip an image vertically by placing it inside

<div style="transform: scaleY(-1)">

and horizontally by placing it inside

<div style="transform: scaleX(-1)">

-- FriedhelmW (talk) 10:56, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Massive google+ spamming

JFTR, if it is not on commons for some reason it is by definition spam. Of course it can be also spam if it's on commons, but the deletion procedure would be straight forward in this case. Please do not spam for Google wannabe-services in any form, no matter if it is YouTube-spam, Maps-spam, Google+-spam, or spam for 1001 former now dead services killed by Google (Usenet archive, reader, buzz, maps API v2, whatever.) –Be..anyone (talk) 03:54, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

@Be..anyone: What is the relation of your comment to Wikimedia Phabricator? Context welcome. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 10:23, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

G+ isn't c:. Somehow a link to the good /versus Bugzilla subpage vanished leaving only the wrt bandwidth huge G+ hangout. I've inserted the /versus Bugzilla blurb again, it could be removed next year when really nobody recalls what bugzilla was. –Be..anyone (talk) 07:16, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Where is this hangout that are you abbreviating about? --Tim Landscheidt 07:36, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

If you refer to the "The Very Basics of Phabricator" link (I can only guess and I still don't know what that "massive spamming" refers to), I replaced the Hangout link by a Youtube link in the article now and anybody is welcome to convert that Youtube video and put it on Commons. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 09:50, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, CC BY-SA is better, even if YouTube manages to link it to their own CC BY page which links CC BY 3.0. Unfortunately 300 MB MP4 + 38 MB M4A download + convert + upload about the same size to commons would eat too much of my 5 GB per month plan. Commons always wants the best, no matter how big it is, up to 976 MB. –Be..anyone (talk) 15:32, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

No idea how to report a bug

I'm just a simple bloke. Having clicked a bunch of incomprehensible stuff and read screeds of text and seen several screens that made me want to scream I have no idea how to report a bug. --Dweller (talk) 12:29, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Is how to report a bug not clear enough? --121.219.253.36 12:36, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Looks better than anything I've seen so far, although still scary. Shame it's not linked in Phabricator#Report_bugs_and_feature_requests. --Dweller (talk) 12:40, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

@Dweller: Thanks for pointing out this problem! I hope this edit made it clearer. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 13:17, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

EzPlan, EU "Active" and other extensions for mediawiki useful to integrate?

Extension:EzPlan and the PM formats supported by the EU "Active" project [2] are of later origin than the deprecated CC:Teamspace [3] and Extension:Semantic_Project_Management mentioned in the Project_management_tools page. That page should be updated.

More importantly, has anyone looked at situations when either of these currently-maintained extensions should be used, or other extensions like Semantic Bundle provides, when people want to co-operate in a mediawiki to help a development process along? For instance, to detail a spec or to describe a use case, or other things that are better done in mediawiki than in Phabricator?

The project of implementing Phabricator should include clearly identifying what mediawiki should be used for, what extensions are helpful to use it for that purpose, and how it should be integrated into Phabricator. A few incredibly useful extensions would likely result from just studying this.

The combined knowledge of the user community is all tied up in mediawiki skills and format, but only a tiny number of those will ever use Phabricator, so the workload is cut drastically if we can maximize the usefulness of mediawiki itself in the Wikimedia development process, in the long term.

Some kind of roadmap for integration of mediawiki and Phabricator would be ideal. But for now, just a review of what extensions will help users to cut the workload of the Phabricator users (i.e. developers), by feeding in data in a form that Phabricator itself can make immediate use of... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.11.95.94 (talk • contribs)

Hi, to discuss content of Project management tools it's probably more effective to directly post on the related Discussion/talk page (the content of that page is nowadays most for historical reasons). For the reasons why Phabricator was chosen over other options (such as MediaWiki itself), see the links in the "Past steps" section on Phabricator. Regarding "integration of MediaWiki and Phabricator", specific problems that you see and would like to solve would be interesting, as "integration" can mean a lot of things. :) --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 20:27, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Am I the only one...

...increasingly frustrated by the lack of a "thanks" system in Phab? Too many times I want to thank people for a comment or an action, and awarding tokens is just too generic (and confusing FWIW). --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:15, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

I do, but probably not as often as you since I am not very active on Phabricator — Ltrlg (talk), 20:02, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

This is funny, Elitre -- I was thinking exactly the same thing yesterday, because I wanted to thank you. :) -Pete F (talk) 19:45, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Inclusion or deletion in Phabricator?

All, I am an occasional user of Phabricator, and have found it a very useful tool. Sometimes the bugs I enter are addressed; other times they are not. When they are not, sometimes I get information about why not, and other times I don't. As a wiki user, I am used to working in an environment like this; once in a while I am frustrated when I enter a bug and hear nothing back, but it's not really a big deal -- if anything, that's useful information, because it means if I want to get action taken, there is still work to be done in finding the right people and/or describing the issue better.

The one thing that is always frustrating to me is when my bugs are closed with a reason like "that project isn't managed on Phabricator." That doesn't help me, if it's unaccompanied by a pretty specific suggestion about how to contact the people who can help -- and it sets me back a little, because now even if I do find those people, Phabricator has been identified as an inappropriate resource for tracking it and moving it forward. It also suggests that it's incumbent on me, an end-user, to determine what project is appropriate before I even decide whether or not Phabricator is the right venue. Perhaps "Fundraising Sprint Beastie Boys" is the right project for my bug? I have no idea. It looks to me like there are, maybe, hundreds of active projects, and I often haven't the slightest idea what a project might be named.

I recently found that Krenair has written on this topic, which is great -- for the first time, I can start to get a handle on the thinking around this. Their essay on the topic argues the opposite, but is clearly presented: User:Krenair/Phabricator projects. We discussed it a bit on their user talk page. (Have also discussed a bit with MZMcBride.) But ultimately, I'm not sure of the status of that essay -- does it reflect an actual policy? Or is there widespread disagreement about how liberally Phabricator should be used? I would like to hear more about this -- and about what to do when I find a software-related problem in the Wikimedia world, but don't know what project it might or might not be connected to, or whether or not that project is managed on Phabricator (or might be in the future). -Pete F (talk) 20:59, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

I am glad this is being discussed.

"I am frustrated when I enter a bug and hear nothing back, but it's not really a big deal -- if anything, that's useful information, because it means if I want to get action taken, there is still work to be done in" - 'hear nothing back' as in no one even touches your task, or no one comments/fixes it? Bugs in some projects get at least a basic read by other people (and often some priority set or categorised into a column). Also, I don't think this is always acceptable to most users. We should avoid leaving users in a situation where no one will even read their task - while we have stuff like tasks with no projects mostly covered, what happens if you make a task that's only got a tag project listed (like tracking or something)? It's highly possible no one will find it for a long time (some of these could be very high priority, others less so).

Tasks being closed because "that project isn't managed on Phabricator." is something that I suspect should be happening more than it currently does. Yes, you should theoretically be expected to figure out which projects to add (at the moment, if you add none, it's likely that someone will add projects if they are in Phabricator, or close it if not), and right now I think that can be a challenge for new users. Since I know that you're here from a gadgets task, I should add that with these, the reporter should be considered be lucky to get much more contact info than "the administrators of your wiki". Wikis do not all have a standardised place for that, it should not be the closer's task to figure out if such a place actually exists or not (they might not have access to the wiki, they might not be able to speak the language, etc.), you may end up contacting an admin directly (e.g. via user talk or email). The gadgets thing specifically is interesting actually - why do some people appear treat it so differently from modules/templates?

My essay is by no means a policy (I don't think I'm a senior enough MW developer to walk around declaring such things policy just like that, I've only been around for like 4 years, and even if I was I probably wouldn't just do it), but it shows some of the ideas that I consider and apply when closing tasks (task closing is very rarely something determined by policy anyway). A developer closing your task does not necessarily mean it's completely hopeless - e.g. they can be reopened by users pointing out the problem is actually a miscommunication/misunderstanding, other developers disagreeing fundamentally, etc (and as you saw, even if it is the wrong forum, some people may still actually be able to help you, the problem is that there's no guarantee and we should try to set reasonable expectations to reporters around this). It's not clear to me at the moment how many people agree with the essay, I haven't got a lot of feedback (maybe if I linked to it every time the subject came up, it would get more attention?)

I kind of wonder if some much more comprehensive guidelines for task creation based on subject (e.g. say "for editor-controlled article content (e.g. wiki articles themselves, individual wiki gadgets, etc.), phabricator is the wrong place." and "before reporting a bug with mobile software, remember to specify whether it's for an app (specify android or ios) or the mobile web"), with some explanation that only tasks intended for projects which are actually tracking issues in Phabricator should go to Phabricator, would be a good idea. I wouldn't go too far with it - i.e. we probably shouldn't (to use an example from my work with the foundation) expect non-VE-developers to identify which parts of VE are generic and which are MediaWiki-specific, and know to add the VisualEditor-MediaWiki project. But still we run the risk of making it look too complicated. --Krenair ^{(talk • contribs)} 04:03, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Okay, I was resisting this temptation, but it turns out to be very relevant here: w:en:WP:DEVBEANS from June 2006 (almost a decade ago), especially the last section or two. --Krenair ^{(talk • contribs)} 04:10, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

When closing a task as "not being tracked in Wikimedia Phabricator" people should point out where the person who already graciously spent their spare time to report the problem should bring it up instead. Regarding the bigger topic what to (not) track in Wikimedia Phabricator and why, discussion in phab:T85433 is related. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 14:03, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Test instance

This page mentions https://phab-01.wmflabs.org/ as "our Labs instance" , and it redirects to https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion . Other instances i have seen URLs for are dead.

Do we have a shared test instance that potential developers should play around with to get their feet wet?

Or a recipe for developers to start up their own test instance. e.g. phab:T179202 is a Google Code-in task which might benefit from being able to play with configuration that might not be wise to allow someone to play with on a shared test instance.

https://secure.phabricator.com/ says

NOTE: You can launch a test installation of Phabricator on [[4]] if you want to poke around and try things out.

So that is an option, at least for the Google Code-in task I am mentoring. John Vandenberg (talk) 12:21, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

@John Vandenberg: Thanks, fixed: https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Phabricator&type=revision&diff=2660137&oldid=2637014 --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 12:32, 26 December 2017 (UTC)