User talk:John Broughton

Welcome to MediaWiki.org!

Yes, welcome! This site is dedicated to documenting the MediaWiki software, the software behind many wikis, including that of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation projects.
Please, take a look at the following pages. They might prove useful to you as a newcomer here:

• Landing instructions
• Project:About
• How does MediaWiki work?
• Help:Editing pages
• Frequently asked questions
• How to contribute
• Policies

If you have any questions, please ask me on my talk page. Once again, welcome, and I hope you quickly feel comfortable here, and find this site useful documentation of the MediaWiki software.

Thanks! Nemo 09:48, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Hey John. Always a pleasure to see you around. I slightly changed the SET page again - we're trying to "unbrand" the product lately. There's of course a lot of documentation where that still hasn't happened... Best, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:09, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Double check

Just wanted to make sure that you saw this change. If you want to have a different section/screenshots for it, please let me know. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:42, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF) - perhaps it's just me, but when I tried to create a link (on my Sandbox page) for wikt:establishment (the page does exist - here is where the link would go to, and wikt is the right prefix - per this page), that failed. Similarly, an attempt to link to this page, using "fr:" as the prefix, failed. John Broughton (talk) 04:23, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm thinking that the instructions are inadequate. Do you know whether he's really trying to get interwiki or interlanguage links? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:48, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF) - I just posted a question for him/her on his/her user talk page, asking for an example of an edit where he/she had used VE to insert such a link. (I couldn't find a similarly-named editor on the English Wikipedia, so no luck there, reviewing editor contributions.) John Broughton (talk) 19:31, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Maybe these? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:08, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF) - Good find. As for the functionality, let's just say that's it not exactly obvious. Specifically, when you try to create an interwiki link, VE says (essentially) that the link can't be made, but if you continue, and if you save the page, the link will function.

I did get a response from the editor, here

My personal recommendation is to remove this addition to the user manual, because (a) the pages where a user usually adds interwiki links are in namespaces where VE hasn't been enabled [projectspace, all the talkspaces, etc.]; (b) a full explanation of the existing functionality, with screenshots, would take up a disproportionate amount of space (disproportionate to the value), particularly since the reader needs, at minimal, a link to where the concept of interwiki links is described; (c) interwiki links don't belong in articles; having them described in the VE user manual just increases the likelihood of their being used incorrectly; and (d) presumably the existing functionality is a rough edge which the VE developers will, eventually, fix, at which time the user manual will have to be rewritten. John Broughton (talk) 18:32, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Then let's remove it. If there's demand for the information, then we can create a short, separate page for that unusual (for Wikipedia editors) use. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:59, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Done, and I've made a note to follow up on this idea at phab:T134186. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:29, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF) - thanks. I would have removed the information myself, but the translate tags didn't seem to want to cooperate with me. John Broughton (talk) 20:02, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Ping

I'd love to have you copyedit this: Help:VisualEditor/User guide/Citations-Full. A relatively new contributor has been working on it. (Please ping me.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:36, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF) - sure. Any special instructions? When would you like this done by? John Broughton (talk) 01:42, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

My special instructions are: You are so awesome that I wouldn't dare to tell you what to do.  ;-) To be clear, I am not asking for perfection. People need something that is basically workable.

As for a deadline, I don't really have one. The important point is that when you're done, please remove the big do-not-translate tag from the top of the page. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:05, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF) - What's written is very promising, but - as usual - would benefit from some copy editing. Two questions, then:

-- The user guide is, not surprisingly, intended for a user, but part of the new text (enabling Citoid, for example) isn't useful for a typical user. I'm inclined to either compress anything that discusses adding functionality; alternatively, such discussions could be deleted entirely. Do you have a preference?

-- I may have a question or two for the (relatively) new contributor. If so, is it okay to ask him/her directly? (Not a big deal either way.) John Broughton (talk) 16:45, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

1) No strong preference. I think that the user need is to be able to figure out whether the citoid service is enabled at the wiki. At the English Wikipedia, it's been done for years; at, say, the Jamaican Creole Wikipedia, I'd have to check. This is one of those "are you on the correct page?" points. It's no good learning about how to use the citoid service if it's not present on your wiki.

2) Yes, please! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:22, 21 March 2019 (UTC)