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Maniphest T58517

BetaFeatures: The "Beta" personal menu item should only be shown for users who opted in to at least one beta feature
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Description

The "Beta" personal menu item should only be shown for users who opted in to at least one beta feature. (I mean genuinely opted in, not including the users who merely did not opt out of default beta features.)

The personal menu can already be rather crowded (the default 6 items, ULS, Echo, LiquidThreads, sandbox links from site JS, and I'm probably missing some), and the "Beta" itself can become a *lot* longer in translations (the expression "beta feature" is not directly translateable to many languages).

I have once in the past created a superficially similar thing in site JS on pl.wp – a gadget preferences manager which added its own special page, which was linked from the personal menu – and I was promptly and bluntly told to get rid of that link. (It is now only linked from the Preferences pages and descriptions of each gadget that uses it and everyone is happy.)

(Personally I would consider this – or some other solution to the crowdedness issue – a blocker to wider release.)

Version: unspecified
Severity: major

Details

Reference
bz56517

Related Objects

Event Timeline

• bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Needs Triage.Nov 22 2014, 2:33 AM
• bzimport added a project: BetaFeatures.
• bzimport set Reference to bz56517.
• bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).
matmarex created this task.Nov 2 2013, 5:32 PM
matmarex added a comment.Nov 7 2013, 9:14 PM

(Note to self: I've hidden the link preemptively on pl.wp, has to be reverted after this is fixed: https://pl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.css&diff=37848510&oldid=37694055 .)

Jdforrester-WMF added a comment.Dec 17 2013, 10:34 PM

No. This would entirely defeats the discoverability concept of putting it in the personal tools in the first place.

Marking as WONTFIX.

(Also, please consider reverting your pre-emptive suppression of this functionality for other users on plwiki.)

matmarex added a comment.Dec 18 2013, 2:36 PM

(In reply to comment #2)

(Also, please consider reverting your pre-emptive suppression of this
functionality for other users on plwiki.)

I am positive this is not a good idea (in particular because of how long this text is, see bug 56537), but okay, done. I will restore it and note it here if I get complaints from users.

• bzimport added a comment.Dec 18 2013, 3:07 PM

mr.heat wrote:

(In reply to comment #2)

consider reverting your pre-emptive suppression of this functionality

I'm sorry, but what's that "functionality"? It links to the settings. That's all. We already had a link to the settings in the personal bar. Was there a problem with that link? Should we suppress that instead? What's the benefit of having a duplicate item except for being an advertisement?

Con:

  • It's a duplicate, redundant link to the same special page.
  • It can confuse people. Why does the Beta settings tab have an extra menu item? Why not the Widgets, for example?
  • It's inserted with JavaScript and makes all items on the left jump. When I try to access my talk page I accidentally click on something else. This happens very often and gets pretty annoying. Same problem with the orange bar from Echo, by the way.
  • There is a beta feature discussed to compact the personal bar.[1] Adding an item is counter-productive. It's the opposite of what we and you want.
  • An important reason to create the beta features was that the community got annoyed by unexpected UI changes. As a reaction to that critics the UI gets changed. Please excuse me if I find that strange.

Pro:

  • It makes people aware of the beta features.

I'm sorry but in conclusion I don't think the users personal bar is the right place to do advertisement. Talk to the people in the village pump and other appropriate places, please.

[1]https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features/New_Features#Compact_Personal_Bar

matmarex added a comment.Apr 23 2014, 9:21 PM
  • Bug 64323 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
matmarex mentioned this in T290463: Remove beta option from user menu.Oct 27 2021, 6:24 PM
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