Page MenuHomePhabricator

Decide what to do about the global user page banner
Closed, ResolvedPublic

Description

GlobalUserPage adds a footer to ?action=view currently. It reads:

This is a global user page. The original page is located at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Example

Later changed to

What you see on this page was copied from //meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Example

This footer doesn't sit well with me.

  • I don't really want an ugly footer on my global user page.
  • It's an irrelevant internal implementation detail — why should I care where the page content lives, I'm interested in the user page content, not its location.
  • The message can read with a remedial tone; you can imagine the footer reading "You're on a Web site. Using a Web browser. This is the Internet."

I'd like the disclaimer to be moved from ?action=view to ?action=edit (the edit screen), where people will actually be interested in where the page content lives. If the user is interested in editing the content, they'll then care about where the "original" page lives. Otherwise, it's a user page and it should be a decision of the user to note that the page is hosted on a central wiki.

It would also be nice if the edit disclaimer included a direct edit link to the page on the central wiki. It could read something like this (very rough wording... please improve!):

"Currently this user page is set to use your [[global user page]]: <link> (edit). Creating a local user page suppresses the global user page."


Version: unspecified
Severity: normal
See Also:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=66931

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Needs Triage.Nov 22 2014, 3:55 AM
bzimport added a project: GlobalUserPage.
bzimport set Reference to bz73634.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

Background:
The template footer was proposed/added in Bug 66931 ("Add a template message at the transcluded locations, to indicate the source")

Bug 70629 proposes changing the background color of the div (currently unspecified) to #F9F9F9 - this border-color and background-color will then match the styling of the generic boxes for Categories, Infoboxes, ToC, etc.

Bug 70576 comment 13 proposes moving the template to the top:
(from Krinkle)

(In reply to Kunal Mehta (Legoktm))

If a local user page does not exist, and the user has a global account
attached on the local wiki and the central wiki, their user page from the
central wiki will be displayed, with a notice below it indicating (..)

From a user experience perspective, I think such a notice should be
displayed on top. Which we do for file description pages as well (below the
thumbnail, but atop the actual page contents). It should not be longer than
a single line of text and not be grabbing much attention. Similar to how
MediaWiki core handles foreign files (e.g. from Commons), though various
Wikimedia wikis have overridden that line of text with a centred box.

Personally, I'm not very-strongly attached to the original template idea, nor its top/bottom location. It seemed like something the communities would ask for, so I preemptively filed a bug for it, and tried to match the Commons File: template layout/location in a way that wouldn't impede the lovely styling some users create. Wider input would probably be good.

While it's true that there is a possibility that the top template could be a bit more annoying for some (though not most) custom styling on a user page I think the benefits will end up outweigh those downsides. The biggest thing is that the template/marker can:

  1. Be translated/localized meaning that the users will understand it where they may not understand the long user page in 'not their language' and so putting it on top is important so that they don't miss it or have to slog through a longer harder to understand user page confused.
  1. It's a long tail communication method, there will be a lot of people who don't hear about this feature when we roll it out (most people, though most of them won't use the feature often) and this allows them to learn about it organically when they come across the feature.
  1. The top position allows people to know this is global right away and make it less likely that they try to engage on that project (where it's less likely they will get a response) assuming it's a local account.

I strongly think that the banner should remain on action=view, but go on top for consistency for cross-cluster pulling of media files.

(Re-titling per Lego.)

Aklapper subscribed.

I agree with Krinkle, but I don't see how top/bottom matters.

Besides, over 120 wikis are using userpage templates which are typically at the bottom. The only difference is that here we're talking of intended and surely legitimate mirrors, i.e. ourselves.

This is a global user page. The original page is located at

Indeed this can be improved: "global user page" is unnecessary jargon; "original" can be misinterpreted as "more important" or so.

"Currently this user page is set to use your [[global user page]]: <link> (edit). Creating a local user page suppresses the global user page."

This is even worse, though.

I think the footer can simply be "The current content of this page comes from http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Example".

gerritbot subscribed.

Change 187662 had a related patch set uploaded (by Nemo bis):
Simplify globaluserpage-footer

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/187662

Patch-For-Review

Wording: Nemo_bis, your suggested change to the wording seems good. Shorter is better, because it is more likely to be read.
My original suggestion in T68931 was for "This GlobalUserPage is a copy from http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Example "

Help link: I do like the idea of linking "GlobalUserPage" to the documentation at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:GlobalUserPage so that users can easily find out details and caveats. (Is that help-page ready to be marked for translation?)

Location: Regarding top/bottom, I think top would be better, per the 3 good reasons that Jalexander describes. Avoiding confusion in two ways, and promoting this wonderful and overdue new feature.

Styling/visibility: Sorry MZMcBride, I know you dislike it. Are there any stylistic tweaks to the template that might help minimise its aesthetic affect, whilst still remaining accessible?

Change 187662 merged by jenkins-bot:
Simplify globaluserpage-footer

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/187662

Legoktm claimed this task.
Legoktm reassigned this task from Legoktm to Nemo_bis.
Legoktm set Security to None.

Are there any stylistic tweaks to the template that might help minimise its aesthetic affect, whilst still remaining accessible?

I don't see the reason for the notice to exist at all. What was the rationale?

If some indication is absolutely necessary, I would probably go with a top icon, maybe a globe.

In T75634#2128486, @ori wrote:

Are there any stylistic tweaks to the template that might help minimise its aesthetic affect, whilst still remaining accessible?

I don't see the reason for the notice to exist at all. What was the rationale?

I proposed it in T68931: Add a template message at the transcluded locations, to indicate the source, because

  1. it was confusing to find "create page" tabs at the top of a page that clearly already exists, e.g. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Quiddity
  2. If I found a userpage that seemed to contain vandalism, or a broken link, or something else that I wanted to fix, then I needed to know where to go in order to fix it. Anyone unfamiliar with the extension would have no idea where to go next!

If some indication is absolutely necessary, I would probably go with a top icon, maybe a globe.

Hmm, I do love that we finally standardized https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Page_status_indicators however...
On userpages, the top icons are generally used for information about the editor themselves (user-rights, featured content contribs, etc), e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Legoktm - whereas this is information about the page-itself; I think that would be confusing or at least non-intuitive.
Also, I don't know if that would work for non-Wikimedia wikis that want to use this extension?

(Note: this task is currently marked as resolved. I'm just replying FYI! :)