Last modified: 2014-04-24 00:51:32 UTC

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Bug 56517 - BetaFeatures: The "Beta" personal menu item should only be shown for users who opted in to at least one beta feature
BetaFeatures: The "Beta" personal menu item should only be shown for users wh...
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Product: MediaWiki extensions
Classification: Unclassified
BetaFeatures (Other open bugs)
unspecified
All All
: Unprioritized major with 1 vote (vote)
: ---
Assigned To: Nobody - You can work on this!
:
Depends on:
Blocks:
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2013-11-02 17:32 UTC by Bartosz Dziewoński
Modified: 2014-04-24 00:51 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

See Also:
Web browser: ---
Mobile Platform: ---
Assignee Huggle Beta Tester: ---


Attachments

Description Bartosz Dziewoński 2013-11-02 17:32:51 UTC
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.)
Comment 1 Bartosz Dziewoński 2013-11-07 21:14:07 UTC
(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 .)
Comment 2 James Forrester 2013-12-17 22:34:11 UTC
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.)
Comment 3 Bartosz Dziewoński 2013-12-18 14:36:27 UTC
(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.
Comment 4 TMg 2013-12-18 15:07:06 UTC
(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
Comment 5 Bartosz Dziewoński 2014-04-23 21:21:39 UTC
*** Bug 64323 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

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