Graphs don't work because WMF developers are idiots

[badmachine]

Lol they created an entire roadmap/strategy to fix the graph issue: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extensio ... ns#Roadmap I bet it still won't work in ten years.

www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Graph/Plans#FAQ

The team expects there to be a timeline to share during the first or second week of November 2023. By this time, we think we will know whether volunteers see any fundamental issues with the roadmap that warrant it being revised.

two months later and there is no solution.

phabricator.wikimedia.org/T334940

Hi @Sj -- thanks for asking about this. I know this has been such a long road and still without a solution. My plan going forward is to address the graphs issue in a more concerted way on a faster timeline so that decisions get made and momentum gets generated. Like I wrote in my post on Mediawiki, it is looking like we may need to move the conversation from "getting graphs back up and running quickly", to "figuring out a sustainable long term solution (and a plan for what to do about visualizations in the short term)". Right now, I'm gathering the small group of staff members who will think about the possible solutions. It would also really help me to have some synchronous conversations with people who know this space well and want to have a hand in planning. If you (or anyone else watching this task) would be interested in talking about this, please let me know at mmiller@wikimedia.org. Thank you!

so the plan going forward is now "to address the graphs issue in a more concerted way on a faster timeline so that decisions get made and momentum gets generated". if only that was the "plan going forward" back in April 2023.

Matthew Miller's post on MediaWiki explains that the previous guy, Peter Pelberg, "is out on leave for a couple months" which is typical for Wikimedia Foundation. this isnt good enough for Sam Klein who wrote yesterday:

Hello @MMiller_WMF, thanks warmly for tackling this. We seem to have a solution to the immediate problem (rendering static images), but have not implemented it.

There are over 10K transclusions that remain live on various projects (you know, in minor articles like Ammonia, Central Bank, Facebook, Ohio, Petroleum, Web server, Learning curve, ... sometimes the lead image!), which have rendered as broken embeds for almost a year. All would be better served with a static image.

I would like to contribute to planning rendering those images and replacing the current uses of Template:Graph:Chart. But I have little to contribute beyond this request to please render + replace (now, before trying creative and less certain long-term things). [ẅ]

checking only the two he linked, Web server and Learning curve, shows that these graphs are indeed prominently placed if not the lead image. so for nine months the lead images for Learning curve is displayed as "Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org."

there was some activity on the Phabricator page yesterday that could be worth reading. :^)

[badmachine]

not much has happened with this, and this email from Marshall Miller is causing complaints at the Phabricator page. the email from Miller makes it seem like no fix is coming, and that they instead are working on "dark mode" lol

6 Feb 2024 5:10 p.m.
Hi everyone – My name is Marshall Miller, I am a Senior Director of Product at the
Wikimedia Foundation, and I work with many of the teams that are involved with the user
experience of our websites and apps, such as the Editing, Web, Growth, and Mobile Apps
teams (among others) [1]. I’m part of the leadership group that makes decisions about how
the WMF teams approach things like graphs, interactive content, and video. Thank you all
for having this in-depth and important discussion.

I know that issues with graphs [2] are what started this discussion, but I agree that it
makes sense to think about this in terms of the broader category of “interactive content”,
because other kinds of interactive content, such as maps or timelines, would share
architecture with what is needed for graphs (video is a different and more complicated
content type). I wrote a lot in this email, but here are a couple of the main points up
front: to support graphs and other interactive content, we would need to take a step back
and make a substantial investment in sustainable architecture to do it – so that it works
well, safely, and is built to last. And because that’s a substantial investment, we need
to weigh it against other important investments in order to decide whether and when to do
it.

I know that it is very frustrating that the Graph extension has not been operational for
many months – it means readers haven’t been seeing graphs in articles, and editors haven’t
been able to use graphs to do things like monitor backlogs in WikiProjects. Over the
months of trying to find a way to turn graphs back on, it has become clear that there
isn’t a safe shortcut here and that the path forward will require a substantial investment
– one that we have not yet started given the other priorities we’ve been working on.
Every year we have to make difficult tradeoffs around what areas of our technical
infrastructure we can and cannot take on. In the current fiscal year, the Product and
Technology department has made experienced editors a priority [3], and many things that
volunteers have asked for are either accomplished or in flight:

Improvements to PageTriage (complete) [4]
Watchlist in the iOS app (complete) [5]
Patrolling in the Android app (in progress) [6]
Dark mode (in progress) [7]
Improvements to the Commons Upload Wizard (in progress) [8]
…and other projects.

But I know this conversation isn’t as much about what editors need as what current and
future readers need. Between talking about interactive content and talking about video,
it sounds like we’re having the larger conversation of what we should be offering today’s
and tomorrow’s readers to help them learn from encyclopedic content – whether we need to
be offering interactivity, or video, or perhaps enabling other platforms/apps to use our
content to make interactive or video materials there. This is a really important
conversation, because even working together we probably will not be able to build all of
it – we’ll have to make hard choices about where to invest. One place where this broader
conversation is happening is called “Future Audiences”, which does experiments on how to
reach newer generations who use the internet differently than previous generations – and
thinking particularly about video. Future Audiences has regular calls with community
members to shape the direction of those experiments, which in turn inform how the broader
Foundation prioritizes. I hope many of you will get involved in those conversations – you
can sign up here. [9]

Focusing back on graphs, since that’s what kicked this thread off, the several approaches
we’ve attempted for quickly re-enabling the extension have ended up having security or
performance problems. Therefore, we think that if we were to support graphs and other
interactive content, we would need to plan substantial investment in sustainable
architecture. This way, our approach would work securely and stably for the longer term.
But that would take significant resources, and we’ll need to weigh it against many other
important priorities, like tools for functionaries, improvements to the editing
experience, automated ways to stop vandals, etc.

To be clear, if we do assign resources to the planning and building of an architecture for
graphs (and other interactive content), it means that we are still at least several more
months away from having a working Foundation-supported architecture. Therefore, I think
we should also be having the additional conversation that many others have brought up
about what volunteers can do in these intervening months to make graphs somewhat available
to users. I know people are talking about that concretely on the Phabricator task, and I
will join that conversation as well.
For the bigger question, I would like to start with some more learning about which kinds
of interactive content are important for our encyclopedia, and how our community members
see the evolution of the reading experience on our projects. I’d like to have some small
conversations with many of you so that we can get into the details and ideas, joined by
some of my colleagues. I’ll start reaching out to see who is interested in talking – and
please let me know directly if you’d like to talk.

Thank you for weighing in so far, and let’s keep talking and planning together.

Marshall

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MMiller_(WMF)
[2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T334940
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2023-2024#…
[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Page_Curation/2023_Moderator_Tools_…!
[5] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Team/iOS/Watchlist#October_20…
[6] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Team/Android/Anti_Vandalism
[7] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Accessibility_for_reading
[8]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:WMF_support_for_Commons/Upload_W…
[9] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Future_Audiences#Sign_up_to_participate!

[ericbarbour]

They disabled graphs almost TEN MONTHS AGO. And STILL no evident progress.

On the Phabricator page, for the past 2 months all they have done is jabber at each other. "Why can't we do this" and "why can't we do that" blah blah blah.

According to the category, there are now 18,296 articles with broken graphs. Not counting thousands listed in the subcategories. Many of the broken graphs are pageview graphs on talkpages--nice to have but not critical information. But some of them are important images on live articles.

Remember, the WMF is rolling in cash. What possible excuse could they have, by now?

[badmachine]

They disabled graphs almost TEN MONTHS AGO. And STILL no evident progress.

On the Phabricator page, for the past 2 months all they have done is jabber at each other. "Why can't we do this" and "why can't we do that" blah blah blah.

According to the category, there are now 18,296 articles with broken graphs. Not counting thousands listed in the subcategories. Many of the broken graphs are pageview graphs on talkpages--nice to have but not critical information. But some of them are important images on live articles.

Remember, the WMF is rolling in cash. What possible excuse could they have, by now?

Salaries and benefits $101,305,706

thats a lot of money for a dark mode improvements to page triage and a watchlist for iOS

(edited)

[badmachine]

lots of butthurt at the Phabricator page lately. here are a few quotes:

restoring the graph extension is a lot more urgent than (for example) funding external projects through the Knowledge Equity Fund. We are being told that limited resources is the reason for the failure to address this problem, while the WMF is freely spending on many things that are only marginally related to building an encyclopedia, let alone core or urgent.

Do you think that dark mode of the UI is a core functionality? Judging from the fact that it is one of the features that WMF is working on, it is.

You could set that money on fire, and it would be more useful, as at least it would keep somebody warm.

We still don't know how much would it cost to have the graphs back, but I doub that it will be more than the money used to speculate in the Stock Exchange, which is not part of our mission.

which led to "The_RedBurn" bitching about the bitching:

Please read the Phabricator etiquette before commenting on this task.
Relevant excerpt:

Thoughts unrelated to the topic of the report (for example, meta-level discussions on priorities in general or on whether a new extension is wanted at all) should go to the appropriate mailing lists, wiki talk pages, or separate reports.

[ericbarbour]

which led to "The_RedBurn" bitching about the bitching:

Please read the Phabricator etiquette before commenting on this task.

This is EXACTLY the sort of smug little "passing comment" someone posts before the insiders crack down and censor everything. How many times have you seen that phoney-polite "Please Stop" crap on talkpages? It's dictatorship with a smiley-face facade.