⚓ T344544 Archive the DoubleWiki extension

Subject	Repo	Branch	Lines +/-
Unregister DoubleWiki	mediawiki/extensions	master	+0 -5
Archive repository	mediawiki/extensions/DoubleWiki	master	+1 -10 K
Remove DoubleWiki	mediawiki/vagrant	master	+0 -5
Zuul: [mediawiki/extensions/DoubleWiki] Mark as archived	integration/config	master	+4 -5
Rm some more archived repos	translatewiki	master	+0 -6
Disable DoubleWiki extension everywhere	operations/mediawiki-config	master	+0 -6

		Status	Subtype	Assigned	Task
		Open	Request	None	T344544 Archive the DoubleWiki extension
		Resolved		Ladsgroup	T351675 Undeploy DoubleWiki

Soda created this task.Aug 19 2023, 7:50 AM

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptAug 19 2023, 7:50 AM

cc @Samwilson @Tpt who are the current maintainers :)

Soda updated the task description. (Show Details)Aug 19 2023, 7:52 AM

Novem_Linguae subscribed.Aug 19 2023, 7:52 AM

I am not actively maintaining the extension. I never took the time to try to rewrite it properly. I am fine with undeploying it. Some consultation of the users (frwikisource...) might be nice to avoid a backslash.

Soda added a project: All-and-every-Wikisource.Aug 19 2023, 12:40 PM

Reedy added a project: Community-consensus-needed.Aug 19 2023, 1:10 PM

Is the proposal here to merge the functionality into the Wikisource extension, or to drop the functionality entirely?

In the former case there is no obvious need for community consensus. Given its age and state of unmaintenance I am not sure just dropping it is an issue for community consensus either, but in that case it would probably be good to go through a period of deprecation, warnings to the communities, helping users to migrate to something else (at the very least to disable any Gadgets depending on it and update community docs and guidance etc.) before turning it off.

Migrating the functionality to a WMCS/Toolforge tool doesn't immediately sound like a good idea to me, but projects that are heavy users of it (are there any? frWS maybe? Did anybody run a mwgrep or similar to try to quantify its actual usage?) might want to try to put something together iff it's going away.

I've never used its functionality in anger, but trying it now on the examples linked in the doc it worked remarkably well for something unmaintained since 2013.

In T344544#9103741, @Tpt wrote:

I am not actively maintaining the extension. I never took the time to try to rewrite it properly. I am fine with undeploying it. Some consultation of the users (frwikisource...) might be nice to avoid a backslash.

I intend to put out a user notice out in the next Tech News.

In T344544#9103959, @Xover wrote:

Is the proposal here to merge the functionality into the Wikisource extension, or to drop the functionality entirely?

In the former case there is no obvious need for community consensus. Given its age and state of unmaintenance I am not sure just dropping it is an issue for community consensus either, but in that case it would probably be good to go through a period of deprecation, warnings to the communities, helping users to migrate to something else (at the very least to disable any Gadgets depending on it and update community docs and guidance etc.) before turning it off.

I'm open to both approaches, if there is not much community interest, (I know frwikisource and itwikisource use it) we could just kill it. If there is community interest, we could modernise the code (improvements include: moving away from table based formatting and surfacing the links in more prominent locations etc) and merge it into the Wikisource extension.

Migrating the functionality to a WMCS/Toolforge tool doesn't immediately sound like a good idea to me, but projects that are heavy users of it (are there any? frWS maybe? Did anybody run a mwgrep or similar to try to quantify its actual usage?) might want to try to put something together iff it's going away.

Looking at the code, this could easily be a gadget that is used by specific wikis (it is already partially enabled via a gadget). I agree that a toolforge tool might not be the best option, however, these are options via which we could have the same functionality without the added complexity of maintaining a extension.

I've never used its functionality in anger, but trying it now on the examples linked in the doc it worked remarkably well for something unmaintained since 2013.

It definitely works better than I would have expected :)

Amire80 updated the task description. (Show Details)Aug 20 2023, 2:18 AM

Amire80 updated the task description. (Show Details)

Quiddity moved this task from To Triage to In current Tech/News draft on the User-notice board.Aug 20 2023, 5:38 AM

Soda updated the task description. (Show Details)Aug 20 2023, 10:56 AM

Soda updated the task description. (Show Details)

I strongly support undeploying this extension. One way to tackle missing functionalities is through gadgets and iframe or a wmcs service. The communities can build that as they see fit.

Peachey88 moved this task from Backlog to delete on the Wikimedia-GitHub board.Aug 26 2023, 6:59 AM

RhinosF1 subscribed.Aug 26 2023, 7:04 AM

Peachey88 moved this task from Untriaged to Archive extensions on the Projects-Cleanup board.Aug 26 2023, 11:44 PM

Nikerabbit moved this task from Backlog to Projects to remove on the translatewiki.net board.Aug 28 2023, 1:58 PM

NightWolf1223 subscribed.Aug 28 2023, 2:12 PM

It might be useful tool, if someone knows about existence of it.

The example book looks terrible on my monitor in Vector '22:
https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Criton_(trad._Cousin)?match=en

I believe this feature could be quite useful if the text could be synchronized in some manner, similar to how two-language books are organised. However, I'm unsure if this is really feasible, considering that translated pages wouldn't necessarily align.

For instance, in this particular scenario, the English content has already concluded while the French text still has a few screens to go.

In the current state, it seems more practical to open two pages in separate browser windows. On Windows, you can achieve this by using [Windows]+[Left arrow].

Quiddity moved this task from In current Tech/News draft to Already announced/Archive on the User-notice board.Aug 31 2023, 9:53 PM

Kizule moved this task from Backlog to Cleanup / Archival on the Diffusion-Repository-Administrators board.Sep 11 2023, 3:49 AM

Next week I'm going to disable the extension.

Change 965707 had a related patch set uploaded (by Ladsgroup; author: Amir Sarabadani):

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Disable DoubleWiki extension everywhere

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/965707

gerritbot added a project: Patch-For-Review.Oct 13 2023, 10:47 AM

Change 965707 merged by jenkins-bot:

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Disable DoubleWiki extension everywhere

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/965707

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2023-10-16T14:02:13Z] <ladsgroup@deploy2002> Started scap: Backport for [[gerrit:965707|Disable DoubleWiki extension everywhere (T344544)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2023-10-16T14:03:27Z] <ladsgroup@deploy2002> ladsgroup: Backport for [[gerrit:965707|Disable DoubleWiki extension everywhere (T344544)]] synced to the testservers (https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mwdebug)

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2023-10-16T14:10:22Z] <ladsgroup@deploy2002> Finished scap: Backport for [[gerrit:965707|Disable DoubleWiki extension everywhere (T344544)]] (duration: 08m 09s)

Maintenance_bot removed a project: Patch-For-Review.Oct 16 2023, 2:12 PM