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Community configuration: What happened in a year?

Martin Urbanec, Michael Große�Growth team, WMF�Wikimedia Hackathon 2024 – May 03, 2024

https://s.wmcz.cz/wmhack24-cc

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Agenda

  1. Motivation: Why Community configuration?
  2. Current status: Where are we at?
  3. Architecture: How does it work?
  4. Next steps
  5. Questions and answers

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Motivation

Michael Große

01

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Common complaints about WMF

  • The slow pace of software development
  • Insufficient transparency and communication
  • Lack of community involvement in decision making

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It proved to work!

Arabic Wikipedia disabled a Newcomer task

Screenshot from Special:EditGrowthConfig in GrowthExperiments extension

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It proved to work!

Swahili Wikipedia independently enabled Mentorship features

Screenshot from Special:EditGrowthConfig in GrowthExperiments extension

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  • Previous examples are from config forms custom built into GrowthExperiments
  • How can other extensions benefit from this tool as well?
  • => CommunityConfiguration 2.0

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Current status

Martin Urbanec

02

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By Webysther - Sample from MediaWiki source code on GitHub., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56188328

Community configuration is now

a (working) MediaWiki extension!

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Screenshot from Special:CommunityConfiguration (May 2024)

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You can try it out!

Live in eswiki beta:

Special:CommunityConfiguration

https://s.wmcz.cz/cc-beta

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We answered most of the open questions!

We now (mostly) know what we want CommunityConfiguration to be like.

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Should all configuration be present in one place or one config per feature set?

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Should communities be able to add their own fields to Community configuration (gadgets, user scripts, etc.)?

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How to ensure config is always loaded from the correct place?

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There are still some unanswered questions.

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How to make Community configuration discoverable?

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Architecture

Martin Urbanec

03

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Modular architecture

  • Validator: ensures the configuration is valid
  • Store: persists the configuration
  • Configuration provider: groups validator and store together
  • Editing form: the user-visible component

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Validator

  • Ensures configuration is valid
  • Provides information about recognized variables
  • Current implementation uses JSON schema for validation (represented as a PHP class, processed by Core’s ReflectionSchemaSource class)

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Example schema

class ExampleSchema extends JsonSchema {

​

public const String = [

self::TYPE => self::TYPE_STRING

];

​

}

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Editor form

By default: An editing form is automatically generated based on a JSON schema

Client extensions might introduce a new editor capability to replace the default logic with their own, to meet more complex needs.

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Store

  • Persists the configuration.
  • Current implementation uses a JSON wiki page in�the MediaWiki: namespace

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Configuration provider

  • Groups store and validator together, including parameters (extension.json)
  • Defines how store/validator communicate together (new providers can be registered via extension.json)

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Provider in extension.json

"attributes": { "CommunityConfiguration": { "Providers": {

"HelpPanel": {

"store": {

"type": "wikipage",

"args": [

"MediaWiki:GrowthExperimentsHelpPanel.json"

]

},

"validator": {

"type": "jsonschema",

"args": [ HelpPanelSchema::class ]

},

"type": "mw-config"

}

}}}

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Next steps

Michael Große

04

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Production deployment

  • Migrating the existing CommunityConfig 1.0 in GrowthExperiments into CommunityConfiguration 2.0
  • Making that available to the community, in production

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Defining stable interfaces

  • If other teams are using it, it has to be consistent
  • Defining a minimal set of essential interfaces as stable
    • Probably structure of provider config in extension.json and the JsonSchema base class
  • Document and publish

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Supporting a first non-Growth extension

  • Support other teams on integrating CommunityConfiguration 2.0 into their extensions
  • Co-create guidelines on what configuration is suitable for CommunityConfiguration

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Questions and answers

Slidedeck: https://s.wmcz.cz/wmhack24-cc�Homepage: https://s.wmcz.cz/cc-homepage �Contact: murbanec@wikimedia.org, mgrosse@wikimedia.org