User story & summary:
As a Wikipedia admin, I want to easily update community configuration, so that I can customize features to work well for my wiki.
Background:
This task is important because Special:EditGrowthConfig has increased in complexity we can't continue to scale this feature without design improvements.
Short-term this project supports the Editing and Moderator Tools team projects (Edit check and Revert prediction bot), and long-term this work will help evolve how WMF product and technology teams develop and deploy features. Prioritizing work on Community configuration acknowledges that each community has unique needs, and invested community members should be empowered to configure features to meet those needs. This approach removes the barrier for non-technical moderators to customize settings for their communities and fosters a more inclusive and collaborative product development process, thus enabling WMF to better serve the Wikimedia movement.
Needed research & open questions:
- Ideally community configuration is a well-known tool for admins that can be adjusted as needed, but doesn't require frequent changes. You can view Community configuration usage here. Do admins know about Community configuration? Do they feel empowered to make changes or feel blocked currently? Do they have any feedback about needed Community configuration improvements?
- How can configuration options be organized in a way that will scale well overtime? For example, both the Apps and Web have "Suggested edits": would those be organized together, or separated since they are different platforms? How can we resist Conway's law and ensure the organization matches user needs rather than the organizational structure they are designed in?
- User access levels: Community configuration should be visible by all, but only editable by a trusted subset of experienced Wikimedians. Are all configuration options only editable by Admins? Do Bureaucrats and Stewards have access to make changes? Do some configuration options have different user access levels?
Design:
Design comprises two key parts:
- Revising the UI and workfklow of Community configuration is easy to use and understandable for admins, regardless of their technical expertise.
- Designing guidelines for what community configuration settings should include, and user access/permissions that scale to other products/features.
Acceptance Criteria:
- Collaborate closely with communities, @Urbanecm_WMF, and WMF teams interested in Community configuration (Moderator Tools & Editing), to develop design improvements for Community configuration that will allow this feature to scale and evolve to meet community needs.
- Create a Design brief that addresses the key parts of the physical re-design of the current feature for Growth and explorations about extension beyond to other products/teams
- Create design sub-tasks based on the outputs from sharing the design brief
- Once initial designs have been shared internally and you have iterated on designs based on feedback, share the English language mockups on Commons and attach URLs as a comment to this task.
Overarching story:
Given I access Special:EditGrowthConfig
When want to review or adjust the configuration,
Then I can easily access the section I care to adjust.