PersonalScienceWiki:Open Issues

This is a list of open to do items for this wiki as well as a list of things we have already implemented or are in the process of fixing. If you have a bug that should be fixed you can add it directly to the open issues. For more general ideas, please use the talk page of this article. If you have improvement ideas for specific pages that you would like to discuss, you can add your comment directly to that page's discussion page.

Open issues

Better popups for citations

So I do not have to click, page moves, then I click the link to see the page. There must be a way for writer to describe page or at least pop up the link itself and maybe allow opening new page with the link on click. DG (talk) 20:23, 21 September 2022 (UTC) here:https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Popups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Reference_display_customization#Popups

Thank you Katoss it works as well as could be hoped. Loading external pages in the popup is insecure and spamy.

add keywords and search terms to page

Pages may be misnamed and require constant redirecting. When someone searches for the page either here in the wiki or on google they may use very different terms than writer. I think each page should have a synonym and unique terms section. For example "longevity[1][2], life expectancy, gerontology, life extension" some could be titles but each could be search term. DG (talk) 20:47, 10 March 2022

Links / Spam

Definition of rules for when something is and isn’t appropriate / good practices ; Who maintains the wiki / removes spam regularly / enforces the rules? - Katoss (talk) 14:50, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Thoughts from wiki page making meeting: restricting creating links (e.g. account creation necessary), make links not appear in search engines to remove incentives for spam, it is important to create policies that can be cited, so that spam deletion does not seem arbitrary (what is trash, what is not trash?); People who create/edit a page are on the watchlist, so they get notifications if somebody makes changes - Katoss (talk) 16:24, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Update on spam protection: The "nofollow" attribute reduces the "reward" of linkspam, and this is already on (by default) in the wiki. Rather than restricting edits to "accounts", some weeks ago Katoss set up captchas for wiki edits that don't use accounts and we said the wiki was "safe to share". In the past day or two, we did get our first spam; Gedankensteucke realized it was due to the captcha not being fully set up. We learned how to clean up spam, and should document instructions for that stuff.

Spam protections in place:

- "nofollow" attribute on external links (on by default)

- Captchas (working since 8 March 2022) for:

- anonymous edits that contain links

- account creation

- after bad login attempts

TODO:

- Create a wiki page to document instructions for spam clean-up

- Create a wiki page to start describing "appropriate content" in this wiki (should get defined and evolve via use and needs)

Madprime (talk) 19:10, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

I get captchas whenever I add a link and I am using an account. DG (talk) 01:43, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Oh, that seems like we haven't set up the captcha exemptions correctly. The MediaWiki docs give some advice on that. - Gedankenstuecke (talk) 10:49, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

I have gotten to the sail boats level DG (talk)

I changed the settings to whitelist 'confirmed' user accounts. Does that help and bypass the captcha now? - Gedankenstuecke (talk) 16:36, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I've added another level of spam protection by enabling the spam blacklist for URLs. - Gedankenstuecke (talk) 11:47, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Backups

There are daily VM backups in Digital Ocean. Should there be other backups? - Katoss (talk) 14:50, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Import more Show & Tell talks

We imported 373 Show and Tell talks (those already published on Quantified Self) as project pages. There are more in the database that could be uploaded, but each of them needs to be verified first. - Katoss (talk) 14:14, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Search results readability issues

Is it possible to display the page category when searching, and create filters, so the search results become more readable and useful? - Katoss (talk) 13:10, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Guides for project pages

Right now there are only technical/formatting guides for project pages (Help:How to make a Project page). It would be good to have a page that gives guidance on outline, sections, and on what qualifies as a project.

Improving the front page

Suggestions for making the page more accessible for new users? Right now it has a lot of text, some of which we might remove. - Katoss (talk) 13:10, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Many links to videos from Show & Tell talks are not working

There are two different error messages (Video doesn't exist vs. video is private). We still don't know where the issue is coming from. We need to contact Quantified Self people to ask if they changed any settings or removed videos. - Katoss (talk) 15:47, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Claimed Issues

Add MediaWiki statistics

Currently we don't collect any stats on visitors for pages etc. This would be useful to have to measure impact of the wiki in a broader sense but potentially also to see which pages are most useful etc. - Gedankenstuecke (talk) 14:39, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Added HitCounter extension to count page views (shows up on the bottom of each page). Usefulness of this might be limited, we discussed maybe using Google Analytics (pros might outweigh cons, seems to be easiest solution, no need to set anything up on our own server like with many other tools). Have to check GDPR compliance first. - Katoss (talk) 13:10, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Resolved Issues

Content removal request process

I've made a start on documenting a content removal process at Help:Requesting content removal. I drafted types of removal requests (priority, undiscussed, and discussed) and reasons they may be warranted. Still TODO:

• Set up an private method (e.g. email) for making private priority removal requests
• Draft and implement other within-wiki methods for removal requests

Also, there's a related TODO (documenting content removal processes for admins) in PersonalScienceWiki:Open_Issues#Links / Spam

Madprime (talk) 21:41, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Okay, I finally got this done: I've created a private method (email), and added instructions on how to use the wiki to make and (in some cases) discuss removal requests. Madprime (talk) 20:11, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Reference extension

Adding the 'cite' extension to the wiki, so it is possible to add references/footnotes - Katoss (talk) 14:50, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

The extension 'cite' was already installed (comes with MediaWiki 1.21 and up), but had to be activated manually. I tested it quickly and it seems to work. - Katoss (talk) 14:53, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

"people" page vs "user:" page

As far as I understood there was consensus on making separate pages for individuals (a page in the "People" category, and a "User:USERNAME" page). The User: page is the personal page of every user, where they can write what they like (similar to user: pages on wikipedia), and the "People" page is the "public" page about the self research practice of that person. Here are some thoughts from User:Madprime and from the self research chat on that issue. - Katoss (talk) 11:20, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

How can users reset passwords?

At the moment the wiki cannot send emails, so nothing happens when users request resetting their password. Is there another way to allow them to reset their password? If not, how can we activate email functionality? - Katoss (talk) 11:20, 18 November 2021 (UTC) (Source)

Hopefully fixed as of Nov 17 as SMTP has been set up for the server. Madprime (talk) 18:38, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I see it now works and managed to recover my password, thnx! Esenabre (talk) 15:15, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Homepage structure

The home page needs content and structure. A suggestion by User:Esenabre is here: Template:Homepage. - Katoss (talk) 15:10, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I tried importing box templates from mediawiki for formatting, but got error messages when logged in as admin. I suspect it could be size limits for file uploads. - Katoss (talk) 15:10, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I would suggest to add links to the "open issues" and "brainstorming" pages to the home page, in addition to what is in User:Esenabre's template. - Katoss (talk) 15:11, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Done. Used a table instead of boxes for now. - Katoss (talk) 15:57, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Homepage: About

We need a short text introducing the wiki(@User:Madprime would you still like to give it a try?) - Katoss (talk) 15:10, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

User:Madprime wrote a first version on the PersonalScienceWiki:About page. - Katoss (talk) 15:57, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

"Why wiki"?

It might be good to have a short text reasoning why we develop this wiki, and how it is different from other existing platforms. This could be part of the "about" text on the homepage, or maybe a dedicated text, e.g. on the Help:Personal Science Wiki FAQ page. - Katoss (talk) 11:20, 18 November 2021 (UTC) (Source)

See PersonalScienceWiki:About - Katoss (talk) 15:57, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Which metadata should the pages use?

Which metadata would be good to have for tools, topics, people and projects in order to make pages easily findable and create a useful semantic structure for this wiki? (I hesitated to put this into "brainstorming" rather than "open issues". It might be good to agree on some basic/evident properties now and to let the rest develop over time) - Katoss (talk) 11:20, 18 November 2021 (UTC) (Source)

After some discussion with User:Gedankenstuecke and User:Madprime, to reduce complexity, the category pages will only have other page categories as properties, and only in one direction (that means that, e.g. a project page has "tools" as property, but the respective tool page does not have this project as a property. However, on the bottom of the tool page, project pages that link to the tool are listed. Have a look at "Template:" + [category name] + "Infobox" and "Template:" + [category name] + "Queries" to see properties and backlinks for all categories (or look at pages of this category).

Content type "research articles"

Links to good research articles on topics, like HRV, could be useful content. This could just be part of the respective topic pages. For some types of resources, it might be worth creating a dedicated page. Would we like to have a (sub)category for this? - Katoss (talk) 11:19, 18 November 2021 (UTC) (Source)

I'd stick with integrating them into normal topic pages for now, if we see that it becomes too unwieldy on individual pages we can still break out information into 'research on topic X' pages. - Gedankenstuecke (talk) 09:06, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Should we put tagged meeting notes on the wiki?

It could be good to have (a condensed version of) the meeting notes from the self research chats on this wiki. Con: this might be a lot of work. Pro: Having tagged notes on this wiki could make it easier to find discussions and people with regards to topics. Idea: Make a page for each meeting (similar to here), but only link to the notes doc, and add links to topics, tools, projects, people that have been discussed. Maybe not add users/attendees (would attendees like to have a list of meetings they attended? Would other people find this useful?) - Katoss (talk) 11:19, 18 November 2021 (UTC) (Source)

Started adding meeting notes that only contain a link to the notes document and tags for the categories tools, topics, projects and people (self researchers/other people we talked about in the meeting, not attendees) - Katoss (talk) 14:51, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Templates for signs

I think Wikipedia uses templates to signal content that needs to be worked on, e.g. Reference needed or Stub. Do we want something similar to formalize signalling? - Gedankenstuecke (talk) 10:03, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

We now have the stub and citation needed templates. - Gedankenstuecke (talk) 13:07, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Reference templates

Wikipedia has a whole range of citation templates which allow providing data like title/author/year etc. in addition to a link in a standard way. It could be really nice to have the same here? - Gedankenstuecke (talk) 09:06, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

See above, done with templates. - Gedankenstuecke (talk) 13:08, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Switch Newarticletext by namespace

MediaWiki:Newarticletext contains the text that shows up over the textfield when one creates a new page. Some of the instructions do not make sense in some namespaces, so it would be good to display different texts for different namespaces. Katoss (talk) 15:44, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Added a switch function. Now there are different texts for the main and user namespace. The default is empty, so for the other namespaces there is no text displayed right now. Katoss (talk) 15:44, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Should we use the Media Viewer extension?

Currently galleries and images link immediately to the File page instead of having a media viewer-display like Wikipedia does. The Viewer extension would enable this. I personally think that display is useful, but how do others feel about it? - Gedankenstuecke (talk) 15:38, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Activated the extension, I think it improves the usability! Katoss (talk) 16:16, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Edit new article message

The MediaWiki:Newarticletext still gives details on how to use forms, but now we've changed to using the WYSIWYG editor and using the templates instead. Need to adapt this. - Gedankenstuecke (talk) 10:20, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Text is replaced Katoss (talk) 16:07, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Creating detailed instructions on how to create pages of each category

The pages on this wiki are sorted mainly into 4 categories (people, projects, topics, tools), which contain specific tags and templates for categorization and semantic structuring. There needs to be a guide for users on how to do this. Katoss (talk) 15:44, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Working on pages called "How to make a X page" with detailed instructions. Katoss (talk) 15:44, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Done Katoss (talk) 16:07, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Importing Show&Tell talks as wiki pages

We got a database from Quantified Self with >300 talks that can be published as project pages. The templates have to be prepared and the import code written. Katoss (talk) 15:44, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

User:Gedankenstuecke, User:Madprime and I are working on this. Katoss (talk) 15:44, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Done uploading 373 projects that are also published on Quantified self. Might upload other, unpublished projects later. - Katoss (talk) 14:14, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Notifications

I noticed that when Katoss tagged me on PersonalScienceWiki:Ask_questions, I did not receive a "notification" - a feature I'm familiar with in Wikipedia. It looks like "Notifications" is a standard component in Mediawiki.

I think we'd like to have this in our wiki? I think it may be included as a standard component already, but ... not on? It's unclear to me how to "activate" it. (Or is it active but somehow not working for me?) - Madprime (talk) 19:21, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Agree, I think I had put a wish for notifications somewhere earlier too. The Notifications article on the MediaWiki docs was a bit confusing, but I think I found it out: It seems that the Echo extension is still required to enable the notifications, even if they've rebranded the whole thing. Echo doesn't seem to be installed by default, so that would be something to look into. - Gedankenstuecke (talk) 08:37, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

I've added the Echo extension. By default there's no email notifications, but users can enable them in their preferences. - Gedankenstuecke (talk) 16:47, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Broken link in navigation

The navigation menu on the left links to Self-Research Chats and Open Humans Community Calls which does not actually exist. Is there a correct landing page for this or did we decide to get rid of it completely. If it's the latter we should remove the link in the menu. - Gedankenstuecke (talk) 14:17, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

I changed the broken link, now it points to the right, new page (Personal Science Community Meet Ups) - Katoss (talk) 13:10, 14 April 2022 (UTC)