Forum:Flags - a new way to maintain article notice boxes

Good morning GTA Wiki!

As part of our ongoing work to try and help ensure articles work well across kinds of devices, we've been hard at work on a new article feature to update the way 'content notices' work, which we're calling Flags.

What we're talking about are the kinds of notice templates you see at the top of articles with information like 'plot and/or ending details are in the text which follows' or 'this article or section contains insufficient information'. Essentially, they are metadata for an article - communicating the status of that article, rather than being article content itself.

With Flags, the notice templates are be separated out from the article content and given their own management tool. They still use the exact same templates as before (and you can continue to create new ones and update existing templates, just as you do today) - but now users can browse, add and remove them without resorting to fairly specific knowledge of how the varied templates work.
 * What does it do?

By adding a quick layer of data to these templates, communities will have more control over which notices appear to which people (e.g. an Spoiler notice would be relevant to all readers, but a Stub notice may only be relevant to logged-in contributors.) The layer of data would also allow for custom reports via Insights (e.g. an Insight list of all pages that have a stub flag.) The content of these templates will no longer clutter Google and on-Wikia search results, and we'll be able to display abbreviated versions of the notices on mobile phones.

Other potential ideas include mobile users easily being able to mark pages that need work (e.g. you notice a page is full of typos, and flag it for yourself or others to improve), or even modifying how the page behaves based on the flags (e.g. hiding spoiler article text from on-Wikia search results). If you have more ideas around this, we’d love to hear them!

We have been working on a simple version of the Flags tool, which is already live on a few communities, such as Maze Runner Wiki, 007 Wiki and Red Dead Wiki. We're really interested to see how it works on active, smart communities like yours, to help us understand how it works in real-world environments.
 * How can you help?

Any and all feedback on how it works will be invaluable, and will likely strongly influence future development in this area.

We'll automatically convert usages of notice templates to the new type of code. (If it needs to be reversed, this is possible.) Afterwards, you'd use a new option on the 'Edit' button dropdown to choose which flags should appear on an article.
 * What would enabling it mean for your community?

You can view the current flags setup for your community on Special:Flags. This can't be edited yet (we're working on that functionality), but we're happy to make tweaks to it in the meantime.

You can read more detail about how exactly the tool works on Help:Flags!

The tool is under heavy development right now, and more abilities and options will be added as and when they are completed.

So - we'd love to hear your thoughts! We'll keep an eye on this thread for any feedback you may have.

Thanks! Kirkburn (talk) 20:31, June 17, 2015 (UTC)

Discussion
So if I understand well, the Flags' purpose is to allow readers to remove specific templates? 20:39, June 17, 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes and no - while adding and removing flags (notice templates) is the primary user interaction with it, moving to this format allows a variety of other things to happen as well. For example, editing-related flags can be hidden in contexts where editing doesn't happen (anon mobile users is a primary example), and we can provide interesting data reports based on how the flags have been classified. Do feel free to take a look around the communities where it's already enabled to get an idea of how it functions! Kirkburn (talk) 20:47, June 17, 2015 (UTC)
 * I've been checking them on the RDR feature and it looks like an interesting feature. Just a question: who will be able to edit flags to add/remove some? Sysops only or everyone? 20:50, June 17, 2015 (UTC)
 * Anyone can add and remove Flags from an article. (Only admins will be able to edit Special:Flags, once those abilities are available). Kirkburn (talk) 19:43, June 18, 2015 (UTC)

I'm okay with it as long as it will not destroy half the pages & templates on the wiki and will not completely wreck desktop experience like the recent Wikia layout "improvements" did. I'll once again say my ignored suggestion of adding an option in Special:Preferences where users can choose the size of the layout they want - so if someone wants a mobile-like version on desktop or a proper widescreen layout (or whatever other possible resolution) they can without using custom css.

Anyway, I have a few questions about the flags:
 * Are we able to flag specific sections? For example: I would only want to flag a vehicle's "Design" section for cleanup instead of the entire page - so that the template appears in that one section only instead of top of the page.
 * In the flags dialog, does writing the reason for a specific flag alter multiple things within the template? The next-gen template has two versions - one for all current-generation consoles (and PC) and one for PC only (which is activated by "|pconly=y" tag). Also templates such as move/merge has three functions - one page, second page and talk page. Is it possible to control all variants/functions/etc of the template or just a single one?
 * If someone edits the page when a flag is active, does the flag appear when editing (where it can be removed) or can it be only added/removed through the flags dialog?

23:16, June 17, 2015 (UTC)


 * Hey there! For a logged in desktop user, Flags should make almost zero difference to how articles appear. Currently, anonymous users won't see the flags targeted at 'contributors', while mobile users won't see any flags. For your other questions:
 * Flags, as currently designed, is only for the notices that appear at the top of pages. We simply don't affect templates that aren't in the first section of a page (so you would continue to add and remove those as you do today).
 * The options within the flag dialog are a direct match to the parameters you currently use - in the example screenshot 'Reason' is a parameter for the Cleanup template.
 * Currently, flags do not appear during editing - but not because we don't think it should. Our development process for this feature is very much: get the 'Minimum Viable Product' in front of people's eyes, and ask for feedback about it. We'd love thoughts on what you'd like to see!
 * PS. Regarding your general site layout thoughts - while this wasn't my area, I would say your feedback wasn't ignored: we just can't do everything suggested. The layout updates aren't unquestionably 'done-and-dusted', certainly. Kirkburn (talk) 19:43, June 18, 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reply. Would changing the flags' target be possible once "Special:Flags" is editable? For example making the "Images" flag be visible to everyone so that it encourages visitors to take pictures, sign up and add images.


 * Responses & more questions:
 * Would there be a possibility of selecting a specific section to flag in the future?
 * So, basically, it's the exact same as it is now? If I would split text in the flags dialog with "|", that would control multiple parameters the same way as adding a template does?
 * I don't mind if it does or does not appear when editing. I would actually prefer if it does not appear when editing (It would kind of be pointless to add flags dialog if flags would be added/removed almost the exact same way when editing) - but as I said, I don't mind either way.
 * I've been thinking what if adding flags would split them from the page? Since adding a flag will add it to the very top of the page, maybe a horizontal rule (" " tag) separating the flags and the page content could make it look slightly better and more visible (I actually don't know how to describe this) - though I'm not exactly sure how it would look like with multiple flags at the same time.


 * As for the layout changes, would it be possible to add an option like this in the future? Just a widescreen on/off toggle or something would be perfect as long as it looks like the previous layout.v-michael-trunk-mini.jpg V-franklin-trunk-mini.jpg V-trevor-trunk-mini.jpg 23:01, June 18, 2015 (UTC)


 * Changing settings on Special:Flags would be no problem - if it's before we've been able to launch the native customization abilities, we (Wikia Staff) can change it fairly quickly for you upon request.
 * Section flags: I wouldn't rule it out, but it's definitely not our focus for now.
 * Parameters: each parameter gets its own input line in the flags dialog - no need to worry about how to separate (or label) them.
 * Editing experience: thanks for the ideas!
 * Layout preference: I'll make sure that idea has been passed along.
 * Thanks for the questions! Kirkburn (talk) 15:59, June 19, 2015 (UTC)

Hey there. A wide range of updates to the tool went out today - lots of polish, including logging improvements, better behaviour around updates, and Special:Flags now lists out the parameter options for each flag. We're pretty keen on getting feedback from live situations - would you consider having this enabled within the next week or so? If not, what do you feel could be blocking that? Kirkburn (talk) 18:06, June 23, 2015 (UTC)


 * A couple more rounds of updates have gone out since my last comment, mostly around bug fixing. More feature updates will be coming soon :) As a followup to my last comment, we'd definitely like to get this live on more communities, so we can get more feedback on how it works in real situations. What are you biggest concerns at the moment? Kirkburn (talk) 16:18, July 6, 2015 (UTC)