MediaWiki talk:Sitenotice

This interface message or skin may be documented on MediaWiki.org or translatewiki.net. The page forms part of the MediaWiki interface, and can only be edited by administrators and interface editors. To request a change to the page, add {{edit fully-protected}} to this page, followed by a description of your request. Consider announcing discussions you add here at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) to bring more people to the discussion.

Wikipedia has five kinds of top-of-page messages that can be used to convey information or announcements to readers and editors. The "Sitenotice", found at MediaWiki:Sitenotice, is displayed at the top of all pages for all logged-in users, and for anonymous users if the following message is empty. MediaWiki:Anonnotice can be used to display information only to anonymous/IP users, not logged-in users. Alternatively, by 'blanking' the anonnotice and replacing it with nothing (not even a space or empty paragraph!), then the sitenotice can be used as a "logged-in users only" notice to display information only to editors. When "Anonnotice" contains nothing, no notice is shown to anonymous users. When it contains "-" it disables the message in favour of Sitenotice. If it contains anything else, it will be rendered to anonymous users instead of the Sitenotice (including a "hide" button). MediaWiki:Watchlist-messages is displayed at the top of Special:Watchlist for all users who use this feature. The CentralNotice, found at meta:Special:CentralNotice, is an extension which can display banners at the top of a select group of Wikimedia sites simultaneously. Geonotice, at Wikipedia:Geonotice, allows location-specific notices – and is a candidate for integration into MediaWiki.

Archives

Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5 Archive 6

Just to let you know that the Happy Bday banner pointing to the Shop does not display properly on my Firefox (completely missing the Wikimedia Shop. The Wikimedia Shop is operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia and its sister projects. part), unless I minimize the size of the text in the page, and I am pretty sure it is not meant to work like this. --Elitre (talk) 14:29, 14 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The 15% discount banner is originating from the Wikimedia Foundation's Central Site Notice page at meta:Special:CentralNotice, not here. Zzyzx11 (talk) 04:41, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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There's no good reason to use reduced size text here; it only serves to make it more difficult to read. Could someone remove font-size: 80%; from the style attribute of the div tag? Also, please remember to increment MediaWiki:Sitenotice id per mw:Manual:Interface/Sitenotice#Dismissing when updating the sitenotice. Thanks. jcgoble3 (talk) 18:29, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Partly done: I've bumped the cookie counter, seeing as it hadn't been done today, but not sure about the font size - yes it is tiny, but it is being shown absolutely everywhere, and we already have complaints that it ought to be displayed on main page only. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:39, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The latest comments at WP:VPT#Users reporting site time issues and delay in visible update of edits are suggesting that this issue is present throughout the wiki, not just on the Main Page. Therefore, I would suggest pushing the change above through, and also change "the Main Page" to "some pages" or "many pages" and the "is" two words later to "are". jcgoble3 (talk) 22:28, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I generalized the wording before seeing this request. The font size issue appears to require discussion. —David Levy 23:16, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

font size is good as is. NE Ent 23:29, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, I am requesting a sitenotice for POTY 2012 Round 2 (Final Round) to run instead of a CentralNotice on this wiki. Picture of the Year is a widely recognized event and we would like to encourage ENWP editors to participate in celebrating Wikimedia's best pictures. The banner would remain visible to logged in editors from Feb 7 2012 to Feb 14 2013. You can view the banner here - the banner would appear in English only. Mono for the POTY 2012 committee at 20:30, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Out of curiosity, why is the CentralNotice insufficient? Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 04:33, 8 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Currently there are mass-migrations of interwiki data being moved to WP:Wikidata. These appear in Watchlists as large-scale bot deletions and look like this [1]. Based on the feedback at Wikipedia talk:Wikidata#Lack of advanced warning and no decent how-to guide for WP:EN editors and the the Talkpages of the bot operators, User talk:Addbot#Avril Lavigne -- interwikilink removals, it would appear that most editors on en.wikipedia are utterly unaware of this. Although others disagree, I think there is a case for a sitewide (logged-in) use of {{sitenotice}} to give editors a heads up on a such a significant change to the way in which articles work. That said, there still isn't (yet) any decent documentation to point people to, despite the bots going forward at full-steam, and it's happening now. —Sladen (talk) 11:28, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Again, this is not a good use for the sitenotice, and is over a week after deployment. --Rschen7754 11:30, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this is your opinion. Your are familiar with Wikidata, myself, and 95% of other editors weren't until it hit our Watchlists ~36 hours ago. It's clear the documentation is lacking, and if it is indeed "a week", perhaps it would be good to work on this first, while other editors worry about how to get the message out. Respectfully, —Sladen (talk) 11:35, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have to agree. Way too late, but better than nothing. Relatively few people read the Signpost. --Yngvadottir (talk) 12:43, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think the issue is more we need to alter Wikipedia:Wikidata. ·Add§hore· ^{Talk To Me!} 12:49, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Let's shoot for the achievable - letting editors know what the heck is happening. Why is this seen as an unsuitable use of the sitenotice? It seems to me alerting editors to the legitimacy of a migration affecting every article for inscrutable technical reasons is one of the best reasons to have a sitenotice. --Yngvadottir (talk) 12:55, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I completely agree. This is a fundamental change to a well-known aspect of the site's functions. Editors should not have to be surprised one article at a time until they work it out after the fact. – Smyth\^talk 14:16, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Surprised to find myself agreeing here. I resent the repeated attempts to blame Wikidata editors for Wikipedia's failure to publicize a change that was announced weeks in advance, but, now that it's clear that Wikipedians weren't made adequately aware, I think a notice is not necessary. However, I'd differ on one point: This change doesn't affect normal Wikipedia readers, only editors. So MediaWiki:Watchlist-details seems more appropriate. — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 15:58, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's not "~36 hours ago" - it's been over a week now, see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Wikidata phase 1 is live now. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:43, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think the initial shock is all over now, I don't seem to be getting as many messages on my talk page now, people seem to be reading the pages that are linked to in the comments. ·Add§hore· ^{Talk To Me!} 16:27, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that it's important to provide an explanation, but why is this not achievable via links included in edit summaries? (To be clear, this is a sincere question, not an argument.)

If a notice is necessary, I strongly agree with PinkAmpersand that MediaWiki:Watchlist-details, not MediaWiki:Sitenotice, is the appropriate location. —David Levy 17:09, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Right from the start I've been routinely linking the relevant Wikidata page in my edit summaries. After a few of these, I also linked WP:WDATA, like this. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:41, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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When doing a live beta, letting people back out is crucial to avoiding discontent, as well as providing a place to post bugs. Neither of these have been done. Indeed, the current attempt doesn't even explain what VisualEditor is. As such, I would suggest the following sitenotice be added immediately.

I've used a little colour to make sure people see it. I suggest Sitenotice, as whatever hack is being used for the uninformative message literally takes 3 seconds before it appears on the otherwise completely-loaded page. This provides the necessary information, explains what's happening, and tells people where to report bugs, and how to opt out - things that should have been done 15 hours ago.

Thank you. (Crossposted to WP:ANI) Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 14:36, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a 'hack', it's the CentralNotice extension, which we use for pretty much every big announcement. My feeling on this is clear; I feel it would totally undermine the software proper to fire everyone at an instant switch to permanently disable the VE, I think it is frankly unfair to push on to editors a sitenotice that contains no mechanism for disabling it, and I suspect that the Foundation will not appreciate attempts to do so. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:56, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You don't understand how SiteNotice works if you think there's no way to disable it. That's part of sitenotice's core functionality. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 15:49, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We've already had this conversation elsewhere, Adam; look at the timestamps. Can we try to focus on one venue, please? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:32, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Oh not again". Yes, please, somebody either disable the crazy-never-loading-Javascript-thingy until a sitenotice has been properly applied with clear instructions on how to disable it. There is nothing presently in Preferences→Editing that I can see that matches up. —Sladen (talk) 16:45, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done. After speaking with the team in #mediawiki-visualeditor, there's an issue with CentralNotice's cookie handling which they're actively working on a fix for. For the time being, having some users see two notices is just going to make it harder for coordination. Leaving it centrally in one place is going to be easier for now. If they aren't able to get a fix working in a reasonable amount of time, then we should definitely re-visit the idea of using a local sitenotice. Legoktm (talk) 18:25, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It took a bit of going in circles on #mediawiki-visualeditor, but the answer was much simpler; the intended notice had expired because of |until=2013-06-30, before deployment had occurred Old revision of MediaWiki:Watchlist. —Sladen (talk) 19:27, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies, I can see it now, it relies on a double-negative. Ideally it should be changed to be [x] Use Visual Editor, so that unticking disables, rather than ticking disabling. —Sladen (talk) 16:47, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's more of a comment for MediaWiki talk:Gadgets-definition or WP:VPT. Legoktm (talk) 18:25, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Hi. The notice about the RFC concerning default state of the VisualEditor should be removed until there's a consensus to include it in a site-wide notice for all users. (If such a consensus exists already, please provide a link to it. I checked this talk page and saw nothing.) --MZMcBride (talk) 03:14, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done. I've removed it. If there is a consensus to include it somewhere, though, just let me know and I will restore it. At any rate, we should have either the sitenotice or the watchlist notice; both is definitely too much. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 03:30, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! And an extra thank you for remembering to clear MediaWiki:Anonnotice as well. Well done. For what it's worth, I agree with you that we should have a watchlist notice or a site-wide notice; having both is a bit much. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:38, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Let's rather have a site notice than a watchlist notice. Watchlist notices are easily overlooked (I always miss them). Having the site notice up for those four or five hours doubled participation in the RfC, leading to about 100 editors leaving an opinion: that was a good thing. Andreas JN466 14:32, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Concur with Andreas, the site notice has been far more effective than the watchlist notice in bringing attention. MZM is just being silly, there's not a single site notice I've seen in the last five years that has had "consensus". Risker (talk) 14:39, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • What? You don't think, prior to enabling a site-wide notice on one of the most-visited sites on the Internet, there should first be at least a discussion (outside of your personal user talk page) about whether doing so is appropriate? Who's being silly, Risker? --MZMcBride (talk) 14:44, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Didn't Killiondude set the site notice up to display to logged-in editors only? Andreas JN466 14:51, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes, using a horrible hack. I don't see how that's relevant to the principle that site-wide notices should first have some kind of consensus before being deployed. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:59, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • You said this was one of the most-visited sites. I believe Jayen was trying to point out that not every visitor sees the message. Killiondude (talk) 18:55, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well, I've been an admin for six years, MZM, and I have yet to see a single consensus discussion on a site-wide notice. This page has 62 discussions running back 7 years (to when this feature was first enabled, I believe). There's nothing on this page saying a consensus discussion is needed. You and I both know that most site notices are done without discussion at all by admins who happen to know how to do them. Risker (talk) 14:54, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Are you really suggesting that any admin who knows where MediaWiki:Sitenotice is should be able to set a site-wide notice on a whim? Without any prior discussion? I don't believe you agree with what you're writing here. Historically most site notices have been fundraising-related or outage-related. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:58, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • There's no policy about this as far as I know. In my experience it usually boils down to using common sense, but if discussions like this start to get more common it would probably be a good idea to create some actual rules for how to deal with sitenotices and watchlist notices, etc. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 15:21, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• I also agree. For something like this, its better to have the site notice. Given the number of commentors and the number of discussions wikiwide about VE I do not believe there was a consensus to remove the notification. Evidence seems to the contrary that the consensus is that the notice is needed and wanted. Kumioko (talk) 14:43, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you can provide any links to such discussions where there's a forming consensus that a site-wide notice is appropriate, that would be very helpful. I'm only aware of this discussion and a small discussion at User talk:Risker. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:46, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Here. On the talk page of the RFC. My talk page. This is probably the biggest consensus for a site notice that there has been for the last five years. Risker (talk) 14:55, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Ummm, both this discussion and the discussion at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor/Default State RFC#Restore site notice? were obviously started after the site notice had already been enabled. Perhaps there's now "retroactive consensus," but ideally there should be a consensus prior to enabling a site-wide notice. I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with. This is completely common sense. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:11, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support site notice. That method will generate a much wider opinion than watchlists - especially for the inexperienced users the VE is supposed to be for. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 14:58, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• (edit conflict) I've reinstated the sitenotice and removed the watchlist notice. There have only been a few editors chiming in so far, but most of those editors have been in favour of a sitenotice. Let's keep it in place a bit longer and see what other editors have to say about it. If there's a consensus to remove it after all, then I will do so. Also, other administrators are free to revert my actions here without notifying me - I don't really mind either way. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 15:03, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• I agree with Mr. Stradivarius that both notices were probably too much. I should have started a discussion to remove the watchlist notice once I put the site notice in place. I apologize. I felt it would be reasonable in general to make this RFC more prominent due to the nature of the topic. This has been done in the past with pending changes / flagged revs iirc as well as other important site-wide changes. Killiondude (talk) 18:55, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I believe that PC was advertised with watchlist notices. In 2010, there was a site notice for the Usability Intiative in May, a problem with thumbnails in August, a note about Wikileaks for maybe ten minutes in December, and a notice about a survey for less than 15 minutes in December. In 2011 and 2012, there were no site notices posted for more than a couple of minutes. (Fundraising and such uses CentralNotice.) In 2013, there was a brief notice in January about a bug affecting the main page. Now there's this. That's it for the last few years. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support use of Sitenotice. For the avoidance of doubt, the use of Sitenotice for this VE RFC is completely appropriate. VE is the most intrusive user-visible change to enwiki made in the last five years, and such large-impact changes should continue to be reported to the userbase proportionately. I strongly suspect that had Sitenotice been deployed in the process—see requests that were made above—then this VE RFC today would be unnecessary. —Sladen (talk) 02:47, 2 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Announcements about VisualEditor during June and July used CentralNotice, which is essentially the same thing (puts a big box at the top of each user's screen), except that you can schedule them in advance, run multiple languages from a single page, and use a few other bells and whistles. So there were big notices on everyone's pages, even though this exact page wasn't the one used to deliver the message. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:15, 2 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's "VisualEditor", not "the Visual Editor". Could someone correct this? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:26, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Also, if you're correcting things anyway, there's a complaint about the non-anonymous nature of "anonymous" users over at the RFC's talk page. "Unregistered editors", "logged-out editors" or simply "all editors" might be appropriate. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:28, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The anonymous thing can probably be changed. I simply copied the text from the watchlist notice that was put in place. However, to your first point, mw:VisualEditor has "the" and "Visual Editor" interspersed all over the page. Is the team's brand image that it be used without the definite article and as one word? Because that's not clear to readers of the original documentation page. Killiondude (talk) 23:08, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if "brand image" is the best way of putting it, but I'm told that it's "the VisualEditor environment" (or portal/team/project/whatever)" or just "VisualEditor" (no article) when the product is itself the noun. The mw page is therefore mostly correct: "The VisualEditor deployment...", etc. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:32, 2 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've altered the name to VisualEditor and also switched "anonymous" to "logged-out". The question of whether "users" is redundant is another kettle of fish. — foxj 08:31, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

An editor at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Default_State RFC#RFC tag brought up that he's unable to disable the site notice for the Visual Editor RFC. This user surfs with JavaScript disabled.

I tested this with both Firefox (22) and IE (9). When you disable JavaScript the "[hide]" link that's normally to the upper-right of a site-notice is centered and positioned above the notice. However, clicking it has no affect. Under Firefox the HTML sent to me when JavScript is disabled was <div class="mw-dismissable-notice-close">[<a href="#">hide</a>]</div>. That's not going to hide the notice.

I enabled JavaScript, disabled the site-notice (which removed the notice), and then disabled JavaScript. The site notice is visible again.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to turn the site notice back on so that I can view the HTML for a site notice's "hide" link when JavaScript is enabled. I assume there was an onclick or something similar that handled setting the "hide notice" flag using the MediaWiki:Sitenotice id.

Someone suggested the site notice could be disabled via Preferences / Gadgets / "Suppress display of the fundraiser banner." However, The site notice for this RFC is apparently not a "fundraiser banner" and so the preference did not remove the RFC site notice. --Marc Kupper|talk 21:10, 6 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In Firefox 22, go to Tools → Options → Privacy → History → remove individual cookies.

In the scrolling list, find the entry for en.wikipedia.org, click the + to the left of that, and find the dismissSiteNotice cookie; highlight that and click Remove cookie --Redrose64 (talk) 21:27, 6 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Yes, the fundraiser is a bit different. Anyhow, to rid yourself of the SiteNotice for all eternity, just add #siteNotice { display:none; } to your .css file like so. Killiondude (talk) 21:30, 6 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 09:17, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And then remember not to complain when you miss an announcement (including partial outages, emergency announcements etc). Hopefully the new Echo messages platform in the future will be able to take over most of these sitenotice functions, and then we could actually register the individual messages in a database to do a more targeted approach to delivery of messages. That's still months away though. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:03, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'll probably remove the code after this RFC is over. So I'll be complaining about something else. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 11:13, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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I would suggest that seven days is probably enough time for having shown a site notice about an RFC to everyone. Perhaps it is about time to take this notice down? Dragons flight (talk) 16:33, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I reckon so too. Let's ask for some {{sudo}} assistance. —Sladen (talk) 17:55, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done. If anyone decides to restore it, please also remember to undo my changes at MediaWiki:Anonnotice as well, otherwise the notice will be visible to anonymous readers as well as logged-in editors. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 18:01, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Should we add one, following the examples of Commons, de.wp, es.wp, fr.wn? It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 19:17, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Where does one make a request for a notice on an RFC? Any specific procedure? There is a discussion on Wikipedia_talk:MOS#Bird_common_name_capitalisation that might need more eyes. Shyamal (talk) 02:31, 18 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Should this request for comment re the use of the "Wiki Loves X" campaign title format be advertised here? It is going nowhere at the moment and I suspect very few editors know about it. HelenOnline 08:09, 10 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot remove this site notice. I click on the X, and it goes, but when I go to a new page, or refresh, the notice returns. I use Opera. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 09:42, 16 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@SilkTork: Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 130#Banner keeps reappearing. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:28, 16 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'm now suppressing site notices using the CSS code mentioned above. I'm trying to recall if any site notice was so important that I would regret missing it, and I don't think so. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 16:02, 17 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Nemo_bis. Unfortunatly, the trick of replacing Mediakiwi:Anonnotice with <p></p>, as explained in the top box, does not avoid the [hide] button with nothing to hide. --Vriullop (talk) 18:47, 23 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Similar to how SOPA was voted on, I'd like to request this important discussion (Wikipedia talk:Freedom of Panorama 2015) be put on the sitenotice. This banner would only be shown in Europe. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 20:19, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

I thought that sitenotices didn't support geolocation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:29, 25 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Freedom of Panorama 2015 -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 22:33, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't mind the message, but the implementation leaves something to be desired. For whatever reason the banner appears scrunched up on my screen so that the text runs into a long vertical stripe covering an obnoxious fraction of every browser window. I'm assuming that is not how it is intended to appear. My laptop screen is on the small side, but not so small that it is unreasonable to expect things to be laid out in a sensible fashion. Dragons flight (talk) 21:36, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'll have a look at re-implementing it via CentralNotice and see how that looks on narrow screen before activating it. -- KTC (talk) 21:38, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Dragons flight: Judging by the font size on the webpage versus the font size of the buttons in your browser, you have adjusted the zoom level of the web page. This would cause similar visual irregularities across much of the web. Try Ctrl+0 to restore the normal zoom level — MusikAnimal ^talk 21:41, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Umm, what. You have a ton of custom CSS. I'm not surprised it looks weird. Please re-test as a logged out user with normal browser settings. Legoktm (talk) 21:48, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In the page preview it covers the full width of the screen, but just barely fits in a way that looks acceptable. This doesn't change whether I am logged out or logged in. However, when it was deployed there was extra margin to the left and right of the notice (the white space in the screenshot on either side of the banner). Not sure what is causing the extra margin, but it was enough to take something that would just barely fit across the screen and make it untenable. For the record, I don't believe I have any custom CSS that ought to affect this. Dragons flight (talk) 22:06, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's custom CSS, rather the zoom level of the browser itself (so won't matter if you're logged out or not). This is an accessibility feature that sometimes people turn on accident. On Windows it should be Ctrl+0 to restore the normal zoom level, or go to the browser settings menu thing. — MusikAnimal ^talk 22:09, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The zoom level is not an accident. The native 1920px width is bit much for me on the laptop screen without reading glasses so I keep Wikpedia zoomed, but the effective screen size after zooming isn't exactly crazy (compare for example the size of other Wikipedia elements on the screen). I doubt I'm the only one in the world who zooms websites. In addition, some computers and many tablets / mobile devices still use a smaller effective screen resolution. As mentioned above, the extra white margin (whatever is causing it) was eating a rather large chunk of the available real estate. If there is a consensus that it is just my problem, then I'll hide the damn thing and go away, but I don't actually think it is unreasonable to expect things to layout in a sensible way for small screens. Dragons flight (talk) 22:35, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry to imply it was accident! I tried zooming in Gmail and Amazon and saw that tabs and other content were cut off. The banner could probably use some tweaking, but all I'm saying is that in general the zooming is not easy to combat from a web development perspective. I don't think the banner should be showing at all on mobile devices. If we want Legoktm we can use media queries to hide it? — MusikAnimal ^talk 22:43, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's an excellent thing to highlight to site visitors, but agree that the briefly shown version was the wrong implementation. I normally work with 2 portrait orientation browser windows side by side on a HD widescreen, and it was taking up going on for 50% of the vertical content space. I strongly suggest having the pictures either above or below the text (so that the text is allowed to use the full width of the content space), or just having the text either on its own or with a single picture. While many people have widescreen format displays these days, it's very wrong to draw the conclusion that they work with a full screen or landscape orientation window. --Murph9000 (talk) 21:49, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Also a complaint to wikitech-l that it breaks the mobile site: [2][3] Dragons flight (talk) 21:58, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The mobile site breaks on its own without our intervention. Also, why does the mobile version use MediaWiki:Sitenotice? When has a sitenotice ever been formatted to fit a mobile screen? Killiondude (talk) 22:10, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there hadn't been a Sitenotice for 2 years, so who knows. -- KTC (talk) 22:12, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Could we use media queries to hide it just on mobile? — MusikAnimal ^talk 22:43, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Desktop/mobile targetting is a native feature of CentralNotice, so I'm doing it over there and this wouldn't be an issue. -- KTC (talk) 22:44, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As an FYI, I saw this banner in the United States. The discussion permits this banner to be used only in Europe. There is no discussion that authorizes this banner to be displayed to non-European users. --B (talk) 22:26, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect we need a Geonotice then. Those can only go to logged-in users, because they sit top of watchlist. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:54, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think the spirit of the discussion is for it to be displayed in Europe (EU and EEA countries). If that requires it to be shown in the US as well, I do not think many would oppose. I think Central Notice is a fine destination if Sitenotice isn't sufficient for the task. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 10:34, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

No, the discussion was specifically held under the pretense that it would only be displayed to European users. You can't claim that as an authority to display it to everyone. You have no idea what opinions might have been had it been revealed that everyone across the planet would be subjected to an irrelevant banner about somebody else's politics. --B (talk) 11:33, 2 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all, we made a request for a consensus for semi-regular site notices for the Wikipedia Library at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Wikipedia_Library:_Running_a_SiteNotice_for_logged-in_users. Please comment, we would appreciate feedback/support. Cheers, Astinson (WMF) (talk) 16:44, 10 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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A couple months ago, I proposed a WP:TWL Site notice for logged in users, which would communicate availability of Wikipedia Library resources ( see Tech Pump and Proposal pump). Both proposals were relatively supportive silences. As I mention in the pump proposals, their are way more accounts/accesses to partner sources available than we have distributed. Also, when we did a similar notice on French, it brought much greater attention to the program, helping French-language users recognize the program's support.

We believe their will be little concern about the notice: the program is only a benefit for editors, might encourage more constructive editing contributions by volunteers, and is highly supported in the community (as we have noticed with the recent coverage/conversation about our EBSCO partnership (see coverage in our recent newsletter). We would love to see this notice run for ~2 weeks to only signed in users, using the Annnotice exclusion of not-signed in readers (who wouldn't fully benefit from these resources), in part we are running it to create visibility to editors that don't regularly sign in and use other community communication venues (and see our semi-regular Watchlist notices).

Here is the proposed banner:

Did you know that you can get access to over 40 paywalled research databases which you can use to improve Wikipedia through The Wikipedia Library?

If you are an active editor and have 500 edits and a 6-month-old account on any Wikimedia project you can sign up for resources like JSTOR, Project MUSE, EBSCO, Newspapers.com and Highbeam, among many other academic and popular publishers. If you don't qualify yet, The Wikipedia Library can connect you to other research tools as well: learn more.

Thanks much, The Wikipedia Library Team,

Astinson (WMF) (talk) 17:04, 2 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@KTC, Legoktm, Mr. Stradivarius, Dragons flight, and Redrose64:, any thoughts? Could we get some help? Astinson (WMF) (talk) 21:25, 2 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have no problem with it, but I would want it to emphasise that getting those resources is to improve Wikipedia. So "through The Wikipedia Library to improve Wikipedia?" or such like. -- KTC (talk) 21:51, 2 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@KTC:  Done, looking forward to it running :) Astinson (WMF) (talk) 02:37, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• As as admin who also has this on the watchlist, I should advise that generally during the last few times something was posted on the en.wikipedia's Sitenotice, there also seemed to be, more or less, roughly prior "silent consensus". Then once they were posted, there were then subsequent discussions to take it down once a majority of logged in users saw it (see #Remove VisualEditor default state RFC notice and the second half of #Freedom of Panorama 2015 for example). Many regular logged-in editors usually either do not pay attention to such prior discussions, or they are not advertised that well. Then once something like this is posted, they want to take it down (and usually with the rationale that Sitenotice should only be used for critical system issues). Instead, many regular logged-in editors have stated that they prefer to post such messages on MediaWiki:Watchlist-details (which, as you stated, a similar message for the Wikipedia Library was posted between 17 September and 30 September[4]). So we can still post this for now, but I would not be surprised if there may be subsequent calls to take this banner down. My sense of the English Wikipedia community as whole would be one that would not necessarily welcome Sitenotice to be regularly used as a community bulletin board to advertise various Wikipedia projects and programs. Zzyzx11 (talk) 05:30, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  @Zzyzx11 and Sladen: I'll be happy to do it via CentralNotice with limited traffic and max X number of views, and possibly some JS magic with editcount etc. That also comes with some impression recording (though I'll have to check exactly where and what). If no one objects in say oh ~24 hours, I'll put together something. -- KTC (talk) 09:53, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  KTC. Sounds a particularly productive solution. A double-plus good from me. —Sladen (talk) 10:11, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, I'd prefer this on CentralNotice as well, as it is more equipped to handle those situations (plus it would also give a sense that is more official coming from a WMF representative like Astinson (WMF), and take it off of any en.wiki admin here. Even the regular WMF fundraising banners tend to get complaints on Talk:Main page and elsewhere, but at least nobody here has the ability to be bold and take them down). Zzyzx11 (talk) 12:06, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Astinson (WMF), if/when this is run, could I strongly encourage that some metrics could be collated and published about click-through rates (and "conversions") from running this sitenotice. This will provide hard data to inform future requests of this type. —Sladen (talk) 07:19, 4 October 2015 (UTC) Gut reaction: "the text is huge" "oh not again" "so many links" (masking the important one).[reply]

Not done: @Astinson (WMF) and KTC: It looks like the emerging consensus is that this should run, but on CentralNotice, rather than SiteNotice here. If there are problems setting up the CentralNotice, feel free to reopen this request and we'll work something out. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 15:43, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have CN adminship rights on Meta and can do it. Like I said, I'll wait till tomorrow to see if there are any more comments on this. -- KTC (talk) 18:01, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Mr. Stradivarius, KTC, Zzyzx11, and Sladen: Thanks all for the feedback: we had been opting for a Central Notice for the first run because of the model by which the French community ran their notice, and we are not geo-limited, so their is not advantage to doing it on CentralNotice. We have consulted with several people, and we have been told that the JavaScript modifications to the CentralNotices are less than ideal. I am fine with running it as a CentralNotice, if that is the consensus here, and per Zzyzx11's observations.

@Sladen:: we are trying to engage more volunteers in the English context for taking care of the project, as we scale up the impact of the project to other languages, thats part of the reason we are running through a community process here. How would you recommend tracking the data? Also, on the data: what is the best way to collect that data? Can we take impression to click-through data using Central Notices's tools?

@KTC: saw the campaign on the CentralNotice tool, limitations look good. I made two tweaks to the banner here: smaller text, and bolding the important link per Sladen. How do you create/load a banner to campaign? Is there anything else I need to do? Cheers, Astinson (WMF) (talk) 14:30, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Astinson (WMF): I'm working on it (slowly) over on Meta. -- KTC (talk) 14:44, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@KTC: Brilliant! Your awesome! Astinson (WMF) (talk) 15:09, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Astinson (WMF): Set to start appearing in about an hour. 50% traffic, maximum 5 appearances per user (technically per lang.proj), desktop only, to appear on en language interface users on Wikipedia. I've Javascript'd it to appear only to users with 500 edits or more, and account registration date before 2015-04-20 (both on that lang.proj), so I've modified the message a bit to make it shorter and also no duplicate links. Let me know if you want anything changed. -- KTC (talk) 04:55, 6 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• I am disappointed to see such a banner advertising closed-access resources (again). If we are to use such notices for community engagement (which I am not convinced is a good idea, as discussed by Zzyzx11 above), I think we should preferentially use them to highlight the value of open resources, as WP:OPENACCESS is trying to do. -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 02:57, 8 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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The 2016 WikiCup begins this week. We'd like to have a site-wide notice, running for the rest of December and all of January, with this text:

The 2016 WikiCup, our yearly site-wide competition dedicated to improving Wikipedia, starts January 1. Sign-ups remain open until February 5.

Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 05:59, 28 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The sitenotice is for important messages of relevance to Wikipedia's users in general. On what do you base the assertion that this request to display an editor-centric advertisement throughout the encyclopedia for more than a month is "either uncontroversial or supported by consensus"? Why shouldn't the message appear above watchlists instead? —David Levy 07:26, 28 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We've used sitenotice before, for announcements for past WikiCups. The judges believe that all users should know about it because it displays an aspect of WP that encourages active editing, something we dearly need. We also want to get the word out to as many people as possible, including editors that don't visit their watchpages often. It's all in good fun, you know. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 17:45, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Figureskatingfan: When was that? Certainly it wasn't in either December 2014 or December 2013. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:24, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Actually it was on watchlist last year, apparently I put it there. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:15, 30 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

 Disagree I think that watchlist notice would suffice, would also support additional mass message to prior participants and notice baord postings. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:55, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I was given faulty information, since I didn't set it up myself in previous years. Will request a watchlist notice shortly. Thank you for your time. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 22:03, 30 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A site notice is getting ready to go live, barring any objections. This will be for logged in users only. Please comment at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Why_am_I_seeing_a_.22Welcome.22_message.3F. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:49, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note - discussion at VPT does not favor this at this time - on hold unless that develops. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:48, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Please post the following notice (and remember to increment the MediaWiki:Sitenotice id):

--Pipetricker (talk) 02:33, 18 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I don't think we need this, the discussion at VPT already references multiple other ways this will display, and it is a very short window. The only "action call" here would be to read our article about what UTC is as well. If someone goes ahead with this, they should be immediately available to remove it when no longer needed. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:46, 18 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Would it be worth this year or subsequent years putting up a banner linking to the videos of presentations at wikimania? It might be a way of making it more broadly known the sorts of things that are going on 'behind the scenes' for readers who otherwise don't know how extensive the wikimedia community activities are. Might even inspire people to think about getting involved. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 02:11, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Evolution and evolvability: funny we keep running in to each other. (Somehow I'm the "notice guy") This page isn't watched much - and being reader-impacting this is going to need some affirmative support (much more so than editor-facing wishlist notices). Please bring this up at WP:VPPR as a new section. I wonder if this is something the foundation would want to sponsor with a CentralNotice campaign? (see meta:CentralNotice/Request). — xaosflux ^Talk 02:19, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Xaosflux: Ha! Thanks for the tip - I wasn't really certain where a sensible place to post it was, so I'll copy the post over to there. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 02:26, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This edit request to MediaWiki:Sitenotice and MediaWiki:Anonnotice has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Hello

There is a read only phase that will happen for your wiki, on Thu 14th November from 05:00 to 05:30 AM UTC. Please see T234800 for details; in short, it is because of a database decommission.

I suggest you to setup a banner (so as an Anon-notice banner) 30 minutes before the read-only.

It could just say "A maintenance will be performed soon - 14th November from 05:00 to 05:30 AM UTC" and "You may not be able to save any edits during this time."

In any case, the read-only message will be displayed when the read-only will happen, but have a warning message prior the intervention is needed to warn people.

Thank you, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:50, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Leaving this open for further input, but I generally agree with xaosflux' response to the 2018 occurrence — unlikely to be hugely necessary. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 17:59, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Amorymeltzer: agree, I don't think this is going to be necessary here - similar to how we have recurring other outage periods. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:02, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done @Trizek (WMF): per the above and prior precedent. If this was going to be an exceptionally lengthy activity I could see a need. I suggest you include this in the meta:Tech/News prior to the event. Will add comments at phab:T234801. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:43, 10 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Recently for the Main Page with the WP:ITN box we've added a banner for recent coverage and news related to the COVID-19 pandemic which many have found helpful.

From a separate angle, a discussion was raised on Jimbo Wales' page, and he offered his comment related to site-wide messages, [5], which while rejected the original comment, did offer the suggestion that with the current situation around COVID-19 this may be a point to use a Sitenotice to provide helpful links to our pages on it.

Exactly what those links are, I don't know but we could replicate something like the ITN box easily, or offer something differently. --Masem (t) 14:05, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Masem: SN should have a strong consensus of support to be used, especially as this one would really need to be for all readers as well. Once a specific proposal and mock up are ready, please widely advertise this so we can get good support. For SN mock ups, please be sure to test on mobile web (<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page>) as well, since we have a large number of readers that use the mobile web. Thank you, — xaosflux ^Talk 14:36, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

We've given everyone a week to get used to it and given that both sides are claiming silent majorities I'm planning to add the following notice:

Assuming everything still works the way I think it does the notice should only display for logged in users.©Geni (talk) 17:09, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose this is overkill. If you want to increase awareness next step could be to process MediaWiki_talk:Watchlist-messages#Vector_2022_undeployment. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:13, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

We're talking about something that will impact every user for the next decade. Not just those that use watchlists.©Geni (talk) 17:16, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

And registered users can just opt out of it if they want, the real impact is to readers - that you are already not going to poll. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:21, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

And if you want to drop it into MediaWiki:Anonnotice you are free to make the case.©Geni (talk) 17:29, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, I don't think either one of these is appropriate. Skin links and Central Notices were also already deployed with links on them to solicit feedback from endusers. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:30, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

And it is on cent, and it is on top of the landing page (Wikipedia:Vector 2022). — xaosflux ^Talk 17:34, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Unless I'm missing something nothing at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralNotice suggests there is a central notice pointing at the RFC.©Geni (talk) 17:42, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm saying the banner DesktopImprovements_deployment (now expired) pointed to Wikipedia:Vector 2022, which has the RFC banner on top. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:15, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

So it expired on the 20th but the RFC wasn't added to it until the 21st. So not on central notice.©Geni (talk) 18:35, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose Without WMF staff acknowledging this as a possibility this is clearly beyond what community consensus can determine WP:CONEXCEPT. (Point 4) This is a WMF decision that is solely in their hands and considering the "vibe" around the deployment it seems beyond unlikely for this to go anywhere. (Copied my response to the watchlist request) I had a search through WMF responses at the RFC page and there were not any which acknowledged this as a possibility (5 days later, they only respond to technical help and post progress updates). This shouldn't be advertised more since it is wasting everyones time. Terasail^[✉️] 18:30, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  One thing we may also do is retarget MediaWiki:Vector-2022-prefs-talkpage to the local page (that is what people see when they click discuss about vector 2022 in preferences). — xaosflux ^Talk 19:05, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Link to both? For example: Discussion | Global discussion. So that people can still find the mw page, it could be useful? Just an thought. Terasail^[✉️] 19:14, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

thats for the WMF to make a statement on not for us to guess at.©Geni (talk) 00:04, 26 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong oppose - frankly the current rfc is already a bit of a mess, and I would say is more of a space to vent/argue, than come to any meaningful consensus. I don't think advertising it in the sitenotice is going to help, I think you're just adding more fuel to the fire. --Chris 08:49, 26 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• ’’’Strong oppose’’’ Chris’s post hits the nail on the head. The RGC is a mess and isn’t going to help. Maybe if it had been raised a month after the deployment it would have been meaningful. Doug Weller talk 08:56, 26 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Support: As long as the RfC is running, it's only fair to give active users a chance to participate, so that there are less gripes later about not being involved in a major decision for the project. I'd recommend to only target logged-in users: this can be achieved by adding something like   to MediaWiki:Anonnotice at the same time (needs to be tested). Nemo 18:41, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

WP:OPENLETTER2024 is a thing, and I suggest' that it be advertised in a site notice. It is an important issue that affects all logged-in users of the site.

Cremastra (u — c) 00:19, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You'll need to establish a strong consensus to get a sitenotice loaded. Start an RFC, ensure it is well advertised and well attended. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:39, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify: a whole RfC just on whether a site notice is appropriate? Cremastra (u — c) 00:41, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Cremastra It doesn't need to be some 30 day thing, I was using the term generally. This page is sparsely watched, I suggest you start a section specifically about wanting to run a sitenotice over at WP:VPR. It will need to be well attended and well supported, especially if this is going to be also for readers. There are lower bars for editor advertisement elsewhere, e.g. this is already at T:CENT; the next exposure level is generally a WP:WLN (which will also need a showing of actual support for something like this as it isn't in the general pre-approved sort of call to actions). The suggested VPR section I mentioned above could ask for options for support (WLN, SN, SN with ANON). — xaosflux ^Talk 11:08, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, that's more reasonable. Cremastra (u — c) 13:40, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]