841534 - Add a "Site tools" menu to every wiki page

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(developer.mozilla.org Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

What problems would this solve?
===============================
In order to optimize workflow, we should make it easy and convenient to get to sitewide tools (such as the revision dashboard).

Who would use this?
===================
Most users would find this handy.

What would users see?
=====================
A new drop-down menu next to the "This page" menu, called "Site tools". Inside would be a "Revision Dashboard" option (and eventually others; we will file more bugs for those later.

What would users do? What would happen as a result?
===================================================
Choosing "Revision Dashboard" option would open that dashboard.

Is there anything else we should know?
======================================
The goal here is to ensure that users know these options are there. Currently, they tend to be hard to find.

Comment 1

[John Karahalis [:openjck]]

I agree that we should do more to highlight the revision dashboard. It is a useful tool, and we are not doing much at the moment to call attention to it.

I feel there might be a better place to put a menu like this, since both the "This page" menu and the "Languages" menu are related to the document that is loaded, rather than the site as a whole.

Comment 2

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

(In reply to John Karahalis [:openjck] from comment #1)
> I agree that we should do more to highlight the revision dashboard. It is a
> useful tool, and we are not doing much at the moment to call attention to it.
> 
> I feel there might be a better place to put a menu like this, since both the
> "This page" menu and the "Languages" menu are related to the document that
> is loaded, rather than the site as a whole.

Maybe. I'm not sure where else to put it. It belongs in the "wiki" part of the page, rather than the header area, I think, and that reduces the options. If it's too far away from the wiki content, it's easy to miss (I basically never look at anything in the black areas of the page, for example).

Comment 3

[David Walsh :davidwalsh]

Adding the rev-dash link to every document page wont work -- too confusing and we'd be presenting something to 100% of our users that 99.9% of them don't care about.  I've added a link to the dashboard on the "/docs" page, and those who need to know about the revision dashboard are probably on #IRC to ask about it.

Comment 4

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

Well...

I'm not sure I agree with your logic on this one, but not so much so that I'm not willing to go ahead and close this for now. Most of the users that we were hoping to expose this to will use watchlists once we have them instead, anyway.

Comment 5

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

I'm very much surprised to find this marked wontfix!

I knew the dashboard existed and still couldn't find it for a while. I wonder how many features I don't know about are completely hidden from everyone, such as https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Project:MDN/Tools/Feeds

I think displaying "Site tools" is a good idea maybe just for logged in users or maybe not in the top-level UI but in the Community dropdown. Would you accept a pull request adding it?

dwalsh:

> we'd be presenting something to 100% of our users that 99.9% of them don't care about.

I'm not sure about that. Recent changes shows how active the community is. 99.9% don't care about History

IIRC, mindtouch had exactly what Sheppy suggested. Even Wikipedia links to recent changes, even though their audience is more mainstream than ours.

> I've added a link to the dashboard on the "/docs" page

The /docs page is impossible to find. As far as I can tell, the only thing that points to it is the More docs links in the Docs heading. I can't imagine me clicking that to find the site tools.

> and those who need to know about the revision dashboard are probably on #IRC to ask about it.

I strongly disagree with this. If I didn't see the announcement, I'd assume it was still unimplemented. I think over-relying on IRC creates an unnecessary barrier for contributors.

Comment 6

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

(In reply to Nickolay_Ponomarev from comment #5)
> I'm very much surprised to find this marked wontfix!
> 
> I knew the dashboard existed and still couldn't find it for a while. I
> wonder how many features I don't know about are completely hidden from
> everyone, such as
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Project:MDN/Tools/Feeds
> 
> I think displaying "Site tools" is a good idea maybe just for logged in
> users or maybe not in the top-level UI but in the Community dropdown. Would
> you accept a pull request adding it?

I personally agree entirely with Nickolay; this is very useful stuff that onboarding new contributors depends on them being able to find it. Anything we can do to make that onboarding process easier is a key win for us. I personally strongly favor a "site tools menu".

> I strongly disagree with this. If I didn't see the announcement, I'd assume
> it was still unimplemented. I think over-relying on IRC creates an
> unnecessary barrier for contributors.

I agree too; making users have to *ask* in order to find key site functionality for contributors is a bad idea.. The UI should include these features.