Extension talk:Description2

Previous discussion was archived at Extension talk:Description2/Archive on 3 January 2021.

I've submitted a chain of six patches on Gerrit meant to improve the quality of generated descriptions, however, the author (as listed on the extension's page here) is unable to review them due to time constraints. I'd really appreciate if someone could perhaps review my changes for a merger.

The scope is rather big (effectively changing every bit of the logic), so please let me know if it'd be preferred to just fork the extension. I'm open to maintainership if needed, but (given I'm a newcomer to Gerrit and its projects, and this is my first Description2 patch) do not believe it'd be wise to go for that straight away.

These changes should also resolve the issues raised in "Multiple descriptions on file description page" and "references" threads.

Links, in order of dependency from top to bottom:

• Autoloading: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/Description2/+/980050
• Hook handlers, Config injection: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/Description2/+/980052
• Generator interface/class: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/Description2/+/980053
• Addressing interface messages: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/Description2/+/980054
• Truncating: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/Description2/+/980055
• New deriver: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/Description2/+/980056

Changes #980054, #980055 and #980056 contain general summaries of all the changes.

Thanks for the patches! I think they're of good quality. I did review them and they look good. However, I'm not sure what's going to happen with this extension, since the owner can't review them... I don't know if there are other "supergroup" members that can merge them. I'll try poking on IRC

There's probably no chance other than Dantman merging those patches. Maybe with my comments he may have more confidence about the patches to merge them... I'd recommend to wait a couple of weeks, though, just in case someone else wants to also review them

Alright, thank you very much!

On file description pages, this extension is adding 3 descriptions:

• View Original file, and list of sizes.
• The actual file description description
• This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or scanner used to create or digitize it.

Looks like Manual:Hooks/ParserAfterTidy is firing for each generated content, each one adding its own description.

CSS pages (e.g. "MediaWiki:common.css") also have a double description:

<meta name="description" content="Note: After publishing, you may have to bypass your browser's cache to see the changes." />
<meta name="description" content="/* Cascading stylesheets (CSS) here will be applied to all skins. */" />

Nicole Sharp (talk) 03:59, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

W3C HTML Validator gives an error message for this: "Error: A document must not include more than one meta element with its name attribute set to the value description." Nicole Sharp (talk) 04:03, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

If this bug only affects MediaWiki pages for files (CSS or uploads), maybe just disable the plugin for those page types? Nicole Sharp (talk) 04:11, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

This may be a conflict between Extension:WikiSEO and Extension:Description2. They are supposed to work together, but disabling Description2 and instead enabling "$wgWikiSeoEnableAutoDescription = true;" appears to have resolved the problem. Nicole Sharp (talk) 05:52, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

I haven't seen any problems using WikiSEO without Description2. I recommend leaving Description2 disabled and using WikiSEO instead until some of the bugs outlined on this talkpage have been fixed. WikiSEO does not provide META descriptions for CSS pages but that might be because of the same double-description bug that happens with Description2. Nicole Sharp (talk) 13:32, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Reference tags (<ref></ref>) should be removed from the description. Otherwise you end up with gobbledegook in the description: "&#91;1&#93; &#91;2&#93; &#91;3&#93;". Nicole Sharp (talk) 01:09, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

WikiSEO AutoDescription removes the REF elements from the description. Nicole Sharp (talk) 13:32, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Description2 not compatible with the 1.38 :

AH01071: Got error 'PHP message: PHP Deprecated: Use of ParserOutput::getProperty was deprecated in MediaWiki 1.38. [Called from MediaWiki\\Extension\\Description2\\Description2::onOutputPageParserOutput in XXX/h/httpdocs/extensions/Description2/includes/Description2.php at line 105] in /XXX/h/httpdocs/includes/debug/MWDebug.php on line 375PHP message: PHP Deprecated: Use of ParserOutput::setProperty was deprecated in MediaWiki 1.38. [Called from MediaWiki\\Extension\\Description2\\Description2::setDescription in /XXX/httpdocs/extensions/Description2/includes/Description2.php at line 33] in /var/www/vhosts/fallout-wiki.com/httpdocs/includes/debug/MWDebug.php on line 375'

There isn't MW 1.38

Hello,

Mediawiki 1.38 exists and is currently on the wmf9 board (see git)

The wmf 7 branch is currently in production on wikipedia itself.

We have been using it ourselves in production for over a month.

Kims

Ok! It is clear. I believe a lot of extension is not compatible for MW 1.38 yet

A deprecation warning doesn't mean it isn't compatible - after all, it's not an error. MediaWiki core itself is often not updated according to its own deprecation warnings.

Description2 is working for me on MediaWiki 1.39.2 with PHP 8.2.0. Nicole Sharp (talk) 03:59, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Works for me on MediaWiki 1.39 PHP 7.4.33