I wonder if we should do this using a GuidedTour once and for all. You can see a demo here.
Developer docs: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GuidedTour/Write_an_on-wiki_tour

@Samwilson @TBolliger Thoughts?

A guided tour sounds great! People seem to love them on Slack.

I'm not quite familiar with how it works: I guess we'd guide people through, and as part of the tour they'd actually have to change their preferences in order to see all the features of GlobalPreferences (e.g. we can't show them the local exceptions until they've set a global preference). But that sounds okay; I mean, most people interested would be probably wanting to set a global preference or two or all.

We don't have to make it very complex. We can skip the part of showing how to set local exceptions and only mention it in a guided tour step. How about this - Tour starts when someone open Special:GlobalPreferences. For the first step we point to the "global" checkboxes and explain what those are for. Then we ask them to click on one (for example timezone or language) and click save. And done. We tell them their setting is live on all Wikimedia wikis and they can set exceptions from Special:Preferences.

In T188524#4012128, @Niharika wrote:

We don't have to make it very complex. We can skip the part of showing how to set local exceptions and only mention it in a guided tour step. How about this - Tour starts when someone open Special:GlobalPreferences. For the first step we point to the "global" checkboxes and explain what those are for. Then we ask them to click on one (for example timezone or language) and click save. And done. We tell them their setting is live on all Wikimedia wikis and they can set exceptions from Special:Preferences.

I like this.

However, to me it does not solve the immediate issue of "What is this?" without having to click on it. Unless that's how we want it to be discovered?

In T188524#4012135, @Keegan wrote:

However, to me it does not solve the immediate issue of "What is this?" without having to click on it. Unless that's how we want it to be discovered?

What is "this" referring to? The link for Special:GlobalPreferences?

I found another nice guided tour demo.

In T188524#4012190, @Niharika wrote:

In T188524#4012135, @Keegan wrote:

However, to me it does not solve the immediate issue of "What is this?" without having to click on it. Unless that's how we want it to be discovered?

What is "this" referring to? The link for Special:GlobalPreferences?

Correct. The issue to me is, "As a user, I have made an account and wish to change my preferences. In my preferences, I am seeing an additional link to "Global" preferences, and I do not know what the difference is."

Guided tours can solve this and answer the question. It's a perfectly acceptable solution to the issue. The solution is putting an extra step in front of the user, having to click on the global preferences to find out the solution, though, which isn't always ideal. I don't have a strong opinion.

@Keegan One possible solution is to have the guided tour start from Special:Preferences. When a user first opens that tab (after the extension is deployed), guided tour points to that link as a first step and the user can choose to click it or ignore it. There's the slight issue there that we will be showing the guided tour pop-up to every user who opens Special:Preferences on any wiki (at least once). This might come across as a bit spammy.
I know that Edit Filter Improvements project did have a similar tour/popup for people so maybe it's not a bad idea.

Yes a short message, perhaps with links to Special:CentralAuth/USERNAME and/or to https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects ...?

In T188524#4012320, @TBolliger wrote:

No need to boil the ocean. I think a quick message change could make this more understandable. "Sets preferences on all wikis" or something similar seems to be clear and alleviate the ambiguity of 'global'.

I'd say we're only luke-warming the ocean, given the technical complexity involved in setting up the tour. But I like your idea better. How about something like this -

In T188524#4012406, @Niharika wrote:

In T188524#4012320, @TBolliger wrote:

No need to boil the ocean. I think a quick message change could make this more understandable. "Sets preferences on all wikis" or something similar seems to be clear and alleviate the ambiguity of 'global'.

I'd say we're only luke-warming the ocean, given the technical complexity involved in setting up the tour. But I like your idea better. How about something like this -

This is pretty much what I had in mind. Not sure if we want to use the word "Wikimedia" but that is a key clarifying piece. I leave that for y'all to sort out ;)

I like it. Let's do it.

Should this go behind a config flag so that 3rd party installs can turn it off? i.e. they won't want "all Wikimedia wikis" in there. I know they can change the system message, but not for all languages easily.

In T188524#4015959, @Samwilson wrote:

Should this go behind a config flag so that 3rd party installs can turn it off? i.e. they won't want "all Wikimedia wikis" in there. I know they can change the system message, but not for all languages easily.

Seems overkill. Let's change the message to avoid having "Wikimedia" in it. Suggestions anyone?

In T188524#4015963, @Niharika wrote:

In T188524#4015959, @Samwilson wrote:

Should this go behind a config flag so that 3rd party installs can turn it off? i.e. they won't want "all Wikimedia wikis" in there. I know they can change the system message, but not for all languages easily.

Seems overkill. Let's change the message to avoid having "Wikimedia" in it. Suggestions anyone?

The existing message without 'Wikimedia' will work fine, as suggested by Keegan.

Hi Keegan.

Thank you for showing the text. I like the idea. :-)

A few thoughts.

"Preferences set via global preferences will apply to all wikis" sounds vague. The user is left in confusion. They probably do not even know they are using a "wiki". But for a short description this is probably workable. To solve this, when the user visits the global preferences page I would suggest to show them a longer paragraph at the top which contains more clear information with relevant external links that say what sister projects are.

Links could include https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects or its local equivalent such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_sister_projects. Unfortunately the latter is heavily infested with information how to edit pages which may be irrelevant and confusing, so I like the former better - unless there is a better local page that I may have missed.

It would also need to be clear that this would apply to all languages.

Suggested wording:

"These global preferences apply to $WIKI as well as to its sister projects, in all languages. For help, please visit Help:GlobalPreferences."

Here WIKI = this is the name of the wiki the user is on and https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:GlobalPreferences needs to be written (and maybe also copied to all wikis).

This could be reworded to be more concise. I am not a native English speaker and I am sure we can find something clear and simple. :-)

Thank you!

In T188524#4016281, @Gryllida wrote:

Suggested wording:

"These global preferences apply to $WIKI as well as to its sister projects, in all languages. For help, please visit Help:GlobalPreferences."

Here WIKI = this is the name of the wiki the user is on and https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:GlobalPreferences needs to be written (and maybe also copied to all wikis).

This could be reworded to be more concise. I am not a native English speaker and I am sure we can find something clear and simple. :-)

Thank you!

Great point about the "wiki" concept not being understood.

The issue here, and why we're trying to not use "Wikimedia", is that Extension:GlobalPreferences will be used well beyond Wikimedia Foundation wiki farms. If we go all the way with the suggestion and make it Wikimedia specific, then we will have to hide this help from other users of the software. It's preferred not to do that :)

Keep in mind I'm not decision maker here, I'm helping with ideas: what about "...apply to $wiki as well as related sites." There might end up having to be some sort of lack of 100% clarity that we live with.

The help page does exist and it lives at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:GlobalPreferences

Hi again Keegan.

The help page does exist and it lives at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:GlobalPreferences

Oops! Thanks for pointing that out.

"These global preferences apply to $WIKI as well as to its sister projects, in all languages. For help, please visit Help:GlobalPreferences."
Here WIKI = this is the name of the wiki the user is on and https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:GlobalPreferences needs to be written (and maybe also copied to all wikis).

The issue here, and why we're trying to not use "Wikimedia", is that Extension:GlobalPreferences will be used well beyond Wikimedia Foundation wiki farms. If we go all the way with the suggestion and make it Wikimedia specific, then we will have to hide this help from other users of the software. It's preferred not to do that :)

Perhaps use an extension configuration variable, $wgGlobalPreferencesIntro (or pick a better name), which stores the message.

Just use MediaWiki system messages for these things, as we always do it this way.

Let's just use "all wikis" instead of "all Wikimedia wikis" so we don't have to override it with WikimediaMessages.

"Preferences set via global preferences page will apply to all wikis."

Change 417513 had a related patch set uploaded (by Samwilson; owner: Samwilson):
[mediawiki/extensions/GlobalPreferences@master] Add help message to link from Preferences to GlobalPreferences

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/417513

Change 417513 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/GlobalPreferences@master] Add help message to link from Preferences to GlobalPreferences

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/417513