Discuss and decide on underspecified behavior for anonymous users
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	thiemowmde
	Oct 17 2019, 9:35 AM

Description

While working on the first baseline patch for T233813: Separate user preferences for Page previews and Reference previews for Beta, we realized the behavior for anonymous users is currently underspecified. As of now:

Not logged in users see a settings icon in Page-Previews popups, and can disable them via a cookie (more precisely: webStorage).
Such a setting does not exist in Reference Previews. An (incomplete) task for this exists: T234205: Add cog wheel to the popup to disable ReferencePreviews.
As of now, disabling page previews via this cookie probably disables all popup types.
It might also be that reference previews can never be disabled for anonymous users.

Questions:

Should anonymous users even see Reference Previews in the first place?
If yes, as an opt-out or opt-in feature? Or should it copy the Page-Previews behavior 1:1?
Should anonymous users get a single setting to disable all popup types, or one checkbox per popup type?
How should the UI for this little disable/enable dialog look like, and what's the wording? (Relevant: T219153: Change Popups descriptive title to also fit reference previews)

Suggested baseline (a.k.a. "cheapest way to make it not obviously broken"):

Make sure the current cookie solution indeed disables all popup types.
Change all relevant messages to talk about all popup types, not only page previews.
Tackle T234205 soon-ish.

Status	Assigned	Task
Open	None	T256004 Decide if we keep the wgPopupsReferencePreviews feature switch
Open	awight	T282999 Enable Reference Previews on all wikis using the Popups extension, on Nov 21
Resolved	WMDE-Fisch	T282147 Enable RefPreviews on Marathi Wikipedia
Resolved	WMDE-Fisch	T271206 Enable RefPreviews on first wikis
Resolved	pmiazga	T233037 [Regression] Not possible for logged in users to disable page previews
Resolved	None	T233813 Separate user preferences for Page previews and Reference previews for Beta
Resolved	None	T235737 Discuss and decide on underspecified behavior for anonymous users

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Adding to @ovasileva and @alexhollender's radar in case they're interested in this change.

Some thoughts from my side:

I think both preview types should be enabled by default
I think having a cog on reference previews (as suggested in T234205: Add cog wheel to the popup to disable ReferencePreviews) would probably be the best way to go in terms of consistency - I think we definitely want to stay away from having different optin/optout mechanicsms for two similar features
I'm not sure if a single setting or checkboxes makes more sense, but I agree that both should probably appear within the same modal. So the workflow could be something like: open a page preview or reference preview --> select the cog --> settings modal opens --> select which preview type you would like to enable/disable. To turn back on, select "enable previews" from the footer and that opens the settings modal.

For now, I agree that the baseline suggested makes sense!

I agree with T235737#5639644. Here are two ways we could do that:

Option A

click on setting icon on either reference or page preview	settings modal appears	user can reveal individual settings

Option B

click on setting icon on either reference or page preview	settings modal appears with individual settings

Documenting the results of a few different meetings here and linking to the resulting individual tickets.

Preferences will be merged into a single 'Preview' preference: T265709: Merge Page Preview and Reference Preview preferences. This will be editable for logged-in users from their preferences page, and for anonymous users with the current cog wheel pop-up solution. Exact wording is still in progress.
Reference Previews will get it's own matching cog wheel T234205: Add cog wheel to the popup to disable ReferencePreviews, but open the same, merged pop-up as Page Previews, implemented in the ticket above. This will not give the option to turn them on/off individually but as a joint preview feature
In order to avoid the conflicts with gadgets mentioned in this ticket, if a gadget is enabled then Reference Previews will be hidden (same behavior as Page Previews with Navigation Pop-ups). The work for this was begun T234204: Investigation: how many wikis have the ReferenceTooltip Gadget enabled by default?, but will likely get its own implementation ticket.
The goal is that these conflicts become less common, once Reference Previews becomes a default on a wiki. How it becomes a default on the wikis which current have a default gadget is in discussion.

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