While letting Wikibase configure it instead of changing it just for Wikidata in some Wikimedia config file is definitely a better solution (I can imagine other extensions like ProofreadPage (example) also opting out of limited width, as the text next to the image is already only half the screen width), I don’t think a separate sidebar is the right solution: on narrower screens, the limited-width content of new Vector fills the whole (or almost the whole) screen anyways, so the sitelinks cannot be anywhere but at the bottom without making the statements unreadably narrow, i.e. the current legacy Vector behavior should be kept. You could in theory make the sidebar work similarly to how Wikibase behaves currently, i.e. go to the bottom on narrow screens, but that wouldn’t be a general solution: for example, an infobox or image that has been put in the sidebar should not appear on the bottom on narrow screens, but the in the middle of the text, wherever it’s defined in wikitext; but (as far as I remember) putting them into the sidebar is planned.

@Jdlrobson thanks for raising this. In T298900#7660228 I started playing with the idea of a right sidebar. If we decide to implement that perhaps we could generalize it a bit so that other projects could use the right sidebar for whatever is appropriate.

Note at some point in the future Wikidata UI may be completely rewritten using Vue and skins should skins should prepare for them.

In T300182#7830064, @Jdlrobson wrote:

@alexhollender_WMF @ovasileva what solution is being proposed here? I don't see any mocks so is it safe to assume you want to disable max width on Wikidata ?

I think we should probably have a conversation around this first. @alexhollender_WMF - do you have any other approaches outside of removing max width. Also, it's possible even if we remove that we can restrict to certain namespaces to begin with

when do we need to make a decision about this? if it isn't urgent I think we should wait to discuss it.

a few quick notes:

• wikidata has it's own max-width of 65em / 910px, on .wikibase-entityview-main
• all/most of the information on wikidata item pages seem to be in tables
• the information on wikidata item pages is not paragraphs of text like Wikipedia (i.e. so there are different considerations around a max-width)
• the layout where the site links are to the right of the main content only happens once your screen is larger than 1570px

my inclination is that if we want to use the table of contents area, or the area to the right of the article, we would need to take some time to talk with the wikidata community and understand what would work for them. I could make some guesses and try to propose some things, but I don't know much about wikidata.

@ovasileva is this urgent?

In T300182#7854060, @Jdlrobson wrote:

@ovasileva is this urgent?

@Jdlrobson, @alexhollender_WMF - It's a bit difficult evaluating urgency without knowing the exact number of people that are using the new skin on Wikidata. @alexhollender_WMF - do you think you could look into some very rough proposals over the next month or so and we can start by taking those to the Wikidata community to get some of their thoughts (cc @sgrabarczuk)

@ovasileva @Jdlrobson ok, I've added it within our Visual design & layout refinements epic. Also FYI, I'm compiling a list of "states that the layout needs to respond to" in T303086, and have added this to the list. Feel free to add any such states/projects that we're interested in accommodating to that list going forward.

exact number of people that are using the new skin on Wikidat

In November it was just under 300. (T275251#7534508)

The easiest solution here to get the page usable, is to disable max width on Wikidata item namespace. That's a simple configuration change and I can do that today if we need to make it. We can spend more time on a longer term solution later.

I think that would be fine. It is the intended layout anyways. I myself use New Vector and I know that we should probably make other permanent UI changes, say we don't want the sitelinks to be present on the sidebar.

In T300182#7868654, @Jdlrobson wrote:

The easiest solution here to get the page usable, is to disable max width on Wikidata item namespace. That's a simple configuration change and I can do that today if we need to make it. We can spend more time on a longer term solution later.

I agree that it seems like a good solution to remove the max-width for now, at least on item pages. Perhaps it's worth keeping it on the main page and other pages that would benefit from a max-width?

In T300182#7868654, @Jdlrobson wrote:

The easiest solution here to get the page usable, is to disable max width on Wikidata item namespace. That's a simple configuration change and I can do that today if we need to make it. We can spend more time on a longer term solution later.

This sounds good to me

Change 786358 had a related patch set uploaded (by Jdlrobson; author: Jdlrobson):

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Expand max-width to login, create account, disable on Wikidata

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/786358

Change 786358 merged by jenkins-bot:

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Expand max-width to login, create account, disable on Wikidata

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/786358

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2022-04-26T20:28:07Z] <urbanecm@deploy1002> Synchronized wmf-config/InitialiseSettings.php: fe0e119ef7c768373db4afed21537f85004a8ae2: Expand max-width to login, create account, disable on Wikidata (T300182, T306834; 1/2) (duration: 00m 56s)

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2022-04-26T20:29:01Z] <urbanecm@deploy1002> Synchronized wmf-config/CommonSettings.php: fe0e119ef7c768373db4afed21537f85004a8ae2: Expand max-width to login, create account, disable on Wikidata (T300182, T306834; 2/2) (duration: 00m 54s)

Change 786388 had a related patch set uploaded (by Jdlrobson; author: Jdlrobson):

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] wmgVectorMaxWidthOptionsNamespaces not working

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/786388

Change 786388 merged by jenkins-bot:

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] wmgVectorMaxWidthOptionsNamespaces not working

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/786388

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2022-04-26T21:01:08Z] <urbanecm@deploy1002> Synchronized wmf-config/CommonSettings.php: cab00628da0ba6226ff162cfc848bea35a35783a: fix wmgVectorMaxWidthOptionsNamespaces (T300182) (duration: 01m 00s)