Change 761738 had a related patch set uploaded (by Jdlrobson; author: Jdlrobson):

[mediawiki/core@master] Make the default skin for 1.38 Vector

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/761738

You pinged me there so I respond. I like the change and I think we should do it eventually but I feel this needs a bit more time in the oven. Specially I don't like the incohesion in the look (my biggest grievance is the gradients of the tabs and the "more menu" being inconsistent with the user links.). Right now I feel it's bit of "in-between" and specially since the cohesion step (T283803) is not done yet, it's very much in your face. My thinking is that would be great for 1.39? How does that sound to you?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Amir!

I'm not sure who makes this decision, and how important it is to sync mediawiki.org with a default install. @MarkAHershberger @Aklapper do you know who might be the right person to make that decision?

There is no formal body deciding on default values of mediawiki for third parties. It is basically done case by case and by individuals who do the releases (most notably @Reedy and @Jdforrester-WMF ). There are some plans for changing this (T293323) but nothing concrete yet. HTH

I don't think the look of mediawiki.org is relevant per-se. Homepages of other web app services and software, whilst generally using their own platform, rarely use their default theme of new instances. Instead, they have their own brand identity. E.g. https://wordpress.org, https://fandom.com, https://www.squarespace.com, https://www.drupal.org, or https://woocommerce.com. This is, as I understand it, a major reason why our brand team has indicated a desire for the MediaWiki software to not use the same exact theme configuration as Wikimedia wikis.

I vaguely recall DIP being a step toward that long-term objective. This task suggests this is perhaps no longer the direction our brand officials are persuing. Is that so?

I'm going to suggest we consider this 1.39 at the earliest then. My main reason for suggesting 1.38 was because of the default skin of mediawiki.org

Thanks for all the input.

Change 761738 abandoned by Jdlrobson:

[mediawiki/core@master] Make the default skin for 1.38 Vector

Reason:

To be continued on ticket..

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/761738

In T301527#7710594, @Krinkle wrote:

This is, as I understand it, a major reason why our brand team has indicated a desire for the MediaWiki software to not use the same exact theme configuration as Wikimedia wikis.

May I ask who is referred here as brand team and what exact conversations?

Apart from that, both options are viable, having a solid, modern default, unbranded theme (currently non-existing) or point to the latest and greatest we deliver without being overly branded (the MW logo is currently the only thing we do in this direction).

It's hurtful as software platform to not rely on sane, modern UX principles following look and feel at and after installation.

One detail to be fixed independently would be, if Vector is selected at installation point to feature Vector 2022 and not Vector legacy .

I agree with @Volker_E @ on this - MediaWiki installs should be using Vector 2022. It should be showcasing our best work. 3rd parties tend to want to use the latest and greatest code.

The question for me is whether we want to do this as part of the 1.39 release or 1.40 release.

We are on course to be technically ready to deploy Vector 22 to English Wikipedia by 1.39, but we may want to wait until 1.40 to allow community consultation to happen.

krinkle @ovasileva the 1.39 release is coming up so resolving this seems important to me. In particular, I'd like to have an answer to Volker's question about who the brand team is we're referring to here.

My 2c:

• Note that 1.39 is LTS
• I think it's not binary, there are lots of shades in between, e.g. keeping the current default but highly encouraging to switch to the new skin in documentation, etc.
• The installer and the default logos in mediawiki core are still relying on the old skin, you definitely have to fix that before switching the default.

Logos are optional in new Vector and the installer supports adding them via GUI so that's a non-issue.

It'd be nice to have the installer logo when installing I think. Can't say for sure but I think having a default logo would be nice as well but not strong opinions on that.

I've reached out to the Brand Studio to get their take on this.

After chatting to Olga we'll not considering this a blocker for release.

Are we potentially bumping this out to a later release? We might aswell remove it from the 1.39 workboard completely if it's not going to happen in 1.39 at all. And retitle to match too :)

Yep. Was waiting for the 1.40 release tag to be created!

Heh. Good timing then!

I suggest encouraging the new vector in docs at least for 1.39!

The branch cut is really soon. We need to decide on this. Given that it's the skin of enwiki and many other wikis, maybe it makes even more sense now?

Change 761738 restored by Jforrester:

[mediawiki/core@master] Make the default skin for 1.38 Vector

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/761738

Many extension tests are relying on the old vector, this needs to be fixed, starting from Echo https://integration.wikimedia.org/ci/job/wmf-quibble-selenium-php74-docker/22782/console and Math https://integration.wikimedia.org/ci/job/wmf-quibble-core-vendor-mysql-php74-docker/10475/console

Our our tests/CI could be updated to use Vector? It's bugged me for some time that integration tests change results fail depending on LocalSettings.php values. I'd much rather these were explicitly set by the tests if the skin mattered. They should probably all run on fallback skin by default.

I think most of them are just "brittle tests". Just being too specific in assertion (like a very specific html element). That needs to be fixed regardless. I don't think anything really wants to test the old vector explicitly.

Change 761738 abandoned by Jdlrobson:

[mediawiki/core@master] Change the default skin from Vector to Vector-2022 but not for tests

Reason:

I'm not sure whether the plan is to get this into 1.40 but I don't have capacity to help with this right now. Feel free to fork my patchset.

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/761738

Change 921246 had a related patch set uploaded (by Jforrester; author: Jforrester):

[mediawiki/core@master] [WIP] Change the default skin from Vector to Vector-2022

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/921246

Change 921259 had a related patch set uploaded (by Jdlrobson; author: Jdlrobson):

[mediawiki/extensions/Math@master] Temporary mark integration test as script

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/921259

Change 921259 abandoned by Jdlrobson:

[mediawiki/extensions/Math@master] Temporary mark integration test as script

Reason:

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/921259

Change 921246 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/core@master] Change the default skin from Vector to Vector-2022

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/921246

Even though this was already resolved, I’ll list the arguments in favour of keeping the legacy Vector default for the other sites, which is what should’ve been done:

1. it would keep the commitment for the WMF and MediaWiki devs to maintain the legacy Vector up to all standards
2. it would bring a broader testing base for legacy Vector and other skins that are related to it in its code or concept from third-party developers after it got disabled as the default in most Wikimedia wikis
3. it would bring more clarity between Wikimedia sites and random wiki sites, since most third-party wikis would probably not switch to new Vector
4. it would keep the more stable skin for third-party users, since new Vector experienced a bunch of changes and bugs in ‘stable’ MediaWiki versions that have been out (1.37 → 1.38 → 1.39)

This should’ve been considered more thoroughly. Alas.

The biggest reason for the change is that since most of production is being served by the new skin, the tests must be running on the new vector as well. Otherwise tests could miss a bug that would show up in production.

I don't know what is the plan for support of the old vector, it's not related to this work and you should talk to Reading web about it.

Web team will be maintaining Vector, and running tests on it to ensure it keeps working, and meets current coding standards, but from a feature point of view it is frozen and provided "without warranty" in the same way Monobook, Timeless, Modern and CologneBlue are. It doesn't make sense to keep Vector the default MediaWiki skin for this reason. We want MediaWiki to celebrate the latest and greatest code at all times.

@stjn: Following your points, I could argue that MediaWiki should randomly change its default skin to some random $skin with every release so random $skin would "keep commitment" from devs and a less common random $skin would get " a broader testing base". That's not convincing at all. :)

@Aklapper: this wasn’t a proposal to change to some random skin, this was a proposal to keep both thoroughly tested and supported, especially since new Vector and most other skins have much difference in their configuration and their code design (aforementioned logo difference, for example).

I would not comment how much of new Vector is our greatest code since that is pretty subjective.