Historically admins have been able to edit MediaWiki:Sidebar to customize the sidebar that appears on the left of the page. With the new article tools menu, Vector 2022 is now opinionated on where these menus should go.
Background
MediaWiki:Sidebar makes it possible for communities to configure which items appear in the main menu, with the following caveats:
- Some menus are user-generated, and some are hardcoded and cannot be edited (but can still be rearranged).
- The hardcoded menus are generate by mediawiki core and are represented by the following uppercase keywords:
TOOLBOX, LANGUAGES, SEARCH.
- Users can rearrange these value on the page, but if they are deleted, they will still be rendered underneath the custom menus. SEARCH is hidden by default and only shown in the Monobook skin.
- The custom menu links themselves can also be either translation messages, or regular wiki links. (more on Manual:Interface/Sidebar).
With the The Page Tools menu, Vector 2022 has removed the hardcoded menus from the main menu and placed them in an entirely new menu. The goal of this task is to determine whether we can create a page similar to MediaWiki:Sidebar for the new Page Tools menu.
TODO
- Locally, add a new bullet point to MediaWiki:Sidebar and review where the links default to
- Ask Alex where he would expect such a menu to go by default
- Review how this is handled in Timeless
- Ask the question if the main menu (top left hamburger) should be extendable using this page
- Think about what modifications to the sidebar we might be able to make if the sidebar to give editors control of adding to it. See T306519#8078671 for one idea (thanks @Iniquity)
- Understand the caching aspects of MediaWiki:Sidebar
- Explore the pros and cons of the following options 1) adding a new wiki page using the same format 2) extending the existing format 3) working within the constraints of the existing format.