This popped during my work at T364717: GrowthExperiments: Make use of Suggested edits config in Community configuration, which includes loading data from https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki:NewcomerTopicsOres.json (so, remotely).

To be able to (in the future) remove Community configuration 1.0 code from GrowthExperiments, and fully rely on the CommunityConfiguration extension, CommunityConfiguration should be able to handle external titles.

The only drawback for external config is that it (obviously) cannot be edited, as the URL can point anywhere (not necessarily to a MediaWiki page). With @Cyndymediawiksim's fix for T361123: Make it possible to declare a Community configuration provider that does not display on the dashboard, such cases can be excluded from the dashboard by setting the skipDashboardListing option to true.

What would be the reasoning for config like https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki:NewcomerTopicsOres.json being suitable for CommunityConfiguration in the first place?
To me that looks very technical (needs detailed knowledge about Ores internals) and would maybe be better suited for classic PHP-based configuration.

Further, using loading configuration from someplace other than the current wiki seems antithetical to the overall goal that we're trying to achieve with community configuration. This is not something that one local on-wiki community can form an opinion about and then change, this needs agreement among many communities. Not sure if community configuration is the right tool for that. (This is a product question.)

Finally, I'm not sure if accessing external files to load configuration is a good idea in terms of performance, security and stability.

So, my intuitive suggestion for dealing with GE's mw:MediaWiki:NewcomerTopicsOres.json would be to downgrade it into php configuration (=> LocalSettings.php locally, or CommonSettings.php in wikimedia). That being said, I do not know what the reasons and motivations were for creating it this way originally.

In T359185#9790649, @Michael wrote:

What would be the reasoning for config like https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki:NewcomerTopicsOres.json being suitable for CommunityConfiguration in the first place?
To me that looks very technical (needs detailed knowledge about Ores internals) and would maybe be better suited for classic PHP-based configuration.

Hmm... Good question. We were originally using morelike, which needed a couple of articles as seeds, and back then it was stored on-wiki (example is https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:NewcomerTopics.json, which was later deleted; content is at P62371). Later, we switched to ORES topics, and since we already had it stored on-wiki, we switched to the central wiki. That being said, I can see the arguments for moving https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki:NewcomerTopicsOres.json to the server config.

Further, using loading configuration from someplace other than the current wiki seems antithetical to the overall goal that we're trying to achieve with community configuration. This is not something that one local on-wiki community can form an opinion about and then change, this needs agreement among many communities. Not sure if community configuration is the right tool for that. (This is a product question.)

Not necessarily. For example, spam blacklist has two components: many domains are blocked globally from meta (and loaded via HTTP). If spam blacklist was to move to CommunityConfiguration, the HTTP store would make a lot of sense.

Finally, I'm not sure if accessing external files to load configuration is a good idea in terms of performance, security and stability.

FWIW, we're already doing it in CC1.0 (in production), for quite a while. There are also other extensions with that pattern, such as SpamBlacklist. So, likely not a significant issue?

So, my intuitive suggestion for dealing with GE's mw:MediaWiki:NewcomerTopicsOres.json would be to downgrade it into php configuration (=> LocalSettings.php locally, or CommonSettings.php in wikimedia). That being said, I do not know what the reasons and motivations were for creating it this way originally.

Makes sense. I have no problem with that approach if @Sgs and @Cyndymediawiksim do not have any objections.

Change #1031010 had a related patch set uploaded (by Urbanecm; author: Urbanecm):

[mediawiki/extensions/CommunityConfiguration@master] [PoC] Create HttpStore

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1031010

Change #1031010 abandoned by Urbanecm:

[mediawiki/extensions/CommunityConfiguration@master] [PoC] Create HttpStore

Reason:

likely not needed at this point

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1031010