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Clarify and/or rethink centralnotice device settings
Open, Needs TriagePublic

Description

The "device" settings for a centralnotice banner e.g. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralNoticeBanners/edit/wikimania2026scholarships are confusing and make outdated assumptions. See the relevant code here

Screenshot 2025-12-05 at 17.17.04.png (302×1 px, 81 KB)

  • Anyone using the desktop sites will see banners with (desktop) selected, regardless of their device (see also T122793)
  • The other settings only affect the mobile versions of the sites (mobilefrontend)
  • (ipad) now only selects very old ipads. iPads have used Mac OS in their user agent since iOS 13 in 2019
    • iPads also now see the desktop site by default, so wouldn't be affected by this setting
  • T153225 - the link to the code explaining any of this has been broken forever...

I think it's worth just cutting this back to a simple "desktop site" / "mobile site" (while further encouraging responsive banners which can work on both). The only use case I can think of for needing Android/iOS targeting would be advertising a native app for one or other systems. And doing that is rare enough that we could just do it with in-banner javascript to check the user agent.

Event Timeline

@Pcoombe Is this something you want us to look at now, or hold for next year? Our understanding is that you may be able to work around this with your targeting now - but if not, or you want to discuss, let us know.

It's not a question of "working around", it's just inaccurate and confusing for users.

There's no real urgency from a fundraising perspective so we can revisit next year if that's better. But please let's actually discuss it then.

If someone wants to address T153225 (which doesn't need any discussion) in the meantime that would be great.