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Baby globe will not show up on Minerva on English Wikipedia in current state
Closed, ResolvedPublic2 Estimated Story PointsBUG REPORT

Description

You can replicate this on the beta cluster. Raised by @Etonkovidova in {T414960#11584946}

Steps to replicate the issue (include links if applicable):

  • Visit any page on mobile
  • Enable birthday mode

What happens?:
No baby globe.

What should have happened instead?:
Baby globe, of course!

Why does this happen?

Minerva has a configuration option $wgMinervaEnableSiteNotice which disables editor site notices on mobile.
I forget why, but it is disabled by default in production.

We'll need to enable baby globe AND site notices for a project to support birthday mode in the mobile site.

Software version (on Special:Version page; skip for WMF-hosted wikis like Wikipedia):

Other information (browser name/version, screenshots, etc.):

Plan

  • We enable on mobile for English Wikipedia
  • We enable for all wikis
  • We remove wgMinervaNotices.

Event Timeline

@Izno do you have any idea why we disable site notices in mobile? As an admin would you consider this controversial with the community? I assume site notices are pretty mobile friendly these days when used?

Change #1237348 had a related patch set uploaded (by Jdlrobson; author: Jdlrobson):

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Enable site notices on Minerva

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1237348

I assume site notices are pretty mobile friendly these days when used?

When I'm using Vector 22 with responsive script on my phone, I haven't seen any particular issue. The X indicator on the right can sometimes be hard to button mash if I want it to go away (as it's often next to a giant link that site notices often contain). The other reason I can think of it being disabled would have been that site notices used to use a lot of tables. (I suspect some still are.)

I'd suggest taking a look to see if those are issues that I'm not hallucinating (and whether the table one even matters, I don't think it will) on a small device.

Besides mobile friendliness, they may or may not be targeting the right people, as it were, and adding Minerva support would likely double or triple the people being exposed to a site notice (which could be good or bad).

Otherwise, I don't really know why you'd turn it on just for en, so consider another task to nixing the config and making everything display everywhere.

One other thing to consider about site notices and central notices is https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/LayoutShift ?

HFan-WMF triaged this task as High priority.Fri, Feb 6, 6:11 PM
HFan-WMF moved this task from Incoming to Needs refinement on the Reader Experience Team board.

Layout shift is a known issue with CentralNotice and siteNotice, but in this case I think baby globe will be loaded server-side with existing height-related CSS that will prevent the layout from shifting too much.

Regardless, this seems like a decision that was made over a decade ago and might no longer be relevant, since most sitenotices probably don't use table based layouts anymore (I hope?) and mobile traffic is considerably higher than desktop these days.

I like @Jdlrobson suggestion of setting it to enwiki true, then we can do 'wikipedia' => true later in the week and eventually follow-up with removing the config as @Izno suggests above.

Change #1237348 merged by jenkins-bot:

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Enable site notices on Minerva

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1237348

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-02-09T22:14:27Z] <cscott@deploy2002> Started scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1237373|Disable magic links on nlwiki (T145604)]], [[gerrit:999060|Turn on Parsoid read views by default on labs (T357054)]], [[gerrit:1237348|Enable site notices on Minerva (T416644)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-02-09T22:16:22Z] <cscott@deploy2002> jdlrobson, cscott: Backport for [[gerrit:1237373|Disable magic links on nlwiki (T145604)]], [[gerrit:999060|Turn on Parsoid read views by default on labs (T357054)]], [[gerrit:1237348|Enable site notices on Minerva (T416644)]] synced to the testservers (see https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mwdebug). Changes can now be verified there.

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-02-09T22:25:48Z] <cscott@deploy2002> Finished scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1237373|Disable magic links on nlwiki (T145604)]], [[gerrit:999060|Turn on Parsoid read views by default on labs (T357054)]], [[gerrit:1237348|Enable site notices on Minerva (T416644)]] (duration: 11m 20s)

I suspect this would benefit from a tech news entry:
Previously site notices would only render on desktop site and soon they will render on all platforms. Site administrators should be prepared to test and fix notices on mobile devices to avoid interference with articles. To opt out sysadmins can add #siteNotice { display: none; } to MediaWiki:Minerva.css before the change.

Jdlrobson-WMF set the point value for this task to 2.Tue, Feb 10, 6:31 PM

Change #1238856 had a related patch set uploaded (by Jdrewniak; author: Jdrewniak):

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Enabling sitenotices on Minerva on all Wikipedias

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1238856

Hello @Jdlrobson-WMF, how should I word this for Tech News? Also which edition should this be featured in? Monday the 16th?

I suspect this would benefit from a tech news entry:
Previously site notices would only render on desktop site and soon they will render on all platforms. Site administrators should be prepared to test and fix notices on mobile devices to avoid interference with articles. To opt out sysadmins can add #siteNotice { display: none; } to MediaWiki:Minerva.css before the change.

Hi @STei-WMF , I think Monday 16th would be great. I was planning on deploying this change today, but we can wait to do that until Monday when technews comes out. I think Jon's wording for technews is accurate. I will add that it does seem like people have been asking for this for a long time e.g: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T138572#3457366e

@Jdrewniak, so there is no need to mention baby globe I guess? The main issue is about notices in general right? Also you can go ahead and deploy. Tech News English edition is technically ready on Friday. Monday is for broader distribution.

Hi @STei-WMF , I think Monday 16th would be great. I was planning on deploying this change today, but we can wait to do that until Monday when technews comes out. I think Jon's wording for technews is accurate. I will add that it does seem like people have been asking for this for a long time e.g: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T138572#3457366e

@STei-WMF Yep no need to mention baby globe. This is just about Site notices now displaying on mobile site.

so there is no need to mention baby globe I guess? The main issue is about notices in general right? Also you can go ahead and deploy. Tech News English edition is technically ready on Friday. Monday is for broader distribution.

I'll do the deploy now since it's needed for monday anyway.

Change #1238856 merged by jenkins-bot:

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Enabling sitenotices on Minerva on all Wikipedias

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1238856

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-02-12T22:24:45Z] <jdrewniak@deploy2002> Started scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1238856|Enabling sitenotices on Minerva on all Wikipedias (T416644)]], [[gerrit:1239205|Partially enable WP25EasterEggs on wikipedias. (T417115)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-02-12T22:26:48Z] <jdrewniak@deploy2002> jdrewniak: Backport for [[gerrit:1238856|Enabling sitenotices on Minerva on all Wikipedias (T416644)]], [[gerrit:1239205|Partially enable WP25EasterEggs on wikipedias. (T417115)]] synced to the testservers (see https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mwdebug). Changes can now be verified there.

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-02-12T22:32:44Z] <jdrewniak@deploy2002> Finished scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1238856|Enabling sitenotices on Minerva on all Wikipedias (T416644)]], [[gerrit:1239205|Partially enable WP25EasterEggs on wikipedias. (T417115)]] (duration: 07m 58s)

Jdrewniak claimed this task.

Follow-up task about removing the config flag can be found here T417638