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The wiki is GitLab should not delete text, please file a bug if you had dataloss. The current state of the wiki isn't great but we're also not seeing a lot of

by sytse 7y ago

The wiki is GitLab should not delete text, please file a bug if you had dataloss. The current state of the wiki isn't great but we're also not seeing a lot of people care about it. Many people are switching to static websites. Therefore we're not investing to get the wiki better than the current state of a half circle. BTW We've recently measured experience baselines in GitLab and we agree we still have a lot of work to do https://about.gitlab.com/2019/09/05/refining-gitlab-product-experience/ https://about.gitlab.com/2019/09/05/refining-gitlab-product-...

antonvs 7y ago
> The current state of the wiki isn't great but we're also not seeing a lot of people care about it. That may be because people who do care use a different product. Be careful you don't metric your way to extinction.
mikepurvis 7y ago
Perhaps an argument for focusing on doing a few things well? I work for a GitLab shop, but we don't use the bugtracker (Jira) or wiki (Confluence), we mostly don't use the CI (Jenkins is just more flexible), and we definitely don't use the container stuff. We currently do use the review workflow but at various points have considered moving to a different tool for that as well. So yeah, we would have been fine with a GitLab that did less— a lot less, and instead prioritized supplying first class integration points and supported plugins for other best-in-class tools.
- pritianka 7y ago
  Hi there! Just wanted to add my two cents here. Just like you choose to use SCM and workflow review, we have a lot of other users and customers utilizing different permutations and combinations of the various stages. Over time, various stages all move toward maturity, some faster than others. I know this is a different model than most software companies and it has its downsides. But the net positive is that we are able to provide an increasingly unified experience for DevOps. Note that at other companies the same thing happens except they market different stages as separate "products". They gain on the marketing but lose on the ultimate user benefit (again, IMHO).
  - Scarbutt 7y ago
    But the net positive is that we are able to provide an increasingly unified experience for DevOps. The point of the GP and others where that as of now there is nothing positive about the "unified experience for DevOps", it is very buggy and lacking, maybe someday.
  - ulrikrasmussen 7y ago
    I would much rather have fewer features which work well. For example, until recently there was a restriction that jobs could only run in parallel if they were defined in the same "stage", and no two stages could have running jobs at the same time. This means that a job whose dependencies were met could not necessarily be started because it belonged to a later stage (and jobs cannot depend on other jobs from its own stage, more on that later). GitLab then introduced another way of specifying dependencies using the keyword "needs" ("dependencies" was already taken by the half-baked implementation). This allows jobs from multiple stages to run concurrently, as you would expect. However, you are still required to shoehorn your jobs into stages, even though they should be completely deprecated by now. Worse, the restriction that jobs cannot depend on other jobs from the same stage still remains. On top of that, the visualization of a pipeline pretends that the new way of specifying dependencies does not exist, so all the arrows between the jobs are meaningless. I would much rather have had a proper implementation of the simple, more general approach, than having to deal with the legacy of a hacky and half-baked solution.
    - jl-gitlab 7y ago
      We released DAG as an MVC, which helped a lot of people out even in its current state. We do release features here iteratively intentionally, with the idea that feedback will help make future iterations better in unexpected ways compared to if we released a big feature all at once. The items you mention are scheduled for follow-ups in our epic https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/1716 https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/1716. Your feedback on sequencing or how we are approaching the different improvements is more than welcome. I would have loved for the feature to be useful for you too in the MVC iteration, and I'm sorry it wasn't. We are still working on it, though, and I hope that it does become valuable for you also. In the meantime you should still be able to use GitLab in the same way you always have - let me know if you're having trouble running pipelines without the DAG.
- Aeolun 7y ago
  > supplying first class integration points and supported plugins for other best-in-class tools If they did this I wouldn’t want to use it any more. The whole point of Gitlab is that it does everything. To prevent the need for any integrations.
  - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
    I don't follow. Supporting extensions doesn't instantly make a product worse. Removing features and making them into extensions, would be a different thing.
jrochkind1 7y ago
I'd rather have no (eg) wiki feature at all then have a half-assed one. Because _if_ I feel like the feature might be useful, I'm going to try to use it, and invest time in trying to use it, and only then find that it's not reliable or well-polished after all. The more such features there are, the more chance I'll spend at least some time being frustrated by at least one of them. One of the joys of really well-polished software is that if the feature wasn't worth doing right (and not every feature is!), it simply isn't there at all, so if a feature is there I can count on it being well-thought-out and well-executed.
KaoruAoiShiho 7y ago
A wiki's not the same usecase as static site, a static site is for marketing and wikis are for project management. I mean maybe people would use it if it weren't crappy? I would've been happier if the wiki didn't exist and I didn't invest time into wrangling it. ATM it's just a frustration. It's not dataloss but it deletes text in the same line as wiki internal links. And what kind of wiki doesn't use lots of internal links. https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/67132 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/67132 This basically makes the wiki unusable but it's marked as "backlog". If you really do feel this way about the wiki then it should be clearly marked in your marketing. I read about your "integrated devops experience" and was onboard, but if your intent is as you say then you need to put parentheses next to the wiki feature item list that says "this is crap and we intend for it to stay crap" and we'll know to value it appropriately when choosing a provider.
- sytse 7y ago
  I looked up our wiki direction and the ideas is to allow WYSIWYG collaboration, see https://about.gitlab.com/direction/create/wiki/ https://about.gitlab.com/direction/create/wiki/ I'm surprised that this wiki bug that two people here mention has only one upvote https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/48641 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/48641 I'm not sure if the complaints are over multiple issues, if the wiki doesn't get a lot of usage, or something else is going on. The bug sounds legitimate.
- phikai 7y ago
  > A wiki's not the same usecase as static site, a static site is for marketing and wikis are for project management. I mean maybe people would use it if it weren't crappy? I would've been happier if the wiki didn't exist and I didn't invest time into wrangling it. ATM it's just a frustration. Hi! I'm the current PM for our wiki's and I agree that the experience isn't up to par at the moment. As Sid mentioned, historically wiki's were not a priority as many users weren't coming to GitLab for those features. We're starting to see shifts in that thinking as we've penetrated deeper in to some markets so we're working to adjust accordingly. > It's not dataloss but it deletes text in the same line as wiki internal links. And what kind of wiki doesn't use lots of internal links. https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/67132 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/67132 This basically makes the wiki unusable but it's marked as "backlog". That issue is interesting because it's a link mechanism that relies on the underlying wiki project that we use. (i.e. that's no common markdown syntax). Discoverability of things like that is limited to some power users who know that we're using Gollum underneath and know of some of the supported syntax. What we've seen is that most users don't use that functionality and instead just use absolute links in markdown. This likely explains why the upvotes are so low on the bug report as well. For comparison, we've seen more demand to support linking to projects: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/20726 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/20726, than within the wiki itself. As an FYI, I've also asked a couple of our engineers to take a look at that specific issue to see if it's something that can be relatively easy to fix. No guarantees on anything here, but we'll try to get a bit more relevant engineering information to assist in understanding scope. > If you really do feel this way about the wiki then it should be clearly marked in your marketing. That's a lot of what our maturity pages are trying to do. We're being honest with ourselves and with our users about where we think the functionality of certain features are. In fact, when I started we had the Wiki listed at a `Complete` maturity which I reduced to viable: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/23525 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/... If you take a look at the wiki strategy (https://about.gitlab.com/direction/create/wiki/ https://about.gitlab.com/direction/create/wiki/) our next focus is going to be on making editing easier and improving navigation. We think these things will start to move the conversation forward for users and we'll see more adoption. Even more, if you think we're not moving in the right direction with the Wiki's please be vocal on the issue tracker, or open an issue for the Wiki Strategy or even a merge request to change something. We're happy to have the feedback, and don't hesitate to tag me on wiki issues I'm @phikai on GitLab as well.

by sytse 7y ago

antonvs 7y ago

> The current state of the wiki isn't great but we're also not seeing a lot of people care about it. That may be because people who do care use a different product. Be careful you don't metric your way to extinction.

mikepurvis 7y ago

Perhaps an argument for focusing on doing a few things well? I work for a GitLab shop, but we don't use the bugtracker (Jira) or wiki (Confluence), we mostly don't use the CI (Jenkins is just more flexible), and we definitely don't use the container stuff. We currently do use the review workflow but at various points have considered moving to a different tool for that as well. So yeah, we would have been fine with a GitLab that did less— a lot less, and instead prioritized supplying first class integration points and supported plugins for other best-in-class tools.

pritianka 7y ago
Hi there! Just wanted to add my two cents here. Just like you choose to use SCM and workflow review, we have a lot of other users and customers utilizing different permutations and combinations of the various stages. Over time, various stages all move toward maturity, some faster than others. I know this is a different model than most software companies and it has its downsides. But the net positive is that we are able to provide an increasingly unified experience for DevOps. Note that at other companies the same thing happens except they market different stages as separate "products". They gain on the marketing but lose on the ultimate user benefit (again, IMHO).
- Scarbutt 7y ago
  But the net positive is that we are able to provide an increasingly unified experience for DevOps. The point of the GP and others where that as of now there is nothing positive about the "unified experience for DevOps", it is very buggy and lacking, maybe someday.
- ulrikrasmussen 7y ago
  I would much rather have fewer features which work well. For example, until recently there was a restriction that jobs could only run in parallel if they were defined in the same "stage", and no two stages could have running jobs at the same time. This means that a job whose dependencies were met could not necessarily be started because it belonged to a later stage (and jobs cannot depend on other jobs from its own stage, more on that later). GitLab then introduced another way of specifying dependencies using the keyword "needs" ("dependencies" was already taken by the half-baked implementation). This allows jobs from multiple stages to run concurrently, as you would expect. However, you are still required to shoehorn your jobs into stages, even though they should be completely deprecated by now. Worse, the restriction that jobs cannot depend on other jobs from the same stage still remains. On top of that, the visualization of a pipeline pretends that the new way of specifying dependencies does not exist, so all the arrows between the jobs are meaningless. I would much rather have had a proper implementation of the simple, more general approach, than having to deal with the legacy of a hacky and half-baked solution.
  - jl-gitlab 7y ago
    We released DAG as an MVC, which helped a lot of people out even in its current state. We do release features here iteratively intentionally, with the idea that feedback will help make future iterations better in unexpected ways compared to if we released a big feature all at once. The items you mention are scheduled for follow-ups in our epic https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/1716 https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/1716. Your feedback on sequencing or how we are approaching the different improvements is more than welcome. I would have loved for the feature to be useful for you too in the MVC iteration, and I'm sorry it wasn't. We are still working on it, though, and I hope that it does become valuable for you also. In the meantime you should still be able to use GitLab in the same way you always have - let me know if you're having trouble running pipelines without the DAG.
Aeolun 7y ago
> supplying first class integration points and supported plugins for other best-in-class tools If they did this I wouldn’t want to use it any more. The whole point of Gitlab is that it does everything. To prevent the need for any integrations.
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago
  I don't follow. Supporting extensions doesn't instantly make a product worse. Removing features and making them into extensions, would be a different thing.

jrochkind1 7y ago

I'd rather have no (eg) wiki feature at all then have a half-assed one. Because _if_ I feel like the feature might be useful, I'm going to try to use it, and invest time in trying to use it, and only then find that it's not reliable or well-polished after all. The more such features there are, the more chance I'll spend at least some time being frustrated by at least one of them. One of the joys of really well-polished software is that if the feature wasn't worth doing right (and not every feature is!), it simply isn't there at all, so if a feature is there I can count on it being well-thought-out and well-executed.

KaoruAoiShiho 7y ago

A wiki's not the same usecase as static site, a static site is for marketing and wikis are for project management. I mean maybe people would use it if it weren't crappy? I would've been happier if the wiki didn't exist and I didn't invest time into wrangling it. ATM it's just a frustration. It's not dataloss but it deletes text in the same line as wiki internal links. And what kind of wiki doesn't use lots of internal links. https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/67132 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/67132 This basically makes the wiki unusable but it's marked as "backlog". If you really do feel this way about the wiki then it should be clearly marked in your marketing. I read about your "integrated devops experience" and was onboard, but if your intent is as you say then you need to put parentheses next to the wiki feature item list that says "this is crap and we intend for it to stay crap" and we'll know to value it appropriately when choosing a provider.

sytse 7y ago
I looked up our wiki direction and the ideas is to allow WYSIWYG collaboration, see https://about.gitlab.com/direction/create/wiki/ https://about.gitlab.com/direction/create/wiki/ I'm surprised that this wiki bug that two people here mention has only one upvote https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/48641 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/48641 I'm not sure if the complaints are over multiple issues, if the wiki doesn't get a lot of usage, or something else is going on. The bug sounds legitimate.
phikai 7y ago
> A wiki's not the same usecase as static site, a static site is for marketing and wikis are for project management. I mean maybe people would use it if it weren't crappy? I would've been happier if the wiki didn't exist and I didn't invest time into wrangling it. ATM it's just a frustration. Hi! I'm the current PM for our wiki's and I agree that the experience isn't up to par at the moment. As Sid mentioned, historically wiki's were not a priority as many users weren't coming to GitLab for those features. We're starting to see shifts in that thinking as we've penetrated deeper in to some markets so we're working to adjust accordingly. > It's not dataloss but it deletes text in the same line as wiki internal links. And what kind of wiki doesn't use lots of internal links. https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/67132 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/67132 This basically makes the wiki unusable but it's marked as "backlog". That issue is interesting because it's a link mechanism that relies on the underlying wiki project that we use. (i.e. that's no common markdown syntax). Discoverability of things like that is limited to some power users who know that we're using Gollum underneath and know of some of the supported syntax. What we've seen is that most users don't use that functionality and instead just use absolute links in markdown. This likely explains why the upvotes are so low on the bug report as well. For comparison, we've seen more demand to support linking to projects: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/20726 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/20726, than within the wiki itself. As an FYI, I've also asked a couple of our engineers to take a look at that specific issue to see if it's something that can be relatively easy to fix. No guarantees on anything here, but we'll try to get a bit more relevant engineering information to assist in understanding scope. > If you really do feel this way about the wiki then it should be clearly marked in your marketing. That's a lot of what our maturity pages are trying to do. We're being honest with ourselves and with our users about where we think the functionality of certain features are. In fact, when I started we had the Wiki listed at a `Complete` maturity which I reduced to viable: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/23525 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/... If you take a look at the wiki strategy (https://about.gitlab.com/direction/create/wiki/ https://about.gitlab.com/direction/create/wiki/) our next focus is going to be on making editing easier and improving navigation. We think these things will start to move the conversation forward for users and we'll see more adoption. Even more, if you think we're not moving in the right direction with the Wiki's please be vocal on the issue tracker, or open an issue for the Wiki Strategy or even a merge request to change something. We're happy to have the feedback, and don't hesitate to tag me on wiki issues I'm @phikai on GitLab as well.