Remove the lazy load references beta feature
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	Jdlrobson
	May 2 2019, 4:02 PM

Description

The lazy load references feature was added alongside the lazy image in August 2016. Since then it has sat in beta for a period of 3 years without any work.

The main blockers for promoting it were around the slowness of the references API that we created.

Reasons to remove it:

3 years and no activity
It uses the mobile view API which we'd like to deprecate
It's buggy and significant work is needed to complete it (see subtasks of goal task)
We're supporting it with a lot of code
It complicates our refactor project

POC: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/mediawiki/extensions/MobileFrontend/+/506594

Sign off steps

Decline all open subtasks of T123328 and decline T123328 itself

QA steps

Test on beta cluster.

Find articles with reference links on them e.g. [10] on https://en.m.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/China and click them - make sure the reference displayed is the correct one.

Test the same for a reference inside a section that can be collapsed.

Opt into beta mode and check the references continue to work

Details

	Subject	Repo	Branch	Lines +/-
	Remove code relating to lazy reference section handling	mediawiki/extensions/MobileFrontend	master	+14 -41
	Remove the lazy load references beta feature	mediawiki/extensions/MobileFrontend	master	+26 -797

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Related Objects
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Status	Subtype	Assigned	Task
Open	Release	None	T84936 Release VisualEditor-MediaWiki as "1.0"
Open		None	T50429 [Epic] Support editing parts of a page in VisualEditor-MediaWiki
Open		None	T54365 Explore performance gains from progressive (JIT?) de-alienation in VisualEditor
Open		None	T174303 Copy-pasting linked ISBN numbers from view mode HTML into VisualEditor inserts wikitext links to Special:BookSources (it should turn them into magic links?)
Open	Feature	None	T54091 The read HTML should have hinting to allow full DOM copying (as opposed to just rich copying) from read mode into VE surfaces
Open		None	T55784 [EPIC] Use Parsoid HTML for all page views
Resolved		dr0ptp4kt	T114542 Next Generation Content Loading and Routing, in Practice
Duplicate		• Jhernandez	T104432 [EPIC]: Improve mobile site performance
Duplicate		dr0ptp4kt	T120341 [GOAL] Make Wikipedia more accessible to all connections with new fast API-driven web experience in mobile web beta
Declined		None	T125920 [EPIC] Future exciting reading web performance endeavours
Resolved		Jdlrobson	T113066 [GOAL] Make Wikipedia more accessible to 2G connections
Declined		None	T123328 [GOAL] Lazy load references in mobile skin
Resolved		Jdlrobson	T222373 Remove the lazy load references beta feature

Event Timeline

Jdlrobson created this task.May 2 2019, 4:02 PM

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptMay 2 2019, 4:02 PM

To discuss at team offsite.

ovasileva moved this task from Incoming to Product Owner Backlog on the Web-Team-Backlog board.May 28 2019, 3:47 PM

• nray awarded a token.Jul 16 2019, 9:49 PM

Jdlrobson mentioned this in T126802: What is impact of storing references.Jul 17 2019, 4:14 PM

Jdlrobson mentioned this in T125329: Save references in page_props and cache.

Jdlrobson mentioned this in T127263: References stored in page props are not parsed.

Jdlrobson mentioned this in T146396: Improve performance of mobile references API.

Jdlrobson mentioned this in T216073: Move lazily loaded references initialization from Skin to mobile.init.js.

Jdlrobson mentioned this in T203527: Beta: Lazy load references with Cyrillic names are not shown in mobile skin (black box at the bottom immediately disappears again).

Jdlrobson mentioned this in T213966: [Bug] [Beta mode] Table of contents link is broken for lazily loaded references.

Jdlrobson mentioned this in T130551: Refactor mobile references code.

Jdlrobson mentioned this in T221242: [Bug] [Beta] Lazily loaded references sometimes cannot be viewed.Jul 17 2019, 4:16 PM

Jdlrobson moved this task from Product Owner Backlog to Upcoming on the Web-Team-Backlog board.

Jdlrobson mentioned this in T123328: [GOAL] Lazy load references in mobile skin.

Jdforrester-WMF updated the task description. (Show Details)Jul 17 2019, 4:32 PM

ovasileva triaged this task as Medium priority.Jul 17 2019, 4:41 PM

Change 506594 had a related patch set uploaded (by Jdlrobson; owner: Jdlrobson):
[mediawiki/extensions/MobileFrontend@master] Remove the lazy load references beta feature

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/506594

gerritbot added a project: Patch-For-Review.Jul 22 2019, 6:54 PM

Change 506594 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/MobileFrontend@master] Remove the lazy load references beta feature

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/506594

ReleaseTaggerBot added a project: MW-1.34-notes (1.34.0-wmf.16; 2019-07-30).Jul 26 2019, 8:00 PM

Maintenance_bot removed a project: Patch-For-Review.Jul 26 2019, 8:10 PM

Jdlrobson assigned this task to Edtadros.Jul 26 2019, 8:15 PM

Jdlrobson moved this task from Upcoming to Readers-Web-Kanbanana-2019-20-Q1 on the Web-Team-Backlog board.

Jdlrobson edited projects, added Web-Team-Backlog (Readers-Web-Kanbanana-2019-20-Q1); removed Web-Team-Backlog.

Jdlrobson moved this task from Needs Analysis to Needs QA on the Web-Team-Backlog (Readers-Web-Kanbanana-2019-20-Q1) board.

Jdlrobson updated the task description. (Show Details)

MBinder_WMF reassigned this task from Edtadros to Jdlrobson.Aug 7 2019, 5:21 PM