Millions of readers still seeing broken pages as "temporary" disabling of graph extension nears its second year
A lack of technical support for interactive content on Wikimedia projects was lamented in a wide-ranging discussion on Wikimedia-l and elsewhere over the last two months. In particular, several community members expressed deep frustration about the state of the Graph MediaWiki extension, which had been disabled in April last year due to security vulnerabilities in the underlying third-party Vega framework (Signpost coverage). Back then, a Wikimedia Foundation representative had stated that "My hope is we can maybe restore some functionality in the next week or so." But eleven months later, graphs and charts remain deactivated, replaced by a prominent error message in many Wikipedia articles - despite extensive discussions about possible solutions.
Basque Wikimedian Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga (User:Theklan) opened the Wikimedia-l discussion by decrying this state of affairs:
All the solutions proposed have been dismissed, but every two months there's a proposal to make a new roadmap to solve the issue. We have plenty of roadmaps, but no vehicle to reach our destination.
He contrasted Wikimedia projects with e.g. "a place like Our World in Data [which] has been publishing data and interactive content with a compatible license for years". Several other Wikimedians likewise voiced their frustration about the lack of progress in getting graphs re-enabled.
Marshall Miller, Senior Director of Product at WMF, acknowledged these concerns on the mailing list, stating that:
to support graphs and other interactive content, we would need to take a step back and make a substantial investment in sustainable architecture to do it – so that it works well, safely, and is built to last. And because that’s a substantial investment, we need to weigh it against other important investments in order to decide whether and when to do it.
I know that it is very frustrating that the Graph extension has not been operational for many months – it means readers haven’t been seeing graphs in articles, and editors haven’t been able to use graphs to do things like monitor backlogs in WikiProjects. Over the months of trying to find a way to turn graphs back on, it has become clear that there isn’t a safe shortcut here and that the path forward will require a substantial investment – one that we have not yet started given the other priorities we’ve been working on.