Hi,
The report covering Wikimedia engineering activities in January 2014 is now
available.
Wiki version:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2014/January
Blog version:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/13/engineering-report-january-2014/
We're also proposing a shorter, simpler and translatable version of this
report that does not assume specialized technical knowledge:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2014/January/su…
Below is the HTML text of the report's summary.
As always, feedback is appreciated on the usefulness of the report and its
summary, and on how to improve them.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Major news in January include:
- the transition of our search
engines<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/01/06/wikimedia-moving-to-elasti…
Wikimedia sites to ElasticSearch;
- a presentation of how the Tech newsletter
works<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/01/07/tech-news-fighting-technical…s/>,
including a historical perspective;
- an invitation to comment on the 2-year
vision<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/01/09/multimedia-vision-2016/>…
the multimedia engineering team;
- a request for
comments<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/01/23/rfc-should-we-support-mp4…
whether the MP4 video format should be supported on Wikimedia sites.
VisualEditor<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/VisualEdi…
In January, the VisualEditor
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor>team continued their work
on improving the stability and performance of
this visual editing interface to edit pages on Wikipedia and its sister
sites; they also added some new features. You can now edit page settings
like whether to display a table of contents or whether to show section edit
labels. You can also specify the size of a media file manually, see a list
of keyboard shortcuts, and create and edit media galleries using a very
basic stand-in editor whilst the final form is being designed. Work also
continued on a dialog for quickly adding "citation" references based on
templates, more media and page settings, setting content language and
right-to-left indicators, and equation editing.
The Parsoid <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid> team (developing the
program that converts wikitext to annotated HTML, behind the scenes of
VisualEditor) did a lot of bug fixing around images, links, references and
various other areas. We also mentored students, participated in discussions
relating to the architecture of MediaWiki, and started to work on
"packaging" Parsoid to make it easier to install.
Editor engagement <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/New_editor_engagement>
This month, the Core Features team worked on integrating MediaWiki tools
for dealing with spam and vandalism (AbuseFilter and Spam Blacklist) into
Flow <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow>, a new wiki discussion system.
We also launched an updated visual design and user interface for Flow,
based on the first round of experienced user feedback last month, as well
as ongoing user testing with new users. Lastly, we created a script to
disable Flow and convert its content, so that we can begin testing Flow on
two WikiProjects that volunteered on the English Wikipedia while being able
to revert to wikitext if needed.
The Growth <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth> team improved the
GettingStarted <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GettingStarted>extension,
in part to support local configuration for different Wikipedias.
The latest version of GettingStarted and GuidedTour will be released in
English and 23 other languages in early February. The team also completed
several iterations of design and data analysis in support of upcoming work
on Wikipedia article
creation<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_article_creation>on>.
We presented new designs for the Draft namespace, and completed a series of
remote usability
tests<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Draft_namespace/Usability_testing&g…ng>.
We also finalized and published extensive quantitative
analysis<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_article_crea…
trends in article creation across the largest Wikipedias.
Mobile <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Mobile_engineering>
During the last month, the Wikipedia
Zero<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero>team worked on
supporting secure HTTPS connections for partners in the Zero
program, which allows mobile subscribers to access Wikipedia content at no
data cost. We also continued to work on a proof of concept HTML5 web app
for Firefox OS, fixed bugs in the legacy Firefox OS Wikipedia app, and
prepared alpha functionality for the integration of Wikipedia Zero with the
rebooted Android Wikipedia app. The team also met with the business
development team to plan for partners and Wikipedia Zero-related work at
large, and conducted tech facilitation to enable partner launches and align
approaches with current and future partners.
The Mobile web projects
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile_web_projects>team has been
directing much of their attention over the last month at
delivering a tablet-friendly mobile experience. We've added support for
tables of contents, made some design improvements, and have worked towards
making VisualEditor work on tablets (in alpha for now). We have also
released our overlay UI improvements as well as an improved inline diff
view for MobileFrontend into stable. Finally, we have also been working to
expand our coverage of browser tests to facilitate quality assurance and
help prevent the introduction of bugs and regressions.
--
Guillaume Paumier
Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation
https://donate.wikimedia.org