Hello all,
The Technical Decision-Making Forum Retrospective team
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making> invites you to
complete a survey about Wikimedia's technical decision-making processes.
While there will be more ways to participate, this is the first and most
important step in our data collection. It aims to gather information about
your experience, thoughts, and needs regarding the process of making
technical decisions across the Wikimedia technical spaces.
This survey will be used for gathering information about the process and
the needs around technical decision-making that touches our production
systems.
You can find the survey link here:
https://wikimediafoundation.limesurvey.net/885471?lang=en
Who should take this survey?
People who do technical work that relies on software maintained by the
Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) or affiliates. If you contribute code to
MediaWiki or extensions used by Wikimedia, or you maintain gadgets or tools
that rely on WMF infrastructure, this survey is for you.
What is the deadline?
*August 7th, 2023 *
What will the Retrospective team do with the information?
The retrospective team will synthesize the collected data and publish an
anonymized analysis that will help leadership make decisions about the
future of the process.
We will collect anonymized information that we will analyze in two main
ways:
-
Sentiments based on demographic information: these will tell us whether
there are different needs and desires from different groups of people.
-
General needs and perceptions about decision-making in our technical
spaces: This will help us understand what kind of decisions happen in
the spaces, who is involved, and how to adjust our processes accordingly.
Is the survey the only way to participate?
The survey is the most important way for us to gather information because
it helps us gather input in a structured manner. But it will not be the
only way you can share your thoughts with us - we will have more
information soon about upcoming listening sessions where you can talk with
us live. In the meantime, you are always welcome to leave feedback on the
talk page:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Technical_decision_making/Technical_Dec…
Where can I see more information?
There are several places where you can find more information about the
Technical Decision-Making Process Retrospective:
-
The original announcement about the retrospective from Tajh Taylor:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/…
-
The Technical Decision-Making Process general information page:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making
-
The Technical Decision-Making Process Retrospective on MediaWiki:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Technical_Decision…
-
Phabricator ticket: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T333235
How to contact the retrospective core team:
-
Write to the core team mailing list: tdf-retro-2023(a)lists.wikimedia.org
-
The Technical Decision-Making Process Retrospective on MediaWiki talk
page:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Technical_decision_making/Technical_Dec…
Thank you,
Moriel, on behalf of the TDMP Retro Core Group
Core group:
-
Moriel Schottlender (chair)
-
Daniel Kinzler
-
Chris Danis
-
Kosta Harlan
-
Temilola Adeleye
--
Moriel Schottlender (she/her <https://pronoun.is/she>)
Principal Software Engineer
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
(If you don’t work with pagelinks table, feel free to ignore this message)
Hello,
Here is an update and reminder on the previous announcement
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/…>
regarding normalization of links tables that was sent around a year ago.
As part of that work, soon the pl_namespace and pl_title columns of
pagelinks table will be dropped and you will need to use pl_target_id
joining with the linktarget table instead. This is basically identical to
the templatelinks normalization that happened a year ago.
Currently, MediaWiki writes to both data schemes of pagelinks for new rows
in all wikis except English Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons (we will start
writing to these two wikis next week). We have started to backfill the data
with the new schema but it will take weeks to finish in large wikis.
So if you query this table directly or your tools do, You will need to
update them accordingly. I will write a reminder before dropping the old
columns once the data has been fully backfilled.
You can keep track of the general long-term work in T300222
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T300222> and the specific work for
pagelinks in T299947 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T299947>. You can
also read more on the reasoning in T222224
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T222224> or the previous announcement
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/…>
.
Thank you,
--
*Amir Sarabadani (he/him)*
Staff Database Architect
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hi everyone,
We invite your contributions to the Wiki Workshop Hall, a new track as part
of Wiki Workshop 2024 <https://wikiworkshop.org/> which will take place
virtually as a standalone event on June 20, 2024 (tentatively 12:00-19:00
UTC).
The Hall will be a novel space for Wikimedia researchers and Wikimedia
movement members to connect with each other. Through this new track, we aim
to provide a dedicated space for learning, exchange of ideas, the spark of
curiosity, and community building.
We welcome proposals that align with the interactive and collaborative
spirit of the Wiki Workshop Hall and look forward to a wide variety of
content: experiences and learnings, knowledge pieces, how-tos, open
questions, pain points, etc. During the Hall, a breakout room will be set
up for each accepted proposal, so that Wiki Workshop attendees can move
between rooms to interact with their hosts.
*Learn more about the Wiki Workshop Hall at *
*https://wikiworkshop.org/2024/call-for-hall*
<https://wikiworkshop.org/2024/call-for-hall.html>* and submit your
contributions by **April 29, 2024 (23:59 AoE)*
<https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html?iso=20240430T115900&p…>
*. *
If you have questions about the workshop or about Wiki Workshop Hall,
please email wikiworkshop(a)googlegroups.com with a [Wiki Workshop Hall] tag
in the subject of your email or comment on this post.
Looking forward to seeing many of you in this year's edition.
The Wiki Workshop Hall chairs,
Pablo Aragón, Wikimedia Foundation
Kinneret Gordon, Wikimedia Foundation
Hey all,
This is a quick note to highlight that in five weeks' time, the REL1_42
branch will be created for MediaWiki core and each of the extensions and
skins in Wikimedia git, with some (the 'tarball') included as sub-modules
of MediaWiki itself[0]. This is the first step in the release process for
MediaWiki 1.42, which should be out in May 2024, approximately six months
after MediaWiki 1.41.
The branches will reflect the code as of the last 'alpha' branch for the
release, 1.42.0-wmf.26, which will be deployed to Wikimedia wikis in the
week beginning 8 April 2024 for MediaWiki itself and those extensions
and skins available there.
After that point, patches that land in the main development branch of
MediaWiki and its bundled extensions and skins will be instead be slated
for the MediaWiki 1.43 release unless specifically backported[1].
If you are working on a new feature that you wish to land for the release,
you now have a few days to finish your work and land it in the development
branch; feature changes should not be backported except in an urgent case.
If your work might not be complete in time, and yet should block release
for everyone else, please file a task against the `mw-1.42-release` project
on Phabricator.[2]
If you have tickets that are already tagged for `mw-1.42-release`, please
finish them, untag them, or reach out to get them resolved in the next few
weeks.
We hope to issue the first release candidate, 1.42.0-rc.0, two weeks after
the branch point, and if all goes well, to release MediaWiki 1.42.0 a few
weeks after that.
[0]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bundled_extensions_and_skins
[1]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Backporting_fixes
[2]: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/mw-1.42-release/
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester (he/him or they/themself)
Wikimedia Foundation
I would like to nominate Siddharth for CR+2 (the right to approve and merge
changes in MediaWiki core and extensions). He has done excellent work in
core and various extensions, most notably Gadgets and the related core
infrastructure.
Please voice support or concerns on
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T360442
Hello friends,
In code review, it was suggested I get wider consensus for my proposed
changes, so I would like to invite your feedback on the following Extension
SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi ticket:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T361407
Summary: I propose adding parser tags <sh> for <syntaxhighlight>, and <shi>
for <syntaxhighlight inline>. Reason: These are much shorter to type.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Novem Linguae
Hi all,
On Thursday we will be issuing a security and maintenance release to all
supported branches of MediaWiki.
The new releases will be:
- 1.39.7
- 1.40.3
- 1.41.1
This will resolve two security issues in MediaWiki core, along with bug
fixes included for maintenance reasons. This includes various patches for
PHP 8.0, 8.1, 8.2 and 8.3 support.
This release may or may not be made with a CVE number formally attached,
due to the recent delays in receiving them from MITRE.
We will make the fixes available in the respective release branches and
master in git. Tarballs will be available for the above mentioned point
releases as well.
A summary of some of the security fixes that have gone into non-bundled
MediaWiki extensions will also follow later.
As a reminder, MediaWiki 1.35 became end of life (EOL) in December 2023.
It is strongly recommended to upgrade to either 1.39 (the next LTS after
1.35), which will be supported until November 2025, 1.40, which will be
supported until June 2024, or 1.41, which will be supported until December
2024.
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Version_lifecycle
Hey everyone,
Product and technology development at the Wikimedia Foundation is guided by
the annual plan, which sets the focus for the Foundation – what are the
central areas we are trying to address?
We have now posted the Product & Technology draft key results for next
fiscal year on Meta. They aim to explain what outcomes we are working
towards:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2024-2025/…
The objectives and draft key results are divided into different sections,
and the ones most relevant to this list are "WE5" and "WE6" (Wiki
Experiences #5 and #6). They are about evolving the MediaWiki platform to
better meet Wikipedia's core needs and to give technical staff and
volunteer developers the tools they need to effectively support the
Wikimedia projects.
To give a couple of examples, here we have key results like
"By Q2, introduce a sustainability scoring system for the Toolforge
platform across a variety of technical and social factors. By Q4, improve
one of its key technical factors by 50%"
or
"Identify by Q2 and complete by Q4 one or more interventions to evolve the
MediaWiki ecosystem’s programming interfaces to empower decoupled, simpler
and more sustainable feature development"
Out of context, they might not say much, but there are more explanations on
the Meta page. We welcome any feedback on the draft:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2024-…
(The Wikimedia Foundation fiscal year runs from July through June, so this
covers July 2024 through June 2025.)
Best,
*Johan Jönsson*Manager, Product Ambassadors
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>