Hi, all!

As you might have seen on the Wikimedia tech blog https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/03/11/lua-templates-faster-more-flexible-pages/ or the tech ambassadors list http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2013-March/000171.html, we enabled Lua on all Wikimedia sites last week. Lua https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Lua is a scripting language that enables wiki editors to write faster and more powerful MediaWiki templates. We're pretty excited about this, partly because of the promise of Lua + Wikidata https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/03/14/what-lua-scripting-means-wikimedia-open-source/. To enable Lua templating on your own wiki, install the Scribunto extension https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Scribunto.

If you have questions about how to convert existing templates to Lua (or how to create new ones), we'll be holding two support sessions on IRC this week: one on Wednesday http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?hour=02&min=00&sec=0&day=20&month=03&year=2013(for Oceania, Asia & America) and one on Friday http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?hour=18&min=00&sec=0&day=22&month=03&year=2013 (for Europe, Africa & America); see m:IRC office hours https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours for details. If you can't make it, you can also get help at mw:Talk:Lua scripting https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Lua_scripting.

If you'd like to learn about this kind of event earlier in advance, consider becoming a Tech ambassador https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/Ambassadors by subscribing to the mailing list https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors.

Thanks, Sumana