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WMIT bulletin no. 59 - September 4, 2013
by .mau. (maurizio codogno) 02 Oct '13

02 Oct '13

Hi all, the new bulletin from Wikimedia Italia (#59) is available. This time we write about Wiki Loves Monuments 2013, VisualEditor, new international positions held by our members and future appointments. As usual a link has been added to meta, at Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Italia ; more-or-less raw text of the bulletin follows below. ciao, .mau. (p.s.: for the curious, # 57 and # 58 exist, but they were not translated. Sooner or later we will add them) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=== Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 == Sunday, September 1, [http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org/ Wiki Loves Monuments 2013] officially began. The photo competition is open to everybody who wants to help illustrate Wikipedia and enhance the world cultural heritage. The competition kicks off with the figures of the important achievements in the previous year ('''353,768 images''' received , '''more than 15,000 people''' involved) and with its recognition as '''"World's largest Photo Contest"''', as awarded by the Guinness Book of World Records in 2012 (as in 2011). In this issue there are news at the international level: 48 countries have joined, including several new entries, such as England, Armenia and Antarctica. We point out that you can follow [http://wikizabytki.pl/stats/online ] the evolution of the competition nation to nation; number enthusiasts should also not miss [ http://toolserver.org/~emijrp/wlm/stats.php the sites ] with even more detailed statistics. '''In Italy''' we have received 13 sponsorships; more than 120 municipalities, associations and individuals have freed their cultural heritage for the competition, so that at this moment '''971''' monuments may be photographed (and the number [ http://www.wikilovesmonuments.it/monumenti/lista-monumenti/ steadily increases]). Here's what our president said , [[:it:w:Utente:Frieda|Frieda Brioschi]], on the occasion of the launch: "''Since its beginning, Wiki Loves Monuments had a huge success throughout the world, because the protection of artistic and cultural heritage of the entire planet is an issue really felt. We Italians are always sensitive to these issues, because we appreciate art and culture also as valuable resources for our country, as well as the pillars of world history. I am however very sorry that besides the unconditional support of WWF, regions and some superintendences, major entities as MIBAC [the Italian ministry for cultural heritage], FAI [Fondo Ambiente Italiano] and Italia Nostra systematically ignored the numerous attempts on our part to engage them. The aim of our project seems perfectly aligned with their charters; we should put our forces together, for a cause that has as its sole purpose the promotion of an immense heritage''." ==Visual Editor: What's the story == As we already announced in previous issues of WMINews, from the end of July 2013 a new editing interface for modifying Wikipedia entries, called [ https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VE VisualEditor] (VE), is active. VisualEditor looks like a simple word processing program and does not require any knowledge of wikisyntax. [[:it:w:Utente:Elitre_ 28WMF% 29%|Elitre]] is the contact person working with the Wikimedia Foundation to facilitate the introduction of the new instrument in the Italian community. We asked her how things are going after about a month, and how Italian-speaking Wikipedians react. We learn that bugfixing is going on, new features are being introduced and that even many "historical" users accustomed to the classic mode of writing are using VisualEditor, and they are tirelessly helping to improve it with their advice. From a look at the Recent changes, however, is immediately apparent that, as expected, contributors using VisualEditor are mostly anonymous and newly registered users, thanks to its intuitive interface. Information: * To contact Elitre, you can write at https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussioni_utente:Elitre_(WMF). * You can subscribe to aperiodic updates (in Italian) and consult the back issues starting from [ https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Cosa_cambia#Posso_rice… page] * For the latest news (in English) you can always refer to [ https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/status this link]. Curiosities: * [[:it:w:Utente:Jacopo_Werther|Jacopo Werther]] received a barnstar as "the first user to create 10 voices on it.wikipedia.org using VisualEditor" * We are collecting [ https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Cosa_cambia#Dicono_di_…] on the characteristics of VisualEditor that the Italian community prefers. Did you already share yours? == Wikimedia Italia members contributing to international boards == [[:it:w:Utente:Frieda|Frieda Brioschi]]'' (President of Wikimedia Italia)'' has become part of the [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GAC#Current_membersGrant Advisory Committee], the commission made up of volunteers who help the Wikimedia Foundation in allocating funding. [[:it:w:Utente:Aubrey|Andrea Zanni]]'' (Head of projects for Wikimedia Italia)'' announced that a [ https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/openaccess new international mailing list] (in English) was born. The list is about Open Access to scientific literature. Zanni says: "If you're a librarian, a researcher, a hacker or just a lover of free culture, join us! We'll reflect together on how to make concrete the research and science of the commons goods ". == Future appointments == Here there are the appointements involving Wikimedia Italia this month. For the complete calendar, look at Vi ricordiamo qui gli eventi che coinvolgeranno Wikimedia Italia nell'arco del prossimo mese, per il calendario completo vi invitiamo [[Diario_di_bordo|Diario di Bordo]] on our site. * Grosseto, 16-17 September; Scandicci, 23-24 September: [ http://www.aib.it/struttura/sezioni/toscana/2013/35639-biblioteche-toscane-… about Wikipedia for librarians and users] during [ http://www.aib.it/attivita/bibliopride/bibliopride2013/'''Bibliopride2013'''], promoted by the Tuscany Section of AIB (Italian Library Association). * 4-5-6 October, Rovereto (TN): [http://conf.openstreetmap.it Annual Conference] of the Italian community of OpenStreetMap. * 5 October, Florence: Wikimedia Italy participates in the [ http://www.aib.it/attivita/bibliopride/bibliopride2013/ National Day of Libraries - Bibliopride 2013]. == Flash news == [[File:TESSERA 2013.png|150px|left|]] 2013 member cards are arriving into the homes of all members of Wikimedia Italia. If you are not yet registered you can do so by following the directions found [[Iscrizioni|on the site]], while if you need to communicate a change in your address this is the right time (write to segreteria(a)wikimedia.it). ''(Member card assembled by Jollyroger - Picture of Nicola D'Orta, cc-by-sa).''

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Wikimedia engineering report, September 2013
by Guillaume Paumier 02 Oct '13

02 Oct '13

Hi, The report covering Wikimedia engineering activities in September 2013 is now available. Wiki version: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2013/September Blog version: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/10/02/engineering-report-september-2013/ 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/2013/September/… Below is the full HTML text of the report. As always, feedback is appreciated on the usefulness of the report and its summary, and on how to improve them. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Major news in September include: - A recap on how our engineers worked with volunteers<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/09/03/language-support-at-wikimania-2013-in…>to improve language tools at Wikimania; - A call for wikis willing to experiment with using HTTPS for all users<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/09/10/https-by-default-beta-program/> ; - A recap on how our new image scaling system<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/09/12/vipsscaler-implementation-wikimedia-s…>was implemented by a volunteer developer; - A call for technical projects<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/09/16/call-for-wikimedia-tech-projects-need…>that could for instance be completed as part of our mentorship programs; - Design experiments to show the community behind Wikipedia articles<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/09/25/humanizing-wikipedia-editing-mobile-e…>on mobile devices; - Another release of the MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/09/26/get-introduced-to-internationalizatio…>, with an explanation of how it's put together; - The completion of the sixth round of the Outreach Program for Women<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/09/30/foss-outreach-program-for-women-succe…> ; - A recap of the launch of Notifications<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/10/01/notifications-launch-on-more-wikipedi…>to more language versions of Wikipedia, and their impact. *Note: We're also providing a shorter, simpler and translatable version of this report<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2013/September/…>that does not assume specialized technical knowledge. * Personnel Work with us <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Work_with_us> Are you looking to work for Wikimedia? We have a lot of hiring coming up, and we really love talking to active community members about these roles. - Vice President of Engineering: Search Firm Engagement - Engineering<http://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=oDVOXfw3> - Software Engineer - Fundraising<http://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=oawpXfwM> - Software Engineer - Growth<http://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=o8NJXfwl> - Software Engineer - Core Features<http://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=o6NJXfwj> - Software Engineer - Language Engineering<http://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=oH3gXfwH> - Senior Software Engineer - Multimedia<http://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=oC9OXfwg> - QA Engineer - Manual Testing - Visual Editor<http://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=oNeQXfwy> - FE Developer - Analytics<http://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=olyGXfwg> - Software Engineer Data Analytics (Back End)<http://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=oLdOXfwt> - Product Manager - Platform<http://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=o3vtXfwI> - Dev-Ops Engineer - SRE<http://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=ocLCWfwf> - Ops Engineer - Labs Contractor<http://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=oIcUXfwv> - User Experience Designer<http://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=oO8OXfwr> Announcements - Kartik Mistry joined the Language Engineering team as Software Engineer (announcement<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2013-September/071618.html> ). - Sucheta Ghoshal joined the Language Engineering team as associate software engineer (announcement<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2013-September/071620.html> ). - Kaity Hammerstein joined the User experience team as Associate UX Designer (announcement<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/design/2013-September/000871.html> ). - Aaron Halfaker joined the Analytics team as Research Analyst ( announcement<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/analytics/2013-September/001021.html> ). - Oliver Keyes transitioned to the role of Product Analyst (announcement<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2013-September/071988.html> ). - Dan Garry joined the Product development team as Associate Product Manager for Platform. (announcement<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2013-September/071988.html> ). - Nick Wilson joined the Product development team as Community Liaison ( announcement<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2013-September/071988.html> ). Technical Operations *Site infrastructure* Work to refactor and modularize our Puppet repository continues: this month, lots of dead code was removed, and some tiny miscellaneous classes aggregated with more relevant components. Work on git-deploy has also restarted this month. Changes were made to make git-deploy easier to configure and to make initial setup of new repositories and setup of new minion targets completely automated.Many of the services within the Tampa data center have already migrated to EQIAD, however there remain several smaller, unique, or in some cases orphaned services that we still need to document or scope prior to the closure of this center. Several of these services may no longer be required, and we expect there to be some discussion about how they are migrated or maintained going forward. Additionally, several of these systems need to be moved to the new secondary data center (see below), and will be waiting until infrastructure is in place to do so. Our goal is to try to have these systems moved before the end of 2013, but we'll continue to have equipment in this location for as long as necessary to ensure stability of our network.For EQIAD, the ordering process is underway to complete our fourth row of machines, and ensure we have capacity to take in systems that will be arriving from the sunsetting of the Tampa data center, as well as handle our expected growth.For ULSFO, after a long initial setup, initial bootstrapping and configuration of the systems is finally underway. Over the next several weeks, we will be configuring, testing, and redirecting traffic at this location.Lastly, work has begun on a definition and RFP process for a new, secondary data center, likely on the west coast of the US. We will send further updates on this project once our RFPs are complete and we begin the selection process. Our hope is to have this facility ready to take systems from Tampa by the end of 2013. *Data Dumps <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WMF_Projects/Data_Dumps>* The GSoC incremental dumps<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Svick/Incremental_dumps>project has drawn to a close, but User:Svick <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Svick> will still be around. There's work to be done<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=54633>before this can go into production, as well as extensive testing and code review from folks with C++ expertise. If you want to help, check the repository<https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/projects/operations/dumps/incremental,dash…> . *Wikimedia Labs <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Labs>* The DNS infrastructure of the Labs has been overhauled and much improved. The hardware switch to replace Labs' NFS server unreliable hardware is ready, and should be enabled this week. Yuvaraj Pandian has created and deployed a new instance proxy with an OpenStack-style API. The new proxy is in use for a small number of instances right now, but will be expanded to most instances in the future. The new proxy uses nginx with Lua code to read its configuration of virtual hosts from redis and can handle arbitrary URLs to arbitrary back-ends. Features Engineering<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Features_engineering> Editor retention: Editing tools *VisualEditor <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor>* In September, the VisualEditor team continued their work to improve the editor and roll it out to additional wikis. The deployed version of the code was updated four times (1.22-wmf16<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.22/wmf16#VisualEditor>, 1.22-wmf17,<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.22/wmf17#VisualEditor> 1.22-wmf18<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.22/wmf18#VisualEditor>and 1.22-wmf19<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.22/wmf19#VisualEditor>). The focus in the team's work this month was to continue to improve the stability and performance of the system, fix a number of bugs uncovered by the community, and make some usability improvements. *Parsoid <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid>* We fixed a few bugs reported in production, added performance stats to our RT-testing framework (and discovered a couple bugs and fixed them as a result) and did some long-standing cleanup work in our codebase. September also saw the all-staff meeting at the WMF offices in San Francisco which gave us the opportunity to work in person and discuss some proposals. We planned out an implementation strategy for language variant support, and started researching and experimenting with HTML storage options which is required for a number of projects in our roadmap. Core Features *Notifications <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo_%28Notifications%29>* In September, we released Notifications on more Wikipedias<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/10/01/notifications-launch-on-more-wikipedi…>, such as the Dutch, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. Fabrice Florin and Keegan Peterzell managed community relations for these new releases, and are reaching out to more projects. Our next deployments will take place every other Tuesday<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo/Release_Plan_2013>. Developer Benny Situ was responsible for these deployments and fixed a number of bugs, with the help of Erik Benhardson and Matthias Mullie. Community response has been very positive so far, across languages and regions. For each release, we reached out to community members weeks in advance, inviting them to translate and discuss the tool with their peers. As a result, we have now formed productive relationships with volunteer groups in each project, and are very grateful for their generous support. To learn more, visit our project hub <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo>, read the help page <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Notifications> and join the discussion on the talk page<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Notifications> . *Flow <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow_Portal/Project_information>* This month, we continued back-end work on the Flow first release – integrating with the recent changes table (to ensure that users will be able to monitor Flow boards via the watchlist and Special:Recentchanges, in the same way they monitor wiki pages), mentions and notifications, and an early experiment with VisualEditor-enabled posting. We also kicked off a sprint to create a new visual design treatment<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow_Portal/Design#Visual_design_iterations>for the board and discussions that will work across desktop and mobile platforms. We are aiming to implement this design next month, in preparation for several rounds of new user and experienced user feedback before the first onwiki release. Growth *Growth <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth>* In September, the Growth <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth> team (formerly known as Editor Engagement Experiments, or E3), primarily worked on the onboarding new Wikipedians<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Onboarding_new_Wikipedians>project. In particular, this included the creation and deployment of two new guided tours <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Guided_tours> to teach any new user how to make their first edit, using wikitext<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikitext>or VisualEditor <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor>. The guided tours extension was also deployed to the following language editions of Wikipedia: Catalan, Hebrew, Hungarian, Malay, Spanish, Swedish, and Ukrainian. Along with the renaming, the team held its third Quarterly Review (minutes<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_r…>are available), published its 2013–2014 product goals<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/2013-14_Goals#Editor_E…>, and shared a new job opening<http://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=o8NJXfwl&c=qSa9VfwQ>for two additional software engineers. In accordance with our 2013-14 goals, the Growth team began research into modeling newcomer retention<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newcomer_survival_models>on Wikipedia, anonymous editor acquisition<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Anonymous_editor_acquisition>, and article creation improvement<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Article_creation> . Support *2013 Wikimedia fundraiser<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/2013_Wikimedia_fundraiser> * This month, the team mostly focused on preparing for the upcoming English fundraiser. Planning began for periodic tests throughout October, which will help determine the launch date and other aspects of our fundraising efforts in November and December. Mobile <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Mobile_engineering> *Wikipedia Zero <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero>* This month, the team released enhanced URL rewriting and debug flag-only Edge Side Includes (ESI) banner inclusion to production, supported the Ops implementation of dynamic MCC/MNC carrier tagging, identified web access log and user agent anomalies, further analyzed and recommended load balancer IP address-related changes in support of HTTPS requirements, and tested JavaScript-based Wikipedia Zero user interface enhancements. *Mobile web projects <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile_web_projects>* In September, we mostly focused on Tutorial A/B testing, Notifications overlay in Beta, and adding campaign tracking to MobileFrontend. Platform Engineering<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Platform_Engineering> MediaWiki Core *MediaWiki 1.22 <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.22/Roadmap>* In September, MediaWiki 1.22wmf16 through 1.22wmf19 were deployed to the production Wikimedia Foundation cluster. *Multimedia <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia>* In September, we continued to expand our multimedia team<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia>and updated our multimedia plan for the coming year<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/2013-14_Goals>(see slides <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:Multimedia_Project_Slides.pdf>). Mark Holmquist continued development on the Media Viewer<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer>to improve the image viewing experience, based on designs by May Tee-Galloway and Jared Zimmerman. We also made good progress on the Beta Features <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features> project, which will invite users to test, give feedback, and use a range of new features in real-world settings. We aim to have first beta versions of both products ready by the end of the October. New employee Bryan Davis started work on several multimedia platform bugs, and Summer contractor Jan Gerber completed his work on the TimedMediaHandler extension. To discuss these features and keep up with our work, we invite you to join the new multimedia mailing list <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/multimedia>. Last but not least, we are also recruiting for a senior software engineer<http://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=ouLnWfwi&c=qSa9VfwQ>position on our team. *Admin tools development<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Admin_tools_development> * Although this activity is still officially on hold, several bug fixes were committed this month by community members. The GSoC project to implement a simple Bayesian Filter extension<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Anubhav_iitr/Bayesan_spam_filter>was successfully completed. *Search <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Search>* In September, we expanded the new CirrusSearch back-end to a number of wikis. Italian Wiktionary, Catalan Wikipedia and English Wikisource are all running CirrusSearch now. Additionally, we deployed to all "closed" wikis. Further feature refinement and bugfixing are ongoing, with roughly 2 to 3 deployments a week. *Auth systems <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Auth_systems>* The team improved the user interface of OAuth and deployed these changes to mediawiki.org and test.wikipedia.org. We hope to test and refine the extension with third party developers, and subsequently deploy to all wikis. An initial review of Extension:OpenID<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:OpenID>was performed, and several issues were brought to the attention of the extension maintainer. Several bugs with CentralAuth/SUL were also fixed. *Security auditing and response<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Security_auditing_and_response> * The team responded to reported issues, and released MediaWiki 1.21.2, 1.20.7 and 1.19.8 security releases to fix several issues in core and extensions. Quality assurance *Quality Assurance <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Quality_Assurance>* This month, we wrapped up Rachel Thomas' Outreach Program for Women internship successfully. Rachel helped us extend our browser test coverage of VisualEditor. Besides our ongoing collaboration with Wikimedia Foundation development projects, we are also engaging the greater community on the QA mailing list <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/qa>, where we discuss both code contributions and general QA topics. *Browser testing<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Quality_Assurance/Browser_testing> * This month saw significant improvements to both coverage and speed in our tests for VisualEditor. We are collaborating with the Language team on browser tests for the UniversalLanguageSelector extension and Translatewiki.net. We created our first tests for the new Flow feature and are in the process of supporting Flow fully in a reference test environment. We presented yet another of our ongoing series of training sessions, this one live in San Francisco. Engineering community team *Bug management <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bug_management>* This month, beside our usual ongoing work and numerous small fixes<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?bug_id=37257,53500,53333,52943,5…>to Bugzilla's code and changes to taxonomy, Legoktm provided a patch to support Sourceforge URLs <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=54416> in Bugzilla's "See Also" field, as part of moving pywikipedia bug reports<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52692>from SourceForge to Bugzilla. Andre Klapper added an option <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47256#c11> to display metadata changes to a bug report (which are available via the "History" link in a Bugzilla ticket) inline, between the comments. It is now possible to distinguish the products 'MediaWiki' and 'MediaWiki extensions' <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40244> in Bugzilla's search results. Furthermore, work on creating a guided bug entry form <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36762> for newcomers continued. *Mentorship programs <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs>* 18 out of the 20 Google Summer of Code<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2013>projects have passed the program evaluation, as well as the one Outreach Program for Women<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Outreach_Program_for_Women/Round_6>project (read our announcement<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2013-September/072081.html>and blog post<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/09/30/foss-outreach-program-for-women-succes…>). These numbers are unprecedented and we have to ensure that they are not just occasional results but a trend. Wrap-up reports from the projects: - Browser test automation for Visual Editor<http://bleededge.blogspot.com/2013/09/wrap-up-of-my-outreach-program-for.ht…> - Internationalization and Right-To-Left Support in VisualEditor<http://moriel.smarterthanthat.com/tips/google-summer-of-code-2013-summary/> - Improve support for book structures<http://www.mollywhite.net/blog/?p=104> - Section handling in Semantic Forms<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2013-October/072133.html> - Prototyping inline comments <http://richajain-annotator.blogspot.in/> - jQuery.IME extensions for Firefox and Chrome<http://blog.praveensingh.in/articles/gsoc-wrap-up/> *Technical communications<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_communications> * Guillaume Paumier <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Guillom> wrapped up work on supporting the deployment of VisualEditor, and resumed regular activities like preparing the Tech newsletter<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News>and ongoing communications support for the engineering staff. *Volunteer coordination and outreach<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Volunteer_coordination_and_outreach> * Together with XWiki <http://www.xwiki.org/> and Tiki <https://tiki.org/>, we submitted a Wiki devroom<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Events/FOSDEM#Devroom_proposal>proposal for FOSDEM <http://fosdem.org>, the biggest open source source conference in Europe. We are also preparing a proposal for a stand, lead by volunteers at the nascent Wikimedia Belgium chapter. The overall goal is to achieve a good MediaWiki & Wikimedia tech gathering in Brussels next February. We are also supporting the organization of the MediaWiki Architecture Summit<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Architecture_guidelines/Meetings/Architectur…>in San Francisco on 23-24 January, 2014. Analytics <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Analytics> The team has been focused on smaller but more important work items this month, including enhancement to Wikimetrics, Grantmaking and Program Developments graphing infrastructure and fixing some long-standing Limn bugs. On the infrastructure side, our collaboration with Ops has the Kafka middleware project moving along nicely. The all-staff meeting and travel schedules definitely impacted our throughput this month.Two notable accomplishments should be called out: our Hadoop environment is now 100% free software, as we swapped out a proprietary JDK for OpenJDK 7. We also spent a lot of time on our engagement processes and planning for our first combined quarterly review in October, and made significant process on our hiring goals. *Research and data<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Analytics/Research_and_Data> * This month, Aaron Halfaker<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Halfak_%28WMF%29>joined the research team as a full-time employee. We started to reorganize the team structure and engagement model in coordination with the Analytics developers. We performed a survival analysis of new editors<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newcomer_survival_models>in preparation for new experiments led by the Growth <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Growth> team, and worked with the team to iron out the data collection and experimental design for the fortcoming iteration<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Onboarding_new_Wikipedians/OB6>of *GettingStarted*. We worked with product owners to determine the initial research strategy for features with key releases scheduled for the next two quarters (Mobile Web <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile_web/Team>, Beta Features<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features>, Multimedia <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia>, Flow<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow>, Universal Language Selector<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_Selector>, Content translation <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Content_translation>). We started a cohort analysis of conversion rates for mobile vs desktop account registrations; the results will be published<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/R:Mobile_editor_engagement>on Meta shortly. We drafted a proposal to host tabular datasets<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/DataNamespace>in a dedicated namespace and solicited feedback from interested parties (particularly the Wikidata community). We also started fleshing out the Labs 2 <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Labs2>proposal, an outreach program for academic researchers and community members, launched at Wikimania 2013 in Hong Kong. We co-hosted the second IRC research office hours and prepared for the first Wikimedia research hackathon<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Labs2/Hackathons/November_9th,_2013>, an offline/online event to be held in various locations worldwide on November 9, 2013. Last, we contributed to the September 2013 issue<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/2013/September>of the Wikimedia research newsletter. Kiwix <http://www.kiwix.org> *The Kiwix project is funded and executed by Wikimedia CH<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CH> .* Mediawiki offliner<http://sourceforge.net/p/kiwix/other/ci/master/tree/mwhtmldumper/>is now pretty stable, and its first release will happen in October. The ZIM incremental update GSoC project<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Kiran_mathew_1993/ZIM_incremental_updat…>was successfully completed; we still need to do a little bit work to finish the integration in the openZIM and Kiwix code bases. libzim, the openZIM reference implementation, has been packaged for Debian<http://packages.debian.org/sid/main/libzim-dev> . Wikidata <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata> *The Wikidata project is funded and executed by Wikimedia Deutschland<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Deutschland/en> .* In September, the Wikidata team mainly concentrated on the sister projects Wikimedia Commons and Wiktionary. For Wikimedia Commons, we added the ability to store interwiki links in one central location (Wikidata) together with the ones for Wikipedia and Wikivoyage. For Wiktionary, we published an analysis<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Comparison_of_Projects_and_Proposals…>of all existing proposals for the integration of Wikidata and Wiktionary. On Wikidata itself, we rolled out the URL datatype. This for example allows you to provide a URL as a source of a statement. Denny Vrandečić published 2 blog posts about the ideas behind Wikidata: "Wikidata Quality and Quantity<http://blog.wikimedia.de/2013/09/04/wikidata-quality-and-quantity/>" and "A categorical imperative?<http://blog.wikimedia.de/2013/09/12/a-categorical-imperative/>". In addition, he shared a few thoughts on the future of Wikidata<http://blog.wikimedia.de/2013/09/27/data-for-the-people/>before leaving the project at the end of the month. The development team is looking to hire another front-end developer<http://wikimedia.de/wiki/Software_Entwickler_%28w/m%29_mit_Schwerpunkt_Fron…>experienced in JavaScript. Future The engineering management team continues to update the *Deployments<https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments> * page weekly, providing up-to-date information on the upcoming deployments to Wikimedia sites, as well as the *engineering roadmap<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Roadmap> *, listing ongoing and future Wikimedia engineering efforts. -- Guillaume Paumier Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation https://donate.wikimedia.org

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The Signpost -- Volume 9, Issue 38 -- 25 September 2013
by Wikipedia Signpost 27 Sep '13

27 Sep '13

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Request for consultation about the Community logo
by Yana Welinder 24 Sep '13

24 Sep '13

Hi all, The WMF legal team has started a Request for Consultation on whether WMF should continue with the registration of the Community logo as a collective membership mark: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Logo/Request_for_consultation. We would like to invite you to voice your opinion on this question. Many thanks for your input on this! Thanks, Geoff & Yana

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Wikidag 2013
by Ole Palnatoke Andersen 22 Sep '13

22 Sep '13

Hi! We have just concluded "Wikidag 2013" in Denmark, a conference day ending with the general assembly of Wikimedia Danmark. We had six external speakers - three from various organisations, one from OpenStreetMap, and two of my personal favourite women-on-the-net-with-an-agenda. The crowd was kinda small, but the discussions were great. The general assembly criticised the board soundly, yet ended up reelecting everybody except the alternate auditor. Links: Call + programme: https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikidag_2013 Storify thingie: http://storify.com/kim_bach/wikidag2013 Hashtags: #wikidag and #wikidag2013 Recap (in progress): http://dk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidag_2013 Everything is in Danish, and if your favourite translation service won't help, just ask :-) regards, Ole, Wikimedia Danmark -- http://palnatoke.org * @palnatoke * +4522934588

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It's time to reclaim the community logo
by Tomasz W. Kozlowski 21 Sep '13

21 Sep '13

Hello community, this is to inform you that in response to the trademarking of the Wikimedia community logo[1], created in 2006 by Artur “WarX” Fijałkowski, which was discussed on this mailing list[2] as well as on Meta[3] back in March, a small group of community members—Artur, myself, Federico Leva (Nemo) and John Vandenberg—have initiated a formal process of opposition against the registration of the trademark by the Foundation in order to *reclaim the logo* for unrestricted use by the community. We appreciate the Foundation’s protection of the other trademarks they have registered so far, including the logos of Wikipedia, Wikisource and some other sister projects. In the case of the community logo, however, it is our belief that the Foundation’s actions are exactly opposite to what the community logo stands for and contradict the purpose behind its very existence. We would like to make it clear that it is not our intention to damage anyone; our actions are a challenge against what we perceive as unilateral declaration of ownership of an asset that has always belonged to the wider community, and not to one or another organisation that is part of the movement. By formally opposing the registration of the trademark we hope to ensure the history of this logo is not disregarded, and we wish to protect the community against unnecessary bureaucracy and, to use another quote, let “groups who do not purport to represent the WMF”[4] to continue to be able to freely associate with a logo that has been part of their identity for so long. We also want to note that this is in no way a legal action against the Foundation, but a simple notice of opposition against the registration of the logo in the European Union. If we assume good faith, we can only be confident that the WMF, having now a formal occasion, will withdraw its registration of the logo rather than continue using movement resources to force the community into lengthy, expensive proceedings. We invite all community members interested in this issue to express their opinions at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Logo/Reclaim_the_Logo If any of you would like to help us in any way (covering the costs of the opposition, promoting the discussion, etc.), please feel free to contact us off–list. Artur Fijalkowski (WarX) Tomasz Kozlowski (odder) Federico Leva (Nemo) John Vandenberg (jayvdb) == References == * [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Community_Logo.svg * [2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March/124715.html * [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Logo * [4] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March/124730.html

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The Signpost -- Volume 9, Issue 37 -- 18 September 2013
by Wikipedia Signpost 20 Sep '13

20 Sep '13

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Monthly Reports July and August 2013 Wikimedia Deutschland
by Katja Ullrich 18 Sep '13

18 Sep '13

Hi there, please find the English translations for Wikimedia Deutschland's monthly reports of July and August 2013 on Meta. They contain much information on the preparation of Wikimania in Hong Kong and WMDE's first conference on Open Educational Resources. Also, elections are coming up in Germany and we sent out the infamous election questionnaire again. More here https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Deutsc… and here https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Deutsc… Best wishes and have fun reading the reports, Katja -- Öffentlichkeitsarbeit ------------------------------------- Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstraße 72 | 10963 Berlin Telefon 030 - 219 158 26-0 www.wikimedia.de Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der jeder Mensch an der Menge allen Wissens frei teilhaben kann. Helfen Sie uns dabei! http://spenden.wikimedia.de/ Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.

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WMF Board of Trustees: minutes of Hong Kong meeting
by Geoff Brigham 15 Sep '13

15 Sep '13

At the request of the Chair of the WMF Board of Trustees, I am posting the minutes of the Hong Kong Board meeting, which you may find here: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2013-08-07 Cheers, Geoff Brigham General Counsel & Secretary of the Board Wikimedia Foundation

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The Signpost -- Volume 9, Issue 36 -- 11 September 2013
by Wikipedia Signpost 13 Sep '13

13 Sep '13

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