Dear Ambassadors,
I'm looking for volunteer wikis to try out the new search that Chad and
I've been working on called CirrusSearch.
<sales pitch>Be a part of the second wave of wikis and influence new search
features!</sales pitch>
Reality:
* We're reasonably sure CirrusSearch's language support is better than the
current search. [1]
* CirrusSearch indexes expanded templates.
* CirrusSearch indexes articles within a few seconds of when they are
changed. Articles that contain a changed template take longer but they are
also updated.
* Most of the special search syntax is the same. You can read the syntax
here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Search/CirrusSearchFeatures
What it means to volunteer:
If you volunteer your wiki we'll turn CirrusSearch on in "secondary" mode
where it'll keep itself up to date but all queries will still go through
the old search. You'll be able to get search results from the new search
engine for comparison by adding a url parameter to the search results
page. If you and the community that you represent aren't immediately blown
away by how much better it works we'll work with you to make it awesome.
At some point, shortly after the new search has been deemed awesome, we'll
switch CirrusSearch to "primary" mode and all queries will go through it.
You'll be able to get at the old search results with a url parameter
similar to the one that you used to test CirrusSearch. If anything goes
wrong we'll switch you back to the old search. We'll keep that option open
for a few months.
So who is ready to help make search better?
Nik Everett
[1]: Some languages (20ish) will see a huge improvement because
CirrusSearch understands their grammar and old search doesn't. Many other
languages will see an improvement because CirrusSearch is happy to search
all kinds of character sets while the current search isn't. Esperanto is
very well supported by the old search so would get worse. eo wikis should
probably wait until we've improved support.
Ambassadors,
I have three CirrusSearch updates:
1. nl.wikipedia.org is now live as a secondary. You can test it by adding
&srbackend=CirrusSearch to the url of the search results page. If you have
any trouble you can send email directly to me or file a bug at
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=MediaWiki%20extensions…
2. I've scheduled more deployments:
itwiki November 14
plwiktionary November 14
wikimedias November 19
wikimanias November 19
wikisources November 19
wiktionaries November 21
The schedule is here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Search#Wikis
3. Since I haven't heard of any search problems I think it is time to
switch the wikis running CirrusSearch as a secondary to primary. I
certainly don't want to break anything but so far it looks like everything
is working very well. So each wiki that has CirrusSearch as a secondary
will have a date scheduled to switch it to primary. If we/you/the
community that you represent discover a bug that makes CirrusSearch worse
than the current search we'll make sure to deploy the fix plenty of time
before the date or we'll push the date back.
I think each wiki deserves two weeks to test Cirrus so I'll schedule the
date accordingly. For nlwiki it'd be 2013/11/28. For itwiki and
plwiktionary it'll be 2013/12/3.
I'd like to switch the wikis that have CirrusSearch as a secondary now to
primary on 2013/11/21. All of them will have had two weeks to try it out
by then.
Again, we'll push the dates if we think we'll make the experience worse.
Thanks,
Nik Everett
See https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/11/22/oauth-on-wikimedia-wikis/
for details. If you're a tool builder or talk to tool builders
regularly, now's a good time to take a look :-)
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Hi folks,
as of yesterday, the CommonsMetadata extension is active on all wikis.
As the name suggests, it's optimized for providing API access to
metadata for files on Commons, but it will also work for project-local
uploads (e.g. fair use metadata on en.wp) -- provided that the
templates used for describing metadata emit the same machine-readable
information.
The format for emitting such machine-readable metadata is documented here:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Machine-readable_data
The documentation page for the extension (which could use some cleanup
& examples BTW) is at:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CommonsMetadata
Help modifying local templates accordingly is appreciated.
All best,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
FYI: no deploys next week.
----- Forwarded message from Greg Grossmeier <greg(a)wikimedia.org> -----
> Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 14:07:48 -0800
> From: Greg Grossmeier <greg(a)wikimedia.org>
> To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Development and Operations engineers <engineering(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Deployment highlights - week of November 25th
>
> Hello and welcome to the shortest deployment highlights email.
>
> Next week there will be no planned deployments as it is Thanksgiving in
> the US.
>
> See:
> https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments#Week_of_November_25
>
> For the following week (week of Dec 2nd), there are things planned, and
> those can be found at:
> https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments#Week_of_December_2
>
>
> Thanks!
>
> Greg
>
> --
> | Greg Grossmeier GPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E |
> | identi.ca: @greg A18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D |
----- End forwarded message -----
--
| Greg Grossmeier GPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E |
| identi.ca: @greg A18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D |
This should probably be sent to this list as well. I'll also include
it in the next tech newsletter unless someone beats me to it :)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Fabrice Florin <fflorin(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 12:32 AM
Subject: [Commons-l] Beta Features and Media Viewer Launch Worldwide
To: Wikimedia Foundation Multimedia Team
<multimedia(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Wikimedia Commons Discussion List
<commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hi folks,
We're happy to let you know that the first version of Beta Features
(1) has now been deployed worldwide on all wikis.
Beta Features is a new program that lets you test new features on
Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released widely.
Think of it as a digital laboratory where community members can
preview upcoming changes and help designers and engineers make
improvements based on their feedback.
This first worldwide release includes these features:
* Media Viewer — view images in large size (2) (7)
* Typography Refresh — make text more readable (3)
* Near this page — see what other pages are nearby (4)
* VisualEditor Opt-in — edit pages without having to learn wiki code
(5 - see below)
* VisualEditor Formulæ — edit algebra or equations on your pages (6 -
see below)
(Note that Visual Editor Opt-in is only on a couple hundred sites
where it was already available, but not enabled by default.)
We invite you to test these new features on your sites and let us know
what you think. You can share your feedback about this Beta Features
program on its discussion page (8) -- or about individual features on
their respective discussion pages (see links 2-6 below). And if you
find any technical bugs, please report them on Bugzilla (9).
We also invite you to join tomorrow's office hours IRC chat, this
Friday, 22 November, 2013 at 18:00 UTC. (10)
Many thanks to all the community and team members who made this
program possible! We hope it can help us improve Wikipedia together
and provide a better experience for all our users around the world.
Enjoy,
Fabrice -- on behalf of the Multimedia, Visual Editor and Design teams
(1) About Beta Features:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer
(2) About Media Viewer v0.1:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer
(3) About Typography Refresh:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_Update
(4) About Nearby Pages:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features/Nearby_Pages
(5) About Visual Editor Opt-in:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Beta_Features/General
(6) About VisualEditor Formulæ:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Beta_Features/Formulae
(7) Media Viewer - New Version 0.2:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Lightbox_demo
(This new version displays larger images, for a more immersive
experience. It is now on MediaWiki.org only and will be released to
all wikis in early December.)
(8) Discuss Beta Features:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:About_Beta_Features
(9) Report a Bug:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=MediaWiki%20extensions…
(10) Office hours IRC chat - Friday, 22 November at 18:00 UTC:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours#Upcoming_office_hours
P.S.: If any community member would like to hide the 'Beta' link in
their personal menu, they can easily remove it by going to their
personal style page [[Special:MyPage/common.css]] and pasting in this
CSS rule on a line by itself: "#pt-betafeatures { display: none; }"
(do not include the quotes).
We have merged a couple changes so that jQuery UI is not loaded by code
that doesn't need it. See
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55550 for details.
That means gadgets and user scripts that use jQuery UI should explicitly
load the appropriate module.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Gadgets has info on adding
gadget dependencies.
User scripts can use mw.loader.using
(https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/RL/DM#mw.loader.using).
A list of jquery.ui modules is at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/RL/DM#jQuery_UI .
There is one remaining issue that may affect a few wikis. If your wiki
uses jquery.ui buttons in wikitext, the styles will not be loaded unless
something explicitly loads or depends on jquery.ui.
If you notice styles missing from your wiki, you can add:
// Load jquery.ui.button so button styles work in wikitext
mw.loader.using( 'jquery.ui.button' );
to the site Common.js
Don't do this unless it's actually needed, since this does have a
performance impact (although it is not loading all of jquery.ui). If
you do add it, please include the comment so people know why it's being
loaded.
This will roll out to the test wikis, plus MW.org, 2013-10-31, the
remaining non-Wikipedia wikis the 4th, and the Wikipedias, the 7th.
Matt Flaschen