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.
Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the deployment highlights
email.
You can always check the Deployment calendar [0] for the canonical
reference of deployments planned during a given week.
For next week:
https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments#Week_of_December_16
!!!Special Holiday Note!!!
This next week is the last week of planned (non-emergency) deployments
before we take a week off for the holidays.
== Monday ==
* The new search backend (CirrusSearch[1]) will be enabled on all
wikisources and commons as a secondary search option that is
accessible via the appending "&srbackend=CirrusSearch" to a search
url.
* CirrusSearch will be added to the list of "Beta Features" that users
can opt-in to on all wikimedias, wikimanias, and wiktionaries.
* There will be a new version of PHP deployed to the Wikimedia servers
on Monday as well. This should not change any user-facing actions
(this update will help deal with a server problem where temporary
files are not deleted when appropriate).
== Tuesday ==
* All non-Wikipedia sites will be switched to MediaWiki 1.23wmf7 [2].
* The GLAM Wiki Toolset[3] will be enabled on Commons, allowing for GLAM
institutions (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) to more
easily upload bulk collections of images with associated metadata.
== Wednesday ==
* The new search backend (CirrusSearch) will be enabled on:
** all wikinewsies set as secondary search;
** itwiktionary, disabled wikis, cawiki, and enwikisource set as primary
search;
** all users on all wikisources will have the option of enabling it as
their own personal primary search via BetaFeatures[4].
* The new and improved Wikimania Scholarships application[5] will be
deployed to production. NOTE: this doesn't mean you need to start
applying for scholarships, this is simply the deployment of the code
for the new scholarship application management tool. See your friendly
Wikimania planners for more information about scholarships.
== Thursday ==
* All Wikipedias will be switched to MediaWiki 1.23wmf7 [2].
* All test wikis (test.wikipedia.org, test2, mediawiki.org, and
test.wikidata.or) will be switched to MediaWiki 1.23wmf8 [6].
Thanks, and as always, feel free to reply with any questions,
Greg
[0] https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments#Near_Term
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Search
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.23/wmf7
[3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GWToolset
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features
[5] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimania_Scholarship_app
[6] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.23/wmf8
--
| Greg Grossmeier GPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E |
| identi.ca: @greg A18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D |
Hello,
This is a reminder that the Wikimedia Language Engineering team will be
hosting an IRC office hour from 1700 to 1800UTC later today on
#wikimedia-office (FreeNode). Please see below for the event details.
Thanks
Runa
=== Event Details ===
What: WMF Language Engineering Office hour
When: December 11, 2013 (Wednesday). 1700-1800 UTC
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20131211T1700
Where: IRC Channel #wikimedia-office on FreeNode
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Runa Bhattacharjee <rbhattacharjee(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 3:19 PM
Subject: Language Engineering IRC Office Hour on December 11, 2013
(Wednesday) at 1700 UTC
To: MediaWiki internationalisation
<mediawiki-i18n(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Wikimedia Mailing List
<wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Wikimedia developers
<wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>,
wikitech-ambassadors(a)lists.wikimedia.org
[x-posted]
Hello,
The Wikimedia Language Engineering team will be hosting an IRC office
hour on Wednesday, December 11, 2013 between 17:00 - 18:00 UTC on
#wikimedia-office. (See below for timezone conversion and other
details.) We will be talking about some of our recent and upcoming
projects and then taking questions for the remaining time.
Questions and any other concerns can also be sent to me directly
before the event. See you there!
Thanks
Runa
=== Event Details ===
What: WMF Language Engineering Office hour
When: December 11, 2013 (Wednesday). 1700-1800 UTC
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20131211T1700
Where: IRC Channel #wikimedia-office on FreeNode
--
Language Engineering - Outreach and QA Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation
--
Language Engineering - Outreach and QA Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation
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
