Wikitech-ambassadors December 2013

wikitech-ambassadors@lists.wikimedia.org

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Wikimedia engineering report, November 2013

by Guillaume Paumier

Hi, The report covering Wikimedia engineering activities in November 2013 is now available. Wiki version: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2013/November Blog version: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/09/engineering-report-november-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/November/s… Below is the HTML text of the report's summary. As always, feedback is appreciated on the usefulness of the report and its summary, and on how to improve them. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Major news in November include: - Beta Features<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/11/07/introducing-beta-features/>, a new way for users to try out new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone; - The launch of our search for a VP of Engineering<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/11/20/wikimedia-foundation-is-looking-for-a…>; - A retrospective by the Mobile engineering team on best practices for collaboration<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/11/22/developing-distributedly-part-2/>while working distributedly; - The activation of OAuth on Wikimedia wikis<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/11/22/oauth-on-wikimedia-wikis/>, which allows users to authorize third-party applications to take actions on their behalf without sharing their password; - A presentation of the "Wikidata concept cloud<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/11/25/wikidata-concept-cloud/>"; - A retrospective on the ability to add musical scores<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/11/27/adding-musical-scores-to-wikimedia/>to pages on Wikimedia sites. VisualEditor<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/VisualEditor/Portal> In November, the VisualEditor team continued to improve the stability and performance of this new editing interface, and add new features. The code was updated three times. Most of the team's focus was on fixing bugs, and on some major infrastructure changes, splitting out reusable code from VisualEditor to make it available to other teams. Much of the team travelled to the Open Source Language Summit<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Language_portal/Pune_LanguageSummit_November…>in Pune, India to learn more about how to improve VisualEditor for a variety of languages, scripts, users and systems. Thanks to two new members of the QA team<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Quality_Assurance/Browser_testing>, the automated browser tests have expanded in breadth and depth of coverage. Work continued on major new features like full rich copy-and-paste from external sources, a dialog for quickly adding citation templated references, and a tool to insert characters not available on users' keyboards. The editor was made available by default on just over 100 additional Wikipedias as part of the continuing roll-out. VisualEditor was also enabled for opt-in testing on Swedish Wiktionary and Wikimedia Sweden's wiki, the first time it has been available on a non-Wikipedia production wiki. Work also continued on Parsoid <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid>, the parsing program that converts wikitext to annotated HTML to make VisualEditor work. Major changes were made to the specification and representation of elements. Due to bugs in external code used by the team, tests were added to catch similar issue automatically in the future. Editing support for categories was improved and several wikitext corruption issues were fixed. Work continued to test the performance of a system to store HTML and related information to improve performance of Parsoid. Editor engagement <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/New_editor_engagement> In November, the Notifications<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo_%28Notifications%29>feature was added to the German and Italian Wikipedias, completing the worldwide release of this tool. Community response to Notifications has been generally favorable on all wikis. While feature development has now ended for this project, we expect new notifications and features to be developed by other teams in coming months. The Flow <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow_Portal> team finished the basic features of this new wiki discussion system. We made Flow work with the watchlist and added history view for boards, topics and posts. We asked for community feedback and testing, and prepared for release to production wikis in December by working on Operations and Security needs. The Growth <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth> team primarily worked on reorganizing the GuidedTour<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GuidedTour>and GettingStarted <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GettingStarted>extensions, including development of an computer program interface<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Application_programming_interface>(API) that will be used to show editing tasks to users across a variety of devices. The team also worked on the anonymous editor acquisition<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Anonymous_editor_acquisition>and Wikipedia article creation <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_article_creation>projects, by taking part in a community discussion about a possible Draft namespace <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Draft_namespace> for articles, identifying user needs and preparing the code changes. A few members of the Growth team attended the Wikimedia Diversity Conference<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Diversity_Conference>and presented on how diversity related to their work. Mobile <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Mobile_engineering> During the last month, the Wikipedia Zero<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero>team monitored the launch of Wikipedia Zero via text (USSD/SMS) in partnership with Airtel Kenya and Praekelt for the first pilot of the program. The team also continued to improve and simplify the process and files to configure Zero partners, enhanced performance and added safeguards to avoid previous issues. The A/B test done by the Mobile web projects<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile_web_projects>team resulted in an Edit Guider, now available on the mobile site. Other features like an interface overhaul and better user profiles are currently being tested in beta. -- Guillaume Paumier Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation https://donate.wikimedia.org

10 years, 4 months

Tech newsletter (2013, week 49)

by Guillaume Paumier

Hi, The latest tech newsletter is now available at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2013/49 . Below is the English version. You can help write the next newsletter: whenever you see information about Wikimedia technology that you think should be distributed more broadly, you can add it to the next newsletter at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/Next . More information on how to contribute is available at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News#contribute . You can also contact me directly. The newsletter is now being delivered across wikis using the new MassMessage system, which should be faster than the previous bot-powered system. I've done several tests, but since it's the first time we're using MassMessage for Tech news, please let me know if you notice any issues. As always, feedback (on- or off-list) is appreciated and encouraged. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Latest *tech news <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News>* from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2013/49>are available. This newsletter is now posted using MediaWiki message delivery<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/User:MediaWiki_message_d…> . *New features* - The CommonsMetadata<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CommonsMetadata>feature was added to all wikis. It creates metadata information about multimedia files (like their license) that can be read automatically by computer programs. It not only works for Commons, but for all wikis, and you can use it for files on your wiki by editing templates<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/commons:Special:MyLanguage/Commons:Machine-…>used to describe metadata. [1]<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2013-November/000…> - JavaScript <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/w:en:JavaScript> code used on Wikimedia sites is now saved locally<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/w:en:Web_storage>on your computer to load faster. [2]<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2013-December/073330.html> *VisualEditor <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/VisualEditor/Portal>* - You can now paste formatted content copied from external sources (not just as plain text) into VisualEditor; this includes copy/pasting from other VisualEditor windows. [3]<https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?oldid=836802#2013-12-05_.28MW_1.23wmf…> - You can now open VisualEditor by adding ?veaction=edit to the page URL, regardless of your user preferences. [4]<https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?oldid=836802#2013-12-05_.28MW_1.23wmf…> - Many bugs have been fixed, and VisualEditor should also look faster, for example when you save a page. [5]<https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?oldid=836802#2013-12-05_.28MW_1.23wmf…> *Problems* - Due to issues, the new search tool ("CirrusSearch<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Search>") was recently removed from wikis where it was enabled, then added again. [6]<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2013-December/000…> *Future* - MediaWiki 1.23wmf6 <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.23/wmf6>was added to test wikis on December 5. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on December 10 and all Wikipedia wikis on December 12 (calendar<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.23/Roadmap> ). - The old Etherpad tool (replaced by a new version<http://etherpad.wikimedia.org>) will be removed on December 30, 2013. You can still save old pads before that date using the old address: https://etherpad-old.wikimedia.org. [7]<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2013-November/073249.html> *Tech news <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News> prepared by tech ambassadors <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/Ambassadors> and posted by MediaWiki message delivery <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/User:MediaWiki_message_d…> • Contribute <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News#contribute> • Translate <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2013/49> • Get help <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech> • Give feedback <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tech/News> • Subscribe or unsubscribe <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_message_delivery/Targets/Tech_ambass…>.* -- Guillaume Paumier Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation

10 years, 4 months

Language Engineering IRC Office Hour on December 11, 2013 (Wednesday) at 1700 UTC

by Runa Bhattacharjee

[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

10 years, 4 months

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Wikitech-ambassadors December 2013