Wikitech-ambassadors July 2013

wikitech-ambassadors@lists.wikimedia.org

13 participants
19 discussions

Pywikipediabot is migrating to git
by Amir Ladsgroup 14 Aug '13

14 Aug '13

Hi folks, As you probably know pywikipedia is migrating to git and after 26 July SVN checkouts can't be updated so if bot operators don't switch to git, their bots might not work properly. I already sent global message for all targets but It's good to inform local bot operators and put a message in bots' noticeboards There is a blog post: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/23/pywikipediabot-moving-to-git-on-july-2… A technical manual for bot operators: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Pywikipediabot/Gerrit If people have question, they can ask in mailing list or IRC channel of pywikipedia Best -- Amir

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Ready for early translation: Tech News summary #31
by Tomasz W. Kozlowski 27 Jul '13

27 Jul '13

Hello, the latest issue of your favourite tech newsletter is ready for early translation at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2013/31 We're planning to send it on Sunday (in 2 days), but since there is already some stable content, we thought it would help translators if the page was set up for translation early. The content will be frozen on Saturday evening (tomorrow), and it will be possible to continue or edit translations until Sunday evening. Following your feedback, just like this past week, we will be sending out /all/ language versions that have been at least partially translated. Note: These two templates appear on the page and need to be translated separately (if translations aren't already done): * https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Tech_header * https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Tech_news_nav Please also note that this week's issue will not be divided into the usual "recent software changes" and "future software changes" parts; we've been having trouble with this division for some time and decided to experiment with a single bulleted list this time. Therefore please take special care when translating https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translations:Tech/News/2013/31/2/en as the translation memory will suggest you an outdated translation. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments or concerns. I appreciate your help, feedback and involvement. Tomasz

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Re: [Wikitech-ambassadors] [Translators-l] Ready for early translation: Tech News summary #31
by Tomasz W. Kozlowski 26 Jul '13

26 Jul '13

Philippe Verdy wrote: > Please fix missing translation by validating the added tag in the source This was intentional; Brian (Wolff) suggested this addition to me after I sent this request to you, and I was not sure if this is relevant enough as to be included in this week's issue. I decided not to add it for translation yet and to wait for Guillaume's opinion on the subject. We /might/ still be adding new items to the newsletter tomorrow, and I will inform you all about new messages that need to be translated should such situation occur. Tomasz

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Fwd: WMF deployment highlights - week of July 29th, 2013
by Greg Grossmeier 26 Jul '13

26 Jul '13

FYI, the major thing next week being VisualEditor enabled for anonymous users on 7 more Wikipedias (list below). (I just realized I forgot Russian on the below list!) ----- Forwarded message from Greg Grossmeier <greg(a)wikimedia.org> ----- > Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2013 11:59:19 -0700 > From: Greg Grossmeier <greg(a)wikimedia.org> > To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> > Subject: WMF deployment highlights - week of July 29th, 2013 > > Hello and welcome to the latest installment of the WMF Deployment > Highlights for the week of July 29th, 2013. > > As always, the full schedule with more details can be found here: > https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments > > == Monday == > * VisualEditor will be enabled for non-logged in (anonymous) users on > the following Wikipedias: > ** German, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, and Swedish > > * All non-Wikipedia sites will be upgraded to MediaWiki 1.22wmf12. This > includes Commons, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikibooks, etc. > > == Thursday == > > * All Wikipedias will be upgraded to MediaWiki 1.22wmf12 > * All test wikis and mediawiki.org will be upgraded to MW 1.22wmf13 > > > The bulk of the week is the normal schedule of feature team deploy > windows with nothing extraordinary scheduled other than continuing bug > fixes in eg Echo/ULS/MobileFrontend. > > If you have any questions, please do let me know. > > Best, > > 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 |

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resizing big images will get faster next week
by Sumana Harihareswara 25 Jul '13

25 Jul '13

Thursday July 18th, we're going to deploy something new on the sites: VipsScaler - https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VipsScaler . Upside: Resizing big images will be faster and more reliable, leading to fewer errors -- no matter whether you get a different size by clicking on a link like "Other resolutions: 320 × 239 pixels" or hand-editing the filename to https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/Thompson-Pond-200… . Also, right now, there is an "area limit"- we don't let anyone upload a PNG to our site that's more than 50 megapixels. The area limit will go away; that should be nice for Wiki Loves Monuments! (There will still be a filesize limit, of bytes). Downside: We'll see slight changes in visual quality, and a few images might break. We've already tested this ourselves, but we'd love more testing ahead of time to check for bugs so we can fix them early next week. There's a test page at https://test2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:VipsTest that you can use to test this and find bugs before we roll this out on Thursday the 18th. I'm about to notify Commons on-wiki, but I'd especially welcome more help liaising with Commons on this. Thanks to volunteer Bryan Tong Minh <bryan.tongminh(a)gmail.com> who wrote most of the code, and to WMF's Greg Grossmeier, Jan Gerber, and Tim Starling for working on this! -- Sumana Harihareswara Engineering Community Manager Wikimedia Foundation

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Fwd: Wikivoyage will get phase 1 soon
by Lydia Pintscher 23 Jul '13

23 Jul '13

Hey :) Wikivoyage is scheduled to get language links via Wikidata on 22nd. More details are in my email below. Please do let me know if you have any questions. Cheers Lydia ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Lydia Pintscher <lydia.pintscher(a)wikimedia.de> Date: Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 4:52 PM Subject: Wikivoyage will get phase 1 soon To: "Discussion list for the Wikidata project." <wikidata-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Wikidata technical discussion <wikidata-tech(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Heya folks :) So we're finally starting to get real with this sister projects thing. We'll be starting with Wikivoyage since this is comparatively similar to Wikipedia. We'll take it easy at the beginning and just go for the language links between the different language editions of Wikivoyage. On July 18th we will change test.wikidata.org to be able to store links to Wikivoyage in addition to Wikipedia. You can test it there then and make sure there are no huge issues we have not noticed yet. On July 22 we will enable this on wikidata.org and the Wikivoyages. Some things to keep in mind: * This is only for links between Wikivoyages for now. More will follow later. * Access to the other data like timezones, airport codes and so on will not be enabled yet. That will follow later as well. * There will be no automatic links to/from Wikipedia for now. Some specific things about the language links: * It'll no longer be needed to keep them in the wikitext like it is currently. * It'll still be possible to do so however but this will overwrite the links coming from Wikidata. * With the magicword noexternallanglinks links from Wikidata can be turned off on an article either for all languages or only specific ones. A page on Wikidata has been created where you can find someone to help you in case of issues (http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Wikivoyage_migration) and as usual I am available to answer any questions you might have. Cheers Lydia -- Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher Community Communications for Technical Projects Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. Obentrautstr. 72 10963 Berlin www.wikimedia.de Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 Nz. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.

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Feedback for the Wikimedia Foundation
by Romaine Wiki 22 Jul '13

22 Jul '13

A few weeks ago a car salesman came to us and said: 'You will get a new car.' We were able to do some test drives with it before it got delivered and noticed that the car still needed doors and a steering wheel, but the idea was great! We reported to the manufacturers that some essential things weren't ready, like the doors, safety bumbers and steering wheel and the manufacturers said that they will make sure that that will be ready when the car is delivered. They also said that in a month time the car will be delivered, and we said - seeing the car - that the timeline is too short in regards with the things that needed repair. In the past week we got the notice that the car will be delivered this week. Again we did a full check, and while a lot of things were changed, still our reported essential things weren't ready. When we asked about this, we got a car salesman who tried to sell the car even harder and pushed as much as he could to sell the car. We all together discussed the situation and came to the conclusion that the car would damage the people and damage the road, and that local people afterwards can solve the problems what the car causes. The onliest thing we good do, for the sake of the people and the roads, is to refuse to receive the car. When that came clear to car manufacturer, they started to threaten us, that we must use it, no matter if it caused many damage or not. The car salesman told us in the mean while that the delivery is delayed for two days and that the car for 5 days only should be used by adult users and later children may also use it. He also told us that the main reason to deliver the car too early was because of that the manufacturer made for himself a too short time schedule to get it finished, it hired its personnel for a too short time and that it shortly after would go produce something else, instead of delivering a fully functional car. When other people heard about the this story and the worse policies of the manufacturer, they got angry as they think that the safety and health of the local people and environment are more important than the goal of the manufacturer, while the manufacturer does not respect that. --------------------------------- This story is in fact the story what happened on the Dutch Wikipedia in the past weeks, the car is the visual editor, the manufacturer is WMF, the salesman is the liaisons hired by WMF. In the past days the Dutch community held a voting that very clear explained what the situation is, what the problems are and asked the community if they considered the issues of the visual editor as a problem that needs to be fixed first or that the visual editor should be launched already. About 80% of the users is for delaying the visual editor as this software is **not** ready and causes too many problems in articles. Among the 20% of users were also users who dislike the visual editor completely and do not like it to be deployed at all. In general the Dutch community likes the idea of getting an visual editor as they like the idea that (new) inexperienced users will be able to edit the articles, but at the moment it is too soon as the software is not ready. Some reactions I have seen (roughly translated): * Seems to buggy. The WMF has product managers... If managers can be paid, why not pay programmers to do their work properly? * A worse product from the developers. If they do something, they must do that in a good way. * Not yet stable. * Multiple times crashed with the visual editor. * Switch off until all problems have been solved. Wikipedia has no need for its own OV-chipkaart (Dutch card to travel with public transport with so many bugs with the launch): something that is finished half, not been tested sufficiently and still pushed through your throat. Njet ! * First the teething troubles out * It's a very good alpha, but it should never have been launched outside of a test deployment. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Alpha ) Conclusion: if software is launched for everyone, communities want a finished product. If not it is respect-less for local communities who daily do the actual work: writing, updating and improving articles. Communities want respect and taken serious. The current communication wasn't that, it was mainly one way communication as WMF doesn't listed to our concerns. At least since 2007 there are complaints about the communication of WMF, sure you are trying to improve, but hiring liaisons but not listing yourselves to what communities have to say is still a problem. This is not about small things, it is about damaging articles due software that doesn't understand all wikisyntax. We have these problems black on white but we are ignored. We care very much for the articles in Wikipedia, we explained again our problems today to WMF, and instead of being listened to us we got threatened. Is that the way how the Wikimedia Foundation works? Forcing things whatever it takes? Romaine

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Ready for translation: Tech News summary #30, distributed tomorrow
by Tomasz W. Kozlowski 21 Jul '13

21 Jul '13

Hello, the latest issue of your favourite tech newsletter is ready for translation at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2013/30 We will send it tomorrow evening, in order to give a little time for translation while still providing users with information that isn't outdated. Following your feedback, this time /all/ language versions of the newsletter that have been at least partially translated will be posted on wikis in those languages. Note: These two templates appear on the page and need to be translated separately (if translations aren't already done): * https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Tech_header * https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Tech_news_nav Please let me know if you have any questions, comments or concerns. I appreciate your help, feedback and involvement. Tomasz

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Amended schedule for VisualEditor deployment
by Guillaume Paumier 20 Jul '13

20 Jul '13

Greetings, I wanted to let you know that the schedule for the deployment of VisualEditor has been changed, to give communities more time to prepare and adapt to this alternative editing interface. Here is the new schedule: * Wednesday July 24: VisualEditor will be available for all logged-in users on de, es, fr, he, it, nl, pl, ru, and sv.wikipedia * Monday, July 29: VisualEditor will be available for all users (logged-in and unregistered) on those wikis. * Development and bug fixing will slow down around Wikimania (first half of August), because many engineers and technical employees will be traveling and attending the conference. * VisualEditor will be made available on the other Wikipedia wikis (except those in languages that the software doesn't support yet, like Chinese) after Wikimania. By decoupling the deployment for logged-in and unregistered users, we hope to give communities more time to adapt, update documentation, add TemplateData, and report issues. Please spread the news to your home wikis :) -- Guillaume Paumier Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation https://donate.wikimedia.org

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Wikidata search plugin
by Jacobo Nájera 15 Jul '13

15 Jul '13

Maybe someone is interested in: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/wikidata-search/ -Jacobo

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Wikitech-ambassadors July 2013