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.
Hi all,
This is just an advance notice that we're getting much closer to being able
to launch GettingStarted,[1] a tool for suggesting tasks to new editors
after they sign up,[2] on non-English Wikipedias.
In the next 24 hours or so, most of our major user-facing changes will be
merged and ready to localize. About 10-15 languages are 80% or better on
translatewiki already, so many are close. The more the better!
Our current plan is to launch initially on all Wikipedias where
localization is complete (or close to it, 90% or better is ideal). That
will likely happen soon after our current iteration of work ends on
February 5th, though I will keep people posted.
Please let me know if you have any questions,
1. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GettingStarted
2. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Onboarding_new_Wikipedians
--
Steven Walling,
Product Manager
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Hi all,
This is just a notice that we are making a small series of updates to the
button styles in MediaWiki core. These buttons appear on login, account
creation, search, and some other interfaces.
This isn't a big change, but I didn't want anyone to be taken by surprise
since there are some color changes and so on. On the positive side, those
who think our blue action buttons are too Facebook-like may be pleased with
the change. ;-)
This is added to Tech News next issue,[1] and you will be able to see it on
mediawiki.org as of Thursday, if you want to try it out before it is on
your wiki.
Thanks!
1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/06
--
Steven Walling,
Product Manager
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Hi,
The report covering Wikimedia engineering activities in December 2013 is
now available.
Wiki version:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2013/December
Blog version:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/01/21/engineering-report-december-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/December/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 December include:
- a retrospective on Language Engineering
events<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/10/language-engineering-events-language-…>,
including the language summit in Pune, India;
- the launch of a draft
feature<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/20/new-draft-feature/>on
the English Wikipedia, to provide a gentler start for Wikipedia
articles.
VisualEditor<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/VisualEditor/Portal>
In December, the VisualEditor team worked to continue the improvements to
the stability and performance of this interface that allows users to edit
wiki pages visually rather than using wiki markup. Most of the team's focus
was on major new features and fixing bugs. There is now basic support for
rich copy-and-paste from external sources into VisualEditor, and a basic
tool to insert characters not otherwise available on users' keyboards. Work
also continued on a dialog for quickly adding references using citation
templates.
The Parsoid <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid> team, who is
developing the parsing program that converts wiki markup to annotated HTML
(and back) behind the scenes of VisualEditor, continued their relentless
work to eliminate bugs and incompatibilities. Problems arose during the
migration to node 0.10, the platform that runs Parsoid. The team rolled
back the upgrade, investigated and fixed the issue. Testing has also been
improved so that similar issues are caught in the future. Last, the team
created several requests for
comment<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment>concerning
architectural components of the MediaWiki platform.
Editor engagement <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/New_editor_engagement>
In December, we enabled Flow <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow> to a few
selected pages on mediawiki.org
(Talk:Flow<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Flow>and
Talk:Sandbox <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Sandbox>) and collected
feedback about the features and design to date from the community (read the
summary <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow/Research#Experienced_Users>).
Throughout the feedback period, we worked on implementing design changes,
such as a more compact view of the board and a different interface for
topic and post actions, as well as different visualizations of history
information, based on the comments of users testing the software.
We also began a straw poll about launching Flow as a beta trial in the
discussion spaces of WikiProject Breakfast, WikiProject Hampshire, and
WikiProject Video Games on the English Wikipedia. Based on the outcome of
these polls, we hope to deploy Flow to those pages in January.
The Growth <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth> team spent time working
on product development and research for upcoming Wikipedia article
creation<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_article_creation>improvements.
First and foremost, the team fulfilled a request from the
English Wikipedia community to launch the new Draft
namespace<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Draft_namespace>there. Pau
Giner and others on the team simultaneously began design work on
future
improvements to drafts
functionality<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/20/new-draft-feature/>,
including recruiting for usability testing sessions.
Mobile <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Mobile_engineering>
During the last month, the Wikipedia
Zero<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero>team continued to
make it easier to configure partnerships with
telecommunications carriers that offer access to Wikipedia at no data cost
to their mobile subscribers. They also implemented a global landing page
redirector for mobile Wikipedia website access. Last, the team started
working on an HTML5 webapp proof of concept as an option for rebooting the
Firefox OS app.
The Mobile web projects
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile_web_projects>team has been
working on finishing the redesign of the overlays and mobile
on-boarding. The "Keep going" feature has been changed to a workflow that
asks users to add blue links and includes a tutorial. This is consistent
with what we've learned about how guiding users helps accomplish more
edits, and it fits into more of micro contributory workflow that we want to
experiment with. We've also worked on an A/B test displaying an edit guider
for users signing up from the left nav menu. This is mirroring the edit
guider that displays for users signing up through the edit call to action.
It also is consistent with the behavior that the desktop site will be
displaying to users as a result of the OB6 A/B
test<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Onboarding_new_Wikipedians/OB6>
.
The mobile apps <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps> team added
saved pages, article navigation, and language support to the mobile
Wikipedia app. During the quarterly planning meeting, it was decided to
postpone photo uploads from our market release plan in favor of text
editing.
--
Guillaume Paumier
Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation
https://donate.wikimedia.org
Hi all,
This is just a quick announcement that today we enabled the Guided Tours
extension on the following Wikipedias: fawiki (Persian), astwiki
(Asturian), and ruwiki (Russian). I'll also be posting to those wikis
directly but wanted to send out a note here.
--
Steven Walling,
Product Manager
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the deployment and roadmap
highlights.
Full up-to-date schedule, as always, can be found online at:
<https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments>
== Throughout the week ==
* The Technical Operations team will be bringing the west coast caching
center ("ULSFO") online (again, after a failed first attempt due to
connectivity limitations). This work will happen throughout the week.
* On Thursday and Friday there is the MediaWiki Architecture Summit in
San Francisco. See:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Architecture_Summit_2014
* Due to the US public holiday on Monday (Martin Luther King Jr Day) and
the Architecture Summit, the week of the 20th will be a low/no deploy
week. As such, the only things on the calendar are placeholders for
"Lightning Deploys" on Tues, Wed, and Thurs (Pacific time).
Let me know if you have any questions,
Greg
--
| Greg Grossmeier GPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E |
| identi.ca: @greg A18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D |
Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the deployment and roadmap
highlights.
Full up-to-date schedule, as always, can be found online at:
<https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments>
== Monday January 13th ==
Search - <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Search>
* enwiki will have the new search as a secondary (opt-in via URL
parameter) search backend, thus starting the indexing of those sites
* dewiki and wikibooks wikis will have the new search as an opt-in
BetaFeature.
Visual Editor - <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor>
* enabled by default on "phase 4" Wikipedias
** full list at: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#q,102208,n,z
== Tuesday January 14th ==
Search
* Upgrade the ElasticSearch backend to 0.90.10
** <http://www.elasticsearch.org/blog/0-90-10-released/>
MediaWiki - <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.23/Roadmap>
* group1 to 1.23wmf10: All non-Wikipedia sites (Wiktionary, Wikisource,
Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikiversity, and a few other sites)
Wikidata
* Wikidata (phase1) will be enabled on Wikisource. In other words, this
will enable support for Wikisource language links on Wikidata.
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Wikisource>
== Thursday January 16th ==
MediaWiki - <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.23/Roadmap>
* group2 to 1.23wmf10 (all Wikipedias)
* group0 to 1.23wmf11 (test/test2/testwikidata/mediawiki)
As always, let me know if you have any questions.
Best,
Greg
--
| Greg Grossmeier GPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E |
| identi.ca: @greg A18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D |
