Wikitech-ambassadors April 2014

wikitech-ambassadors@lists.wikimedia.org

26 participants
23 discussions

Please help us check these CAPTCHAs for readability
by Vira Motorko 09 Jun '14

09 Jun '14

I had a look at Ukrainian captchas. Fine and funny, I'm eager to know what is the source for the words :) Nota bene: * usage of proper nouns may cause difficulties; * letters Л and П in cyrillic look very simmilar *Vira Motorko* Help save natural resources - please think twice before printing this e-mail or any attachments.

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Tech newsletter (2014, week 18)
by Guillaume Paumier 28 Apr '14

28 Apr '14

Hi, The latest tech newsletter is now available at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2014/18 . 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. As always, feedback (on- or off-list) is appreciated and encouraged. Other languages: العربية <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/18/ar> [image: 100%] • ‎مصرى <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/18/arz> [image: 25%] • ‎čeština <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/18/cs> [image: 100%] • ‎English [image: 100%] • ‎español<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/18/es> [image: 95%] • ‎suomi<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/18/fi> [image: 65%] • ‎français<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/18/fr> [image: 100%] • ‎ગુજરાતી<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/18/gu> [image: 100%] • ‎עברית<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/18/he> [image: 100%] • ‎日本語 <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/18/ja> [image: 74%] • ‎한국어 <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/18/ko> [image: 95%] • ‎Nederlands <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/18/nl> [image: 40%] • ‎polski <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/18/pl> [image: 100%] • ‎svenska <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/18/sv> [image: 5%] • ‎українська <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/18/uk> [image: 100%] • ‎中文 <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/18/zh> [image: 100%] 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/2014/18> are available. *Recent software changes* - The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf2<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.24/wmf2>) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 24. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 29, and all Wikipedias on May 1 (calendar<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.24/Roadmap> ). - You can now use interwiki prefix c: to link to pages on Wikimedia Commons. [1] <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4676> *VisualEditor news* - You will soon be able to set content language and direction with VisualEditor. [2]<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Beta_Features/Language> - VisualEditor now works on all Wikipedias after broken MediaWiki:Common.js pages (and similar) were fixed last week. [3]<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60842> - VisualEditor dialogs now use an animation of moving lines rather than animated GIF images. *Future software changes* - CirrusSearch <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Search> will be enabled as a beta feature on 41 new wikis, including Meta-Wiki and the Swedish (sv), Russian (ru), Polish (pl), Japanese (ja) and Chinese (zh) Wikipedias next week. This change means that CirrusSearch will now be enabled on all Wikimedia wikis. - MediaViewer<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Extension:MultimediaViewer> will be enabled for all users on the French (fr) and Dutch (nl) Wikipedias on May 1 <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Release_Plan>. Feedback<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer> is welcome. [4] <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/125034/> - The mobile version of Wikimedia wikis will soon include filters to limit the number of uploaded files that are copyright violations. [5]<https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/127179/> - CodeEditor <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CodeEditor> will soon have a status bar about errors and warnings. [6]<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63294> [7] <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/122601/> - You can test a new version of Winter<http://unicorn.wmflabs.org/winter/>, a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. Comments<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Winter> are welcome. [8]<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/design/2014-April/001813.html> *Problems* - For about 30 minutes on April 21, there were problems with image scaling due to a high server load. [9]<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/multimedia/2014-April/000271.html> [10]<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/multimedia/2014-April/000276.html> - On April 22, it was not possible to use the Collection<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Collection> extension for about 90 minutes due to a server move. [11]<https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/127658/> [12] <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/127659/> *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/2014/18> • 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 https://donate.wikimedia.org

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Roadmap and deployment highlights - Week of April 28th
by Greg Grossmeier 25 Apr '14

25 Apr '14

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the WMF Engineering Roadmap and Deployment update. The full log of planned deployments next week can be found at: <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments#Week_of_April_28th> A quick list of notable items... == Tuesday == * MediaWiki deploy ** group1 to 1.24wmf2: All non-Wikipedia sites (Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikiversity, and a few other sites) ** <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.24/wmf2> * Flow ** Enable Flow on VisualEditor's language Beta Feature talk page *** <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:VisualEditor/Beta_Features/Language> ** Enable Flow on the content translation Beta Feature's talk page *** <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Content_translation> == Wednesday == * Search: Enable CirrusSearch BetaFeature on all wikis that don't * have it yet. (Might be delayed until Thursday, pending the initial * index which is currently running.) ** <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Search> == Thursday == * MediaWiki deploy ** group2 to 1.24wmf2 (all Wikipedias) ** group0 to 1.24wmf3 (test/test2/testwikidata/mediawiki) * Media Viewer ** Fourth limited pilot release: Enable by default on first large pilot sites: Dutch Wikipedia and French Wikipedia. ** <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Release_Plan#Timeline> * Compact Personal Bar ** Enabled as a Beta Feature on 1.24wmf3 wiki thus rides the deployment train. ** <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Compact_Personal_Bar> Thanks, Greg -- | Greg Grossmeier GPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E | | identi.ca: @greg A18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D |

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Media Viewer Launches on More Pilot Sites
by Fabrice Florin 24 Apr '14

24 Apr '14

Greetings! I’m happy to announce that we just enabled Media Viewer by default on nine more pilot sites: Czech, Estonian, Finnish, Hebrew, Polish, Romanian, Thai, Slovak, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. 1. Overview We’re releasing Media Viewer gradually, a few wikis at a time, to test it carefully before deploying to the next batch of sites. So far, the tool has been well received on our first pilot sites: Catalan, Hungarian and Korean Wikipedias, as well as on English Wikivoyage, as outlined below. Next Thursday, we plan to deploy to some of our first large wikis: Dutch, French, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish Wikipedias. Learn more about this release plan here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Release_Plan 2. Metrics We’re now logging about 336,000 image views per day on a global basis, as shown on this graph: http://multimedia-metrics.wmflabs.org/dashboards/mmv About half of these views are coming from the Hungarian Wikipedia, and the rest from Wikimedia Commons, English Wikipedia and other pilots. More metrics dashboards are available for selected sites on this page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Metrics 3. Performance We are now tracking image load performance globally, and fist results suggest that images take over a second to load on average (50th percentile), but can take up to 5 seconds when looking at worst case for most users (90th percentile), as shown in this graph: http://multimedia-metrics.wmflabs.org/graphs/mmv_performance_image_global We’re also encouraged by early comparisons of the time it takes to open an image with Media Viewer versus on a Commons File, the current default: the mean load times for these two methods seem to be very close, on the order of 2-3 seconds on a cold cache, as shown in this preliminary graph: http://multimedia-metrics.wmflabs.org/dashboards/mmv#media_viewer_vs_file_p… 4. Surveys We are now running surveys in multiple languages, to validate whether or not this feature is useful to readers and editors alike. Overall response so far is generally favorable. Here are the current results: * English Survey: 64% find the tool useful, 12% don’t find it useful, 24% are not sure (50) * Hungarian Survey: 47% find the tool useful, 47% don’t find it useful, 5% are not sure (268) * Catalan Survey: 62% find the tool useful, 15% don’t find it useful, 23% are not sure (13) We’re also starting new surveys in French, German and Portuguese. You can find links to live results and comments from all these surveys here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Survey#Results 5. Usability For the past few months, we have been running a series of usability studies, with positive results. Testers are typically able to complete most common tasks successfully, and they have helped us find new ways to improve the user experience for areas they found confusing. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Usability_testing 6. Your feedback How can we improve Media Viewer? Are there any critical issues that should be addressed for this first release? Please let us know what you think of this tool — and join other users from around the world on this discussion page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer We’d also be grateful if you could take this quick survey, to let us know how Media Viewer works for you. It only takes a minute and means a lot to us: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/media-viewer-1?c=email Many thanks to all the team and community members who made this launch possible! Enjoy, Fabrice — for the Multimedia Team P.S.: New improvements take about 2 weeks to get deployed to all wikis. If you would like to test the latest version of Media Viewer, follow the test tips on this demo page on MediaWiki.org: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Lightbox_demo _______________________________ Fabrice Florin Product Manager, Multimedia Wikimedia Foundation https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)

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A fresh look to old Collection bugs
by Federico Leva (Nemo) 24 Apr '14

24 Apr '14

TL;DR: check on https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/BugTriage-Collection if you see an old friend Hello book lovers, I propose to hold a bug triage for old Collection bugs. It's sad, but all the bugs of 4 years ago are still current; what's worse, they're not even tracked because the bug tracker was deleted. So, let's test them together again, everyone on their own wiki: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/BugTriage-Collection If you want to help, add your name and your proposal of a date when to meet on IRC. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bug_management/Triage for what a triage is. You don't need to come on IRC, just writing on etherpad or bugzilla something you know about one of those bugs is very valuable. Note: this is only about the Collection extension itself. The backend software to produce the actual PDF files (mwlib) is being superseded. There are some 160 more bugs to retest for it, but we need a testing area; I've asked about it at <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Thread:Talk:PDF_rendering/Test_instance_and_…> Nemo

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Tech newsletter (2014, week 17)
by Guillaume Paumier 21 Apr '14

21 Apr '14

Hi, The latest tech newsletter is now available at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2014/17 . 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. As always, feedback (on- or off-list) is appreciated and encouraged. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Other languages: العربية <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/17/ar> [image: 100%] • ‎مصرى <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/17/arz> [image: 4%] • ‎English [image: 100%] • ‎español<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/17/es> [image: 96%] • ‎suomi<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/17/fi> [image: 100%] • ‎français<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/17/fr> [image: 100%] • ‎עברית<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/17/he> [image: 100%] • ‎日本語 <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/17/ja> [image: 39%] • ‎한국어 <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/17/ko> [image: 100%] • ‎polski <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/17/pl> [image: 100%] • ‎українська <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/17/uk> [image: 96%] • ‎中文 <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2014/17/zh> [image: 100%] 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/2014/17> are available. *Tech News updates* - You can now subscribe to an Atom<https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=featuredfeed&feed=technews&feed…> or RSS<https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=featuredfeed&feed=technews&feed…> feed to read Tech News in your news aggregator<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/en:news_aggregator>. The newsletter will now also show on the English Planet Wikimedia<https://en.planet.wikimedia.org/> every Monday. [1]<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2014-April/000683…> - We are looking for contributors<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News#contribute> to help write a new issue every week. If you would like to help, please contact us <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tech/News>. *Recent software changes* - The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf1<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.24/wmf1>) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 17. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 22, and all Wikipedias on April 24 (calendar<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.24/Roadmap> ). - CirrusSearch <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Search> was enabled as a beta feature on 27 new wikis on April 18. [2]<https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/126671/> [3] <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/126806/> - Problems with various fonts in SVG files were fixed last week. Files that use DejaVu Sans Condensed, DejaVu Serif Condensed, DejaVu Sans Light, Kochi Gothic and Kochi Mincho fonts now show correctly. [4]<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63206> [5] <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/126834/> [6]<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64002> [7] <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/126729/> - The page view statistics site developed by Henrik<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Henrik> (stats.grok.se) should now work faster. [8]<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/analytics/2014-April/001800.html> - You can read a summary<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_engineering_rep…> of the Wikimedia technical report for March 2014. [9]<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2014-April/000682…> *VisualEditor news* - If you try to add a category which redirects to another category, VisualEditor will now suggest adding the target category directly. [10]<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52414> [11] <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/118218/> - VisualEditor tabs will no longer appear on Education Program pages. [12] <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53477> [13]<https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/125233/> - You can now use VisualEditor on Meta-Wiki and the French Wikinews by enabling it in your preferences<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-input-wpvisualeditor…> . [14] <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/125774/> [15]<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63841> [16] <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/125538/> *Future software changes* - MediaViewer<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Extension:MultimediaViewer> will be enabled for all users on the Czech (cs), Estonian (et), Finnish (fi), Hebrew (he), Polish (pl), Romanian (ro), Slovak (sk), Thai (th) and Vietnamese (vi) Wikipedias on April 24<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Release_Plan> . Feedback<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer> is welcome. [17] <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/125033/> - Edits by anonymous users will now be marked with a new CSS class ( mw-anonuserlink). This way, you can easily make those edits use a different color, font or background. [18]<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43179> [19] <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/115095/> - The user preference to remember login will soon be removed from all wikis. The edit review<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-flaggedr…> preferences will be moved to the recent changes<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rc> tab, and the preference for the WikiLove<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikiLove> tool will be moved to the editing<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing> tab. [20]<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2014-April/000681…> [21] <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52342> [22]<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63576> [23] <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52757> - You will soon be able to give parameters to preloaded templates. [24]<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12853> [25] <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/116482/> - You will soon be able to use CodeEditor<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CodeEditor> in read-only mode on pages that you cannot edit. [26]<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45258> [27] <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/120397/> - It is now proposed<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Phabricator> to replace Bugzilla <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/>, Gerrit<https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/> and other tools by a single tool called Phabricator. You can test Phabricator<http://fab.wmflabs.org/> and add your opinion<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Phabricator> on MediaWiki.org. [28]<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2014-April/000677…> - An IRC discussion <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours> about Phabricator will take place on April 22 at 03:30 AM UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion<http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20140422T0330> ). [29]<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-April/076061.html> *Problems* - For about 40 minutes on April 17, there were problems with page loading due to high server load. - There is a problem with the rendering of formulas with MathJax<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Math#MathJax>. If you enabled MathJax in your preferences<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering>, you might need to turn it off and on again. [30]<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63915> *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/2014/17> • 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 https://donate.wikimedia.org

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Roadmap and deployment highlights - week of April 21st
by Greg Grossmeier 19 Apr '14

19 Apr '14

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the WMF Engineering Roadmap and Deployment update. The full log of planned deployments next week can be found at: <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments#Week_of_April_21st> A quick list of notable items... == Tuesday == * MediaWiki deploy ** group1 to 1.24wmf1: All non-Wikipedia sites (Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikiversity, and a few other sites) ** <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.24/wmf1> * Flow: ** Archive and enable Flow on the Nearby Pages Beta Feature talk page ** <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Beta_Features/Nearby_Pages> ** <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow> == Thursday == * MediaWiki deploy ** group2 to 1.24wmf1 (all Wikipedias) ** group0 to 1.24wmf2 (test/test2/testwikidata/mediawiki) * Media Viewer: ** Third limited pilot release: Enable by default on a few small pilot sites (batch 2: Czech, Estonian, Finnish, Hebrew, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Thai, Vietnamese) ** <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Release_Plan#Timeline> As always, questions and comments welcome, Greg -- | Greg Grossmeier GPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E | | identi.ca: @greg A18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D |

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Subscribe to Tech News via a web feed
by Tomasz W. Kozłowski 18 Apr '14

18 Apr '14

Hi! Just dropping a short note that it is now finally possible to subscribe to the weekly Tech News bulletin[1] via a web feed to ensure a smooth, hassle-free delivery of every issue to a news aggregator of your choice. You can subscribe to an Atom[2] or RSS[3] feed, which should deliver a new issue at 00:00 UTC every Monday. At this point, the feed only provides the English version of the bulletin, so you'll need to click one of the links on top of the page to read a version in a different language — if you think that a per-language feed is a good idea, please let us know! The feed is now also subscribed to the English Planet Wikimedia[4], so if you get your Wikimedia news that way, you'll also see a new issue of Tech News on the Planet every Monday. Feedback and questions are welcome :-) == References == * [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News * [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=featuredfeed&feed=technews&feed… * [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=featuredfeed&feed=technews&feed… * [4] https://en.planet.wikimedia.org/ Tomasz

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Wikimedia engineering report, March 2014
by Guillaume Paumier 18 Apr '14

18 Apr '14

Hi, The report covering Wikimedia engineering activities in March 2014 is now available. Wiki version: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2014/March Blog version: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/04/18/engineering-report-march-2014/ 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/2014/March/summ… 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 March include: - an overview of webfonts<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/03/07/webfonts-making-wikimedia-projects-re…>, and the advantages and challenges of using them on Wikimedia sites; - a series of essays<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/03/25/seeing-through-the-eyes-of-new-techni…> written by Google Code-in students who shared their impressions, frustrations and surprises as they discovered the Wikimedia and MediaWiki technical community; - Hovercards<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/03/26/hovercards-now-available-as-a-beta-fe…> now available as a Beta feature on all Wikimedia wikis, allowing readers to see a short summary of an article just by hovering a link; - a subtle typography change<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/03/27/typography-refresh/> across Wikimedia sites for better readability, consistency and accessibility; - a recap of the upgrade and migration<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/03/28/wikimedias-road-to-bugzilla-4-4/> of our bug tracking software. VisualEditor<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/VisualEditor/Portal> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:VisualEditor_-_2013-14_Q2%E2%80%93Q3_qu…> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:VisualEditor_-_2013-14_Q2%E2%80%93Q3_qu…> Presentation slides from theVisualEditor team's quarterly review meeting<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_r…> on March 26 In March, the VisualEditor <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor> team continued their work on improving the stability and performance of this visual tool to edit wiki pages. They also added some new features and simplifications, helping users edit and create pages more swiftly and easily. Editing templates is now much simpler, moving most of the advanced controls that users don't often need into a special version of that window. The media dialog was improved and stream-lined to make it clearer what the controls are for. The overall design of dialogs and controls was improved to make it flow better, like double-clicking a block to open its dialog. A new system for quickly and simply inserting and editing "citations" (references based on templates) neared completion and will be enabled in the coming month. <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:Parsoid_review_Q3,_March_2014.pdf> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:Parsoid_review_Q3,_March_2014.pdf> Presentation slides from the Parsoid team's quarterly review meeting<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_r…> on March 28 The Parsoid <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid> team continued with a lot of bug fixing and tweaking<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid/Deployments> of this parsing program that converts wikitext to annotated HTML, behind the scenes of VisualEditor. Media and image handling in particular was improved. In the process, we discovered a lot of edge cases and inconsistent behavior in the PHP parser, and fixed some of those issues there as well. We revamped our round-trip test server interface<http://parsoid-tests.wikimedia.org/> that compares the wikitext code of a page before and after it's been converted into annotated HTML, and back into wikitext. We fixed some issues in the round-trip test system, and improved our error logging system. We also designed and implemented a HTML templating library<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_template_system> which combines correctness, security and performance. This will notably be used to evaluate HTML templating for translation messages and eventually wiki content. Editor engagement <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/New_editor_engagement> This month the Core Features team focused on improvements to how the new Flow <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow> discussion system works with key MediaWiki tools and processes. We made changes to the history, watchlist, and recent changes views, adding more context and bringing them more in line with what experienced users expect from these features. We released a thank feature in Flow, allowing users to thank each other for posts, and began work on a feature to close and summarize discussions. Lastly, we continued work on rewriting the Flow interface to make it cleaner, faster, and more responsive across a wide number of browsers/devices. In March, the Growth <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth> team primarily focused on bug fixing, design enhancements, and refactoring of the GettingStarted <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GettingStarted> and GuidedTour <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GuidedTour> extensions, which were recently launched on 30 Wikipedias. We updated icons and button styles, rewrote the interface text, and refactored the interface to be more usable in non-English languages. We also began to refactor of the GuidedTour API, in order to support interactive tours that are non-linear. Non-linear tours will not depend on a page load to run, which will notably enable better support for tours in VisualEditor<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor>. Last but not least, we made progress on measuring the impact of GettingStarted<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Onboarding_new_Wikipedians/Rollout> across all wikis where it is deployed, with results for the first 30 days of editor activity expected in early April. Mobile <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Mobile_engineering> The Wikimedia Apps <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps> team worked on logged-out editing to logged-in editing, and table of contents refinements. The Mobile web projects <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile_web_projects> team worked on the link inspector for VisualEditor on tablets, and a switch between VisualEditor and wikitext on tablets. Both are in alpha. During the last month, with the assistance of the Operations and Platform teams, the Wikipedia Zero <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero> team set up the upcoming Partners Portal and continued work on reducing image size for the mobile web. Additionally, the team added Wikipedia Zero detection to the Wikipedia for Firefox OS app, as well as contributory features support for users on partner networks supporting zero-rated secure connections. With the assistance of the Apps team, new features were added to the forthcoming reboots of the Android and iOS apps; proof of concept for full-text search was started on iOS. Smart, the largest mobile operator in the Philippines, is giving access to Wikipedia free of data charges through the end of April. We arranged a meeting with local community members and Smart to explore ways to collaborate in support of education. The partnerships team started to review the 27 existing Wikipedia Zero partners, to update the implementation, identify opportunities for collaboration in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives and get feedback on the program. The account reviews will continue for the next few months. -- Guillaume Paumier Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation https://donate.wikimedia.org

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"Remember my login" preference removed
by Steven Walling 17 Apr '14

17 Apr '14

Hey all, This is just a prior notice that with the merge of https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/94614/ we've removed the preference for "Remember my login" from your Special:Preferences. This preference was removed because it is redundant to the "Remember me" checkbox on the login form. This is also documented at https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52342 This will show up next week, first to mediawiki.org and test wikis Monday, Tuesday to all non-Wikipedias, and Thursday to all Wikipedias. Thanks to all the volunteers and staff who time to code/review/test this. :-) Thank you, -- Steven Walling, Product Manager https://wikimediafoundation.org/

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