Dear Wikitech/Wikitech-Ambassadors,
Over the last few months, a small team at the Wikimedia Foundation has been
working on a project that has been discussed by many people in our movement
for many years: building ‘enterprise grade’ services for the high-volume
commercial reusers of Wikimedia content. I am pleased to say that in a
remarkably short amount of time (considering the complexity of the issues:
technical, strategic, legal, and financial) we now have something worthy of
showing to the community, and we are asking for your feedback. Allow me to
introduce you to the Wikimedia Enterprise API project – formerly codenamed
“okapi”.
While the general idea for Wikimedia Enterprise predates the current
movement strategy process, its recommendations [0] identify an enterprise
API as one possible solution to both “Increase the sustainability of our
movement” and “Improve User Experience.” That is, to simultaneously create
a new revenue stream to protect Wikimedia’s sustainability, and improve the
quality and quantity of Wikimedia content available to our many readers who
do not visit our websites directly (including more consistent attribution).
Moreover, it does so in a way that is true to our movement’s culture: with
open source software, financial transparency, non-exclusive contracts or
content, no restrictions on existing services, and free access for
Wikimedia volunteers who need it.
The team believes we are on target to achieve those goals and so we have
written a lot of documentation you get your feedback about our progress and
where it could be further improved before the actual product is ‘launched’
in the next few months. We have been helped in this process over the last
several months by the approximately 100 individual volunteers (from many
corners of the wikiverse) and representatives of affiliate organisations
who have reviewed our plans and provided invaluable direction. Pointing out
weaknesses and opportunities, or areas lacking clarity and documentation in
our drafts.
A essay describing the “why?” and the “how?” of this project is now on
Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/Essay
Also now published on Meta are an extensive FAQ [1] and operating
principles [2]. Much of this documentation is already available in French,
German, Italian, and Spanish.
For technical specifics, the new documentation on MediaWiki.org describes
the product strategy and roadmap, work currently underway, design
documents, as well as infrastructure decisions and future plans:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise
The team is particularly interested in your feedback on how we have
designed the checks and balances to this project - to ensure it is as
successful as possible at achieving those two goals described above while
staying true to the movement’s values and culture. For example: Is
everything covered appropriately in the “Principles” list? Is the technical
documentation on MediaWiki.org clear? Are the explanations in the “FAQ”
about free-access for community, or project’s legal structure, or the
financial transparency (etc.) sufficiently detailed?
Meet the team and Ask Us Anything:
The central place to provide written feedback about the project in general
is on the talkpage of the documentation on Meta at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Enterprise
Equally, for technical comments or questions the talkpage on MediaWiki.org:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Enterprise
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Enterprise>
On this Friday (March 19) we will be hosting two “Office hours”
conversations where anyone can come and give feedback or ask questions:
- 13:00 UTC via Zoom at https://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/95580273732
- 22:00 UTC via Zoom at https://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/92565175760 (note: this
is Saturday in Asia/Oceania)
Other “office hours” meetings can be arranged on-request on a technical
platform of your choosing; and we will organise more calls in the future.
We will also be attending the next SWAN meetings (on March 21)
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Wikimedia_Affiliates_Network, and
also the next of the Wikimedia Clinics
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Clinics
Moreover, we would be very happy to accept any invitation to attend an
existing group call that would like to discuss this topic (e.g. an
affiliate’s members’ meeting).
On behalf of the Wikimedia Enterprise team,
*Liam Wyatt [Wittylama]*
WikiCite <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCite> Program Manager & Wikimedia
Enterprise <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Okapi> Community Liaison
Wikimedia Foundation
[0]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recomme…
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/FAQ
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/Principles
// sorry for cross-posting
Hello everyone,
Here is another change from WMDE’s Technical Wishes team concerning syntax
highlighting:
Soon, line numbers will be shown in wikitext editors when you have the
syntax highlighting feature (CodeMirror
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CodeMirror> extension)
enabled.[1] The change will make it easier to detect line breaks and to
refer to a particular line in discussions. More information can be found on
this project page. [2]
We plan to deploy this with this week’s Mediawiki train, so it should be on
wikis from April 13-15. As a first step, it will be available on the
template namespace only. Deployment on other namespaces is planned for the
near future.
If you have any feedback, please let us know on the project’s talk page.
[3] We hope line numbering will be useful to you!
Johanna
for the Technical Wishes team
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CodeMirror
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes/Line_Numbering
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Talk_Technical_Wishes/Line_Numbering
--
Johanna Strodt
Projektmanagerin Kommunikation Communitys Technische Wunschliste
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Tel. (030) 219 158 26-0
https://wikimedia.de
Unsere Vision ist eine Welt, in der alle Menschen am Wissens der Menschheit
teilhaben, es nutzen und mehren können. Helfen Sie uns dabei!
https://spenden.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207.
Hello! I am Sannita, and I am the contact person for the Structured
Data Across Wikimedia (SDAW) project.[1]
We are looking for feedback that can help us design and build some new
*image recommendation features*, to provide more and better
suggestions for image matches to unillustrated articles.
Our work will be based on the Image Suggestion API,[2] but we plan to
experiment with some new approaches and ideas. More information about
this project can be found on Mediawiki at [3]. Feedback is welcome on
the dedicated discussion page,[4] where we also defined a series of
questions about the aspects we are focusing on right now.
We are looking for relatively experienced Wikimedia users, in
particular users who have experience in uploading media to Commons
and/or in writing and expanding articles. For now, our research will
focus primarily on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. We are looking for
feedback from Wikipedias of different sizes and with different writing
directions.
If your community and/or some of its users are interested in this,
please let me know in private via email or on my talk page.[5]
Thank you in advance and hope to hear from you soon!
L.
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Structured_data_across_Wikimedia
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Core_Platform_Team/Initiatives/Image_Suggest…
[3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Structured_data_across_Wikimedia/Image_Recom…
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Structured_data_across_Wikimedia/Image_…
[5] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User_talk:Sannita_(WMF)
Forwarding to wikitech-ambassadors as this seems to be related to
community outreach.
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Krishna Chaitanya Velaga <kcvelaga-ctr(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Thu, 6 May 2021 at 13:00
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Call for Election Volunteers - WMF Board of Trustees
To: <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hi all,
Would you like to get more people taking part in the Wikimedia Foundation’s
Board of Trustees election?
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees announced the plan for the 2021
Board elections
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/2021…>.
That plan includes outreach and communication support for the Board
elections. The Board election facilitators will:
- Inform communities of the trustee selection process
- Invite communities to engage in voting
- Encourage people representing emerging Wikimedia communities to run as
candidates
Voter turnout in prior elections was about 10% globally. It was better in
communities with volunteer election support. Some of those communities
reached over 20% voter turnout. We know we can get more voters to help
assess and promote the best candidates, but to do that, we need your help.
We are looking for volunteers to serve as Election Volunteers. Election
Volunteers should have a good understanding of their communities. The
facilitation team sees Election Volunteers as doing the following:
- Promote the election in their communities’ channels
- Organize discussions about the election in their communities
- Translate messages for their communities
*Who are the Election Volunteers to connect your community with this
movement effort? Is it you? Or someone you know?* *Check out more details
about Election Volunteers*
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021/Electio…>
and
add your name next to the community you will support in this table
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021/Electio…>
or get in contact with a facilitator
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021#Team>.
We aim to have at least one Election Volunteer for Wiki-projects in the top
30 for eligible voters. Even better if there are two or more sharing the
work.
Best,
Krishna Chaitanya
Communications Facilitator, Board Governance
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
<tl;dr>: Your feedback as a technically-minded Wikimedian is welcome on
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal/Content_…
Hi everyone,
last year[1] the Developer Advocacy team started to work on a single,
central entry point for developers and tech-minded people for
Wikimedia's technical documentation[2].
A central entry point ("developer portal") would cover common technical
use cases to allow existing and future technical contributors and
developers to find the information they need.
Each use case links to its most relevant documentation (i.e. to pages
on wikitech or mediawiki.org).
This is part of a larger initiative to implement an organization
strategy for key technical documents: Understand challenges about
finding and maintaining docs, identify key docs, and investigate ways
to improve our workflows around documentation.
So far we:
* Researched and reviewed existing documentation venues and pages
* Reviewed developer/documentation portals in the broader industry
* Interviewed several engineering teams around technical documentation
workflows, audiences, and key technical docs (the key themes from
these conversations are available, see the link above)
* Created an initial draft for the structure and content of the single
entry point
Now we would like to improve this initial content draft with your help.
1) Please take a look at the initial draft at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal/Content_…
2) Then, please help improve it by sharing your thoughts and feedback
until *May 25th* at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal/Content_…
Note that this is only a draft how to structure content.
It is not a design or layout proposal and it is not an implementation.
For additional future work, see also the Phabricator workboard[3].
Next steps include:
* A session at the remote Hackathon (May 22-23; [4])
* Incorporate content improvements, based on your feedback
* Check the documents linked from the single entry point proposal for
accuracy
* Investigate requirements for the technical implementation
* Investigate improvements of processes around technical documentation
(structure, locations, navigation, stewardship, etc).
If you want to learn more about the project, please see
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal
Thanks to everybody who has provided their valuable input to get to
this stage, and thanks in advance to everyone who will!
Cheers,
andre
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2020-August/093773.html
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal
[3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/wikimedia-developer-portal/
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2021
--
Andre Klapper (he/him) | Bugwrangler / Developer Advocate
https://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/