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
TLDR: If you use "hard refresh" in your browser after editing a CSS or JS
page on the wiki, I'd like to hear about it so as to figure out whether
there may be a bug in the software. Please do test and confirm it for
yourself once more without a hard refresh, as it might just be an old habit
acting as a placebo :)
-
The "clearyourcache" message is the message that, contrary to its interface
key, instructs users to perform a page refresh in order to see the effect
of their edit to JS and CSS-related pages. For example:
https://translatewiki.net/wiki/MediaWiki:Clearyourcache/enhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.csshttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:OSM.jshttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Krinkle/global.jshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Citoid-template-type-map.json
As I understand it, this message is no longer be needed. I'm not aware of
any scenario in which a page carries this message, and edits to the page in
question would propagate to the editor's browser sooner as result of
performing a "hard reload".
If you find yourself doing hard reloads, or know people that do, I'd love
to hear detailed examples of specific combinations of pages/wikis/browsers
where people do this.
I've detailed the technical reasons for why these (should) have no impact,
on Phabricator:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T291744
-- Timo
// 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,
On September 13 2021, all traffic from all wikis will be switched back to
the primary data center (first switch happened last June). All wikis will
be in read-only mode on September 13 around 14:00 UTC. A message to inform
our communities has been written, to be sent to wikis:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/Server_switch
Please check the translations and update them when needed. Work should be
limited, since only dates have been changed.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Translate&group=page-T…
More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on
individual wikis.
Please inform your communities about this event!
Thank you for your help,
Benoît
--
Benoît Evellin - Trizek (he/him)
Community Relations Specialist
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>