Hello all,
Starting in April 2023, MediaWiki will end Grade A support for browsers that
do not implement ES6 JavaScript.[0] This mostly affects the small number of
Internet Explorer 11 users. A very small number of iOS users who have not
upgraded to iOS 10 (released in 2017) are also affected.
Users with these browsers will still be able to browse and contribute to the
projects. Enhanced features will become unavailable. For example, the 2010
wikitext editor will not appear, scripts and gadgets will not operate, and
notification buttons will take you to a page rather than open a pop-out.
This change will affect fewer than 0.1% of page views to Wikimedia wikis. We
previously raised the standard (from ES3 to ES5) in April 2017.[1]
Providing JavaScript for IE 11 and other ES5 browsers adds a significant
maintenance burden. It also hinders site speed for all users. Microsoft
ended its official support for Internet Explorer 11 in June 2022,[2] and
entirely removed it from Windows 10 in February 2023.[3]
This change will land in the development branch used on all Wikimedia wikis
this April, to be released as part of MediaWiki 1.41 around November 2023.
Please help carry this message into your communities.
(Tech News will announce this change as well.)
For details about the JavaScript-less experience, see
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Compatibility#Browsers
[0] https://caniuse.com/es6 listing browser support for ES6
[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T128115
[2]
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2021/05/19/the-future-of-intern…
[3]
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/internet-explore…
Yours,
--
*James D. Forrester* (he/him <http://pronoun.is/he> or they/themself
<http://pronoun.is/they/.../themself>)
Wikimedia Foundation
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
My Fellow Wikimedians,
Thanks you very much for your kind interest in submitting program
proposals. Program submissions officially closed at 29 March 2023 at 13:59
UTC.
We received 594 program submissions and we will remove the spam submissions
accordingly. Program subcommittee *may* announce soon another round of
submissions on poster sessions (depending on the result of the first batch
of poster proposals) and details of the Hackathon in Wikimania 2023.
Please take opportunity to refine and edit your program submissions on
Pretalx.com. The jurors will start screening your applications in April.
Don't take risk of editing it within the month April as you don't know if
your submission is already scored before your refinements/ edits.
Please check the program submissions wiki page and FAQ on what qualities we
are looking for a program content in Wikimania 2023 and the next steps.
https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2023:Program/Submissionshttps://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2023:Program/FAQ
If you are interested on knowing the submitted program proposals, go to
https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimania_2023_Program_submis…
Kind regards,
*Butch Bustria*
Event lead, ESEAP Wikimania 2023 Core Organizing Team
Chair, Program Subcommittee
P.S.
*For direct inquiries, please contact us organizers on our group mail :
wikimania(a)wikimedia.org <wikimania(a)wikimedia.org>. We discourage you to
click "reply all" as this is a large mailing list*.
Hi Everyone,
Today, Tuesday, March 28 is the final date of submission.
We are elated to receive more than 300 program proposal submissions for
Wikimania 2023.
This is not just for onsite in Singapore. Please consider submitting a
poster session proposal or a pre-recorded video session format. We love to
see your proposals under these session formats as well!
To submit one, just click the blue button at
https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2023:Program/Submissions
Kind regards,
*Butch Bustria*
Event Lead, ESEAP Wikimania 2023 Core Organizing Team
Hi Folks,
Do you want to host a session at Wikimania 2023 this August?
If you have an idea for a workshop, a discussion, a *demonstration*, or
more, now is the time to apply!
Be part of the Wikimania 2023 program, virtually or in person.
Wikimania organizers reserved a room for the technical community from 15
August (Pre-conference) till final conference on 19 August. Plus there is a
spacious Wikimania Expo space for you to do demonstrate and pitch your idea
or project!
For participants joining virtually, we also have allocated online hours for
you too to allow you to participate & present.
Session submissions for Wikimania 2023 are open until *28 March*.
Wiki page: https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2023:Program/Submissions
Diff post:
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/02/28/be-part-of-the-wikimania-2023-program/
Kind regards,
*Butch Bustria*
Chair, Program Subcommittee
Event lead, ESEAP Wikimania 2023 Core Organizing Team
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Adam Baso <abaso(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 4:45 AM
Subject: Service Decommission Notice: Mobile Content Service - July 2023
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
TL;DR: The legacy Mobile Content Service is going away in July 2023. Please
switch to Parsoid or another API before then to ensure service continuity.
Hello World,
I'm writing about a service decommission we hope to complete mid-July 2023.
The service to be decommissioned is the legacy Mobile Content Service
("MCS"), which is maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation's Content
Transform Team. We will be marking this service as deprecated soon.
We hope that with this notice, people will have ample time to update their
systems for use of other endpoints such as Parsoid [1] (n.b., MCS uses
Parsoid HTML).
The MCS endpoints are the ones with the relative URL path pattern
/page/mobile-sections* on the Wikipedias. For examples of the URLs see the
"Mobile" section on the online Swagger (OpenAPI) specification
documentation with matching URLs here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/#/Mobile
== History ==
The Mobile Content Service ("MCS") is the historical aggregate service that
originally provided support for the article reading experience on the
Wikipedia for Android native app, as well as some other experiences. We
have noticed that there are other users of the service. We are not able to
determine all of the users, as it's hard to tell with confidence from the
web logs.
The Wikimedia Foundation had already transitioned the Wikipedia for
Android and iOS apps to the newer Page Content Service ("PCS") several
years ago. PCS has some similarities with MCS in terms of its mobility
focus, but it also has different request-response signatures in practice.
PCS, as with MCS, is intended to primarily satisfy Wikimedia
Foundation-maintained user experiences only, and so this is classified with
the "unstable" moniker.
== Looking ahead ==
Generally, as noted in the lead, we recommend that folks who use MCS (or
PCS, for that matter) switch over to Parsoid for accessing Wikipedia
article content programmatically for the most predictable service.
The HTML produced by Parsoid has a versioned specification [2] and because
Parsoid is accessed regularly by a number of components across the globe
tends to have fairly well cached responses. However, please note that
Parsoid may be subject to stricter rate limits that can apply under certain
traffic patterns.
At this point, I do also want to note that in order to keep up with
contemporary HTML standards, particularly those favoring accessibility and
machine readability enhancements, Parsoid HTML will undergo change as we
further converge parsing stacks [3]. Generally, you should expect iteration
on the Parsoid HTML spec, and of course as you may have come to appreciate
that the shape of HTML in practice can vary nontrivially wiki-by-wiki as
practices across wikis vary.
You may also want to consider Wikimedia Enterprise API options, which range
from no cost to higher volume access paid options.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise#Access
== Forking okay, but not recommended ==
Because MCS acts as a service aggregate and makes multiple backend API
calls, caveats can apply for those subresources - possibility of API
changes, deprecation, and the like. We do not recommend a plain fork of MCS
code because of the subresource fetch behavior. This said, of course you
are welcome to fork in a way compatible with MCS's license.
== Help spread the word ==
Although we are aware of the top two remaining consumers of MCS, we also
are not sure who else is accessing MCS and anticipate that some downstream
tech may break when MCS is turned off. As we are cross-posting this
message, we hope most people who have come to rely upon MCS will see this
message. Please feel free to forward this message to contacts if you know
they are using MCS.
== Help ==
Although we intend to decommission MCS in July 2023, we would like to share
resources if you need some help. We plan to hold office hours in case you
would like to meet with us to discuss this or other Content Transform Team
matters. We will host these events on Google Meet. We will provide notice
of these office hours on the wikitech-l mailing list in the coming weeks
and months.
Additionally, if you would like to discuss your MCS transition plans,
please visit the Content Transform Team talk page:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Content_Transform_Team
Finally, some Content Transform Team members will also be at the Wikimedia
Hackathon [4] if you would like some in-person support.
Thank you.
Adam Baso (he/him/his/Adam), on behalf of the Content Transform Team
Director of Engineering
Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Specs/HTML
[3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid/Parser_Unification/Updates
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023
Hello all,
As you may already know, the Wikimedia Hackathon 2023 will take place in
Technopolis, Athens, Greece, on May 19-21. This in-person event will gather
the global Wikimedia technical community to connect, hack, run technical
discussions, and explore new ideas.
*If you plan to join, please register as soon as possible.*
Registration for the Hackathon will be open until we reach the event's
maximum capacity [0]. If you plan to join, we encourage you to register as
soon as possible, as there are currently around ten slots left. We also
encourage you to book your travel and accommodation shortly. You will find
more information on the travel [1] and accommodation [2] pages. You are
also welcome to help us improve those pages by adding additional
information about Athens and how to travel there.
For people who already registered, remember to confirm your attendance by
filling out the additional field in the registration form (see the email
sent by hackathon(a)wikimedia.org on March 13). Please note that WMF's
scholarship process concluded in January, and aside from the 51 people who
got a scholarship confirmed, we cannot support people with funds or visa
documents. Therefore, most participants must organize their own travel to
stay in Athens.
This year's edition will focus on bringing together people who already
contribute to technical aspects of the Wikimedia projects, know how to find
their way around in the technical ecosystem, and can work or collaborate on
projects more autonomously. For people new to our technical environment,
there are other newcomers-friendly events you can join throughout the year
- feel free to improve the list. [3]
*You can organize a satellite event with your local community.*
For people new to the technical aspects of the Wikimedia projects or who
cannot attend the in-person event, a great option could be to organize an
autonomous, local satellite event to the Hackathon. These events can occur
before, during, or after the in-person event. If you are considering
running an event like this, contact your local community to get started! If
you need financial support, please note that the deadline to apply for the
current round of Rapid Funds is March 20 [4].
*Proposals for the in-person program are welcome until April 4.*
The Hackathon is organized as a participant-driven event and lives from the
active participation of its attendees. Because this year's edition is
focused on reconnecting with your technical community peers in person, most
of the program will take place onsite. You can propose a session by
creating a task on the Phabricator board. Find more information on the
Program page [5].
Similar to the satellite events, some online sessions, in parallel or ahead
of the event, may be organized autonomously by participants. In any case,
participants are free to work on their projects, whether in-person or
online, and connect to the technical community on the Hackathon channels
[6].
If you have any questions, feel free to use the Hackathon talk page or to
reach out to the organizers at hackathon(a)wikimedia.org.
Cheers,
Srishti
On behalf of the Hackathon organizing team
[0]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023/Participate#Registr…
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023/Travel
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023/Accommodation
[3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023/Documentation#Event…
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023/Satellite_events
[5] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023/Program
[6] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023/Connect
*Srishti Sethi*
Senior Developer Advocate
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>