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_March_24th
Notable items...
== Tuesday ==
* MediaWiki deploy window, currently following the 1.23 schedule
** group1 to 1.23wmf19: All non-Wikipedia sites (Wiktionary, Wikisource,
Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikiversity, and a few other sites)
** <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.23/wmf19>
** Schedule:
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.23/Roadmap#Schedule_for_the_depl…>
* Switching the Compact Personal Bar Beta Feature discussion page to
Flow
** <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Compact_Personal_Bar>
== Wednesday ==
* Enable Hovercards on all wikis as a BetaFeature
** <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features/Hovercards>
== Thursday ==
* MediaWiki deploy window, currently following the 1.23 schedule)
** group2 to 1.23wmf19 (all Wikipedias)
** group0 to 1.23wmf20 (test/test2/testwikidata/mediawiki)
** <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.23/wmf20>
* As a part of the MediaWiki rollout the Typography Refresh beta feature
will move from VectorBeta extension/Beta Feature to the Vector skin in
MediaWiki core. This effectively updates the default skin for all
users with improved readability.
** See the summary of changes:
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh#Summary_of_changes>
** This will roll out with the 1.23wmf20 branch mentioned above, which
means it will gradually roll out to all wikis following the normal
progression (testwikis & mediawiki.org on Thursday -> non-wikipedias
(eg Commons etc) on Tuesday -> All wikis following Thursday).
Thanks, and as always, questions welcome,
Greg
--
| Greg Grossmeier GPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E |
| identi.ca: @greg A18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D |
Hi, just a heads up we have some new Beta Features rolling out soon, and
just launched a beta feature recently.
Just launched was the Compact Language list[1]. This is the first version
and shows exciting possibilities. Please test it out and give feedback.
Soon to launch beta features include, Hovercards[2], Compact Personal
Bar[3], and Winter(fixed header)[4]. The "Flow" part of this announcement
is the clarification that future Beta features talk pages will be Flow
enabled from day 1[5]. When a Beta feature publicly launches (goes from
labs server to mediawiki.org and then other Foundation wikis), or when an
existing Beta Feature recives a major update, e.g. Nearby[6], the talk page
will be Flow-enabled and any existing talk page content will be archived
and linked from the Flow board header.
We hope this allows for easier discussion about Beta Features, as well as
additional small scale conversations which the Flow team can use in order
to validate, test, and study the use of Flow to make sure it is on track,
and they are making the right product and design decisions.
I'm very excited about these upcoming Beta Features, and how they enable us
to get richer feedback from people when it comes to upcoming features,
tests and experiments though the Beta Features framework.
* [1] **https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_Selector/Design/Interlanguage_links
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_Selector/Design/Interlang…>*
*[2] **https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features/Hovercards
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features/Hovercards>*
*[3] **https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Compact_Personal_Bar
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Compact_Personal_Bar>*
*[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Winter
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Winter> *
*[5] **https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow/Rollout
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow/Rollout>*
* [6] **https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features/Nearby_Pages
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features/Nearby_Pages>*
*Jared Zimmerman * \\ Director of User Experience \\ Wikimedia Foundation
M : +1 415 609 4043 | : @JaredZimmerman<https://twitter.com/JaredZimmerman>
Welcome to the latest edition of the Roadmap and deployments update!
Full schedule for next week at:
https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments#Week_of_March_17th
== Week long things ==
The end of 'soft-migration' of WMF Labs to the new datacenteron March
21st. After this date, projects will be shutdown and moved by the WMF
Labs team. If you haven't yet migrated your WMF Labs tool/bot, please
see: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/labs-l/2014-March/002228.html
== Tuesday ==
MediaWiki deploy window, currently following the 1.23 schedule
* group1 to 1.23wmf18: All non-Wikipedia sites (Wiktionary, Wikisource,
* Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikiversity, and a few other sites)
** https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.23/wmf18
Flow: Enable Flow on
[[meta:Programs_talk:Evaluation_portal/Learning_modules]]
== Wednesday ==
Enabling the Hovercards BetaFeature
* https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features/Hovercards
* (exact time tbd)
== Thursday ==
MediaWiki deploy window, currently following the 1.23 schedule)
* group2 to 1.23wmf18 (all Wikipedias)
** https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.23/wmf18
* group0 to 1.23wmf19 (test/test2/testwikidata/mediawiki)
** https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.23/wmf19
== Potentially of interest ==
Next week we will begin having "SWAT deploy team" windows. The
difference between these and the previous "Lightning Deploy" windows is
that:
A) these are twice a day and an hour long (vs once a day and only 30
minutes)
B) they are run by experienced deployers, who will deploy things on
behalf of others (who don't have deploy privs/experience)
More at: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/SWAT_deploys
As always, questions welcome,
Greg
--
| Greg Grossmeier GPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E |
| identi.ca: @greg A18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D |
Hi,
The report covering Wikimedia engineering activities in February 2014 is
now available.
Wiki version:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2014/February
Blog version:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/03/15/engineering-report-february-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/February/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 February include:
- a call for volunteers to test the upcoming multimedia
viewer<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/27/help-test-media-viewer/>
;
- improvements to VisualEditor's media and template editors;
- the launch of the Flow discussion system on two pilot talk pages on
the English Wikipedia;
- the launch of guided tours to 31 more language versions of Wikipedia,
including all of the top 10 projects by number of page views;
- improvements to the tools and process used to deploy code to Wikimedia
production sites;
- the release of the first archive of the entire English Wikipedia with
thumbnails<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/offline-l/2014-March/001238.html>,
for offline use.
VisualEditor<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/VisualEditor/Portal>
In February, 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. It is now easier to edit media items: users can set the
position, alt text, size and type for most kinds of media item. When adding
links, redirects and disambiguation pages are now highlighted to help
editors select the right link, and changing the format or style of some
text was tweaked to make editing clearer and more obvious. Adding and
editing template usages is now a little smoother, auto-focusing on
parameters and making them clearer to use. Page settings have expanded to
set redirects, page indexing and new section edit link options. The
extensive work to make insertion of "citation" references based on
templates quick, obvious and simple neared completion. The deployed version
of the code was updated four times in the regular releases.
The Parsoid <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid> team continued with bug
fixes <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid/Deployments> and improved
image support in this parsing program that converts wikitext to annotated
HTML, behind the scenes of VisualEditor.
Part of the team has continued to mentor two Outreach Program for
Women<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/FOSS_Outreach_Program_for_Women/Round_7>(OPW)
interns; this program ends mid-March. Others are mentoring a group of
students in a Facebook Open
Academy<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Facebook_Open_Academy>project
to build a Cassandra storage back-end for the Parsoid round-trip
test server.
We have a first version of a Debian package for Parsoid ready. This package
is yet to find a home base (repository) from which it can be installed.
This will soon make the installation of Parsoid as easy as apt-get install
parsoid.
Editor engagement <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/New_editor_engagement>
This month, the new Flow <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow> discussion
system was launched on the talk pages of two English Wikipedia WikiProjects
that volunteered to be a part of the first trial, WikiProject
Breakfast<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Breakfast>and
WikiProject
Hampshire <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Hampshire>.
We've continued to iterate on the front-end design of the discussion system
based on user feedback, releasing a new appearance during the trial and
starting work on a front-end rewrite for better cross-browser and mobile
compatibility (to be released sometime in March). We also spent time making
sure Flow integrates better with vital MediaWiki tools and processes (e.g.,
suppression and checkuser) and improving the handling of permalink URLs.
In February, the Growth <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth> team first
focused on releasing the new Wikipedia onboarding
experience<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Onboarding_new_Wikipedians>on
additional projects. The
GettingStarted <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GettingStarted>extension
was deployed to 30 Wikipedias, including all of the top 10
projects by number of page views. This marks the first time its task
suggestions and guided tours were available outside English projects. The
GuidedTour <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GuidedTour> extension
was also deployed to those projects (as a dependency of GettingStarted), as
well as the Czech Wikipedia and se.wikimedia.org. Late in the month, the
team also presented its work at its first Quarterly Review of the 2014
calendar year (see slides and
minutes<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_r…>
).
Mobile <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Mobile_engineering>
The Wikimedia Apps <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps> team
primarily worked on basic editing functionality (using wikitext) for both
logged-in and logged-out users, as well as account creation and login.
The Mobile web projects
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile_web_projects>team has been
working on bringing VisualEditor to tablets; the
functionality is currently in alpha. Once this feature is available, tablet
devices will be redirected to the mobile site. Work has notably focused on
"inspectors" (like the dialog used to add and edit a link) and fixing bugs.
During the last month, the Wikipedia
Zero<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero>engineering team
added zero-data charge rating for secure HTTPS connections
for select carriers, in cooperation with the Operations team. In
collaboration with the Mobile Apps team, we integrated Wikipedia Zero into
the forthcoming rebooted versions of the Android and iOS apps. We updated
the legacy Firefox OS app with bugfixes from January, and prepared other
bugfixes as well. Discussion with the Operations team and Platform
Engineering continued on how to best implement the Wikipedia Zero portal.
The team also continued the discussion on core ResourceLoader features, in
support of a proof of concept HTML5 webapp. We also started work to make
contributory features present for Wikipedia Zero users. Last but not least,
we performed extensive analytics work on pageviews and page bandwidth
consumption.
In February, we launched Wikipedia Zero with MTN South Africa (Opera Mini
browser only). MTN South Africa responded directly to the kids of
Sinenjongo High School with an open letter to the students and the youth of
South Africa. They said they agree that Wikipedia could give a boost to
their education system, and that offering Wikipedia Zero is a small thing
that could change everything (see
video<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc2lVRtWEvM>on YouTube). We also
launched Wikipedia Zero with Safaricom, the largest
operator in Kenya. We now have three partners in Kenya, covering 90% of all
mobile subscribers. South Africa is our 23rd country to launch, and
Safaricom is our 27th operator partner. The Mobile Partnerships team
attended Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where we met with existing
operator partners, prospective partners and tech companies who want to
support the mission. At the conference, our Wikipedia Text pilot with
Airtel Kenya and the Praekelt Foundation was nominated as a finalist for
the GSMA Global Mobile awards in the education category.
--
Guillaume Paumier
Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation
https://donate.wikimedia.org
Compact Interlanguage
Links<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_Selector/Design/Interlang…>have
been launched as a beta feature on Wikimedia projects. This feature is
intended to facilitate cross-language navigation by making the long lists
of languages on the sidebar a shorter list which will be more relevant for
each user.
Users will be able to opt-in for the feature from the beta features
settings (the "beta" link available at the top-right area when you are
logged-in).
The initial implementation has been done by Niharika Kohli as part of her
OPW internship with the great help from the Language Engineering team and
many other members of our community willing to improve language support.
The beta feature has been created as part of the Universal Language
Selector since it relies on several of its components.
Thanks to all those involved!
We are looking forward to improving the feature based on all your feedback.
So feel free to leave your impressions on the project talk
page<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Universal_Language_Selector/Design/Inte…>
.
Pau
--
Pau Giner
Interaction Designer
Wikimedia Foundation
Dear tech ambassadors, please help spreading this call for Google Summer of
Code candidates in your projects. Thank you!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *Quim Gil* <qgil(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Thursday, March 13, 2014
Subject: URGENT call for geographical diversity in Wikimedia @ GSoC
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Please forward this email wisely. Yes, we need your help getting the word
out.
So far, all our GSoC candidates come from only two (neighbor) countries:
India and Sri Lanka. While we are very happy seeing how popular Wikimedia
is among technical students in the Indian subcontinent, we are concerned
about the lack of candidates from anywhere else.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2014#Candidates
GSoC 2013 had accepted students from 69 countries [1], and we have
participants from eight.[2] We can discuss about the deep causes of this
situation but... Considering that we have less than 9 days before the GSoC
deadline for students (March 21 @ 19:00 UTC) we should focus on finding new
candidates.
There is still time to become a strong GSoC candidate for Wikimedia. Many
project ideas in our GSoC page (linked above) have mentors available and no
candidates yet. Go for them! Also, since our evaluation of candidates is
based on their proposals published in mediawiki.org, Google's deadline is
not a hard stop to keep improving your plans together with your mentors.
April 7 is when we need to decide how many slots we will request, meaning
how many teams (candidates and mentors with a common plan) we believe that
can complete GSoC 2014 successfully. That date is more than three weeks
from now.
Diversity is an important factor for Wikimedia. We are putting a lot of
effort promoting gender diversity in our outreach programs, and we are
seeing good progress. It would be surprising to realize that a global
project like Wikimedia has a serious problem with geographical diversity.
Your ideas and actions to fix this situation are welcome.
[1] https://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code/wiki/ProgramStatistics
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2013
PS: in comparison, FOSS OPW is doing a lot better, with five candidates
from four countries
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/FOSS_Outreach_Program_for_Women/Round_8#Cand…
coincidence?
--
Quim Gil
Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil
--
Quim Gil
Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil
Hello,
A quick reminder that the Language Engineering IRC office hour is happening
later today at 1700 UTC on #wikimedia-office. Besides project updates, we
have 30 mins open for discussions about the internationalization and
localization projects in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) and Outreach Program
for Women (OPW). Please see below for event details, agenda and local time.
Thanks
Runa
Event Details:
==========
# Date: March 12, 2014 (Wednesday)
# Time: 1700-1800 UTC, 1000-1100 PDT (Check local time:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20140312T1700)
# IRC channel: #wikimedia-office on irc.freenode.net
Agenda:
======
1. Ongoing Projects - Content Translation tool
2. GSoC and OPW - open house for Language Engineering projects
3. Q & A
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Runa Bhattacharjee <rbhattacharjee(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 10:09 PM
Subject: Language Engineering IRC Office Hour on March 12, 2014 (Wednesday)
at 1700 UTC
To: MediaWiki internationalisation <mediawiki-i18n(a)lists.wikimedia.org>,
Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Wikimedia Mailing
List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>,
wikitech-ambassadors(a)lists.wikimedia.org
[x-posted]
Hello,
The Wikimedia Language Engineering team will be hosting the monthly IRC
office hour on March 12, 2014 (Wednesday) at 1700 UTC/ 1000 PDT on
#wikimedia-office.
In this edition, we will be talking about our ongoing projects, like the
Content Translation tool[1]. Also, we would like to extend this invitation
specially to the students who are looking forward to participate in Google
Summer of Code (GSoC) 2014 and Outreach Program for Women (OPW) - Round 8,
for the Language Engineering projects[2] under Wikimedia. We will be happy
to answer your questions about our work and projects. Please see below for
the event details and check for local time at your location.
Questions can also be sent to me before the event. See you all at the IRC
office hour!
Thanks
Runa
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Content_translation
[2]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs/Possible_projects#Intern…
Event Details:
==========
# Date: March 12, 2014
# Time: 1700-1800 UTC, 1000-1100 PDT (Check local time:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20140312T1700)
# IRC channel: #wikimedia-office on irc.freenode.net
Agenda:
======
1. Ongoing Projects - Content Translation tool
2. GSoC and OPW - open house for Language Engineering projects
3. Q & A
--
Language Engineering - Outreach and QA Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation
--
Language Engineering - Outreach and QA Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation
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.