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.
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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/001…ml>,
for offline use.
VisualEditor<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/VisualEdi…
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/Rou…
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&…
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>…
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/…
).
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