Hi,
The report covering Wikimedia engineering activities in May 2014 is now
available.
Wiki version:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2014/May
Blog version:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/06/15/engineering-report-may-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/May/summary
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 May include:
- changes to the mobile site to better show the editors behind the
curtain
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/05/02/the-wikipedia-editors-behind-the-curtain/>
;
- the announcement of CyrusOne in Dallas
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/05/05/wikimedia-foundation-selects-cyrusone-in-dallas-as-new-data-center/>
as
the location of the new Wikimedia data center;
- the Zürich hackathon
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/05/10/tech-wizards-behind-wikipedia-meet-in-zurich-for-hackathon/>
and Lila Tretikov's perspective
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/05/15/hacker-osmosis-ideas-european-hackathon-zurich/>
on
it;
- experiments by the Growth team to encourage more contributors to
register
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/05/16/anonymous-editor-acquisition/>;
- the one-year anniversary
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/05/20/celebrating-one-year-of-tech-news/>
of
the launch of Tech News;
- the launch of Wikipedia Zero in Nepal
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/05/22/wikipedia-zero-shall-accelerate-wikipedia-in-nepal/>
in
partnership with NCELL;
- the launch of a second request for proposals
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/05/27/request-for-proposals-mediawiki-release-management-round-2/>
for
the release management of MediaWiki for third-party users.
VisualEditor
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/VisualEditor/Portal>
In May, the VisualEditor <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor> team
worked on the performance stability of the editor, rolled out a major new
feature to help users better edit articles, and made some improvements to
other features to increase their ease of use and understandability, fixing 78
bugs and tickets
<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?list_id=318847&order=priority%2Cbug_severity&product=VisualEditor&query_format=advanced&resolution=FIXED&target_milestone=VE-deploy-2014-05-01&target_milestone=VE-deploy-2014-05-08&target_milestone=VE-deploy-2014-05-15&target_milestone=VE-deploy-2014-05-22&target_milestone=VE-deploy-2014-05-29>.
The new citation editor is now available to all VisualEditor users on the
English, Polish, and Czech Wikipedias, with instructions
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Citation_tool> on how to
enable it on other wikis. The citation and template dialogs were simplified
to avoid technical language and some outcomes that were unexpected for
users. As part of this, the citation icons were replaced with a new,
clearer set, and the template hinting system now lets wikis mark template
parameters as "suggested", as a step below the existing "required"
state.
The formula editor
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Beta_Features/Formulae> is now
available to all VisualEditor users, and a new Beta Feature giving a tool
that lets you set the language of content
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Beta_Features/Language> was
made available for testing and feedback. Following a new set of user
testing, the toolbar was tweaked, moving the list and indent buttons to a
drop-down to make them less prominent, and removing the gallery button
which is rarely used and confused users. The mobile version of
VisualEditor, currently available for alpha testers, was expanded to also
have the new citation editor available, and had some significant
performance improvements made, especially for long or complex pages. Work
continued on making VisualEditor more performant and reliable, and key
tasks like keyboard accessibility have progressed. The deployed version of
the code was updated five times in the regular release cycle.
Progress was also made on Parsoid <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid>,
the parsing program that works behind the scenes of VisualEditor. The team
continued with ongoing bug fixes and bi-weekly deployments. Besides the
user-facing bug fixes, we also improved our tracing support (to aid
debugging), and did some performance improvements. We also finished
implementing support for HTML/visual editing of transclusion parameters.
This is not yet enabled in production while we finish up any additional
performance tweaks on it. As part of the Google Summer of Code program, one
student is working on a wikilint project
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid/Linting/GSoC_2014_Application> to
detect broken/bad wikitext in wiki pages.
Editor engagement <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/New_editor_engagement>
In May, the Flow <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow> team prepared the
new front-end redesign of this new discussion system. We completed work on
sorting topics on a board by most recent activity, and changed hidden post
handling so that everyone can see hidden posts. Back-end improvements
include optimizations on how we handle unique identifiers and generate
standard URLs. We also accepted Special:Flow (a community-created
improvement that makes it easier to create redirects to Flow boards) and
made fixes for topic submission and replies for users without JavaScript.
<https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=File:Growth_team_update_(June_2014).pdf&page=4>
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:Growth_team_update_(June_2014).pdf?page=4>
Growth team presentation slides from the monthly Metrics meeting
The Growth <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth> team launched its A/B
test of two methods for asking anonymous editors to sign up
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Anonymous_editor_acquisition/Signup_invites> on
the English, German, French, and Italian Wikipedias. Full analysis of the test
results
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Anonymous_editor_acquisition/Signup_CTA_experiment>
is
expected in June, though preliminary data strongly suggests a positive
impact on new registrations. Last but not least, Growth released two
smaller enhancements to our data collection regarding article creation,
including adding page identifiers to MediaWiki's deletion logs and tracking
page restorations
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Schema:PageRestoration> across
all wikis.
Mobile <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Mobile_engineering>
This month, the Mobile Apps
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps> team
worked on a series of navigation improvements to the iOS and Android alpha
apps, focusing on the interface for searching, saving and sharing pages,
and navigating to the table of contents. We also worked on restyling the
global navigation menu and article content—typography, color, and
spacing—to create a standardized experience across the mobile web and apps.
In preparation for the launch of the Android app in June, we tackled a
number of user-reported crashing bugs to ensure a more stable and reliable
experience for our users.
The Mobile web <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile_web_projects> team
continued to build out the basic features of VisualEditor for tablet users,
providing the ability to add references via VisualEditor. We hope to finish
refining the add and modify references workflow in preparation for
graduating VE for tablets to the stable mobile site sometime in July. On
the reader features side, we've made a number of tablet-related styling
improvements (typography, spacing, and Table of Contents) to the stable
mobile site. This should greatly improve the reading experience for tablet
users who are already accessing the mobile version of our projects, and it
is one of the last pieces of work we planned to get done before we begin
redirecting all tablet users to the mobile site mid-June.
The Wikipedia Zero <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero> team
worked on restructuring ZeroRatedMobileAccess
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ZeroRatedMobileAccess> into
several extensions, and added support for graceful image quality reduction
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Reducing_image_quality_for_mobile>,
and worked on a proposal to use GIF images
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Unfragmented_ZERO_design>
for
Zero banners instead of ESI
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_Side_Includes>. We also added necessary
library support to the reboots of the Wikipedia apps, performed limited app
code review, added support for Nokia (now MS Mobile) proxies, and started
work with the Design team on the final polish for the Wikipedia Zero
experience in the forthcoming apps.
In May we launched Wikipedia Zero with Ncell in Nepal, Sky Mobile (Beeline)
in Kyrgyzstan and Airtel in Nigeria. We also added Opera Mini zero-rating
in Umniah in Jordan. We served roughly 67 million free page views in May
across 30 partners in 28 countries. We met with community members from
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Jordan, as well as prospective partners in
Brazil, and kicked off the carrier portal design with Noble Studios.
--
Guillaume Paumier
Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation