Hi,
The report covering Wikimedia engineering activities in October 2013 is now
available.
Wiki version:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2013/October
Blog version:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/11/12/engineering-report-october-2013/
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/2013/October/su…
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 October include:
- A report on the Open Access Media
Importer<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/10/21/scientific-multimedia-fil…a/>,
a tool that transfers multimedia files from scientific publications to
Wikimedia Commons;
- A request for proposals for a new datacenter in the continental
US<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/10/21/rfp-new-datacenter-continental-…s/>,
published by the Operations team;
- The creation of the Autonym
Font<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/10/28/the-autonym-font-for-language…s/>,
which allows language names to be displayed properly without degrading page
loading time.
*Note: We're also providing a shorter, simpler and translatable version of
this report
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2013/October/summary>
that does not assume specialized technical knowledge.*
VisualEditor<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/VisualEdi…
In October, the
VisualEditor<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Portal>team
continued to improve the stability and performance of the system, and
add new features. The version of the software present on Wikimedia sites
was updated five times. Beyond fixing bugs, the focus of the team's work
this month was to make the system more reliable and easier to extend.
They also continued to improve usability. For example, you now need to
press the "delete" key twice to delete a template, reference or image; the
first time, they only become selected, to avoid accidental deletion of
infoboxes and similar content. A new feature, allowing users to switch from
editing in VisualEditor to editing wikitext directly without having to save
the page, was also added.
In October, the Parsoid <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid> team
continued to work on the conversion between wikitext and annotated HTML for
unusual cases. Speed was improved by making the software run more requests
at the same time. The speed of the testing
server<http://parsoid.wmflabs.org:8001/>used to check for conversion
errors was also improved: we can now run tests
on 160,000 pages overnight. Support for private wikis was also added this
month.
Editor engagement <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/New_editor_engagement>
In October, we enabled Notifications
worldwide<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo/Release_Plan_2013#Complete…
about 800 Wikimedia sites, including most of the remaining Wikipedia
wikis and 'sister projects'. Community members we've spoken to generally
find this tool helpful, across languages and world regions. Notifications
are also available on mobile devices, and seem to be adding value on these
platforms as well. We now plan a final release of Notifications on the
German and Italian editions of Wikipedia at the end of November.
In October, the Flow <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow_Portal> team
redesigned the
prototype<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow_Portal/Interactive_Prototy…
this new discussion system. We also continued to add basic features.
We
held a User Experience
workshop<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow_Portal/Team/Meetings/2013-1…op>,
primarily with users new to Wikipedia, to get feedback on the usability of
the new design. We're planning to demo the basic Flow product to interested
WikiProjects in November to get more feedback on what's needed for a first
trial on Wikipedia.
In October, the Growth <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth> team
completed its sixth and final major A/B test of the
GettingStarted<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GettingStarted&g…
GuidedTour <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GuidedTour> extensions
for the onboarding new
Wikipedians<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Onboarding_new_Wikipedians>…roject.
Data
analysis results <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/R:OB6> for this test were
also published, making way for rolling out the winning version on
non-English Wikipedias in November. This month, the team also completed
background research and early designs for its upcoming work on anonymous
editor
acquisition<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Anonymous_editor_ac…
Wikipedia
article creation <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_article_creation>
.
Mobile <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Mobile_engineering>
Many changes were made to the iOS Commons
app<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Commons>in October.
Users can now select the license among the most common ones,
and swipe to delete categories on yet-to-be-uploaded images. A number of
visual and interface improvements have been made, notably for iOS 7
compatibility. Icon consistency has been improved throughout the app. The
app now also has better internationalization support, as well as better
landscape and iPad support.
The Wikipedia Zero <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero> team,
supporting the program to give Wikipedia access to mobile users at no cost,
worked on many features and enhancements as well. Part of their work
focused on reducing accidental data charges, for example by adding warnings
for users who don't benefit from the Zero program. They also made
improvements to the settings system that allows the configuration of
parameters for different mobile companies.
The mobile web <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile_web_projects> team
has been focusing on many new features, as well as running tests about new
mobile editors. They've improved the general design for a better user
experience, and started to try to integrate VisualEditor to tablets. In
beta, user profiles are now available, as well as 'Keep Going', a series of
calls to action for new editors.
--
Guillaume Paumier
Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation
https://donate.wikimedia.org