Wikitech-l May 2009

wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org

88 participants
67 discussions

Re: [Wikitech-l] [WikiEN-l] Usability Study Results (Sneak Preview)
by Thomas Dalton 13 May '09

13 May '09

Cross posting to wikitech-l 2009/5/8 Ian Woollard <ian.woollard(a)gmail.com>: > Well, the wikipedia is big... google is big also. > > One of the tricks google use is they try stuff out on victims... I > mean users. They pick a small percentage of the internet and do > something slightly different for them, and see if it works or not. The > advantage of only doing it for a small number is that it means you can > write the test with prototyping tools, rather than having to make it > run fast, and you'll have a lot less complaints if it doesn't work > very well. It also means you can do back-back comparisons stuff like: > 'we tried this, and it showed a 23% improvement in referencing'. > > I think if at all practical, the wikipedia needs to start doing stuff like that. That sounds like an excellent idea to me. Is it achievable?

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SVG issues and ideas for SVG Open talk?
by Brion Vibber 13 May '09

13 May '09

Hi all -- I'm putting together a talk proposal for SVG Open 2009, which will be in early October at the Google campus in Mountain View, CA: https://www.svgopen.org/2009/ I've got plenty of background I can pull in on the challenges and benefits of SVG on the web and the tradeoffs we've made in our usage and implementation, but I know lots of you folks out there have been more active on the 'content-generation' end of things and can point out some things I wouldn't think of. If anybody's got any particularly interesting issues, examples, problems, or idea prototypes relating to usage of SVG on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites, I'd love to see how much I can pack in. :) Pointers to cool feature proposals like Nikola's localization presentation at Wikimania last year, or bulk anaylsis like benchmarks and compatibility tests on images in actual use would be of particular interest. -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)

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The Wikipedia Usability Initiative is still hiring.
by Naoko Komura 12 May '09

12 May '09

The Wikipedia Usability Initiative has extended the application deadline for the Software Developer position till May 30th. We are recruiting two candidates for this position. Both local applicants to the San Francisco Bay Area and remote applicants are encouraged to apply. Please help spread the word. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Software_Developer_(projec… Naoko Komura Program Manager Wikipedia Usability Initiative Wikimedia Foundation ----- Job Title Software Developer Employment Duration June 1, 2009 to April 16, 2010 About the Wikipedia Usability Initiative The Wikipedia Usability Initiative was realized by a grant from the U.S.-based Stanton Foundation. The goal of this initiative is to measurably increase the usability of Wikipedia for new contributors by improving the underlying software on the basis of user behavioral studies, thereby reducing barriers to public participation. This position is part of the program team for the initiative. For more information, please see the press release. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikipedia_to_become_more… Job Purpose The core responsibility of this position is to design, develop, test and deploy new features and improvements of the MediaWiki software for the the Wikipedia usability initiative by working closely with the interaction designer and peer developers of MediaWiki. Reports to Program Manager Job Summary *Propose software design solutions and obtain consensus from senior and peer tech teams *Create implementation prototypes based on design concepts *Develop, test, and deploy new features and improvements to the MediaWiki core and to MediaWiki extensions *Collaborate in designing and implementing QA processes including multi-lingual and performance tests *Work closely with operations staff to ensure proper integration with testing and production systems Required Qualifications *Computer Science degree or equivalent work experience *5+ years experience as a software developer is required *Experience with PHP development is required *Extensive experience with AJAX/HTML/CSS is required *Experience with cross-browser compatibility testing is required *Experience with security implications of JavaScript/PHP software is required *Experience with LAMP is a major plus *Experience with testing and analyzing usability and accessibility is a major plus *Experience with MediaWiki is a major plus *An understanding of internationalizing and localizing software products a major plus *Any other free/open software development experience highly welcome *Comfortable in a highly collaborative, consensus-oriented environment *Experience with wikis and participatory production environments is a plus *Understanding of the free culture movement is a plus *The ideal candidate will be creative, highly motivated, and able to operate effectively in multiple cultural and language contexts Salary The salary is in the range of $75,000 to $85,000 plus benefits, commensurate with experience. This position will be filled in June 2009. Due to the volume of responses that we anticipate we will not reply to all applications, so please do not interpret our silence as a lack of interest. Based in San Francisco, CA., but remote candidates will be considered. -- Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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Downloadable client fonts to aid language script support?
by Brion Vibber 12 May '09

12 May '09

Firefox 3.5 will be launching this summer (betas available now!) and will include support for downloading and using regular TrueType and OpenType fonts referenced from a style sheet: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS/@font-face This is also supported in Safari 3.1 and later, and apparently by the latest Opera betas as well. It might be helpful for some language wikis to link in a free font this way, when standard fonts supporting their script are often unavailable. Right now on such sites there tends to be a little English link at the top such as 'font help' leading to a page like this telling you how to download and install a font: http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project:Font_help Internet Explorer afaik still only supports converted embedded (EOT) font files, which would require that we can either get our hands on an existing .eot version of each free font, or be able to generate one ourselves. Note there's an old feature request with an .eot copy of a Tamil font: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2361 but we never had authorship info on the font or cross-browser support, since .eot is only supported by IE. -- brion

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Wiki editor wysiwyg
by apri a.vd.wiel 12 May '09

12 May '09

Hello to all, I am developing Apri wiki editor and at this moment have a what I call a working prototype which I want to share with you. Still a lot of work to do but I like the results so far ;-). Functionality is very basic but shows enough to give you an impression. UI is not what the end result will look like but I'm still looking for the right design in combination with functionality. Please see http://ria.apri.nl/mediawiki-1.14.0/index.php/Main_Page Read the page. Click the edit button and see what happens. Greetings, Andre

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Is mysql_real_escape_string needed?
by Jan Luca 11 May '09

11 May '09

Hello, should I use mysql_real_escape_string or do the DB class this automatically? Gruß jan

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uploading ODF files??
by Rayson Ho 11 May '09

11 May '09

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 8:22 AM, Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+wikilist(a)gmail.com> wrote: > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_format_policy, although that never > passed AFAIK -- but are probably not legal as long as we're only > allowed to distribute under the GFDL. While we are on this topic... I am wondering if (or when) we will allow ODF files to be uploaded to Wikipedia / Wikimedia. I created a presentation for a conference a few months ago; I think some slides can be reused by others... I think it would be a great idea to allow collaboration in creating conference presentations! Currently I can only upload the file as PDF, which is not designed for editing... I googled but could not find discussions on uploading ODF files -- which is why I still have not uploaded the ODF file to wikipedia!! Rayson ====================== Join the Grid Engine project!! http://gridengine.sunsource.net

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request for feedback on new-upload branch
by Michael Dale 11 May '09

11 May '09

The new-upload branch includes a good set of new features is available here: http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/branches/new-upload/phase3/ Major Additions: * action=upload added to the api * Supports New upload Interfaces (dependent on mv_embed / jQuery libs ) ** supports upload over http with reporting progress to user. ** support for chunks upload with progress indicators and client side transcoding for videos (chunks for other large flies types "almost there") (dependent on the firefogg extension) ** supports upload-api error msg lookup and report back. To test the new upload /interfaces/ you need the latest copy of mv_embed / add_media_wizard.js You can get by checking out: http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/MetavidWiki/ski… (add then adding something like the following to localSettings.php : $wgExtensionFunctions[] = 'addMediaWizard'; function addMediaWizard(){ global $wgOut; $utime = time(); $wgOut->addScript( "<script type=\"{$wgJsMimeType}\" src=\"http://localhost/{path_to_skins_dir}/add_media_wizard.js?urid={$utime}\"></script>" ); } Comments or references to new bugs can be reported to the following bug 18563 which is tracking its inclusion. == Things already on the TOOD list == * Deprecate upload.js (destination checks, filename checks etc) in favor of the jQuery / mv_embed style upload interface. (this is dependent on getting the script-loader branch into the trunk bug 18464 (along with base mv_embed / jQuery libs) ) will have a separate email with call for feedback on that branch shortly once I finish up the css style sheet grouping and mv_embed lib merging. --mv_embed upload interfaces-- * Support pass though mode for firefogg (passthough mode only in development branches of firefogg ... should be released soon) * Support remote iframe driver ( for uploading to commons with progress indicators while editing an article on another site (like wikipedia) ) (will be an upload "tab" in the add_media_wizard) peace, michael

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MediWiki 1.13 on FreeBSD-CURRENT, imported Spanish Wiki, result: mix of pages
by Matthias Apitz 11 May '09

11 May '09

Hello, I've installed MediaWiki 1.13, all required extensions, MySQL 5.0.77, configured MediaWiki and created a wikidb; after that I imported the three tables 'page', 'revision' and 'text' from a snapshoot of the Spanish Wikipedia: eswiki-20090421-pages-articles.xml.bz2 all details are in the attached installation guide which worked fine also on another laptop running FreeBSD 7.0. (the attached guide names the 1.11 extension, ofc for 1.13 I have installed the 1.13 extensions); There have been no problems noted in the 'mysqlimport' (btw: run 16 hours on the small EeePC 900). The three tables are there and filled, how can one prove for example with: $ mysql -A -uroot -pxxxxxxxxx wikidb Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g. Your MySQL connection id is 1 Server version: 5.0.77-log FreeBSD port: mysql-server-5.0.77_1 mysql> select count(*) from text; +----------+ | count(*) | +----------+ | 1114075 | +----------+ but if I launch a browser against the Wiki, for example: http://localhost/mediawiki/index.php/Roma I get a mix of information/pages which reads for this example: Roma Para otros usos de este término, véase Roma (desambiguación). Imagen:BH escudo.jpg Detalle del escudo de la fachada de la antigua fábrica de Eibar. Bicicletas BH, siglas de Beistegui Hermanos, es la denominación histórica y una de las marcas comerciales de la empresa Bicicletas de Álava, S.A., también denominada BH Bikes. La empresa, fabricante de bicicletas, tiene su sede en la localidad vasca de Vitoria, en Álava (España), aunque es originaria de Éibar (Guipúzcoa). Es uno de los más importantes fabricantes de España y tiene representación internacional. ... What could be the problem causing that? Thx in advance matthias -- Matthias Apitz t +49-89-61308 351 - f +49-89-61308 399 - m +49-170-4527211 e <guru(a)unixarea.de> - w http://www.unixarea.de/ People who hate Microsoft Windows use Linux but people who love UNIX use FreeBSD.

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Bugzilla Weekly Report
by reporter＠isidore.wikimedia.org 10 May '09

10 May '09

MediaWiki Bugzilla Report for May 04, 2009 - May 11, 2009 Status changes this week Bugs NEW : 128 Bugs ASSIGNED : 9 Bugs REOPENED : 16 Bugs RESOLVED : 66 Total bugs still open: 3643 Resolutions for the week: Bugs marked FIXED : 38 Bugs marked REMIND : 0 Bugs marked INVALID : 10 Bugs marked DUPLICATE : 14 Bugs marked WONTFIX : 2 Bugs marked WORKSFORME : 1 Bugs marked LATER : 1 Bugs marked MOVED : 0 Specific Product/Component Resolutions & User Metrics New Bugs Per Component Deleting 8 Page rendering 5 Site requests 4 Collection 3 General/Unknown 3 New Bugs Per Product MediaWiki 39 Wikimedia 8 MediaWiki extensions 7 Cortado 3 Top 5 Bug Resolvers roan.kattouw [AT] gmail.com 15 innocentkiller [AT] gmail.com 8 brion [AT] wikimedia.org 7 JSchulz_4587 [AT] msn.com 4 karun [AT] fastmail.fm 3

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Wikitech-l May 2009