Wikitech-l January 2013

wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org

143 participants
159 discussions

Gerrit reviewer-bot
by Merlijn van Deen 02 Jan '13

02 Jan '13

Hello all, To add to the great work by Ori and Jon, I have my own recent pet project to announce: Reviewer-bot, which adds reviewers to any new changes uploaded to Gerrit. The basic idea is as follows: 1) reviewer-bot listens to Gerrit's events stream 2) a contributor uploads a new change (only the first patchset is reacted upon) 3) reviewer-bot checks http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Git/Reviewers to see which reviewers would like to be added to new changes 4) reviewer-bot adds the reviewers to the change Obviously, it's still in it's infancy, so it will probably crash every now and then. However, please try it by adding your gerrit username to the Reviewers page! Of course, I also have the obligatory 'Fork me on github!'-notice: the code is available at https://github.com/valhallasw/gerrit-reviewer-bot . I hope that, together with the RSS-based approach by Ori and the daily digest-approach by Jon, this will help to improve the Gerrit experience - especially for new developers! Best, Merlijn

7 12

updated book (article) collections in our MediaWiki Virtual Library (MVL)
by Thomas Gries 02 Jan '13

02 Jan '13

RE: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MVL I updated the book collections in the MVL: - replaced obsolete SVN articles with their git/gerrit counterparts - modified the saved_book template: in addition to PDF downloads, e-book "epub" download link is available These books are presently in the MVL bookshelf: mwbook #01 MediaWiki Developer's Guide (MDG) first book on MediaWiki; for newbies and experienced programmers mwbook #02 MediaWiki Security Guide (MSG) what you need to know about security issues and best practices mwbook #03 MediaWiki Interwiki and Interlanguage Guide (MIG) how to efficiently link pages between wikis and projects mwbook #04 MediaWiki Developer's Style Guide (MST) how to.. mwbook #05 MediaWiki Application Programming Interface API Guide (MAG) under construction mwbook #06 MediaWiki Git Guide (MGG) You are invited to add meaningful articles to books where you think they are missing, or to send me your proposals for improvements.

2 1

Unit tests scream for attention
by Niklas Laxström 02 Jan '13

02 Jan '13

Now that tests need +2 to be run, at least temporarily, I'm going to point out that I've not been able to run tests on my development environment in ages. I mentioned broken unit tests in Oct 4 on this list. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/64390 There are multiple fatal bugs (not to mention the numerous test failures), that halt test runs without any info expect the error. Some bugs I've reported: * https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/41491 * https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/42145 (skip the first few comments) Today I tried again and there is new one: Catchable fatal error: Argument 2 passed to OutputPage::addWikiTextTitle() must be an instance of Title, null given, called in /www/dev.translatewiki.net/w/includes/OutputPage.php on line 1426 and defined in /www/dev.translatewiki.net/w/includes/OutputPage.php on line 1472 This might be just a variant of 42145, but I can't tell for sure. I could add exception there, but the other fatal errors make phpunit not to display backtraces. I haven't yet had time to try to find out which test it is. This situation is starting to feel like a bad horror movie, so I ask everyone to give some tender, love and care to our unit tests so that I don't have to come up with even worse analogies. -Niklas -- Niklas Laxström

8 9

"Big data" benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices)
by ENWP Pine 02 Jan '13

02 Jan '13

I'm sending this to Wikimedia-l, Wikitech-l, and Research-l in case other people in the Wikimedia movement or staff are interested in "big data" as it relates to Wikimedia. I hope that those who are interested in discussions about WMF editor engagement efforts, WMF fundraising, or WMF HR practices will also find that this email interests them. Feel free to skip straight to the links in the latter portion of this email if you're already familiar with "big data" and its analysis and if you just want to see what other people are writing about the subject. * Introductory comments / my personal opinion "Big data" refers to large quantities of information that are so large that they are difficult to analyze and may not be related internally in an obvious way. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data I think that most of us would agree that moving much of an organization's information into "the Cloud", and/or directing people to analyze massive quantities of information, will not automatically result in better, or even good, decisions based on that information. Also, I think that most of us would agree that bigger and/or more accessible quantities of data does not necessarily imply that the data are more accurate or more relevant for a particular purpose. Another concern is the possibility of unwelcome intrusions into sensitive information, including the possibility of data breaches; imagine the possible consequences if a hacker broke into supposedly secure databases held by Facebook or the Securities and Exchange Commission. We have an enormous quantity of data on Wikimedia projects, and many ways that we can examine those data. As this Dilbert strip points out, context is important, and looking at statistics devoid of their larger contexts can be problematic. http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1993-02-07/ Since data analysis is also something that Wikipedia does in the areas I mentioned previously, I'm passing along a few links for those who may be interested about the benefits and limitations of big data. * Links: >From the Harvard Business Review http://hbr.org/2012/04/good-data-wont-guarantee-good-decisions/ar/1 >From the New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/technology/big-data-is-great-but-dont-fo… and https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/sunday-review/big-datas-impact-in-the-wo… >From the Wall Street Journal. This may be especially interesting to those who are participating in the discussions on Wikimedia-l regarding how Wikimedia selects, pays, and manages its staff. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443890304578006252019616768.h… And from English Wikipedia (: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_mining and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_intelligence Cheers, Pine

4 3

mwEmbed gadget
by Lars Aronsson 02 Jan '13

02 Jan '13

Lately, when I visit a Wikipedia page, it just doesn't stop loading. The indication in Firefox (on Linux) just continued to spin. But this stopped when I deactivated the mwEmbed gadget. Is something broken? When mwEmbed is activated, the bottom of my browser says "Connecting to prototype.wikimedia.org ..." This was observed on sv.wikipedia.org. Several other gadgets work just fine. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

5 5

Updated schedule for ResourceLoader, Lua, etc.
by John Erling Blad 02 Jan '13

02 Jan '13

I'm looking for updated schedules for rollout of ResourceLoader, Lua and other extensions/features. Are there any centralized page for such stuff?

3 3

"Big data" benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices)
by ENWP Pine 01 Jan '13

01 Jan '13

> Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2012 17:37:52 -0500 > From: Matthew Flaschen <mflaschen(a)wikimedia.org> > To: wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] [Wikimedia-l] "Big data" benefits and > limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR > practices) > Message-ID: <50E213C0.8020200(a)wikimedia.org> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > > On 12/31/2012 09:19 AM, Strainu wrote: > > Hi Pine, > > > > It might be because of the alcohol I've ingested these last days, but > > - what are you proposing exactly? > > I think Pine is just proposing people read the text and/or links, and > consider what Big Data means for Wikimedia. > > Matt Flaschen > > > Correct, I wasn't proposing any specific action. I was thinking, "Big Data is a cool topic, it's a big topic in its own right, it's relevant to several aspects of Wikimedia, and other people might be interested in reading about it or thinking about it in relation to work that they're doing or priorities that they have". Happy new year, Pine

1 0

Deploying to test2 before other wikis
by Rob Lanphier 01 Jan '13

01 Jan '13

Hi everyone, My understanding is that some new extensions intended for widespread deployment aren't getting deployed to test2.wikipedia.org before going to other production wikis. As I was discussing this with Chris McMahon, he pointed out that there's no stated policy that this should be done. test2.wikipedia.org is basically a standard configuration wiki on the production cluster that we use as the final place for testing before going out to other production wikis. Pretty much anything destined for one of our top wikis or to a substantial number of smaller wikis should go to test2. That's especially true now that our QA team is relying on test2 as an automated test target. Is there any reason why this shouldn't be a stated policy? If not, where should we state the policy so that people are aware of it? Rob

8 8

XOWA: a new, open-source, offline wiki application
by gnosygnu 01 Jan '13

01 Jan '13

Hi everyone. I wrote an open-source, offline wiki application and wanted to announce it here. My apologies if this email is off-topic for this mailing list, but I am hoping XOWA will interest some of you. XOWA is a standalone application that can read and edit Wikimedia data dumps offline. XOWA stands for "XOWA Offlines Wiki Articles!", but it also goes by the more generic "XOWA Offline Wiki Application." XOWA has several features: * Displays all articles from a Wikimedia data dump. * Works with English Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikiquote, as well as the non-English language counterparts (for example, French Wikipedia). * Renders articles with full HTML formatting. * Downloads images and other files on demand. * Edits articles. * Runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. * Installs to a flash memory card for portability to other machines. * Is customizable and extendable at many levels: from keyboard shortcuts to HTML layouts to internal options. * Is open-source under the AGPLv3 license. Screenshots of XOWA are available here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xowa. Imgur links are listed below: * The "Wikipedia" article in English Wikipedia (shows an article): http://imgur.com/a/OydBK#0 * The "Solar_System#Visual_Summary" section (shows more images): http://imgur.com/a/OydBK#1 * The "Pythagorean_Theorem#Algebraic_proofs" section (shows Math images from LaTeX): http://imgur.com/a/OydBK#2 * The "File:Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci, from C2RMF retouched.jpg" image in Wikimedia Commons (shows Wikimedia Commons): http://imgur.com/a/OydBK#3 * The "France" article in French Wikipedia (shows a non-English language wiki): http://imgur.com/a/OydBK#4 * The "Sandbox" page in Edit mode (shows edit mode): http://imgur.com/a/OydBK#5 As with anything, there are a few caveats: * Initial release: XOWA is currently in an alpha stage and there are many defects and omitted features. I'm hoping that 90% of the articles on English Wikipedia will render without issues, though the percentage will be lower on other wikis. * Performance: XOWA may perform slowly, depending on the machine's capabilities. As a rough standard of comparison, most pages load in less than 5 seconds on my primary machine (a Windows XP 3.4 GHz machine with 2 GB RAM and a 2 TB 7200 RPM hard drive). However, on my secondary machine (an Ubuntu Linux 1.6 GHz, 1 GB RAM machine with a 32 GB SD card) the threshold is 10 seconds. * Divergent code base: XOWA is written in Java and its approach is not a direct reproduction of the MediaWiki parser. As such, certain articles will render differently. In addition, many extensions have not yet been implemented in XOWA. * Some assembly required: XOWA requires that a user assemble the installation. This includes downloading and unzipping the MediaWiki data-dump, installing xulRunner/imageMagick/inkscape/MiKTeX, editing the config file, running batch files, etc. Although these should be straightforward one-time steps, it does mean that a user must be willing to do some technical tinkering to get XOWA to run. These caveats notwithstanding, I'm hoping you are willing to give XOWA a try. Here are the relevant links: * Instructions: http://sourceforge.net/p/xowa/wiki/Home/ * Files: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xowa/files/ If anyone has questions, please ask, and I will be happy to follow-up with more details. For reddit users, I am going to post a thread at www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia. Thanks for your time.

3 4

Jump to page:

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

Wikitech-l January 2013