Wikitech-l November 2013

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128 participants
127 discussions

Google Code-in starting NOW (important!)
by Quim Gil 31 Dec '13

31 Dec '13

Hi, Google Code-in is about to start: http://www.google-melange.com/gci/homepage/google/gci2013 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-In We have currently 72 tasks published and 13 mentors. We are still looking for more mentors and tasks. If you are interested, contact me. This is the first time Wikimedia participates in this program and the only certain prediction at this point is that we all will learn a lot. We have been warned that especially the first two weeks will be quite messy, with many impatient newcomers landing in our community channels and asking for help / feedback / review. Please be kind with them. Things will eventually settle down, partially because our documentation will be better, partially because the students interested in Wikimedia will be familiar with the basics and will know where/how to ask. Ideally https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-In should contain answers and links to answers for the frequently asked questions. Try to answer GCI students with links to the appropriate pages, and try to assure that such links are available at our GCI wiki page. Thank you for your patience. I have no doubt that your direct or indirect help will pay off with better documentation for all kinds of newcomers interested in many areas of contribution. /me goes to prepare a hot beverage. It is going to be fun. -- Quim Gil Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil

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Deprecation notice for etherpad-old.wikimedia.org
by Alexandros Kosiaris 30 Dec '13

30 Dec '13

Hello, As many of you might be aware, etherpad.wikimedia.org has been migrated a couple of months ago from the old and no longer supported etherpad software to the new, actively supported, etherpad-lite software. The move also involved the migration of pads from the old software to the new, a process which was quite successful, albeit not without glitches. Since then the old installation has been kept around under http://etherpad-old.wikimedia.org in a read-only state in order to facilitate people to access pads that, for whatever reason, may not have made it to the new installation unscathed (or at all). This service will be discontinued and taken offline on Monday, 30 December 2013. That grants 30+ days to people to copy out any necessary pads. With that in mind, the operations team would like to remind everyone that etherpad.wikimedia.org was never intended to be a permanent storage for pads. Preservation of a pad is up to the people interested in preserving that pad in another format. Regards, -- Alexandros Kosiaris <akosiaris(a)wikimedia.org>

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Wikipedia mobile app rewrite early test builds available
by Brion Vibber 18 Dec '13

18 Dec '13

As folks may be aware, over in the Wikimedia Mobile Apps team we're starting a refresh of the Wikipedia mobile apps for Android and iOS, which have not been updated in a while and are now wayyy behind the mobile web in features and UI awesomeness. The new apps are using native UI around the content web view, which lets us integrate with the system better than the old PhoneGap-based HTML app, and provide long-desired features like pinch-to-zoom in the article view. Our first 2-week work sprint is finishing up, and builds of current state are available: * Android: http://dumps.wikimedia.org/android/apps-android-wikipedia-dev-sprint1.apk * iOS: on testflightapp.com (email notifications sent to our recently trimmed beta list) Both versions are pretty bare-bones, so don't be surprised by missing icons, toolbar buttons that don't work, or incomplete design. :) This first feature sprint concentrated on getting search & basic content loading working. You can type into the search box, the search results include thumbnails, and you can select a search result to load the article. You can also click on internal links in both iOS and Android versions, though they get a little flaky from there out. :) Back/forward is not yet implemented on iOS; back works on Android but there's no forward. Note also the pretty animation when following links on Android -- neat! Next sprint's release should look more polished, as we'll have some more navigation working, and the first sprint stuff prettied up to better match design: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Search-overlay-01.png For in-progress design & UX ideas for the new app, see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_App_Design Note that you may or may not need to manually uninstall the old app if it's present first. If you want to try the iOS version and aren't on the beta list you'll have to build it yourself on a Mac with XCode 5, and then you can only install it on your device if you are a registered iOS developer (thank Apple's restrictions on third-party app installations!): $ git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/apps/ios/wikipediaapps-ios-wikipedia (Unfortunately we cannot add new people to the iOS beta list until Apple clears out old entries from our 100-max device database, either at the end of the calendar year or in February when our membership rolls over. Yeah, I'm serious...) And of course you can build the Android version too, and run it with no restrictions: $ git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/apps/android/wikipediaapps-android-wikipedia Note that there's separate work going to revitalize the Wikipedia app for Firefox OS, which will remain HTML5-based as that's how native Firefox apps work! That's being spearheaded by the Wikimedia Mobile Partnerships & Wikipedia Zero team. -- brion

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Architecture Summit -- Gathering all relevant RfC's
by Diederik van Liere 11 Dec '13

11 Dec '13

Heya, The Architecture Summit will be upon us in less than two months. To make sure that this Summit is going to be productive it is important that we discuss the right RfC's. Before deciding which RfC's should be discussed at the Summit I want to make sure that https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment contains all RfC's and that all important topics have an RfC. If you have a Mediawiki related RfC in a personal notepad, on your User Page, in your mind then this would be a great moment to write or move it under https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment and add an entry to the table. If you don't have 'move' rights then please let me know and I can move it for you. If you know of a topic that *should* have an RfC but does not yet have an RfC then please reply to this list mentioning the topic. I will check with Tim/Brion to see how these topics can get an RfC. Once we have collected all relevant RfC's under https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment then I will make a page where everybody can express their interest in which RfC's should be discussed at the Summit. Questions? Let me know! Best, Diederik

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Making MediaWiki extensions installable via Composer
by Jeroen De Dauw 09 Dec '13

09 Dec '13

Hey all, Several MediaWiki extensions, such as Maps and Semantic MediaWiki, are now installable via Composer. Lately I've been getting quite a few questions from developers on how to have their extensions support this awesome dependency manager, and decided to write down the most important points that are not obviously evident in the Composer documentation down. http://www.bn2vs.com/blog/2013/11/24/introduction-to-composer-for-mediawiki… Cheers -- Jeroen De Dauw http://www.bn2vs.com Don't panic. Don't be evil. ~=[,,_,,]:3 --

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Architecture RFC review meeting, Nov 6
by Quim Gil 04 Dec '13

04 Dec '13

It is confirmed: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Architecture_meetings/RFC_review_2013-11-06 Architecture Requests for Comments review meeting Wednesday, November 6, 2013 at 10:00 PM UTC http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20131106T22 #wikimedia-meetbot IRC The meeting is open to anybody. Still, it is useful to sign up in advance at the wiki page. RFCs scheduled: TitleValue https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/TitleValue Configuration database https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Configuration_database Allow styling in templates https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Allow_styling_in_templa… Password requirements https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Password_requirements -- Quim Gil Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil

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Facebook Open Academy
by Tyler Romeo 03 Dec '13

03 Dec '13

MediaWiki participates in a number of student competitions and programs as an open source mentor (such as GSoC, Code-In, etc.). Today I ran into another one: Facebook's Open Academy Program. https://www.facebook.com/OpenAcademyProgram I'm not sure how we would get involved in this program, but I'm sure people would agree it might be a good thing to become a mentor organization and have students contribute to MediaWiki as part of a college credit program. Any thoughts? *-- * *Tyler Romeo* Stevens Institute of Technology, Class of 2016 Major in Computer Science

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Call for participation: Wikis devroom at FOSDEM
by Quim Gil 02 Dec '13

02 Dec '13

Spread the news! https://lists.fosdem.org/pipermail/wikis-devroom/2013-October/000000.html Wikis devroom - FOSDEM, Brussels, 1 & 2 February 2014 CALL FOR PARTICIPATION IN SHORT We accept proposals for wiki related submissions. The formats accepted are 25min sessions or 5min lighting sessions. All proposals must be submitted via https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/ Deadline: 30 November 2013 Questions? Feedback? Willing to help? https://lists.fosdem.org/listinfo/wikis-devroom BACKGROUND Wikis are essential tools for online collaboration, open knowledge and free software. They are everywhere: from the mainstream Wikipedia to a myriad of public, academic and corporate knowledge bases and personal sites. And most of them are open source software. Wikis became popular thanks to the edit button allowing users to create and modify text-based web pages easily. Over the years wikis have become more powerful, handling more content types, allowing better look & feel, championing localization and integrating (sometimes) with other tools. The development continues, with hundreds of professional and volunteer contributors specializing in this area. There are also challenges: the competition from (mainly proprietary and corporate) social media and online office tools, keeping up with UX expectations from users, editors and sysadmins, compatibility across different wiki engines and other publishing tools, collaboration between wiki projects... SCOPE Wikis devroom is a place to showcase and discuss * new features, especially exploring areas beyond plain text editing * compatibility and integration with other tools and services * lessons learned from deployments, surveys, research... * cross-project collaboration We want to focus on sessions for a technical audience including savvy editors. Basic introductions for end users and long tutorials are out of scope. FORMAT One day, one room. Most of the schedule will be filled with sessions of about 25 minutes that have gone through a call for participation. We will have a WikiWiki Hour of lightning presentations (5 minutes each). We will organize a panel session with representation of key wiki projects - the specific topic to be decided as we confirm the participants. ORGANIZATION Quim Gil (MediaWiki), Vincent Massol (XWiki) and Jean-Marc Libs (Tiki).

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New collapsible elements behavior or more option for mw-collapsible
by Erick Guan 01 Dec '13

01 Dec '13

Since MediaWiki 1.23/wmf3 has been deployed to all Wikimedia sites, the old script in zhwiki didn't work any more. The zhwiki's collapsible behavior makes the whole header bar clickable and shows a helpful text indicating the collapse state. Thus, the Navbox and many templates can be easily expand by click the hotspot(header bar) instead of finding the "show/hide" link to click. What do you think of making this behavior as default? And now, because we want to make use of upstream jQuery.makecollapsible but not break the local collapsible behavior, I think the best way to fix this is adding some configs for jQuery.makecollapsible. Last, I'd like to see Extension:Scribunto's global module.. Therefore we can unify some common templates globally for unified user experience. -- Regards, Erick Guan/管啸 (fantasticfears)

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Need help of Python developers
by Alex Peek 30 Nov '13

30 Nov '13

We are looking for a python developer to create bots for uploading economic statistics into Wikidata. Economic data is usually from non-controversial sources such as the World Bank, IMF and other government sources. Statistics include GDP, GDP by industry, employment by industry, government budgets, inflation, etc. The python developer who builds the bots will be paid as part of this newly proposed IEG: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Global_Economic_Map If you have the python skill and want to be apart of this project, you can just send me a message here. Thanks in advance for your help, Alex

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Wikitech-l November 2013