Vagrant is a command-line tool for automatically provisioning virtual machines according to scripted specifications. The mediawiki-vagrant project bundles together specifications for quickly and easily provisioning a virtual machine running MediaWiki, suitable for development work.
I announced it a few months ago, when I had something nominally useful to share. Some people found it useful, but it was something I had cobbled together in a hacky way as I was learning Vagrant, and I wasn't very happy with the end result. In the intervening months, I got a lot of useful suggestions, and became more proficient in writing Vagrant and Puppet configurations, so I decided to do things over.
There's a lot more work to do (better profiling tools!), but I think it works quite well now, so I would appreciate some testing and feedback from others.
Installation instructions are available here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Vagrant
I hope you check it out, and that you find it useful. Feedback would be much appreciated.
I'd also like to publicly thank Yurik for testing this extensively on Windows and providing detailed logs when things broke. Thanks, Yurik!
--
Ori Livneh
All,
We are excited to announce that Brandon Black will join us this Monday
(2013-04-01) as a full-time member of the Operations Engineering team.
Brandon comes with deep and wide technical experience. Previously, he held
senior systems engineering positions in companies like SqueezeNetwork.com,
Veritas DGC, MCI WorldCom and Networks Online.
He is an active proponent and contributor of open-source software, and has
contributed a new GPL-licensed DNS software
(gdnsd<https://github.com/blblack/gdnsd>)
to accomplish global-level geographic balancing and automatic failover
without paying for expensive commercial solutions.
Brandon resides in Magnolia, TX, but has roamed the planet all his life
(like spending his High School years in Singapore). He is excited to join
the Wikimedia Ops team and hopes to learn many new things from the
experience. His interests include auto racing, being a professional
amateur, and learning new skills by starting projects which he has no idea
how to finish.
Brandon will be in San Francisco office this coming Monday and please drop
by to welcome him!
Thanks,
CT Woo
fyi, there is a nice % of grants for technical projects approved.
You can find the list at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG#ieg-engaging or keep reading.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Announcing Round 1 Individual Engagement Grantees
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2013 14:24:02 -0700
From: Siko Bouterse <sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org>
Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
To: wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Hi all,
I’m happy to announce the first round of Individual Engagement
Grantees today! The Wikimedia Foundation makes a variety of types of
grants, many of which focus on groups and organizations. Individual
Engagement Grants exemplify our commitment to increase support to
individual contributors to Wikimedia projects, with a particular focus
on making online improvements. These grants will support 8 Wikimedians
working individually and in small teams for 6 months to complete
projects that benefit the Wikimedia movement, serve our mission, and
strengthen our communities.[1]
For this pilot round, which began in February 2013, Wikimedians
submitted over 50 ideas and drafts from around the world. WMF
grantmaking staff narrowed these down to 22 complete proposals meeting
the eligibility criteria for review.[2][3]
18 Wikimedians formed a volunteer committee, with participants from 12
countries and from Wikimedia projects in 14 languages. .[4] Committee
members reviewed each proposal carefully, scoring them against a
rubric of pre-defined selection criteria and making recommendations
based on available funding for this round.[5] WMF grantmaking staff
shared aggregated scores and comments back with the community, while
the committee continued its deliberations to finalize a recommendation
to WMF to fund 8 projects in total.
All eight projects have been approved for funding by the WMF. In
examining the recommendations, we were struck by how varied these
projects are in terms of grant size, project methodology and
engagement targets. A central aim of Individual Engagement Grants is
to foster innovation, with a particular focus on online impact. We
think that innovative ideas and the skills that various contributors
bring to Wikimedia projects can lead to better online environments for
everyone, and we hope to learn a lot from these grantees about how we
can support more of this across the movement.
The round 1 selected projects are:
“Build an effective method of publicity in PRChina,” led by Chinese
Wikipedian User:AddisWang, funded at $350.[6] Addis and a small team
of volunteers based in mainland China will be experimenting with
social media campaigns to grow awareness of Wikipedia in China.
“Reply Edits,” led by User:Jeph paul, funded at $500.[7] Jeph is
building a MediaWiki gadget that creates a visual playback of the edit
history of a Wikipedia article, allowing users to see an article’s
change over time.
“The Wikipedia Library,” funded at $7500 and “The Wikipedia
Adventure,” funded at $10,000, will both be led by User:Ocaasi.[8][9]
It is worth noting that we hadn’t anticipated a dual project situation
and don’t expect it to be a usual circumstance. We’ve decided to fund
both ideas in this round, though, because IEGrants focus on funding
promising, feasible projects with good community support wherever we
find them. For the Wikipedia Library, Ocaasi will be building and
consolidating partnerships with reference providers donating access to
reliable sources for Wikipedia editors, and improving the systems for
managing these programs. The Wikipedia Adventure is an on-wiki game
that will be piloted on English Wikipedia using the Guided Tours
extension to determine whether this type of interactive learning is an
effective engagement strategy for new editors.
“Consolidate wikiArS to involve art schools,” led by Catalan
Wikimedian User:Dvdgmz, funded at 7810 Euros.[10] The WikiArS outreach
program builds partnerships with art and design schools to teach
students to create images for donation to Wikimedia Commons and use in
Wikipedia articles. This grant will support focused experimentation in
the existing Catalan program’s models that can allow the initiative to
scale and to be sustained as an international program.
“Elaborate Wikisource strategic vision,” led by Catalan Wikisource
User:Micru and Italian Wikisource User:Aubrey, funded at 10,000
Euros.[11] This project brings together the global Wikisource
community and other stakeholders to define a vision for the project’s
future. They’ll begin work on near-term goals that can be accomplished
by volunteers on-wiki, and investigate paths forward for longer term
improvements to Wikisource.
“MediaWiki data browser,” led by User:Yaron K, partially funded at
$15,000 in order to pilot the initial concept.[12] Yaron’s project
will create a framework to allow any user to easily generate apps or
websites to browse sets of structured data that exist on Wikipedia and
other projects running on MediaWiki.
Finally, we’ve provisionally approved an 8th project for funding --
“MediaWiki and Javanese script,” led by User:Bennylin, funded at $3000
-- provided that a couple of dependencies can be satisfied.[13] This
project will provide technical support using a “train-the-trainers”
model that teaches volunteers how to use Javanese script online,
facilitating the transcription of Javanese texts to projects like
Javanese Wikisource. The newly developed Universal Language Selector
extension for MediaWiki makes the use of this script online
increasingly possible. Because Benny’s project will rely on the
availability of this extension on all Javanese Wikimedia projects, the
start of this grant depends on the WMF Internationalization team’s
completing its scheduled deployment in coming months. We would also
like to see more discussion and input from other members of the
Javanese community demonstrating the potential of this project, and
will be working with Benny to figure out how to support those
conversations while we await the deploy.
The new grantees will begin work on their projects in the coming weeks
and they’ll be sharing progress and learnings with us all along the
way. Please visit their pages on Meta-Wiki for complete project
information and updates.[1]
Thanks to everyone who participated in this round! We look forward to
seeing even more of your ideas and input in preparation for round 2,
which begins on August 1st.[14]
Warm regards,
Siko Bouterse, on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation and the IEG committee
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG#ieg-engaging
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG#ieg-learn
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Committee/Workroom/Review/All
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Committee#ieg-members
[5]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Committee/Workroom/Review#review…
[6]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Build_an_effective_method_of_pub…
[7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Replay_Edits
[8] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/The_Wikipedia_Library
[9] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/The_Wikipedia_Adventure
[10]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Consolidate_wikiArS_to_involve_a…
[11]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Elaborate_Wikisource_strategic_v…
[12] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/MediaWiki_data_browser
[13]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/MediaWiki_and_Javanese_script
[14] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab
--
Siko Bouterse
Head of Individual Engagement Grants
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge.
Donate or click the "edit" button today, and help us make it a reality!
_______________________________________________
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Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Hello all,
Next week we'll be seeing the usual round of deployments, with these
highlights:
* For those that care about version numbers, we'll be starting 1.22wmf1
on Monday. :)
* On Wednesday we'll be deploying Phase II of WikiData to English
Wikipedia; expect big and good things!
For all of the gory details, see:
https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments#Week_of_April_1st
Thanks,
Greg
--
| Greg Grossmeier GPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E |
| identi.ca: @greg A18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D |
fyi, experiences from ghana ...
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: sandistertei <sandistertei(a)live.com>
Date: Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 9:54 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-GH] Wikipedia Visual Editor
To: Planning Wikimedia Ghana Chapter <wikimedia-gh(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
I have tried it. It's amazing. Less intimidating. Loading issues here and
there for our slow Ghanaian internet but it's fine.
I still use the old editor though.
Sandister Tei, www.sandistertei.com | Planning Wikimedia Ghana | 0203572222
Read Tei Ink Press magazine via Google Currents App. Visit www.teiink.com
-------- Original message --------
From: Nkansah Rexford <nkansahrexford(a)gmail.com>
Date: 03/27/2013 9:13 PM (GMT+00:00)
To: Wikimedia-gh <Wikimedia-gh(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Wikimedia-GH] Wikipedia Visual Editor
Hello everyone
You've been able to try the Visual Editor? http://bit.ly/10RlfH2
Facing any challenges you wish to discuss?
thanks
--
+Rexford <https://plus.google.com/107174506890941499078> | +Blender
Academy<https://plus.google.com/b/103109918657638322478/103109918657638322478/posts>
|
+233 266 811 165 l
BFCT<http://www.blendernetwork.org/member/nkansah-rexford-nyarko/>
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-GH mailing list
Wikimedia-GH(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-gh
We've been having a hard time making photo uploads work in
MobileFrontend because of CentralAuth's third party cookies problem (we
upload them from Wikipedia web site to Commons API). Apart from the
newest Firefox [1,2], mobile Safari also doesn't accept third party
cookies unless the domain has been visited and it already has at least
one cookie set.
Even though we have probably found a solution for now, it's a very shaky
and not elegant workaround which might stop working any time (if some
detail of default browser cookie policy changes again) [3].
I came up with another idea of how this could be solved. The problem we
have right now is that Commons is on a completely different domain than
Wikipedia, so they can't share the login token cookie. However, we could
set up alternative domains for Commons, such as commons.wikipedia.org,
and then the cookie could be shared.
The only issue I see with this solution is that we would have to
prevent messing up SEO (having multiple URLs pointing to the same
resource). This, however, could be avoided by redirecting every
non-API request to the main domain (commons.wikimedia.org) and only
allowing API requests on alternative domains (which is what we use for
photo uploads on mobile).
This obviously doesn't solve the broader problem of CentralAuth's common
login being broken, but at least would allow easy communication between
Commons and other projects. In my opinion this is the biggest problem
right now. Users can probably live without being automatically logged in
to other projects, but photo uploads on mobile are just broken when we
can't use Commons API.
Please let me know what you think. Are there any other possible
drawbacks of this solution that I missed?
[1] http://webpolicy.org/2013/02/22/the-new-firefox-cookie-policy/
[2]
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Site_Compatibility_for_Firefox_22
[3] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/54813/
--
Juliusz
In Wiktionary, it's very convenient that some words
have sound illustrations, e.g.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/go%C3%BBter
These audio bites are simple 2-3 second OGG files, e.g.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fr-go%C3%BBter.ogg
but they are limited in number. It would be very
easy to record more of them, but before you get
started it takes some time to learn the details,
and then you need to upload to Commons and specify
a license, and provide a description, ... It's not
very likely that the person who does all that is
also a good voice in each desired language.
Here's a better plan:
Provide a tool on the toolserver, or any other
server, having a simple link syntax that specifies
the language code and the text, e.g.
http://toolserver.org/mytool.php?lang=fr&text=gouter
The tool uses a cookie, that remembers that this
user has agreed to submit contributions using cc0.
At the first visit, this question is asked as a
click-through license.
The user is now prompted with the text (from the URL)
and recording starts when pressing a button. The
user says the word, and presses the button again.
The tool saves the OGG sound, uploads it to Commons
with the filename fr-gouter-XYZ789.ogg and
the cc0 declaration and all metadata, placing it
in a category of recorded but unverified words.
Another user can record the same word, and it will
be given another random letter-digit code.
As a separate part of the tool, other volunteers are
asked to verify or rate (1 to 5 stars) the recordings
available in a given language. The rating is stored
as categories on commons.
Now, a separate procedure (manual or a bot job) can
pick words that need new or improved recordings,
and list them (with links to the tool) on a normal
wiki page.
I know HTML supports uploading of a file, but I don't
know how to solve the recording of sound directly to
a web service. Perhaps this could be a Skype application?
I have no idea. Please just be creative. It should be
solvable, because this is 2013 and not 2003.
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
Hi everyone,
My name is Teresa (or terrrydactyl if you've seen me on IRC) and I've
been interning at Wikimedia for the last few months through the
Outreach Program for Women[1]. My project, Git2Pages[2], is an
extension to pull snippets of code/text from a git repository. I've
been working hard on learning PHP and the MediaWiki
framework/development cycle. My internship is ending soon and I wanted
to reach out to the community and ask for feedback.
Here's what the program currently does:
- User supplies (git) url, filename, branch, startline, endline using
the #snippet tag
- Git2Pages.body.php will validate the information and then pass on
the inputs into my library, GitRepository.php
- GitRepository will do a sparse checkout on the information, that is,
it will clone the repository but only keep the specified file (this
was implemented to save space)
- The repositories will be cloned into a folder that is a md5 hash of
the url + branch to make sure that the program isn't cloning a ton of
copies of the same repository
- If the repository already exists, the file will be added to the
sparse-checkout file and the program will update the working tree
- Once the repo is cloned, the program will go and yank the lines that
the user requested and it'll return the text encased in a <pre> tag.
This is my baseline program. It works (for me at least). I have a few
ideas of what to work on next, but I would really like to know if I'm
going in the right direction. Is this something you would use? How
does my code look, is the implementation up to the MediaWiki coding
standard? buttt You can find the progression of the code on
gerrit[3].
Here are some ideas of what I might want to implement while still on
the internship:
- Instead of a <pre> tag, encase it in a <syntaxhighlight lang> tag if
it's code, maybe add a flag for user to supply the language
- Keep a database of all the repositories that a wiki has (though not
sure how to handle deletions)
Here are some problems I might face:
- If I update the working tree each time a file from the same
repository is added, then the line numbers may not match the old file
- Should I be periodically updating the repositories or perhaps keep
multiple snapshots of the same repository
- Cloning an entire repository and keeping only one file does not seem
ideal, but I've yet to find a better solution, the more repositories
being used concurrently the bigger an issue this might be
- I'm also worried about security implications of my program. Security
isn't my area of expertise, and I would definitely appreciate some
input from people with a security background
Thanks for taking the time to read this and thanks in advance for any
feedback, bug reports, etc.
Have a great day,
Teresa
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Chot
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Outreach_Program_for_Women
[2] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Git2Pages
[3] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/q/project:mediawiki/extensions/Git2Pages,n…