Wikitech-l November 2015

wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org

118 participants
109 discussions

Security patch for Flow merged
by Matthew Flaschen 17 Nov '15

17 Nov '15

Nick Wilson discovered a security issue that affects Flow when used with caching proxies such as Varnish: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T116095 (this task will be opened soon). In such a setup, topics in cache would remain accessible after the board was deleted. We have deployed the fix to the cluster and merged it to the Flow repository. Let us know if you are using REL1_24 or REL1_25 of Flow and this issue affects you. Thanks, Matt Flaschen

1 1

Outreachy round 11 results out
by Tony Thomas 17 Nov '15

17 Nov '15

Hello all, Glad to inform that the results of Outreachy round 11 are out, and one of our candidate - Josephine Lim made it to the program for her proposal on Easier categorization of pictures in Upload to Commons Android app - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T115101. Congratulations to the candidate and the mentors involved. The select should follow up with the mentors to finish the 'Community bonding period' as per [1]. We had around 13 strong proposals submitted in the Outreachy application system for 9 projects - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/outreachy-round-11/ - but the Outreachy organization team made their rule of "Little or No-Commitment during Dec-March", and our applicants had to back off, considering most of them where University students. The applicants who couldn't make it this time are welcome to accomplish the project as per the proposal considering they have mentors ready ( if there is agreement from both sides ). This should possibly make them really strong candidates for the next round of GSoC/Outreachy, which is the bright side. Special thanks to all the mentors, who actively ranked the applicants before the deadline, and making it smooth for the administration team. The total listing of selections from all Organizations can be found over here - https://wiki.gnome.org/Outreachy/2015/DecemberMarch [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Outreach_programs/Life_of_a_successful_proje… Thanks, Tony Thomas <http://blog.tttwrites.in/> ThinkFOSS <http://www.thinkfoss.com> *"where there is a wifi, there is a way"*

2 1

Gerrit +1 now executes the code you reviewed
by Jan Zerebecki 17 Nov '15

17 Nov '15

I just merged and deployed https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/184886/ , which means: A +1 in gerrit.w.o didn't have any technical effect until now. Now it submits the patch for testing. That means if you +1 a patch from a non-whitelisted user that was not yet tested, it will then, just as if recheck was issued. Thus executing the code that you reviewed to not steal secrets or compromise security in other ways. -- Regards, Jan Zerebecki

3 3

Re: [Wikitech-l] [Analytics] Pageview API
by Bahodir Mansurov 17 Nov '15

17 Nov '15

Agree with everyone else, this is great! I just have a question. Is this an evolving thing in a sense that more data sources will be used to define page views? Let me give an example. Reading Web team is working on a new web app prototype that caches pages which can be viewed without hitting the back end. Since no request is made, no page view will be recorded. We may add an event logging event to record a page view which would be another source of information for this API end point. Baha On Tue, 17 Nov 2015 02:50:20 +0500, Dan Andreescu <dandreescu(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: > Dear Data Enthusiasts, > > > In collaboration with the Services team, the analytics team wishes to > announce a public Pageview API > <https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/?doc#!/Pageviews_data/get_metrics_pagevie…>. > For an example of what kind of UIs someone could build with it, check out > this excellent demo <http://analytics.wmflabs.org/demo/pageview-api> > (code) > <https://gist.github.com/marcelrf/49738d14116fd547fe6d#file-article-comparis…> > . > > > The API can tell you how many times a wiki article or project is viewed > over a certain period. You can break that down by views from web > crawlers > or humans, and by desktop, mobile site, or mobile app. And you can find > the 1000 most viewed articles > <https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/metrics/pageviews/top/es.wikipedia/all-ac…> > on any project, on any given day or month that we have data for. We > currently have data back through October and we will be able to go back > to > May 2015 when the loading jobs are all done. For more information, take > a > look at the user docs > <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Analytics/AQS/Pageview_API>. > > > After many requests from the community, we were really happy to finally > make this our top priority and get it done. Huge thanks to Gabriel, > Marko, > Petr, and Eric from Services, Alexandros and all of Ops really, Henrik > for > maintaining stats.grok, and, of course, the many community members who > have > been so patient with us all this time. > > > The Research team’s Article Recommender tool > <http://recommend.wmflabs.org/> > already uses the API to rank pages and determine relative importance. > Wiki > Education Foundation’s dashboard <https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/> is > going > to be using it to count how many times an article has been viewed since a > student edited it. And there are other grand plans for this data like > “article finder”, which will find low-rated articles with a lot of > pageviews; this can be used by editors looking for high-impact work. > Join > the fun, we’re happy to help get you started and listen to your ideas. > Also, if you find bugs or want to suggest improvements, please create a > task in Phabricator and tag it with #Analytics-Backlog > <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/analytics-backlog/>. > > > So what’s next? We can think of too many directions to go into, for > pageview data and Wikimedia project data, in general. We need to work > with > you to make a great plan for the next few quarters. Please chime in here > <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T112956> with your needs. > > > Team Analytics -- Baha

2 1

Design and development principles
by Keegan Peterzell 17 Nov '15

17 Nov '15

Hi all, Please note that what I'm about to talk about is informative to how the Wikimedia Foundation develops MediaWiki software. As you may have seen, engineering in the Wikimedia Foundation is working to define the software product development process to be used internally [0]. As part of this, I'm working on developing a list of guiding principles for the software development process [1]. For examples of what this looks like for some other organizations, please see [2] and/or [3]. There is an initial draft of principles up that resulted from the above, located on MediaWiki.org [4]. These are high-level principles that are meant to be overarching reminders of good practice for WMF engineering, a sort-of poster on the wall. Vagrity is intentional to an extent as a result. As noted on the wiki page, this list is being developed in spirit with Wikimedia movement [5] principles, the Wikimedia Foundation's Guiding Principles for operation [6, and a survey of some staff to find out what is important to them in the process [7]. Comments, questions, thoughts, and whatnot are welcome on the talk page [8]. 0. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WMF_product_development_process 1. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Design_and_development_principles 2. http://www.unicefstories.org/principles 3. https://www.gov.uk/design-principles 4. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Design_and_development_principles/Draft 5. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_movement 6. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Wikimedia_Foundation_Guidin… 7. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Design_and_development_principles/Survey <~ still to be filled in 8. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Design_and_development_principles/Draft -- Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Product Wikimedia Foundation

2 1

What's the previous=yes parameter?
by Denny Vrandečić 17 Nov '15

17 Nov '15

An example here: https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%92'%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%AA%D7%9F_%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%99%D7%A1?previous=yes I couldn't find a description of the "previous" parameter. Does someone know (and how do I find this out by myself)? (I was looking here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Parameters_to_index.php but could not find anything, so I assume this comes from some extension, but I do not know how to figure that out)

2 2

[BREAKING CHANGE] IE 8 will go JavaScript-less starting January 2016
by Krinkle 17 Nov '15

17 Nov '15

Hey all, Starting in January 2016, MediaWiki will end JavaScript support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 8. This raises the cut-off up from MSIE 7. Users with this browser will still be able to browse, edit, and otherwise contribute to the site. However, some features will not be available to them. For example, the enhanced edit toolbar will not appear, and the notification buttons will take you to a page rather than a pop-out. This change will affect roughly 0.89% of all traffic to Wikimedia wikis (as of October 2015). For comparison, 0.33% of traffic comes from Internet Explorer 6, and 1.46% from Internet Explorer 7. Support for these was dropped in August and September 2014 respectively. Providing JavaScript for IE 8 adds a significant maintenance burden. It also bloats the software we ship to all users, without proportionate benefit. This enables us to simplify and streamline the JavaScript codebase for all other users. Users unable to upgrade from Internet Explorer 8 will have a faster experience going forward, based on well-tested and more stable code. This change will land in the development branch in January, and so will be part of MediaWiki 1.27 (to be released around May 2016). Tech News will announce this change as well, but please help carry this message into your communities. In January, we will send a reminder before the change happens. Yours, -- Krinkle For details about the JavaScript-less experience, see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Compatibility

10 18

Wikimedia accepted in Google Code-in 2015 - Bring your tasks!
by Andre Klapper 16 Nov '15

16 Nov '15

Wikimedia is among the 14 organizations in Google Code-in (GCI) 2015! In Dec & Jan, many young students will want to contribute to Wikimedia. Will you mentor some tasks? It's easy and fun. GCI is a great opportunity to let new contributors complete those small little tasks on your To-Do list! Task areas are: Code, docs/training, outreach/research, quality assurance, and user interface. Do your docs on your wiki need some improvements? Does your template or gadget code needs some updates? Do you have small and self-contained bugs you'd love to get fixed? Does your UI have small design issues? Do your old bugs welcome some testing? Then become a mentor and enjoy working with a contributor! Add yourself to the mentor's table on the wiki page, get an invitation email to register on the contest site, and create tasks (which would take you 2-3h to complete, or less technical ~30min "beginner tasks")! Explain the expectations and deliverables in the task. Once the contest starts on Dec 07, be ready to answer and review contributions quickly. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in_2015#Mentors.27_corner Need task ideas? Check out the list of "easy" tasks in Phabricator: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Annoying_little_bugs lists Phabricator queries for your area! https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in_2015 has all information. Or just ask and we'll be happy to help! Thank you! andre -- Andre Klapper | Wikimedia Bugwrangler http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/

1 0

Update about on-going work on Notifications, especially cross-wiki notifications
by Nick Wilson (Quiddity) 16 Nov '15

16 Nov '15

Hi, this is an update on the work we in the Collaboration team are doing. Our focus is on cross-wiki notifications and other back-end improvements to that system. Our long-term goals are to make various improvements to the Notification system. Notifications are at the core of many different on-wiki activities. Making notifications easy to find and use can help those processes. We are focusing our immediate plans on supporting cross-wiki notifications. These will help editors stay informed about the changes they care about on every Wikimedia project on which they work. This is especially important for the editors who work on more than one wiki. Examples include if you upload to Commons, curate on Wikidata, or edit in two or more languages. The team has spent the last few weeks researching the existing and proposed features. This has included examining existing tools such as Crosswatch. We've been considering the problems of: * technical performance (scaling the requests across 800+ wikis), * user preferences (both existing and desired), * user interface design possibilities (how it should work), * how to release an initial, user-testable version for feedback and improvement, and * how to measure the impact of the project (reducing the time it takes to process a notification). We are also doing user research via 1-on-1 interviews. In these we ask active editors about their current notification usage and pain-points. Using a prototype we are evolving, we get feedback on directions to take the design. == Details and further reading == You can read more about the technical details at: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Cross-wiki_notifications . Some of the new backend improvements to Echo: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T107823 ("Rewrite EchoNotificationFormatter") and linked tasks. User preference options are: * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T117670 ("Define Cross-wiki Notifications settings") User interface design possibilities cover several questions. For example, how should cross-wiki notifications look within the pop-up? How and when should we add enhancements to the Special:Notifications page to filter things? We are drafting and discussing these in: * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T114357 (Clarifications to the currently confusing "primary/secondary" link, and proposed future enhancements) * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T114356 (Bundled notifications) * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T115264 (Controlling notification 'volume' based on the type or location) * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T115845 (Clearer use of the notification badges (coloured number in personal toolbar)) * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T115316 (Better organization of the Special:Notifications page) Note: Most of these are not part of the cross-wiki notifications feature. We won't for sure roll all these out together with the main change. We started user research at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T114086 and it continues at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T116741 . (Note: You can sign-up as a volunteer at https://wikimedia.org/research .) A user-testable release is still just in planning. We decided on a Beta Feature on each wiki as the most scalable and least confusing of all the do-able options. Read our plans in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T114237 ("Present cross-wiki notifications as a beta feature to users"). This will help users to try the feature anytime, disabling it if it interferes with their work in some context, and easily suggest how the tool could be improved. There is no system for users having or setting cross-wiki preferences. Waiting to building this would take a long time. For now, we plan to let you enable the Beta Feature at each wiki on which you want to test it. This will let you have a small-scale Beta Feature that you can all try out. We will be able to discover bugs, edge-cases, iterate more, and get even more feedback. Later, when we know what features you need, we can build such a cross-wiki preferences system (including the task linked above). Whilst you wait, we would love to hear your feedback on the above. What comments, what design ideas, and what technical concerns do you have? Please tell us on the linked tasks if you can. I'll send further updates, when the planned Beta Feature is about to be ready. On behalf of the Collaboration team, thank you to everyone who has given your help already. -- Nick Wilson / Quiddity

8 13

WIkigenes tools
by Pine W 16 Nov '15

16 Nov '15

Just noticed that Wikigenes has a couple of interesting tools. There's a way for editors to highlight the contributions in an article that were made by specific users, and also a way to rate edits on a scale of 0 to 4. I'm unsure how valuable the scale would be in light of Aaron's ongoing work about edit value and also in light of our "thanks" feature, but I'd like the ability to highlight contributions on a page by individual authors. Is there any possibility of bringing that tool over to Wikimedia sites? Pine

1 0

← Newer
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Older →

2025

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 November 2015