Wikitech-l March 2015

wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org

116 participants
90 discussions

VisualEditor on Wikipedia now faster with RESTBase
by Gabriel Wicke 27 Mar '15

27 Mar '15

Hello all, Earlier this morning, we made some good progress towards a faster VisualEditor experience by loading the HTML from https://rest.wikimedia.org/, the REST content API that entered beta production a bit over a week ago [1]. Preliminary data shows a drop of mean client HTML load times by close to 40% from about 1.9 seconds to 1.2 seconds. The reasons for this speed-up are primarily - a reduction in HTML size by 30-40%, achieved by storing page metadata separately in RESTBase [2], and - storing (rather than caching) the HTML of all Wikipedia articles, thus eliminating expensive cache misses. So far we have enabled this optimization on all Wikipedias. Other projects with VisualEditor support will follow over the next week. There are also a lot more optimizations in the pipeline. Eventually, we hope to completely eliminate the need to re-load the page for editing by using the same Parsoid-generated HTML for regular page views. While many people helped to make RESTBase and the content API a reality (see the original announcement [1]), I want to specially call out Marko Obrovac for doing much of the integration work with MediaWiki and the VisualEditor extension. I hope that you enjoy the newly faster VisualEditor experience as much as we do! Sincerely -- Gabriel Wicke Principal Software Engineer, Wikimedia Foundation [1]: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2015-March/081135.html [2]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/RESTBase

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Reminder: AjaxDispatcher and Sajax are deprecated
by Krinkle 26 Mar '15

26 Mar '15

Hey all, This is a reminder that AjaxDispatcher and the Sajax js library have been deprecated for a while now (many years). They are still around due to them having been exempted from our deprecation policy – this because these features (as well as their deprecation) predate the existence of this policy and are part of our legacy stack. I'd like to propose their removal in MediaWiki 1.26.0. This is expected to release in November 2015 [1] for third-parties. For Wikimedia sites we'd drop it in June 2015 halfway our 1.26wmf branch cycle. Well after 1.25wmf22 [2], and shortly after the Lyon Hackathon. [4] Note that the Sajax js library has been decorated with deprecation notices, and re-deprecated with release notes since MediaWiki 1.22.0 (December 2013). Sajax usage has almost been eliminated. Migration should be trivial using jQuery. [3][4] AjaxDispatcher is typically migrated to an API module. [5] A few projects known to make use of Sajax: * SecurePoll * ReaderFeedback * BlogPage (Only SecurePoll is deployed at Wikimedia.) A few projects known to make use of AjaxDispatcher: * CategoryTree * Collection * FlaggedRevs * SecurePoll * SemanticticForms (All of which are deployed at Wikimedia.) Tracker bugs: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T55120 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T42786 — Krinkle Related thread: [Wikitech-l] Call to eliminate sajax, Daniel Friesen, October 2013 https://www.mail-archive.com/wikitech-l%40lists.wikimedia.org/msg63136.html Related trigger words: AjaxResponse, wgAjaxExportList, sajax_init_object, wfSupportsAjax, sajax_do_call [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Version_lifecycle [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.25/Roadmap [3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ResourceLoader/Legacy_JavaScript#ajax.js [4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2015 [5] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Ajax

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Monthly MediaWiki releases
by Thomas Mulhall 26 Mar '15

26 Mar '15

Hi it has been 3-4 months since the last mediawiki releases when will they have a new release since it has been a long time.

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Extension:Gather launching on beta for English WP mobile users.
by Moushira Elamrawy 26 Mar '15

26 Mar '15

Greetings, This is probably my first time to post on wikitech-l. I am Moushira, a new community liaison for mobile projects, I would like to share an update for a new feature that is ready for deployment. This January, Jon Katz announced a new feature in development <https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2015-January/080168.html>, and after nearly two months, Extension:Gather <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Gather> is now ready for beta launch scheduled for Monday. The feature will be enabled for logged in users on the English Wikipedia mobile website, who have their mobile beta features activated [1]. There is a list of FAQ <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Gather/FAQ> which includes information on usability and moderation, and you are welcome to add more questions to it :). The Extension will keep the name Gather and internally the team was more inclined to name the feature "Stacks". However, a survey study has been carried out by the design research team and Collections, as a name for a feature, scored far better than the other suggested alternatives. Full survey information and results are documented here <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension%CB%90Gather/renaming_survey>. There are different scenarios for how this feature can be used, either for subjective personal collections, or for broader use. This Beta test will help us discover what resonates. One idea we hope to explore is engaging editors via themed competitions using collections of articles one has edited on a particular topic (such as medicine). We are also interested to see how this tool can be used by WikiProjects, WLM, or the education program. We encourage you to play around with the feature and let us know how you're using it! This is a new experiment in content curation, which hopefully helps with learning new users behavior on mobile web. We are looking forward to learning awesome lessons from this beta launch. All the best, Moushira https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#Extens…

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Review Upload Messages
by Abhishek Mittal 25 Mar '15

25 Mar '15

Hi, I am working on resolving the bug :- https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T85924, which is related to displaying concrete error (warning) message when blocking SVG upload in mediawiki. I submitted a patch for the same https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/194466/, but the patch has not yet been merged possibly because the error messages can yet be improved or are missing some important details. I would greatly appreciate if someone can review the patch and suggest the required changes. The following links contain the major changes 1. https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/194466/6/languages/i18n/en.json 2. https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/194466/6/languages/i18n/qqq.json -- *Regards,Abhishek MittalB.Tech 4th year* *Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering* *IIIT Hyderabad*

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No RFC meeting this week
by Brion Vibber 25 Mar '15

25 Mar '15

The RFC IRC meeting didn't get scheduled this week; there will be one next week, details to be announced. Note we're also going to plan an IRC Office Hours for the Architecture Committee sometime to discuss plans for streamlining the RfC process, creating a code review "SLA", and more! Details to be announced. -- brion

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Org changes in WMF's Platform Engineering group
by Rob Lanphier 25 Mar '15

25 Mar '15

Hi folks, First things first: I'm not burying the lede in this email, so if you aren't interested in the inner workings of WMF's Platform Engineering team, feel free to ignore the rest of this. :-) We're making a few changes effective in April for Platform Engineering, which you all care deeply about because you're still reading. We're looking to give the teams a little more clarity of scope. Previously, among other teams in Platform Engineering, we had a large MediaWiki Core team, and a smaller Multimedia team. We played a big game of musical chairs, and everyone from those teams is part of a new team. Additionally, the Parsoid team got into the fun, getting a new member as a result. - Performance - This team is shooting for all page views in under 1000ms <https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1MtDBNTH1g7CZzhwlJ1raEJagA8qM3uoV7ta…>. The team plans to establish key frontend and backend performance metrics and assume responsibility for their curation and upkeep, and get a handle on web page rendering performance. Right now, it's all about VisualEditor, but over time, this is going to be a more generalized function. - Members: Ori Livneh, Gilles Dubuc (soon!), now hiring! - Availability - Make MediaWiki backend failures diminishingly infrequent, and prevent end users from noticing the ones that do by making recovery as easy and automated as possible. This team does ops facing work that contributes to the overall stability and maintainability of the system. Things like multi-datacenter support, and migrating off of outdated technology to newer, more reliable tech. - Members: Aaron Schulz and Gilles Dubuc (for now, until he wraps up work on multi datacenter) - MediaWiki API - This team's goal wil be make user interface innovation+evolution easier and make life easier for our sites' robot overlords by making all business logic for MediaWiki available via well specified API. Some APIs will be in PHP and some external over HTTP depending on the needs of other teams. - Members: Brad Jorsch, Kunal Mehta, Gergo Tisza, Mark Holmquist. Stas Malyshev plans to join this team when his work on Wikidata Query wraps up. Bryan Davis plans to join as soon as his role as interim Product Manager for Platform wraps up. - Search - Provide unique and highly relevant search results on Wikimedia sites, increasing the value of our content to readers and providing tools that help editors make our content better. The team will continue working on existing backlog of the CirrusSearch/Elasticsearch bugs and improvements, plus Wikidata Query - Members: Nik Everett, Stas Malyshev (for now...), James Douglas, also now hiring! - Security - making life hard for the people that want to do harm to our sites or the people that use them. - Members: Chris Steipp, also now hiring! - Programs support - support our non-tech programs with tools that delight our users and maintain the privacy and security of our community, providing infrastructure for things like Wikimania scholarships, grant program applications, and ContactForm. - Members: Niharika Kohli, Bryan Davis(20%) - Parsing (renamed from "Parsoid") - There are a number of changes to our PHP parser that would make things easier for VisualEditor and Parsoid, while at the same time offering a more powerful and easy-to-use authoring environment for our editors (even those using wikitext). Having Tim on a rebranded “Parsing” team gives that team agency to start evolving wikitext again, in a way that is supported by Parsoid HTML from day one. - Members: Existing Parsoid team (Subbu Sastry, Marc Ordinas i Llopis, Arlo Brenault, and C. Scott Ananian), plus (new) Tim Starling You'll notice that some of these teams are pretty small, especially given their scope. This is likely to be at least a little fluid for a while as we make sure we have the balance of work right and as we figure out the FY 2015-16 budget. Let us know if you have any questions about this. I say "us" because I'll actually be traveling shortly. Feel free to ask the individual members of the teams what's up, or if you don't know who to go to, Bryan Davis will be filling in for my duties while I'm out. Thanks Rob

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[Analytics] [Announce] New daily feed: media file request counts
by Erik Zachte 24 Mar '15

24 Mar '15

FYI: Today WMF Analytics announces a new product: a daily feed of media file request counts for all Wikimedia projects. Details at analytics mailing list. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/analytics/2015-March/003685.html Erik Zachte

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Can anyone please look on T72245 and T58063 issues?
by Nasir Khan 23 Mar '15

23 Mar '15

Hi, I get a number of emails for my watchlist articles and face a issue of "Mediawiki Email Formatting". I believe a lot of others are facing this issue too. To address and resolve this issue, two bug was submitted few months ago. Can anyone please look on these issues[1][2] and give me an idea if it is possible to resolve or not? [1] - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T72245 [2] - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T58063 thanks Nasir -- *Nasir Khan Saikat* www.nasirkhn.com

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Office hours for Flow - 23 March 2015 19:30 UTC / 12:30 PDT
by Nick Wilson (Quiddity) 23 Mar '15

23 Mar '15

Hello everyone, (my apologies for cross-posting) We'll be holding an Office hour for Flow on IRC, this Monday at 19:30 UTC / 12:30 PST.[1] It will take place in #wikimedia-office on Freenode IRC. You can find information on how to get online, including a link to a webchat option if you don't have an IRC client, on the meta office hours page.[2] The intended focus is for questions about the LQT -> Flow conversion on MediaWiki.org, as discussed in the related wikitech-l thread and onwiki.[3][4] Everyone is welcome for discussions and question answering. Logs will be posted on the meta office hour page afterwards. Thanks, Quiddity [1] Time conversion: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?hour=19&min=30&sec=0&d… (30 mins later than previously mentioned) [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours#How_to_participate [3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:Sdoatsbslsafx6lw and at http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/82069 [4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow -- Nick Wilson (Quiddity) Community Liaison Wikimedia Foundation

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Wikitech-l March 2015