Wikitech-l April 2017

wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org

81 participants
87 discussions

Tech Talk: A Gentle Introduction to Wikidata for Absolute Beginners [including non-techies!]
by Rachel Farrand 25 Jun '17

25 Jun '17

Please join for the following talk: *Tech Talk**:* A Gentle Introduction to Wikidata for Absolute Beginners [including non-techies!] *Presenter:* Asaf Bartov *Date:* February 09, 2017 *Time: *19:00 UTC <https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Tech+Talk%3A+A+Ge…> Link to live YouTube stream <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVrAx3AmUvA> *IRC channel for questions/discussion:* #wikimedia-office *Summary: *This talk will introduce you to the Wikimedia Movement's latest major wiki project: Wikidata. We will cover what Wikidata is, how to contribute, how to embed Wikidata into articles on other wikis, tools like the Wikidata Game, and how to query Wikidata (including SPARQL examples).

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O'Reilly free books
by Amir Ladsgroup 24 Jun '17

24 Jun '17

O'Reilly just published some of their popular books for free, either as part of open access movement or some kind of marketing (or both). I find them useful to Wikimedia developers. It supports several types of e-books so you can read it in your kindle, etc.: * Performance, Operations, Release engineering: http://www.oreilly.com/webops-perf/free/ * Data, AI, Analytics: http://www.oreilly.com/data/free/ * Programming, architecture, Open source culture: http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/ * Security: http://www.oreilly.com/security/free/ * Web platform, design: http://www.oreilly.com/web-platform/free/ This is a rather unusual type of email so I wasn't sure I was doing the right thing so I just sent it to wikitech-l. Please spread the word if you think it's okay or tell me if you think not. Thanks. Best

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Does Mathoid require RESTBase?
by James Montalvo 31 May '17

31 May '17

Extension:Math removed client side MathJax support after MW 1.25. This makes setup of the Math extension considerably more difficult. Mathoid was fairly straightforward, but RESTBase seems like it is much more complicated. Is RESTBase a hard requirement? Is there any way to connect to Mathoid directly, the way VE can connect to Parsoid directly? Thank you, James

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productivity of mediawiki developers
by rupert THURNER 30 May '17

30 May '17

hi, is there a statistics about mediawiki developer productivity? i just fell over a couple of pages and i am quite impressed i must say: * gabriel, https://github.com/gwicke, 2'300 commits last year * jeroen, https://github.com/JeroenDeDauw, 3'700 commits a year * ori, https://github.com/atdt, 1'700 * james, https://github.com/jdforrester, 1'200 * yuri, https://github.com/nyurik, 900 * matt: https://github.com/mattflaschen, 400 commits rupert

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MediaWiki 1.29 blocker bugs
by Andre Klapper 18 May '17

18 May '17

As 1.29 will appear in the next weeks [1], here are the open tasks tagged with #MW-1.29-release not scheduled for deployment [2]. Help, comments, code welcome: Remove $wgDisableUserGroupExpiry feature flag https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T162517 Patch exists but needs improvement. Require manifest_version to be set in extension.json https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T155610 Patch welcomed to emit a deprecation warning when not set Don't put arbitrary extension attributes in the top level extension.json schema https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T133627 Initial patch exists in https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/327882/ Unactionable Notice: JobQueueGroup::__destruct: 1 buffered job(s) never inserted https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T100085 Needs investigation. Cheers, andre [1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2017-April/088019.html [2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/2400/ -- Andre Klapper | Wikimedia Bugwrangler http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/

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Improvements to developer events in the WMF Annual Plan draft
by Quim Gil 16 May '17

16 May '17

Hi, the Wikimedia Foundation has published a draft of its Annual Plan FY2017-18 <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2017-2018/…> and it welcomes your review. I want to highlight here the improvements that we are proposing to the developer events (co)organized by the WMF. From local to global: The Technical Collaboration team proposes to combine multiple activities (often disconnected) in a single program focusing on onboarding new developers <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2017-2018/…>. We want to work with the Wikimedia technical community to bring a new wave of developers to our projects, and events play an important role. Local developer events We want to support developers and organizations willing to reach out to specific groups and geographies. We are hoping to see many local developer meetups and small hackathons or workshops around the World, starting small and simple. We should be able to offer introductory materials, contacts with Wikimedia developers in the region, maybe travel budget to send experienced volunteers to help mentoring the in the bigger events, maybe travel budget to invite the best newcomers to our regional and global events. Adding tech to regional Wikimedia events Last year we experimented organizing technical workshops in WikiArabia, and others have done similar efforts in other regional events (for instance, a small hackathon next to WikiConference India). We want to work with the organizers of these regional events in order to attract experienced Wikimedia developers and newcomers, organize developer activities, and also improve the collaboration between the technical and non-technical contributors in these regions. Better retention of newcomers at the Wikimedia and Wikimania hackathons Although we don't expect major changes in the organization of the Wikimedia Hackathon and the hackathon at Wikimania, we want to focus better on new developers onboarding and retention. In every Hackathon we meet many new developers, but the retention rates are very low. We want to review what we can do before, during, and after these apparently successful events in order to retain newcomers better. One hypothesis is that we should focus call for participation, scholarships, and Wikimedia Foundation participation in providing a great experience to new volunteers who have gone through local and regional events, and also "junior" developers coming from wiki projects through the development of bots, gadgets, tools, templates. A smaller and more focused Wikimedia Developer Summit After some discussions between Community Engagement, Technology, and Product, we have decided to propose a different approach for the Wikimedia Developer Summit. Organized by the Technology department as part of their technical community building <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2017-2018/…> efforts, we want the Summit to finally become the venue where the toughest technical problems are discussed between the stakeholders directly related. We want to reduce the size/budget of the event, separate it from the WMF AllHands, and define its main themes well in advance. A Program Committee <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T160996> would decide these main themes to be discussed at the Summit. We also want to explore the possibility of tackling some of these themes at the Wikimedia Hackathon and Wikimania, where we could get most stakeholders involved with just a little extra effort (since many of them would be attending anyway). We believe that this approach will serve better the Wikimedia technical community that we have, and also the the community that we want to have, with a new wave of developers joining our various projects. -- Quim Gil Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil

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eqiad->codfw datacenter switchover, weeks of Apr 17th/May 1st
by Faidon Liambotis 06 May '17

06 May '17

Hi all, You may have heard already that, like last year, we are planning to switch our active datacenter from eqiad to codfw in the week of April 17th and back to eqiad two weeks later, on the week of May 1st. We do this periodically in order to exercise our ability to run from the backup site in case of a disaster, as well as our ability to switch seamlessly to it with little user impact. Switching will be a gradual, multi-step process, the most visible step of which will be the switch of MediaWiki application servers and associated data stores. This will happen on April 19th (eqiad->codfw) and May 3rd (codfw->eqiad), both at 14:00 UTC. During those windows, the sites will be placed into read-only mode, for a period that we estimate to last approximately 20 to 30 minutes. Furthermore, the deployment train will freeze for the weeks of April 17th and May 1st[1], but operate normally on the week of April 24th, in order to exercise our ability to deploy code while operating from the backup datacenter. 1: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments Compared to last year we have improved our processes considerably[2], in particular by making more services operate in an active/active manner, as well as by working on an automation and orchestration framework[3] to perform parallel executions across the fleet. The core of the MediaWiki switchover will be performed semi-automatically using a new software[4] that will execute all the necessary commands in sequence with little human involvement, and thus lowering the risk of introducing errors and delays. 2: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Switch_Datacenter 3: https://github.com/wikimedia/cumin 4: https://github.com/wikimedia/operations-switchdc Improving and automating our processes means that we're not going to be following the exact same steps as last year. Because of that, and because of other changes introduced in our environment over the course of the year, there is a possibility of errors creeping into the process. We'll certainly try to fix any issues that arise during those weeks and we'd like to ask everyone to be on high-alert and vigilant. To report any issues, please use one of the following channels: 1. File a Phabricator issue with project #codfw-rollout 2. Report issues on IRC: Freenode channel #wikimedia-tech (if urgent, or during the migration) 3. Send an e-mail to the Operations list: ops(a)lists.wikimedia.org (any time) Thanks, Faidon -- Faidon Liambotis Principal Operations Engineer Acting Director of Technical Operations Wikimedia Foundation

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CREDIT showcase, Wednesday, 3-May-2017
by Lani Goto 04 May '17

04 May '17

Hi! I'd like to welcome you to join us at the CREDIT showcase next week, Wednesday, 3-May-2017 at 1800 UTC / 1100 Pacific Time. We'd like to see your demos, whether they're rough works in progress or polished production material, or even just a telling of something you've been studying recently. For more information on the upcoming event, as well as recordings of previous events, please visit the following page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/CREDIT_showcase And if you'd like to share the news about the upcoming CREDIT showcase, here's some suggested verbiage. Thanks! *Hi <FNAME>* *I hope all is well with you! I wanted to let you know about CREDIT, a monthly demo series that we’re running to showcase open source tech projects from Wikimedia’s Community, Reading, Editing, Discovery, Infrastructure and Technology teams. * *CREDIT is open to the public, and we welcome questions and discussion. The next CREDIT will be held on May 3rd at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 18:00 UTC. * *There’s more info on MediaWiki <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/CREDIT_showcase>, and on Etherpad <https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/CREDIT>, which is where we take notes and ask questions. You can also ask questions on IRC in the Freenode chatroom #wikimedia-office (web-based access here <https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=%23wikimedia-office>). Links to video will become available at these locations shortly before the event.* *Please feel free to pass this information along to any interested folks. Our projects tend to focus on areas that might be of interest to folks working across the open source tech community: language detection, numerical sort, large data visualizations, maps, and all sorts of other things.* *If you have any questions, please let me know! Thanks, and I hope to see you at CREDIT.* *YOURNAME* -- Lani Goto Project Assistant, Engineering Admin

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[ANNOUNCEMENT] REST API /page/mobile-text endpoint deprecation
by Marko Obrovac 03 May '17

03 May '17

Hello, The mobile-text endpoint~[1] was introduced in the REST API as an experiment in the early days of the Mobile-Content-Service~[2] to provide page content optimised for use in very lightweight mobile clients. The route was an experiment towards a new-generation lite app, initially targeted for low-powered, older Android devices. The idea was to use native Android UI components to show the page contents instead of in a WebView; alas, it was quickly surpassed by a new set of mobile-sections endpoints~[3]. The route is not maintained, there are no plans to use it within the WMF and according to our metrics the endpoint is not used by the community. Therefore, as part of the effort to consolidate the useful endpoints and focus on new features, we have decided to deprecate the route and remove it on May, 1st 2017. If you’re using the endpoint, please use the alternative mobile-sections endpoints~[3,4,5] instead. Should you have any questions or concerns, please reply to this e-mail or contact the Wikimedia Services Team~[6]. Cheers, Marko Obrovac, PhD Senior Services Engineer Wikimedia Foundation [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/#!/Mobile/get_page_mobile_text_title [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Team/RESTBase_services_for_ap… [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/#!/Mobile/get_page_mobile_sections_tit… [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/#!/Mobile/get_page_mobile_sections_lea… [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/#!/Mobile/get_page_mobile_sections_rem… [6] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Services

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"must be of type int, int given"
by Denny Vrandečić 03 May '17

03 May '17

I'm running into a weird problem, which made me reset my whole vagrant. I assume this is not strictly a MediaWiki issue, but probably an HHVM problem, but maybe someone can help me here. So, if I start a fresh MediaWiki Vagrant installation, and the vagrant ssh into the virtual machine, the fastest way to reproduce the issue is to start hhvmsh and type function f():int { return 1; }; =f() I get: Hit fatal : Value returned from function f() must be of type int, int given #0 at [:1] #1 f(), called at [:1] #2 include(), called at [:1] Any way to circumvent this (besides getting rid of the type hint, obviously)? Update to a new HHVM version (According to Special:Version, the HHMV version is 3.12.14 (srv)?

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Wikitech-l April 2017