Sorry for cross-posting!
Reminder: Technical Advice IRC meeting again **tomorrow, Wednesday 4-5 pm
UTC** on #wikimedia-tech.
The Technical Advice IRC meeting is open for all volunteer developers,
topics and questions. This can be anything from "how to get started" over
"who would be the best contact for X" to specific questions on your project.
If you know already what you would like to discuss or ask, please add your
topic to the next meeting: https://www.mediawiki.org/
wiki/Technical_Advice_IRC_Meeting
Hope to see you there!
Michi (for WMDE’s tech team)
--
Michael F. Schönitzer
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Tel. (030) 219 158 26-0
http://wikimedia.de
Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der jeder Mensch an der Menge allen
Wissens frei teilhaben kann. Helfen Sie uns dabei!
http://spenden.wikimedia.de/
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
Greetings,
Some improvements to viewing and managing user settings on the mobile
website (Extension:MobileFrontend) will be available this week. Here
is a short update on what is changing.
== User Features ==
* Font changer - This is an accessibility feature to increase font
size of articles to read. A lot of mobile browsers do not include this
feature. Accessibility is important to our readers and the feature has
been in Beta mode for a while. The team improved the way to change the
font size and promoted it to stable. [0]
* Expand sections by default - For avid readers and editors, opening
up sections every time on articles can be taxing. Now there is a
setting that will expand all sections by default. [1]
* Showing what changes are applied if a user enables Beta mode - Beta
mode on mobile did not communicate to users what changes were getting
applied to their experience. [2] This was a transparency issue in what
was happening to user's experiences. It also helps to encourage more
people sign up for beta features by showing which features are
available to test. This will help us collect feedback from more people
about our experiments.
== Technical features ==
* Use of modern UI library - Wikimedia Design has developed a style
guide and UI library under the OOUI framework. MobileFrontend will use
these components which are standard across other Wikimedia products.
The components use accessible color palettes and UI states.
For more information and feedback, check out the project page on
MediaWiki.org [3]
[0] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T109363
[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T169257
[2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T67079
[3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Settings
Yours,
Chris Koerner
Community Liaison
Wikimedia Foundation
Hey all,
As many of you know, the Timeless skin was deployed for testing across
all Wikimedia projects in late November last year. I submitted a Project
Grant proposal at the time seeking funding to more actively support for
this deployment as well as enable further development based on user
feedback and the bugs that have been coming up in practice, but the
proposal was ultimately vetoed in the late stages due to objections from
WMF staff.
It is my understanding that these objections have since been withdrawn,
and based on what happened, I have been recommended by relevant WMF
staff to resubmit the proposal in the subsequent, now current, round of
Project Grants. I have done this, and would like to invite anyone
interested in this project to comment (again, even) on the current
proposal, or ask any questions you might have on the talkpage. The
current proposal can be found here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Isarra/Timeless:_Post-deploy…
As for some general background:
If you don't know me, I'm Isarra, a volunteer MediaWiki developer and
designer, and a previous WMF grantee on another project, WikiProject X.
I originally created the Timeless skin itself as a volunteer project for
a Wikimedia Tech Talk in 2015; after that the skin just sort of sat
there being ignored for the better part of 2016, and then Paladox found
it, filed a bug saying it should be deployed to Wikimedia, and it turned
out a lot of people agreed with him and we spent most of 2017 pushing it
through various processes, reviews, and fixes to be deployed
(https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T154371).
If you haven't and would like to try out Timeless, you can enable it in
your preferences under Appearance > Skin, or just add ?useskin=timeless
to the end of most page URLs to see what that page looks like in Timeless.
Thanks,
Isarra
Hi Wikitech-l,
This email is directed primarily to the engineering and technical staff.
On February 1st, I was in a conversation with a few non-WMF engineers. To
my surprise, none of them said that they felt that their work was
personally meaningful to them, with one exception of an engineer who said
that he feels proud when people that he mentors become accomplished.
My guess is that when we are deeply involved in work, trying to fix a
frustrating problem, that we may sometimes feel detached from the big
picture and wonder why we are spending hours or days of our lives trying to
improve software or other technical tools. Perhaps we think something like,
"I have been studying this problem for ten hours, I have a meeting tomorrow
in which I will need to tell my supervisor that I have not fixed this bug,
and while I have been working on this problem my inbox has grown by 42
emails."
I hope that when we are in this situation that we can remind ourselves that
our purposes in life are probably not solely to fix bugs, to make our
supervisor happy, and to achieve "inbox zero".
Wikipedia and its sister projects are here to educate humanity, and our
individual activities contribute to the success of the larger whole. I like
the analogy of an ecosystem in which no one individual is essential, and in
which each of us as individuals, in all of our diversity, choose to
participate.
I hope that you feel that your work is personally meaningful to you.
If you feel frustrated or empty in regards to your work, and you need some
emotional nourishment -- I think that everyone does from time to time -- I
suggest that you communicate to your colleagues that you are taking a
break, that you silence your phone, and that you go for a walk outside for
an hour. While you're outside, you might practice some of Julian Treasure's
suggestions for how to listen to the environment
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSohjlYQI2A> (I'm not endorsing the
entirety of his presentation, but I think that some of his advice is very
good.) When you come back, instead of attacking the same issue that was
frustrating you before you left, browse the Featured Pictures archives on
Commons <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_pictures>, English
Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_pictures>, or
another wiki of your choice. Then listen for a few minutes to one of La
Pianista <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:La_Pianista>'s piano
performances (I'm especially fond of this performance
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chopin_-_Scherzo_No._3_(re-recorded…>
of Chopin's Scherzo No. 3 in C sharp minor). Then go to Wikistats 2
<https://stats.wikimedia.org/v2/#/all-projects> and try to get a feel for
how many people are learning about our universe through us. We had
approximately 189 billion page views in 2017, so we are probably doing
something well, and many of our readers and content contributors around the
world are probably grateful for our work in the big picture; WMF has received
comments from donors
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-November/085602.html>
which you may find to be encouraging.
After you've re-oriented yourself in the grand design, then you can return
to your work, hopefully with a renewed sense of meaning and purpose.
Regards,
Pine <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine>
Hello,
The feedback collection phase of this quarter's code stewardship reviews
has closed. Thank you to all those that provided feedback about the items
under review[0] and the process[1] itself. The next step in this
process[1] will be to summarize the feedback and review it with the WMF CPO
and CTO. Additional updates to follow.
There's been some discussion regarding this process and its purpose, I
wanted to take a moment to help clarify. Although the genesis of this
process was the Sunsetting Working Group[2], the process itself isn't
focused on sunsetting as the primary outcome. The primary objective of the
process is to help bring to light areas of code that currently lack
stewardship and define a course of action.
This is a process that we hope will give the both the Foundation and
broader community an avenue to raise stewardship concerns which could
in-turn affect the Foundation's planning.
As this is a new process, I'm sure there will be adjustments as we go
through it the first few times.
Cheers,
JR
[0]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_stewardship_reviews/Feedback_solicitati…
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_stewardship_reviews#Process
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Sunsetting_Working_Group
Hello -
The email below has a link to the feedback survey for the Wikimedia
Developer Summit 2018.
We welcome feedback from both those who attended and those who did not.
The feedback collected will have direct impact on next year's event.
Thank you for helping us to improve. :)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rachel Farrand <rfarrand(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Tue, Feb 6, 2018 at 5:25 PM
Subject: Wikimedia Developer Summit: Feedback / Suggest Process Improvements
To:
Cc: Victoria Coleman <vcoleman(a)wikimedia.org>
Hello -
Please take a moment to fill out the feedback survey for the Wikimedia
Developer Summit 2018.
Many of the questions are fill-in-the-blank so you can choose to answer all
of them or only the ones related to areas where you would like to give
feedback.
You do not need to have attended the Wikimedia Developer Summit 2018 to
fill out the feedback survey, we welcome input from anyone.
Survey deadline: 20 February, 2018.
A summary of the survey results will eventually be posted here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Developer_
Summit/2018/Lessons_Learned
*FEEDBACK SURVEY LINK:* https://goo.gl/forms/XvFRXSRVEaSxjhe52
Thank you very much in advance for taking the time to help us improve.
--
Rachel Farrand
Events Program Manager
Technical Collaboration Team
Wikimedia Foundation
--
Rachel Farrand
Events Program Manager
Technical Collaboration Team
Wikimedia Foundation
Hiya!
I halted the train this afternoon. tl;dr: I rolled wmf.20 to group1 and I
saw a huge spike in DB replag and Cirrus errors. Rolling back made them go
away!
There are tasks:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T186765https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T186764
I think Eric/Stas already fixed the Cirrus bug. The other one was
temporally related, but I dunno about causally.
Needs more investigation if we want to roll forward tomorrow!
<3
-Chad
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Scrum_of_scrums/2018-02-07#Readers_Web
*= 2018-02-07 =*
== Callouts ==
* In case you weren't already aware, Annual Planning is happening. If you
envision any needs from SREs (formerly Ops) in the next Fiscal Year, please
let us know
* Wikidata Query Service UI needs an UrlShortener, what's the state?
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T133109
** +1 from Stas
* Analysts, PMs: working on replacing analytics-store in the long term, let
us know of your use case to analytics(a)lists.wikimedia.org
* Tidy replaced on he.wp, fi.wp, ru.wp, sv.wp + 200 additional wikis
yesterday (see subtasks attached to
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T175706 ). 410 wikis done, 500 more to
go. Will target more wikis for end of Feb.
== Audiences ==
=== Readers ===
==== iOS native app ====
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
** Released 5.7.5 - Search history bug fix, minor crash fix (
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/view/3218/ )
** Continuing work on 5.8.0 - Synced Reading Lists (
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/ios-app-v5.8.0-manatee-on-a-skateboar…
)
==== Android native app ====
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
** Released new version to production (reading list performance
improvements)
** Continuing work on synced reading lists
==== Readers Web ====
* Blocked by:
Release Engineering - Need some input on
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T179552 relating to Docker browser test
image
* Blocking:
* Updates:
** Will be adding instrumentation for page preview "page views" (
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T184793 )
** Rolling out a new version of Special:MobileOptions on mobile
** Adding mobile skin PDF generation support (
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T181680 )
==== Readers Infrastructure ====
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
** deployed logging code + notice on registration page to collect user data
for the AICaptcha project (T186244) (Outreachy, not Reading Infrastructure,
but there wasn't a better place to put it)
** TemplateStyles deployment to svwiki this week being discussed (T176082)
===== Maps =====
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
==== Multimedia ====
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates: N/A
=== Contributors ===
==== Community Tech ====
* Blocked by: Security on GlobalPreferences review
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T184643
* Blocking: none
* Updates: mostly polishing stuff
==== Editing ====
* Blocked by: none
* Blocking: none
* Updates: New wikitext editor performance
==== Parsing ====
* Blocked by: none
* Blocking: none
* Updates:
** Tidy replaced on he.wp, fi.wp, ru.wp, sv.wp + 200 additional wikis
yesterday (see subtasks attached to
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T175706 ). 410 wikis done, 500 more to
go. Will target more wikis for end of Feb.
** Couple of us have been involved in a lot of annual planning related
meetings as part of the audience-tech working group.
==== Collaboration ====
* Blocked by: nobody
* Blocking: ops on Flow dumps
* Updates:
** Wrapping our heads around this new maps thing
==== Language ====
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
=== Audiences Design ===
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
==== UI Standardization ====
** OOUI v0.25.2 released
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/GOJU/browse/master/History.md
*** Deprecation: Flag indicator 'alert' as 'to be removed' (Volker E.)
*** Also 5 new features, 4 style amendments and 17 code improvements & fixes
* Ongoing:
** OOUI & based products:
*** icons: Unify, refine and align to WikimediaUI Style Guide
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T177432 – patch seq to review:
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/402757/
** Style Guide v1 tasks identified and on plan to be implemented
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/wikimediaui_style_guide/
** Research Landing Page has launched: https://research.wikimedia.org/ –
building on top of Style Guide
== Technology ==
=== Analytics ===
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
** Upgrade to Java 8, affecting the whole Hadoop cluster, has been
postponed to next week due to a few slow jobs
* Updates:
** Offsite last week
** Starting back to work on geowiki (editors per geographical zones).
** Ongoing issues with research project data that is due for deletion (past
90 days mark) that contains PII.
** Meeting with audiences (Jon, Adam, Danny) to talk about next year
** Meeting with security and Legal around GDPR (new data protection
regulation going into effect in EU)
=== Cloud Services ===
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
** Resuming goal work for Labweb, Neutron, and Dumps
** Sarah met with BSU!
** James sketching out roadmap for Tools Catalog
** Onboarding Brooke
=== Fundraising Tech ===
* Blocked by: lenovo laptop recall:
https://support.lenovo.com/co/es/solutions/ht504453
* Blocking:
* Updates:
** EventLogging for CentralNotice, thanks Performance team for code review
** Upgrading our Civi instance to latest version, upstreaming as many of
our local patches as possible
** Continuing work on new API for main credit card processor
=== MediaWiki Platform ===
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
** Planning for ATWG Cross Departmental Program
** cleanupUsersWithNoId: ready to go once the train runs on Friday
** Comment table final schema update ran on Monday and was enabled Tuesday
on test wikis
** Code coverage
*** @covers tags for extensions
*** Per-patch coverage report generation project almost complete
** Updated proof-of-concept patch for using NPM for JavaScript package
management
** Kunal helping Brian deploy
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phan-taint-check-plugin to CI
** SPECTRE/Lua analysis
** Cindy was interviewed about MediaWiki for Yaron Koren's new "Between the
Brackets" podcast which was posted Tuesday (
http://betweenthebrackets.libsyn.com/episode-1-cindy-cicalese )
** Thanks to David Strine, Wikipedia and the NASA EVA wiki *may* be going
to the International Space Station using Kiwix. This is a first step in a
longer timeline project to get editable content on the ISS.
=== Performance ===
* Blocked by:
** waiting on update of mcrouter package on labs (was blocked as of Monday
afternoon, may have been done by now)
* Blocking:
** none?
* Updates:
** Working to identify root cause of a SaveTiming spike from 2/4
** Added perf tests against svwiki for TemplateStyles changes (Reading team)
** Working with Community Liason team to get Performance Inspector deployed
** NavTiming changes rolling out this week, more on the train for next week
** Annual Planning consuming
** mcrouter package awaiting deploy on labs
** Thumbor private wiki support merged and working on Vagrant, next step is
to get it in to Production
=== Release Engineering ===
* Blocked by:
** None
* Blocking:
** None?
* Updates:
** Whole team back from offsite, slowly recovering from jet lag
** wmf.20 rolling out this week as normal, deployments back to normal
=== Research ===
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
=== Scoring Platform ===
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
=== Search Platform ===
* Blocked by: none
* Blocking: none
* Updates:
** Search profile refactoring merged, see the docs:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CirrusSearch/Profiles
** WDQS MWAPI now supports continuations:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T178712
** Working on query parsing refactoring:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T185108
** Working on Serbian analyzer for ES:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T183015
** Working on Kafka/EventBus poller for WDQS:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T185951
** SPARQL client in core in review:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T185127
** Deep category search in review: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T184840
=== Security ===
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
=== Services ===
* Blocked by: none
* Blocking: Reading on new summary content rollout
* Updates:
** htmlCacheUpdate job transferred to kafka completely.
** Running dumps to update bugged cached mobile-sections content
** Preparing for the big migration of the summary content from Action API
to Mobile-Content-Service
** Preparing big update to librdkafka from 0.9.1 to 0.11.3 on SCB
=== Site Reliability Engineering ===
* Blocked by:
** Collaboration on Flow dumps: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T164262
* Blocking:
** None
* Updates:
** Annual planning/Capex in full throttle, slower responses from the
team(teams more correctly) is expected. Please if you did not know this
already, reach out to us with needs for the next Fiscal Year
** 2 of team members presented in FOSDEM:
*** https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/tls_mysql/ Jaime,
https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/cumin_automation/ Riccardo
** Varnish 5 upgrade on all Traffic clusters ongoing
== Wikidata ==
* Rolling out fine grained usage tracking on more wikis:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T185032
* Gathering data and fine tuning usage tracking:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T185693
* Still fiddling with edit summaries
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T184702 and diffs
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T186317 when editing Lexemes and Forms of
a Lexeme.
* Blocked by: We get community requests for a supported UrlShortener,
required for Wikidata Query Service UI. What's the state?
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T133109
== German Technical Wishlist ==
* Starting first test with improved version of the TwoColConflict screen
with users
* Continuing the work on the wikidiff2 algo improving the thresholds for
the change detection
* Continuing to work on AdvancedSearch
== SoS Meeting Bookkeeping ==
* Updates:
* Goals - Grace will add to each section
* Grace can only attend this meeting every other week, flow is going
good
* Ops: lack of physcial attendance isn't too horrible but we miss them