Wikitech-l May 2018

wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org

80 participants
78 discussions

How to make commits from mirrored Wikimedia repos show up on your GitHub profile
by Bartosz Dziewoński 27 Jun '24

27 Jun '24

I know it has been annoying a couple of people other than me, so now that I've learned how to make it work I'll share the knowledge here. tl;dr: Star the repositories. No, seriously. (And yes, you need to star each extension repo separately.) (Is there a place on mw.org to put this tidbit on?) ------- Forwarded message ------- From: "Brian Levine" <support(a)github.com> (GitHub Staff) To: matma.rex(a)gmail.com Cc: Subject: Re: Commits in mirrored repositories not showing up on my profile Date: Tue, 09 Jul 2013 06:47:19 +0200 Hi Bartosz In order to link your commits to your GitHub account, you need to have some association with the repository other than authoring the commit. Usually, having push access gives you that connection. In this case, you don't have push permission, so we don't link you to the commit. The easy solution here is for you to star the repository. If you star it - along with the other repositories that are giving you this problem - we'll see that you're connected to the repository and you'll get contribution credit for those commits. Cheers Brian -- Matma Rex

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Research FAQ gets a facelift
by Dario Taraborelli 25 Jun '24

25 Jun '24

We just released a new version of Research:FAQ on Meta [1], significantly expanded and updated, to make our processes at WMF more transparent and to meet an explicit FDC request to clarify the role and responsibilities of individual teams involved in research across the organization. The previous version – written from the perspective of the (now inactive) Research:Committee, and mostly obsolete since the release of WMF's open access policy [2] – can still be found here [3]. Comments and bold edits to the new version of the document are welcome. For any question or concern, you can drop me a line or ping my username on-wiki. Thanks, Dario [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:FAQ [2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Open_access_policy [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Research:FAQ&oldid=15176953 *Dario Taraborelli *Head of Research, Wikimedia Foundation wikimediafoundation.org • nitens.org • @readermeter <http://twitter.com/readermeter>

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bluejeans
by Jeremy Baron 22 Feb '23

22 Feb '23

Hi, On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 3:36 PM, David Strine <dstrine(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: > We will be holding this brownbag in 25 minutes. The Bluejeans link has > changed: > > https://bluejeans.com/396234560 I'm not familiar with bluejeans and maybe have missed a transition because I wasn't paying enough attention. is this some kind of experiment? have all meetings transitioned to this service? anyway, my immediate question at the moment is how do you join without sharing your microphone and camera? am I correct thinking that this is an entirely proprietary stack that's neither gratis nor libre and has no on-premise (not cloud) hosting option? are we paying for this? -Jeremy

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New DB_REPLICA constant; DB_SLAVE deprecated
by Aaron Schulz 03 Jul '20

03 Jul '20

As of 950cf6016c, the mediawiki/core repo was updated to use DB_REPLICA instead of DB_SLAVE, with the old constant left as an alias. This is part of a string of commits that cleaned up the mixed use of "replica" and "slave" by sticking to the former. Extensions have not been mass converted. Please use the new constant in any new code. The word "replica" is a bit more indicative of a broader range of DB setups*, is used by a range of large companies**, and is more neutral in connotations. Drupal and Django made similar updates (even replacing the word "master"): * https://www.drupal.org/node/2275877 * https://github.com/django/django/pull/2692/files & https://github.com/django/django/commit/beec05686ccc3bee8461f9a5a02c607a023… I don't plan on doing anything to DB_MASTER, since it seems fine by itself, like "master copy", "master tape" or "master key". This is analogous to a master RDBMs database. Even multi-master RDBMs systems tend to have a stronger consistency than classic RDBMs slave servers, and present themselves as one logical "master" or "authoritative" copy. Even in it's personified form, a "master" database can readily be thought of as analogous to "controller", "governer", "ruler", lead "officer", or such.** * clusters using two-phase commit, galera using certification-based replication, multi-master circular replication, ect... ** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master/slave_(technology)#Appropriateness_of_… *** http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/master?utm_campaign=sd&utm_medium… -- -Aaron

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Life hack: Working with production content in your local wiki
by Jon Robson 12 Dec '18

12 Dec '18

I've been meaning to document this for a while. If you're finding yourself visiting Special:Export/Import often for the purpose of MediaWiki development there is a much better way to get content into your local wiki for testing purposes. This short video explains how MobileFrontend extension provides tooling to help you debug live on-wiki content via $wgMFContentProviderClass [1] https://youtu.be/uRQzjN0hBlY Hope it saves someone lots of time! [1] https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki-extensions-MobileFrontend/blob/maste… -- Jon Robson Senior Software Engineer

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Roadmap for CX?
by Strainu 06 Sep '18

06 Sep '18

Following the recent outage, we've had a new series of complaints about the lack of improvements in CX, especially related to server-side activities like saving/publishing pages. Now, I know the team is involved in a long-term effort to merge the editor with the VE, but is there an end in sight for that effort? Can I tell people who ask "look, 6 more months then we'll have a much better translation tool"? Is there a publicly available roadmap for this project and more generally, for CX? Thanks, Strainu

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MediaWiki and OpenID Connect
by Adam Sobieski 11 Jul '18

11 Jul '18

Wikitech-l, Greetings. I would like to describe an exciting scenario possible with OpenID Connect. In the scenario, after choosing to verify their name on their Wikipedia account, a user logs onto Wikipedia and uses OpenID Connect to link their Wikipedia account to multiple verified accounts, for example their Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. At the end of the process, we can envision the user obtaining a checkmark next to their full name on Wikipedia, their real name and a verification icon appearing next to their edits and on their user page. There might even be, per user settings, hyperlinks to their Facebook and LinkedIn pages on their Wikipedia user page. With such features, we can envision allowing groups of users or admins to determine that certain articles require a verified account to edit. Presently, OpenID Connect functionality is available for MediaWiki as an extension. I would like to see the OpenID Connect functionality under discussion expanded to support scenarios including aforementioned and also integrated into MediaWiki. Thank you. I hope that the above ideas are also interesting to you in the Wikitech-l community. Best regards, Adam Sobieski http://www.phoster.com/contents/

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Your feedback requested - Beta Cluster Survey...
by Jean-Rene Branaa 15 Jun '18

15 Jun '18

The Wikimedia Foundation Technology department is seeking feedback regarding your current and future use of the Beta Cluster[0]. The anonymized results of this survey will be used by the Wikimedia Foundation Technology department to inform future decisions. This survey will be conducted via a third-party service, which may subject it to additional terms. For more information on privacy and data-handling, see the survey privacy statement[1]. Please help us improve the Beta Cluster by filling out this quick survey: https://goo.gl/forms/XgIxXiSi1G5eVHbp2 This survey will be open until June 15th, 2018. Thanks! Jean-René Branaa Wikimedia Foundation - Technology [0] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Cluster [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Beta_Cluster_Survey_Privacy_Statement

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[nominations needed] Wikimedia Technical Conference
by Deborah Tankersley 07 Jun '18

07 Jun '18

*Hello,We recently announced the new Wikimedia Technical Conference (TechConf) during the closing session of the Barcelona Hackathon on May 20, 2018. We are sending this email to give an update on the planning and organization, and to also let everyone know how the nomination process will work for those interested in attending. The Wikimedia Technical Conference will take place in Portland, OR, USA on October 22-25, 2018. And, as mentioned in previous emails [1][2] and on the wiki page [3], this conference will be focused on the cross-departmental program called Platform Evolution. We will be providing more information and context as we go along in the process.For this conference, we are looking for diverse stakeholders, perspectives, and experiences that will help us to make informed decisions for the future evolution of the platform. We need people who can create and architect solutions, as well as those who actually make decisions on funding and prioritization for the projects.Later this week, we will send out a form to provide more detailed information on the nomination process and how to nominate people (or it can be yourself) to attend this conference, along with the skills, experiences, and/or backgrounds that we are looking for. Due to the time needed for visa application and other constraints, the deadline for nominations will be June 8th. Please make sure that you don’t miss the deadline!If you have any questions, please post them on the talk page [4][1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2018-April/047367.html <https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2018-April/047367.html> [2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2018-April/089738.html <https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2018-April/089738.html> [3] https://mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Technical_Conference/2018 <https://mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Technical_Conference/2018> [4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Technical_Conference/2018 <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Technical_Conference/2018> * *Cheers from the Program Committee:* *Kate, Corey, Joaquin, Greg, Birgit and TheDJ* -- deb tankersley Program Manager, Engineering Wikimedia Foundation

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New feature deployed: Finding text changes in moved paragraphs in diffs
by Birgit Müller 06 Jun '18

06 Jun '18

Hi all, over the past 1,5 years WMDE’s Technical Wishes team was working on a major improvement of wikidiff2 [1] - the engine behind the wikitext diff view. The major outcome of our improvements got deployed to most wikis just now: It is now easier to find moved paragraphs and text changes inside them. [2] Why we worked on this: The idea for the project arose from the wishlist of the German-speaking communities: Show text changes in moved paragraphs. Before we worked on this, moved paragraphs were shown in the diff as a deleted paragraph and then as an added paragraph. This meant that you had to parse visually through the paragraphs to find any potential changes - a fact that vandals liked to make use of. [3] Desktop version, mobile version The desktop version of the feature already got deployed to Mediawiki.org and deWP in December 2017. After further improvements of the diff algorithm, the change could now get deployed to most wikis. The languages unified Han, Thai and Japanese that don’t use spaces as delimiters will follow soon. The mobile version is in the making and will follow in the next weeks. The backend work has been done by the WMDE team, the WMF’s mobile team is taking care of the design work for the user interface of the mobile version. Improving the algorithm of wikidiff2: More than a new feature The work that has been done goes further than the original wish: First of all, we not only highlighted text changes within a moved paragraph, but also made it easier to find moved paragraphs in the first place: Clickable arrows allow to follow the move of the paragraph. Second, we generally improved the diff algorithm: For example, we could find an old bug in the diff engine: Sometimes two paragraphs which are not related at all were considered a changed paragraph. The bug fix was already deployed in October 2017. [4] If you are interested in learning more about the work that has been done, we're going to publish the lessons learned by the dev team within the next days (so stay tuned :-) !. Thank you! We would like to thank everyone who supported us in the work around wikidiff2: People from different wikis looked into diffs and gave us valuable feedback. Moritz Mühlenhoff supported us by updating the library, and deploying it. Tim Starling and Max Semenik supported us with code review and consultation during the Vienna Hackathon. The Desktop and Mobile Web team is going to add a user friendly design to the mobile version. Your advice, feedback and support is much appreciated :-) Further feedback is very welcome! Birgit (for the technical wishes team) [1] Extension manual: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Wikidiff2 [2] Deployment ticket: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T195375 [3] Main project page on meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes/Show_text_changes_whe… [4] Patch on gerrit for the bug fix: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/356582/ -- Birgit Müller Community Communications Manager Software Development and Engineering 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.

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Wikitech-l May 2018