For HTML version see
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Scrum_of_scrums/2019-04-03
= 2019-04-03 =
== Callouts ==
* Fundraising campaigns
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Calendar
* SRE service operations would like input/help from Core Platform
Team/Performance on https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T219279 (Some pages
will become completely unreachable after PHP7 update due to Unicode changes)
* Performance is blocked on input from Core Platform Team/Tim on sampling
profiler for PHP 7: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T176916#5064425
* UI Standardization: New sans-serif font stack for improved mobile reading
(MinervaNeue) has been rolled-out: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T175877
* Wikimetrics is deprecated, requests redirect now to
https://eventmetrics.wmflabs.org/ We have worked with community Tech team
to add couple features to event-metrics that were needed
== Audiences ==
=== Contributors ===
==== Community Tech ====
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
** EventMetrics has been demoed to users and is officially available. We
are cleaning up some bugs now.
==== Anti-Harassment Tools ====
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
** More details about our refactor of Blocks here:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T219441
==== Editing ====
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
** Mobile section editing A/B test running on most wikis
==== Growth ====
* Blocked by: Security Concept and Design Review of our Newcomer Homepage
* Blocking:
* Updates:
** The team is currently coding the start module for the newcomer homepage,
and designing the mobile version of the homepage
==== Language ====
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
** ContentTranslation version 2 is default from now unless user has draft
already in version 1.
** Cron script to purge old unpublished drafts deployed and running at
every 15 days to purge drafts older than 455 days.
=== Readers ===
==== iOS native app ====
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
** 6.2.1 release coming up
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/ios-app-v6.2.1-beluga-on-stilts/
*** Find & Replace
*** Editing onboarding
*** Other bug fixes & editing enhancements
** 6.3 planning begins (
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/ios-app-v6.3-lobster-on-a-motorcycle/)
*** Talk pages
*** Link wizard
*** Citation wizard
*** "Open here to edit" analytics
==== Android native app ====
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
==== Readers Web ====
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
** Summary: technical planning for next year, continuing advanced mobile
contributions features and the MobileFrontend architecture investment
project.
** Responsive website (MinervaNeue / MobileFrontend):
*** Advanced mobile contributions
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Advanced_mobile_contributions
**** Allow easier access to user modes T218625
**** Upgrade MobileWebMainMenuClickTracking to have an AMC field T218627
**** Skin Contributions and History pages in Minerva for consistency with
their mobile replacements T219349
**** Jon working with Volker to improve special pages
*** Invest in the MobileFrontend & MinervaNeue frontend architecture
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Projects/Invest_in_the_MobileFro…
**** Refactoring Nearby: Remove messageBox template partial inside Nearby
T218813
**** Refactor NotificationsOverlay T219036
**** Refactor BetaOptinPanel T217298
*** ExternalGuidance extension review and support
*** Miscellaneous bug fixes and maintenance T214549 T198534 T218731 T219920
** Quick Surveys
*** Allow quicksurveys to target based on registration date T218304
** Desktop website (Popups)
*** Popups https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Page_Previews
**** Bugfix for double pokey on some page previews T204627
** Planning
*** MobileFrontend & MinervaNeue frontend architecture planning for next
fiscal year
==== Readers Infrastructure ====
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
** Suggested Edits APIs are launched in production (Wikidata)
** PCS/MCS/Maps: Nothing particularly interesting
==== Multimedia ====
* Updates
** Still working towards 2nd release of SDoC (depicts statements), pretty
much code complete but many speedbumps along the way
*** Turned on wikidata federation on live commons, and it broke various
things. All since patched, working on some integration tests before we try
it again (just in case)
** Work continues for subsequent releases
==== Parsing ====
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates: Porting continues, about 33% done
==== UI Standardization ====
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
** Collaboration with Jon Robson last full week on AMC work, bringing
*** HistoryAction to OOUI and
*** preparing Special:Contributions for the same
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T117736, including
*** a dozen merged patches for full skinnability on mobile, improved UX and
using DateInputWidget for type=>date HTMLForm elements
** New sans-serif font stack for improved mobile reading (MinervaNeue) has
been rolled-out: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T175877 /
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Design/Projects/Improve_mobile_reading_exper…
** No OOUI release this week, but ongoing work following up AMC work like
DropdownInputWidget cross-browser improvements
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T194523
== Technology ==
=== Analytics ===
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
** Kafka total jumbo outage for like 1 hour (this had never happened
before) https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T219842
* Updates:
** Scooping data for mediawiki reconstruction from new analytics labs
replica on the beginning of the month.
** Launched small tweak to wikistats UI to better explain wikistats1 users
where to find things on Wikistats2, take a look:
https://stats.wikimedia.org/v2/#/metrics/all-projects [wiki, email]
** Reenabling EventGate in prod and working on changes to be able to
persist two streams of data in the new format: api requests and search
requests.
=== Cloud Services ===
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
=== Fundraising Tech ===
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
** Had to rollback payments wiki cluster php7 and mw upgrade mid week due
to problems with our newly introduced Content Security Policy
*** the CSP updates were blocking 3rd party 3dSecure iframe content for
countries with 3dSecure enabled.
** tech-ops working on a plan to handle the termination of debian jessie
backporting (still using some jessie in prod)
=== Core Platform ===
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
** SRE service operations would like input/help from Core Platform
Team/Performance on https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T219279 (Some pages
will become completely unreachable after PHP7 update due to Unicode changes)
** Performance is blocked on input from Core Platform Team/Tim on sampling
profiler for PHP 7: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T176916#5064425
* Updates:
** Organizing Q4 work on 2-week sprint schedule
** Hired and welcomed Will Doran, Engineering Manager
** Enterprise MediaWiki conference
** Finish WikiPEG and tokenization
** T198341 (remove usages of some db fields for MCR Schema migration)
** T213893 (maintenance options bug affecting Semantic Mediawiki users)
=== Performance ===
* Blocked by:
** Sampling profiler for PHP 7: Blocked on input from CPT/Tim.
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T176916#5064425
* Blocking:
** SRE service operations would like input/help from Core Platform
Team/Performance on https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T219279 (Some pages
will become completely unreachable after PHP7 update due to Unicode changes)
* Updates:
** Working with npm support and RelEng to unblock the upgrade of CI jobs
from Node 6 to Node 10 (EOL in late April for Node 6):
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T215562
** We will switch the WebPageTest agent to use a Docker version on the
coming Monday (the 8th) https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T192050
** Error handler on mwdebug servers not working. –
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T217846
** CR for Avoid double parsing during save. –
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/mediawiki/core/+/470099/
** CR for Graph extension multi-dc caching. –
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/mediawiki/extensions/Graph/+/493628/
=== Release Engineering ===
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
** Scoring Platform blocked on releng for the creation of a new repo
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T212180
* Updates:
** Gerrit going to 2.15.12 (again)
** Quibble in summer
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/post/view/118/quibble_in_summer/
** Quibble hibernated, it is time to flourish
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/post/view/155/quibble_hibernated_it…
** Train Health
*** Last week: 1.33.0-wmf.23 - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T206677
*** This week: 1.33.0-wmf.24 - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T206678
**** No problemo! 🎉
*** Next week: 1.33.0-wmf.25 - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T206679
=== Research ===
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
** Mid-term and annual planning.
** Research is participating in Google Summer of Code and Outreachy.
** Improvements to the section recommendation API. Talking with the
Language team about use cases: https://secrec.wmflabs.org/
** Finished up coding an Oozie job for article recommender:
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/analytics/refinery/+/496885
=== Scoring Platform ===
* Blocked by:
** Blocked on releng for the creation of a new repo
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T212180
* Blocking:
* Updates:
** Fixing bugs in ORES extension
**** Special Contributions/OOJSUI in ORES extenions being worked on by Jon
Robson
=== Search Platform ===
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
** Migration of Wikibase search to separate extension finished, cleanup in
progress: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T190022
** Commons still not configured properly for search, fixes pending:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T218954
** ES 6 upgrade finalized: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T183282
** Cleaning up deprecation warnings from ES6:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T218994
** Setting up CloudElastic servers:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T214921
** Working on fixing highlighting in Commons inlabel/incaption keywords:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T217809
** Working on query parsing refactoring:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T185108
** Working on WDQS performance improvements:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T217897
=== Security ===
* Blocked by:None
* Blocking: Growth : waiting on Security Concept and Design Review of our
Newcomer Homepage
* Updates:
** https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T219289: concept review, SOP in
progress
** https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T216419: in progress
** https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T217289: TBD
** https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T216692: discussions with client
** https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T207990: will be completed this week
=== Services ===
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
=== Site Reliability Engineering ===
* Blocked by:
** SRE service operations would like input/help from Core Platform
Team/Performance on https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T219279 (Some pages
will become completely unreachable after PHP7 update due to Unicode changes)
* Blocking:
** None
* Updates:
** New quarter, new goals
== TechCom ==
* Updates
** IRC meeting RFC: Skin templating
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T217158 April 3rd at 2pm PST (22:00 UTC,
23:00 CET) in #wikimedia-office
== Wikidata ==
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
== German Technical Wishlist ==
* Blocked by:
* Blocking:
* Updates:
== SoS Meeting Bookkeeping ==
* Updates:
dear all,
i experienced breaking changes when loading scripts in the widgets
extension through the resource loader. please check the gitlab snippet
[1] i created. i did not find any documentation and checked the
migration guide [2].
is the code presented in the gitlab snippet good practice? could anyone
point me to existing documentation?
thank you!
tom
[1] https://gitlab.com/snippets/1843172
[2]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ResourceLoader/Migration_guide_(users)#Media…
Hello,
As of today, MediaWiki development settings now ask MySQL/MariaDB to
report error for a wide range of issues that just emitted a warning
previously. That is done in includes/DevelopmentSettings.php by setting:
$wgSQLMode = 'TRADITIONAL';
As such, you might see database errors occurring on CI runs. We
definitely need them to be tracked and fixed to later enable a stricter
mode on the Wikimedia cluster.
Why does it matter?
In short, without the stricter mode, the server might just truncate some
rows, fallback to some default or just truncate the value!
We had a RFC written back in 2015 about the subject which gives the
rationale and examples:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T112637
Thus if you encounter an error, please do fill a sub task for T108255.
Ref:
mediawiki/core change https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/429386/
For CI/dev: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T119371
For production: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T108255
--
Antoine "hashar" Musso
As you may have been aware, we've been working on changing how MediaWiki
stores "actors", meaning the user account or IP address that performed the
edit, logged action, and so on. Instead of having user ID and name fields
in each revision (rev_user+rev_user_text), log entry
(log_user+log_user_text), and so on, we're storing the ID and name in a
central "actor" table and referring to them by the actor ID from other
tables (log_actor and so on).
We've been writing to the new fields and tables since mid-December 2018,
and have back-populated them for old revisions, log entries, and so on.
We're about to start changing Wikimedia's production wikis to start reading
the new fields instead of the old.
For the most part wiki users shouldn't notice any changes, however if you
notice something being newly slow or incorrectly displaying the user,
please let me know.
For users of the Data Services replicas, such as Toolforge, the views do
still include the old columns and they will be simulated even after
MediaWiki stops writing them. But, for the non-compat views, this *will*
change in the future as it recently did for the comment columns, so you may
want to begin your migration process soon rather than waiting.
MediaWiki developers should make sure code accessing user fields makes use
of the ActorMigration class that was introduced in MediaWiki 1.31.
You can watch https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T188327 (and any subtasks)
for more information on the deployment process.
Note that accesses to the actor table may be slow, as are accesses to the
comment table. Improving that situation is being tracked at
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T215445.
--
Brad Jorsch (Anomie)
Senior Software Engineer
Wikimedia Foundation
Hey everyone,
This is a reminder about Tech News and how it works. If you know exactly
what it is and how to add items to it, or never have reasons to spread or
help others spread technical news to our communities, you can stop reading
now.
We're big enough to get new folks on a pretty regular basis, so I send this
out to this mailing list maybe once a year or so, which I hope is somewhere
in the right balance between keeping newcomers informed and not spamming
everyone.
Here is the current draft, which will be sent out to the wikis on Monday:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2019/15
ABOUT TECH NEWS
a) What is Tech News?
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News
Tech News is a newsletter for reaching out with technical updates to the
general Wikimedia editor communities, to make sure they can keep track of
what's happening. It's typically distributed in 14–20 languages, reaching
roughly 100 community pages (Village Pumps etc) in addition to those who
read it on Meta, see it included in the Signpost, get it in their email
inbox, or are among the 740 individual subscribers. Typically, this is how
we tell our editors we are changing or planning to change something, or
explain technical problems we have or have had.
b) How is Tech News written?
Simplification is key. Technical news for non-technical readers. Should be
easy to translate as well as be written with en-1 and en-2 readers in mind.
A couple of sentences per item, then a link to a Phabricator task, wiki
page or email if they need more information. Too long and we put an
unreasonable burden on the translators. This doesn't mean you should avoid
adding things because all of this seems difficult – we'll edit it, if
necessary. It's a wiki, after all.
c) I've done something technical. The communities should know. How do I add
it?
Just add it. This is the best and simplest way.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/Next will take you to the
relevant issue. Remember to always link to a relevant Phabricator task,
wiki page or mailing list email.
(You can also add the "user-notice" tag in Phabricator together with a
simple 1–3 sentence explanation of what this is and how it affects editors.
Don't worry about polish; we'll take care of that. Or if you're not sure if
it fits the newsletter – we'll take a look, and if it doesn't, we'll just
remove the tag. Or you can write on https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:
Tech/News – but adding it yourself is the simplest way.)
d) When is it distributed?
Weekly, each Monday afternoon/evening UTC. The deadlines for additions are
several days prior to that to give the translators time to do their work.
See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News
/For_contributors#When_is_the_work_done.3F for when to add things to have
them included in the next newsletter.
This is typically earlier than people tend to assume.
e) What is Tech News not?
* A general Wikimedia newsletter. Everything in the Wikimedia world is at
most one step removed from being technical. This doesn't mean Tech News is
the best place. Typical items are new or upcoming features or potential
breaking changes.
* The best way to reach the Wikimedia technical community. If you want to
reach Wikimedia developers, an email to wikitech-l is usually better than
an item in Tech News. Tech News is a way to keep Wikimedia contributors
up-to-date with technical changes.
* A way to talk about all the important things that happen in the
background. They're often awesome and we should talk more about them, but
if they don't affect how contributors interact with the sites, then this is
not the place.
* A place for updates about one wiki. If it's just relevant for English or
German Wikipedia, you should update English or German Wikipedia, not the
entire Wikimedia community. Exceptions to this rule are Commons and
Wikidata, because they're used by so many other Wikimedia wikis.
More:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News
/For_contributors#What_is_typically_not_included
//Johan Jönsson
--
// sorry for cross-posting
Hello,
readers of an article who want to check the article’s citation have to jump
down to the reference section – and that is disturbing their reading flow.
Hence, it was a top wish[1] from the German Wikipedia community to have
previews of references inside the article text.
That’s what the Reference Previews feature does: When you hover over a
footnote marker or click on it, you’ll see a little pop-up with the content
of the reference. This pop-up is similar to the Page Previews[2] pop-ups,
which show previews of linked articles. Reference Previews are also
influenced by the Reference Tooltips gadget, which is used in several
Wikipedias. Additionally, Reference Previews indicate the type of a
reference, which is meant to help readers assess quickly if they consider
the cited source trustworthy. First tests have confirmed this to be helpful.
Reference Previews are being developed by Wikimedia Germany’s Technical
Wishes[3] team, with technical support from the Wikimedia Foundation’s
Reading Web[4] team. The design for this feature is being done by the WMF.
Now, a very first version of Reference Previews will be available as a beta
feature on German and Arabic Wikipedia. The deployment is planned for
Thursday, April 4. If you want to test it, please have a look at the
information for activating the beta feature.[5] Feedback is very welcome
on the central talk page![6]
If you want to try Reference Previews at an early stage on your wiki,
please let us know on the central talk page.[6]
More information about the wish and the feature can be found on the project
page.[7]
Best,
Johanna for the Technical Wishes team
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes/ReferencePreviews
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Page_Previews
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes/ReferencePreviews>
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web
[5]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes/ReferencePreviews#Try…
[6] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help_talk:Reference_Previews
[7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes/ReferencePreviews
The Search Platform Team
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Search_Platform> usually holds
office hours the first Wednesday of each month. Come ask us anything about
Wikimedia search!
Feel free to add your items to the Etherpad Agenda for the next meeting.
Details for our next meeting (note that we're on daylight savings time, so
the time has shifted relative to GMT):
Date: Wednesday, April 3rd, 2019
Time: 15:00-16:00 GMT / 08:00-9:00 PDT / 11:00-12:00 EDT / 17:00-18:00 CEST
Etherpad: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Search_Platform_Office_Hours
Google Meet link: https://meet.google.com/vyc-jvgq-dww
*N.B.:* Google Meet System Requirements
<https://support.google.com/meet/answer/7317473>
Hope to talk to you in a week!
Trey Jones
Sr. Software Engineer, Search Platform
Wikimedia Foundation
