Wikitech-l October 2020

wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org

49 participants
57 discussions

Missing Section Headings
by Marc Riddell 13 Sep '24

13 Sep '24

Hello, I have been a WP editor since 2006. I hope you can help me. For some reason I no longer have Section Heading titles showing in the Articles. This is true of all Headings including the one that carries the Article subject's name. When there is a Table of Contents, it appears fine and, when I click on a particular Section, it goes to that Section, but all that is there is a straight line separating the Sections. There is also no button to edit a Section. If I edit the page and remove the "== ==" markers from the Section Titles, the Title then shows up, but not as a Section Heading. Also, I don't have any Date separators on my Want List. This started 2 days ago. Any thoughts? Thanks, Marc Riddell [[User:Michael David]]

10 11

How to make commits from mirrored Wikimedia repos show up on your GitHub profile
by Bartosz Dziewoński 28 Jun '24

28 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

3 3

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>

2 1

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

9 16

List related to repositories which haven't mediawiki/mediawiki-codesniffer
by Zoran Dori 11 Jan '23

11 Jan '23

Hello, can someone to update list https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/P10500 which contains repositories which haven't mediawiki/mediawiki-codesniffer. I found in list that much repositories are empty, and repositories which aren't available on Gerrit. So, can someone please update this list of repositories (in mediawiki/extensions) which haven't mediawiki/mediawiki-codesniffer, but at least, contains one PHP file. or to provide me command with which I can update list when I want, so I don't need to request it every time. Best regards, Zoran. P. S.: Happy weekend! :)

4 6

Cloud VPS users, please claim your projects
by Andrew Bogott 19 Nov '20

19 Nov '20

Every year or so the Cloud Services team tries to identify and clean up unused projects and VMs. We do this via an opt-in process: anyone can mark a project as 'in use,' and that project will be preserved for another year. I've created a wiki page the lists all existing projects, here: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/News/Cloud_VPS_2020_Purge If you are a VPS user, please visit that page and mark any projects that you use as {{Used}}. Note that it's not necessary for you to be a project admin to mark something -- if you know that you're currently using a resource and want to keep using it, go ahead and mark it accordingly. If you /are/ a project admin, please take a moment to mark which VMs are or aren't used in your projects. When December arrives, I will shut down and begin the process of reclaiming resources from unused projects. If you think you use a VPS project but aren't sure which, I encourage you to poke around on https://tools.wmflabs.org/openstack-browser/ to see what looks familiar. Worst case, just email cloud(a)lists.wikimedia.org with a description of your use case and we'll sort it out there. Exclusive toolforge users are free to ignore this task. Thank you! -Andrew and WMCS team

1 3

Consultation about the Technical Decision Making Process
by Kate Chapman 11 Nov '20

11 Nov '20

Hi All, Over the past months I've been looking at how we make technical decisions. Wikimedia has significantly grown as a technical movement over the years and similar to how we scaled our technical systems we need to scale our human systems. I've proposed an evolution of the existing TechCom process. This is based on the past couple years that I've been involved in the facilitation of TechCom and research into decision making frameworks. I'm looking for your feedback over the next three weeks (until 5 November) to help me improve the proposed process. Key objectives of this evolved process is: - Make the process more inclusive by shifting to representation by teams/groups instead of individuals - Have clear timelines for when a decision will be made - Being clear upfront about what stakeholders will be engaged - Developing a clear lifecycle of a decision This plan also introduces: - Technical Decision Forum which will be composed of representatives of teams from Product and Tech, WMDE and independent +2 contributors. - Templates for decision statement overviews and decision records Please see the draft process here: < https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Proposal_for_a_Technical_Decision_Making_Pro… > If you have questions or further feedback please use the talk page: < https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Proposal_for_a_Technical_Decision_Makin… > Thanks, -Kate -- Kate Chapman (she/her/hers) Director of Architecture, Architecture Team Wikimedia Foundation kchapman(a)wikimedia.org

1 1

Making breaking changes without deprecation?
by Daniel Kinzler 04 Nov '20

04 Nov '20

Hi all! Since the new Stable Interface Policy[1] has come into effect, there has been some confusion about when and how the deprecation process can be accelerated or bypassed. I started a discussion about this issue on the talk page[2], and now I'm writing this email in the hope of gathering more perspectives. tl;dr: the key question is: Can we shorten or even entirely skip the deprecation process, if we have removed all usages of the obsolete code from public extensions? If you are affected by the answer to this question, or you otherwise have opinions about it, please read on (ok ok, this mail is massive - at least read the proposed new wording of the policy). I'm especially interested in the opinions of extension developers. So, let's dive in. On the one hand, the new (and old) policy states: Code MUST emit hard deprecation notices for at least one major MediaWiki version before being removed. It is RECOMMENDED to emit hard deprecation notices for at least two major MediaWiki versions. EXCEPTIONS to this are listed in the section "Removal without deprecation" below. This means that code that starts to emit a deprecation warning in version N can only be removed in version N+1, better even N+2. This effectively recommends that obsolete code be kept around for at least half a year, with a preference for a full year and more. However, we now have this exception in place: The deprecation process may be bypassed for code that is unused within the MediaWiki ecosystem. The ecosystem is defined to consist of all actively maintained code residing in repositories owned by the Wikimedia foundation, and can be searched using the code search tool. When TechCom added this section[3][4], we were thinking of the case where a method becomes obsolete, but is unused. In that case, why go through all the hassle of deprecation, if nobody uses it anyway? However, what does this mean for obsolete code that *is* used? Can we just go ahead and remove the usages, and then remove the code without deprecation? That seems to be the logical consequence. The result is a much tighter timeline from soft deprecation to removal, reducing the amount of deprecated code we have to drag along and keep functional. This is would be helpful particularly when code was refactored to remove undesirable dependencies, since the dependency will not actually go away until the deprecated code has been removed. So, if we put in the work to remove usages, can we skip the deprecation process? After all, if the code is truly unused, this would not do any harm, right? And being able to make breaking changes without the need to wait a year for them to become effective would greatly improve the speed at which we can modernize the code base. However, even skipping soft deprecation and going directly to hard deprecation of the construction of the Revision class raised concerns, see for instance <https://www.mail-archive.com/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/msg92871.html>. The key concern is that we can only know about usages in repositories in our "ecosystem", a concept introduced into the policy by the section quoted above. I will go into the implications of this further below. But first, let me propose a change to the policy, to clarify when deprecation is or is not needed. I propose that the policy should read: Obsolete code MAY be removed without deprecation if it is unused (or appropriately gated) by any code in the MediaWiki ecosystem. Such removal must be recorded in the release notes as a breaking change without deprecation, and must be announced on the appropriate mailing lists. Obsolete code that is still used within the ecosystem MAY be removed if it has been emitting deprecation warnings in AT LEAST one major version release, and a best effort has been made to remove any remaining usages in the MediaWiki ecosystem. Obsolete code SHOULD be removed when it has been emitting deprecation warnings for two releases, even if it is still used. And further: The person, team, or organization that deprecates code SHOULD drive the removal of usages in a timely manner. For code not under the control of this person, team, or organization, appropriate changes SHOULD be proposed to the maintainers, and guidance SHOULD be provided when needed. Compared to the old process, this puts more focus on removing usages of obsolete code. Previously, we'd often just wait and hope that usages of deprecated methods would vanish eventually. Which may take a long time, we still have code in MediaWiki that was deprecated in 1.24. Of course, every now and then someone fixes a bunch of usages of deprecated code, but this is a sporadic occurrence, not designed into the process. With the change I am proposing, whoever deprecates a function also commits to removing usages of it asap. For extension developers, this means that they will get patches and support, but they may see their code broken if they do not follow up. Now, my proposal hinges on the idea that we somehow know all relevant code that needs fixing. How can that work? When TechCom introduced the idea of the "MediaWiki ecosystem" into the policy, our reasoning was that we want to support primarily extension developers who contribute their extensions back to the ecosystem, by making them available to the public. We found it fair to say that if people develop extensions solely for their own use, it is up to them to read the release notes. We do not need to go out of our way to protect them from changes to the code base. Effectively, with the proposed change to the policy, maintainers of public extensions will get more support keeping their extensions compatible, while maintainers of private extensions will receive less consideration. It seems desirable and fair to me to allow for "fast track" removal of obsolete code, but only if we create a clear process for making an extensions "official". How exactly would an extension developer make sure that we know their extension, and consider it part of the ecosystem? In practice, "known code" is code accessible via codesearch[5]. But how does one get an extension into the codesearch index? There is currently no clear process for this. Ideally, it would be sufficient to: * create a page on mediawiki.org using the {{Extension}} infobox, * setting the status to "stable" (and maybe "beta"), * and linking to a public git repository. It should be simple enough to create a script that feeds these repos into codesearch. A quick look at Category:Extensions_by_status category tells me that there are about a thousand such extensions. So, my question to you is: do you support the change I am proposing to the policy? If not, why not? And if you do, why do you think it's helpful? -- daniel PS: This proposal has not yet been vetted with TechCom, it's just my personal take. It will become an RFC if needed. This is intended to start a conversation. [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Stable_interface_policy [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:Vrwr9aloe6y1bi2v [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193613 [4] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T255803 [5] https://codesearch.wmcloud.org/search/ -- Daniel Kinzler Principal Software Engineer, Core Platform Wikimedia Foundation

13 21

Upcoming Search Platform Office Hours—November 4th, 2020
by Trey Jones 02 Nov '20

02 Nov '20

The Search Platform Team <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Search_Platform> usually holds office hours the first Wednesday of each month. Come talk to us about anything related to Wikimedia search, Wikidata Query Service, Wikimedia Commons Query Service, etc.! Feel free to add your items to the Etherpad Agenda for the next meeting. Details for our next meeting: Date: Wednesday, November 4th, 2020 Time: 16:00-17:00 GMT / 08:00-09:00 PST / 11:00-12:00 EST / 17:00-18:00 CET Etherpad: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Search_Platform_Office_Hours Google Meet link: https://meet.google.com/vyc-jvgq-dww Join by phone in the US: +1 786-701-6904 PIN: 262 122 849# Hope to talk to you in a week! —Trey Trey Jones Sr. Computational Linguist, Search Platform Wikimedia Foundation UTC-4 / EDT

1 1

[Wikimedia Technical Talks] Monday 2 November 2020 at 20:00 UTC
by Sarah R 02 Nov '20

02 Nov '20

Hi Everyone, It's time for Wikimedia Technical Talks 2020 - Episode 9! This talk will take place next Monday 2 November 2020 at 20:00 UTC. Title: Writing PHP unit tests for MediaWiki Speaker: Kosta Harlan Summary: This talk will cover tooling, tips, and best practices. Learn more here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/post/view/169/changes_and_improveme… The link to the Youtube Livestream can be found here: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNNy8ALGjaE> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOWKHUA-wAI During the live talk, you are invited to join the discussion on IRC at #wikimedia-office You can browse past Tech Talks here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Tech_talks If you are interested in giving your own tech talk, you can learn more here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Calendar/How_to_schedule_an_event#Te… Feel free to distribute through appropriate email and social channels! Kindly, Sarah R. Rodlund Senior Technical Writer, Developer Advocacy <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy> srodlund(a)wikimedia.org

1 1

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

Wikitech-l October 2020