Wikitech-l November 2020

wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org

38 participants
38 discussions

Cloud VPS users, please claim your projects
by Andrew Bogott 18 Nov '20

18 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

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Fwd: [Wikimedia-l] Call for insights on ways to better communicate the work of the movement
by Chris Koerner 18 Nov '20

18 Nov '20

Sorry for the cross-posting. Wanting to make sure folks in this community are involved too! ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Elena Lappen <elappen(a)wikimedia.org> Date: Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 6:27 PM Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Call for insights on ways to better communicate the work of the movement To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Dear all, The Movement Strategy recommendations published this year made clear the importance of establishing stronger communications within our movement. To this end, the Foundation wants to gather insights from communities on ways we all might more consistently communicate about our collective work, and better highlight community contributions from across the movement. Over the coming months, we will be running focus groups and online discussions to collect these insights. Individual focus groups will include 10-15 volunteers who will be asked to share insights on specific questions as part of a facilitated discussion. How can we best communicate with your community on an ongoing basis? In what ways does the Foundation currently support your work? We ask you to share your thoughts on these and other questions by signing up for a focus group by the end of Wednesday, 2 December, or participating in the discussion on Meta-Wiki [1]. We would like to collect feedback from across the movement, representing a wide range of insights and opinions. We will be working to build as many focus groups as possible, but want to be upfront that we may face limitations on the number of groups we can convene based on the level of interest. However, if you would like to discuss your thoughts in detail, we are also offering the chance to connect with the Communications team in other ways, including individual and group meetings and office hours [2]. Initial discussions are happening between now and January 2021. We invite you to join the conversation, and look forward to working together to explore some important questions. [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_communications_insights [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_communications_insights#Office_hou… -- Elena Lappen (she/her) Community Relations Specialist Wikimedia Foundation

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2020-11-18 Scrum of Scrums meeting notes
by Grace Gellerman 18 Nov '20

18 Nov '20

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Scrum_of_scrums/2020-11-18 *= 2020-11-18 =* == Callouts == * SRE ** ICU 63 upgrade (has MediaWiki impact) - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T264991 *** enwiki notification up in VP already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Update_to_… ** Sporadic and weird issues with Italian ISPs continue. SRE is aware and working on them. contact cdanis@ if you have more debugging data to share * RelEng ** No Train next week ** No deploys next week Wed-Friday == SoS Meeting Bookkeeping == * Updates: == TechCom == * Blocking: == Product == === Community Tech === * Blocked by: - * Blocking: - * Updates: The Community Wishlist Survey is now live and that's gonna be our main focus for the following 6 weeks === Anti-Harassment Tools === * Blocked by: * Blocking: * Updates: === Editing === * Blocked by: * Blocking: * Updates: === Growth === * Blocked by: * Blocking: * Updates: === iOS native app === * Blocked by: * Blocking: * Updates: === Android native app === * Blocked by: * Blocking: * Updates: === Web === * Blocked by: LangEng: Finishing up some changes to make ULS compatible with desktop improvements ( https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/UniversalLanguageSele…) * Blocking: n/a * Updates: Main focus is on finishing the work on the Vue search study. A VueTaskForce is meeting this week. === Product Infrastructure === * Blocked by: * Blocking: * Updates: === Structured Data === * Blocked by: - * Blocking: - * Updates: ** Commons Media Search: continuing to add features and make UI improvements, exploring some potential methods for using wikidata to improve search results (e.g. traversing entity trees, using aliases) ** Media matching: in discussions with other teams to determine how this project overlaps with others === Abstract Wikipedia === * Blocked by: ** — * Blocking: ** — * Updates: **The [[m:Abstract_Wikipedia/Wiki_of_functions_naming_contest|community contest]] for the name of the central wiki of functions has now closed, and the result is being reviewed with Legal and Comms. Our thanks to all who voted. ** Continuing work on using ZType data to enforce structure when editing ZObjects. ** Huge thanks to Daimona and DannyS712 for helping with a Phan issue blocking us from merging code T268055 === Parsing === * Blocked by: ** This is a followup on a SoS update from a few weeks back. We would like Parsoid clients ( VisualEditor, ContentTranslation, StructuredDiscussion, MCS/PCS ) to act onhttps://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T266143 sooner than later. This should likely be a minor tweak in client code. We need confirmation that clients can handle this switch before we can make progress on making that change in Parsoid. Either leave a note on that phab task once you are done, or create a subtask and resolve it. * Blocking: * Updates: ** no updates === Language === * Blocked by: * Blocking: ** Web. Should be unblocked this week. * Updates: ** T264756 Working on technical implementation plan for translatable modules. Will make it public for feedback soon. ** T254481 Doing final tests on "Support sending TechNews using Special:MassMessage" ** T182433 Developing "Strong synchonization" for translatewiki.net which is a prerequisite for fully automated translation exports ** We fixed a bunch of production JavaScript errors in ULS. Fixes are waiting to be deployed. ** Polishing section translation MVP === Inuka === * Blocked by: - * Blocking: - * Updates: ** KaiOS app *** Submitted to KaiStore *** Addressing usability study feedback (colours, icons, copy, ...) *** Production errors ** Wikipedia Preview *** Oozie job for data analysis *** Image focus mode *** Multilines caption === UI Standardization === * Blocked by: * Blocking: * Updates: === Library === * Blocked by: Waiting to hear back from Cloud Services on question about IDS/IPS for Cloud infrastructure * Blocking: - * Updates: Fixed a bug in Wikipedia Library that denied some users access to the library bundle when they should've had it. Refactoring of Wikilinks UI underway to improve performance. == Technology == === Analytics === * Blocked by: * Blocking: * Updates: - Adjustments to allow migration of legacy EventLogging schemas to Event Platform. - Fleshed out plan to migrate cluster to Apache BigTop and Hadoop coord failover. - Performance improvements of webrequest job, reduce CPU time and data relocation. - Fix bug in pageview_complete dumps (replacement of pagecounts). === Cloud Services === * Blocked by: * Blocking: * Updates: === Fundraising Tech === * Blocked by: * Blocking: * Updates: ** SRE deployed a change to stop iOS app launching for thankyou.wikipedia.org, we need to test ** Quieting down noisy logs in preparation for end of year fundraiser ** Switching dev environment from vagrant to docker === Platform === * Blocked by: * Blocking: ** Code review on https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/core/+/587494 * Updates: ** Parser cache for Parsoid code riding out this week ** Design work for Sockpuppet Detection API ** Design work for IP Masking === Engineering Productivity === ==== Performance ==== * Blocked by: ** Code review on https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/core/+/587494 * Blocking: * Updates: ** Perf monitoring services migrated to Python 3 ==== Quality and Test Engineering ==== * Blocked by: * Blocking: * Updates: ==== Release Engineering ==== * Blocked by: ** * Blocking: ** Trainsient reports of Gerrit: remote unpack failed: Missing tree / blob ( https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T268119 ) -- hope to fix today * Updates: ** [All] Deployments/Covid-19 https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments/Covid-19 ** Train Health *** Last week: No Train *** This week: 1.36.0-wmf.18 [[phab:T263184]]  *** Next week: No Train *** Rest of the year: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments#Upcoming_Release_Train_disr… (two trains in December and that's it for 2020) === Machine Learning Platform === * Blocked by: * Blocking: * Updates: === Research === * Blocked by: * Blocking: * Updates: === Search Platform === * Blocked by: ** Growth: Consume new event from the AddLink feature - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T262226 * Updates: ** "ElasticSearch shard size check" icinga warnings on cloudelastic servers -https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T265908 ** Redirect loop in pages results in infinite loop in API query - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T264534 ** Build integration envirionment for search platform airflow + hadoop + spark integration -https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T265641 === Security === * Blocked by: * Blocking: * Updates: === Site Reliability Engineering === * Blocked by: ** None * Blocking: ** None * Updates: ** Had a networking issue in codfw on Sunday, minimal impact, but keep in mind https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T267865 ** Sporadic and weird issues with Italian ISPs continue. SRE is aware and working on them. ** Grafana SSO is live on https://grafana-rw.wikimedia.org. Quality of life improvement(s) being worked on https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T267645 == Wikimedia DE == === Wikidata === * Blocked by: * Blocking: * Updates: === German Technical Wishlist ===

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TechCom topics 2020-11-04 (fixed)
by Daniel Kinzler 18 Nov '20

18 Nov '20

[Re-posting with fixed links. Thanks for pointing this out Cormac!] This is the weekly TechCom board review. Remember that there is no meeting on Wednesday, any discussion should happen via email. For individual RFCs, please keep discussion to the Phabricator tickets. Activity since Monday 2020-10-26 on the following boards: https://phabricator.wiki09media.org/tag/techcom/ <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/techcom/> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/techcom-rfc/ Committee board activity: * T175745 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T175745> *"overwrite edits when conflicting with self"* has once again come up while working on EditPage. There seems to no longer be any reason for this behavior. I think it does more harm then good. We should just remove it. RFCs: Phase progression: * T266866 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T266866> *"Bump basic supported browsers (grade C) to require TLS 1.2"*: newly filed, lively discussion. Phase 1 for now. <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T262946> * T263841 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T263841>*"Expand API title generator to support other generated data"*: dropped back to phase 2 because resourcing is unclear. * T262946 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T262946> *"Bump Firefox version in basic support to 3.6 or newer"*: last call ending on Wednesday, November 4. Some comments, no objections. Other RFC activity: * T250406 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T250406> *"Hybrid extension management"*: Asked for clarification expectations for WMF to publish extensions to packagist. Resourcing is being discussed in the platform team. Cheers, Daniel

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Image search
by Lars Aronsson 17 Nov '20

17 Nov '20

I've been contributing to Wikipedia since 2001 and to Wikimedia Commons since 2005. I'm not new to this. Wikimedia Commons now has millions of images and thousands of categories. But it's really hard to find anything. Today I was looking for photos of buildings that have an exterior lantern on their corner. This is common in the countryside, where there are no streetlights and no other buildings nearby. You put a lantern on the outside of your house, and you put it on the corner to cover two sides with one lamp. So there are categories for buildings and for houses. And by country and by county. And by building material. And there is a category for exterior lanterns, but none of the photos there are really corner-mounted. When I arrive at Commons, there is a search box and so I type "exterior lantern corner", but all it does is to search text content and descriptions. So I get lots of hits in scanned documents, which is not what I wanted. I can limit my search to the "File" namespace, but that includes both JPEG photos and PDF documents. Here are indeed some corner lamps, but not the rural kind I wanted, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tinghuset_(lanterne).jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fanal_públic_LED.JPG Here is what I search, but the lamp (in the upper left) is too small to be useful in this photo, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vårdinge_församlingshem.JPG This is where I want to find more images like these, not in the same category, just similar photos. Surely, such a search function could be implemented in 2020, in addition to our current text search? Hasn't anybody done this already? -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Linköping

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2021 Community Wishlist Survey
by Szymon Grabarczuk 16 Nov '20

16 Nov '20

The 2021 Community Wishlist Survey[1] is now open! This survey is the process where communities decide what the Community Tech[2] team should work on over the next year. We encourage everyone to submit proposals until the deadline on 30 November, or comment on other proposals to help make them better. The communities will vote on the proposals between 8 December and 21 December. The Community Tech team is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors. You can write proposals in any language, and we will translate them for you. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing your proposals! P.S. If the pages are not fully translated into your language, visit a dedicated page[3], be bold, and add the translations! [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Community_Wishlist_Surve… [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Tech [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2021/Translation_… Kind regards, Szymon Grabarczuk (he/him) Community Relations Specialist Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

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Hourly Pageviews Data
by Michael Tartre 16 Nov '20

16 Nov '20

This was brought up in a previous thread (link here <https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2020-October/093935.html>), but the aggregated hourly view dumps haven't been published since 2020-09-24 (see here <https://dumps.wikimedia.org/other/pagecounts-ez/merged/2020/>, also mirrored here <http://ftp.acc.umu.se/mirror/wikimedia.org/other/pagecounts-ez/merged/2020/>). The response to the previous thread by Dan suggested that the new data would be available in a week, but it's already a month past that expected deadline. Are there any updates on the status of that new dump, any new estimates of when it would become available? I would also suggest posting information about the pending change and new system to the information page (at https://dumps.wikimedia.org/other/pagecounts-ez/) -- from reading that page, there is no indication that data delivery has stopped or that a new pipeline will be available shortly. Thanks for any information, Michael -- *Michael Tartre* Senior Machine Learning Engineer michael(a)predata.com t: +1 415 857 0967 1 Liberty Plaza New York, NY 10006

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Consultation about the Technical Decision Making Process
by Kate Chapman 10 Nov '20

10 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

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Want to Contribute Need Help
by Puneet Dwivedi 08 Nov '20

08 Nov '20

Hello Puneet here, I am interested and I want to contribute for the organization.Honestly new to the open source contribution. As I have good knowledge about the HTML CSS JAVASCRIPT and PHP as well. So please help me how I could contribute for organization.

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Reference Previews: Search for wikis for early deployment
by Michael Schönitzer 05 Nov '20

05 Nov '20

Hello, A new feature called Reference Previews [1] was introduced as a beta feature last year. After more than a year of testing, bug fixing and other improvements it will soon leave the beta state in the first wikis, enabling it by default for all users including readers. New features like this are deployed in multiple batches, to ensure everything runs smoothly. Therefore, we are currently looking for a few small or medium-sized wikis that are interested in being among the first to gain the new feature. If your community is interested, please reach out to me on my discussion page or via email. The feature shows you references in a small popup when you hover over the reference number in square brackets. This way you can look up a reference without jumping down to the bottom of the page. The feature is part of the MediaWiki Popups extension [2], which is also used for the Page Previews feature [3]. Both features can be turned on and off together by the user. Several wikis have a gadget called “RefTooltips” to provide the same functionality [4]. The new extension will disable itself if RefTooltips is used. This way, it is up to the users and communities to decide if they want to disable the gadget in favor of the new feature. Reference Previews originated from a wish from the German-speaking wiki community and was developed collaboratively by Wikimedia Deutschland the Wikimedia Foundation. If you'd like to know more about this feature, please visit the project page.[1] For the Technical Wishes team, Michael Schönitzer 1: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes/ReferencePreviews 2: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Extension:Popups 3: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Page_Previews 4: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T234204#6244041 -- *M. F. Schönitzer* Community Communication Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin Tel. (030) 219 158 26-0 https://wikimedia.de Unsere Vision ist eine Welt, in der alle Menschen am Wissen der Menschheit teilhaben, es nutzen und mehren können. Helfen Sie uns dabei! https://spenden.wikimedia.de Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us to achieve our vision! https://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 27/029/42207.

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Wikitech-l November 2020