Wikitech-l December 2021

wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org

28 participants
33 discussions

Developer Portal status update
by Andre Klapper 22 Dec '21

22 Dec '21

Hej hej, as you may remember from previous[1] posts[2], we (Alex[3], Bryan[4], Sarah[5], Tricia[6], and me[7]) are working on a developer portal for technical documentation[8] and updating key technical documents. The goal is to make it easier for everyone to find the help and information you need about the technical side of MediaWiki software and Wikimedia projects and to improve the overall quality and discoverability of technical documentation. I'm going to share what has happened over the last months (also see the general schedule[9]). Regarding the technical stack, we decided on a platform[10]. Its work- in-progress codebase is in Gerrit[11] and there might be a demo server soon[12]. This is the technical scaffold; actual content will be added when we get closer to launching in a few months (see the corresponding task graph[13] for work to sort out before launching). We defined core audiences[14] and had nine user tests completed[15] so far. The feedback helped iterate on the Developer Portal content layout draft prototype[16] (which evolved from a unified to a multipage approach). We are also in the process of reviewing and improving many key technical documentation pages (which will get linked from the developer portal). These updates and accuracy checks are based on a review checklist[17]. The checklist may also be helpful for anyone else interested in good technical documentation. For planning documentation review work, we use a Phabricator workboard[18]; you can also find the list of key pages on the project wiki page[19]. To get involved, sign up[20] to participate in user testing for the developer portal. For questions and feedback, leave us a comment on the project talk page[21]. All these efforts are part of the goal to have discoverable docs and paths to entry[22]. Cheers, andre [1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/… [2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/… [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:APaskulin_(WMF) [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:BDavis_(WMF) [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:SRodlund_(WMF) [6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:TBurmeister_(WMF) [7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:AKlapper_(WMF) [8] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal [9] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal#Timeline [10] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T287175 [11] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/wikimedia/developer-portal/ [12] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297800 [13] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T261510 [14] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal#Core_aud… [15] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal/Call_for… [16] https://apaskulin.github.io/wmf-dev-portal-draft/ [17] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation/Review_template [18] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/5409/ [19] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal#Key_land… [20] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal/Call_for…! [21] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Developer_Advocacy/Developer_Portal [22] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Technology/Annual_Plans/ERF_OKR:_T… -- Andre Klapper (he/him) | Bugwrangler / Developer Advocate https://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/

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MediaWiki skins (another call to action)
by Jon Robson 21 Dec '21

21 Dec '21

Exactly a year ago today, we had 55 usable skins for MediaWiki [1]. Now, we have a much more healthy 79. There are >= 23 skins that used to work with MediaWiki that no longer do. This week 5 skins were added thanks to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Skin:Bluelib being added to MediaWiki.org ! All usable skins are all showcased on https://skins.wmflabs.org I believe that the more skins MediaWiki supports, the more vibrant our ecosystem can be for developers and end-users. I dream of a world where not every MediaWiki instance looks like an instance of Wikipedia. In 2022, the work being done on https://mediawiki.org/wiki/Desktop_improvements will see the number of usable skins rise to at least 80 skins and I am personally exploring a script that converts WordPress themes [2] into MediaWiki skins that should add another 10 skins at least (Feel free to message me offline if you want to talk more about this ). However, there is still much work to be done if we want to have a healthy skin ecosystem! * 13 of these 79 skins are throwing deprecation warnings, meaning they may break in future MediaWiki versions [3]. Please help get those patched! * Fix an unstable skin! We have 9 skins that do not work on the current MediaWiki master. Can you help fix one of them? [4] * Make a new skin! Skin development has changed a lot in the last 2 years. It is more constrained and does not require knowledge of PHP. Take our documentation [5] for a spin and see if you can create one and let us know where the documentation can be improved and the limitations that you ran into with the platform while building them [6]. Check out the online skin builder tool if you haven't already. [7] * Improve the mediawiki.org documentation! Add screenshots, add links, translate a skin.. anything that might help someone use a skin. * Write a patch to help improve the core skin architecture where a patch is welcome [8] Wishing everyone a happy holiday and happy skin-building. [1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/… <https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/…> [2] https://wordpress.org/themes/ [3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Skins_using_deprecated_features [4] https://mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Unstable_skins [5] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:How_to_make_a_MediaWiki_skin [6] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/4795 [7] https://skins.wmflabs.org/#/add [8] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/4795/?filter=bGQ_G2ii8IJ7 On Sat, Dec 18, 2021 at 4:11 PM Jon Robson <jdlrobson(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Only skins now that cannot be previewerd > > Check out https://github.com/Steffo99/mediawiki-skins-Bluelib >

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Microsoft Word to Wiki (via LibreOffice)
by Greg Rundlett (freephile) 18 Dec '21

18 Dec '21

Our users have found that using LibreOffice to convert MS Word documents to wikitext is the best approach to getting 'mostly there' when you want to create a wiki page from some MS Word document. In the past, I've created a headless LibreOffice setup to accept file uploads to give editors a conversion service. I don't have that setup available anymore. My question is: "Does anyone know of a service that *is* setup to use LibreOffice to convert MS Word to wikitext?" I searched the ToolHub to no avail. Thanks, Greg

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Save the date! Coolest Tool Award 2021: Friday, January 14th, 17:00 UTC
by Andre Klapper 17 Dec '21

17 Dec '21

Hi everyone! The second edition of the Coolest Tool Award https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Coolest_Tool_Award will happen online on Friday 14 January 2022 at 17:00 UTC! See https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1642179615 for your timezone. The awarded tools will be showcased in a virtual event, with broadcasted video and chat channels for socializing. We will send more details and links soon. Save the date, and join us celebrating the great work volunteer developers do for the Wikimedia communities. We hope to see you there! andre, for the Coolest Tool Academy 2021 -- Andre Klapper (he/him) | Bugwrangler / Developer Advocate https://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/

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[Train] 🚂🔥1.38.0-wmf.13 blocked
by Tyler Cipriani 16 Dec '21

16 Dec '21

Please don't scroll past this. This Wednesday, for the 1st time recently, we humbly ask you to defend Wikipedia's train.[0] The 1.38.0-wmf.13 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T293954> train is blocked. The new version is rolled back to group0 <https://versions.toolforge.org/> until we resolve: - Error: Call to a member function getId() on null <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297827> - tl;dr: users can't login - Already being worked on - PHP Notice: Array to string conversion <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297828> - Impact unclear, maybe not a blocker Once these issues are resolved train can resume. If these issues are resolved on a Friday the train will resume Monday. Thank you for your help resolving these issues! – The Management Tyler Cipriani (he/him) Engineering Manager, Release Engineering Wikimedia Foundation

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Regarding the open source contributions
by Shivam Purohit 16 Dec '21

16 Dec '21

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Invite to explore code ownership in MediaWiki core
by Jon Robson 15 Dec '21

15 Dec '21

The most recent developer satisfaction survey supports the claim that volunteers find it hard to get code reviews. The hypothesis is that by having clearer ownership around code, there should be clearer accountability, and it should be clearer what code lacks ownership that probably should. This also applies to Wikimedia staff. It's often not clear when needing to make changes to core, who is the best person to talk to about that code, and who should be responsible/accountable/consulted/informed about any changes to the code. I am involved in the development of the Desktop improvements project [1] and when we began the work there was no recognized owner for a lot of the skin code in core. Since then my team has taken the role of maintainer and it has allowed us to drive a lot of changes. I'm seeing new skins pop up and we have started hearing from skin engineers, so I feel this has been a positive thing. However, as we've navigated other parts of the codebase, we've had to ask a lot of questions such as "Who maintains the legacy parser? Are they open to changes there, or should that code be considered frozen?"; "Who should we talk to about changes relating to the JavaScript of the watchstar?" What with the proposed move to Gitlab, I have been very interested in the code owners file documented on their site [2] I hypothesize that identifying code owners and getting Wikimedia engineering to agree to some basic expectations around code ownership might go a long way to helping set expectations around who to talk to about making changes, and actually getting those changes carried to completion. The experiment of adding an OWNERS file to MediaWiki core seems like a cheap one, given if we find it does nothing the file can easily be removed. If you are interested in helping me explore this, feel free to join the conversation on https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/core/+/745946 Wishing everyone a happy holiday Jon [1] mediawiki.org/wiki/Desktop_improvements [2] https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/code_owners.html

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Security and maintenance release: 1.35.5 / 1.36.3 / 1.37.1
by Sam Reed 15 Dec '21

15 Dec '21

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Production Excellence #38: November 2021
by Krinkle 13 Dec '21

13 Dec '21

How’d we do in our strive for operational excellence last month? Read on to find out! Incidents 6 documented incidents last month. That's above the two-year and five-year median of 4 per month (per Incident graphs <https://codepen.io/Krinkle/full/wbYMZK>). 2021-11-04 large file upload timeouts <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incident_documentation/2021-11-04_large…>; Impact: For 9 months, editors were unable to upload large files (e.g. to Commons). Editors would receive generic error messages, typically after a timeout. In retrospect, a dozen different distinct production errors had been reported and regularly observed that were related and provided different clues, however most of these remained untriaged and uninvestigated for months. This may be related to the affected components having no active code steward. 2021-11-05 TOC language converter <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incident_documentation/2021-11-05_TOC_l…>; Impact: For 6 hours, wikis experienced a blank or missing table of contents on many pages. For up to 3 days prior, wikis that have multiple language variants (such as Chinese Wikipedia) displayed the table of contents in an incorrect or inconsistent language variant (which are not understandable to some readers). 2021-11-10 cirrussearch commonsfile outage <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incident_documentation/2021-11-10_cirru…>; Impact: For ~2.5 hours, the Search results page was unavailable on many wikis (except English Wikipedia). On Wikimedia Commons the search suggestions feature was unresponsive as well. 2021-11-18 codfw ipv6 network <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incident_documentation/2021-11-18_codfw…>; Impact: For 8 minutes, the Codfw cluster experienced partial loss of IPv6 connectivity for upload.wikimedia.org. This did not affect availability of the service because the "Happy Eyeballs <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Eyeballs>" algorithm ensures browsers (and other clients) automatically fallback to IPv4. The Codfw cluster generally serves Mexico and parts of the US and Canada. The upload.wikimedia.org service serves photos and other media/document files, such as displayed in Wikipedia articles. 2021-11-23 core network routing <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incident_documentation/2021-11-23_Core_…>; Impact: For about 12 minutes, Eqiad was unable to reach hosts in other data centers via public IP addresses. This was due to a BGP routing error. There was no impact on end-user traffic, and impact on internal traffic was limited (only Icinga alerts themselves) because internal traffic generally uses local IP subnets which we currently route with OSPF instead of BGP. 2021-11-25 eventgate-main outage <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incident_documentation/2021-11-25_event…>; Impact: For about 3 minutes, eventgate-main was down. This resulted in 25,000 MediaWiki backend errors due to inability to queue new jobs. About 1000 user-facing web requests failed (HTTP 500 Error). Event production briefly dropped from ~3000 per second to 0 per second. Incident follow-up Remember to review and schedule Incident Follow-up work <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/view/4758/> in Phabricator, which are preventive measures and tech debt mitigations written down after an incident is concluded. Read more about past incidents at Incident status <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incident_status> on Wikitech. Recently resolved incident follow-up: Disable DPL on wikis that aren't using it <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T287916> Filed after a July 2021 incident, done by Amir (Ladsgroup) and Kunal (Legoktm). Create easy access to MySQL ports for faster incident response and maintenance <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T291352> Filed in Sep 2021, and carried out by Stevie (Kormat). Create paging alert for primary DB hosts <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T233684> Filed after a Sept 2019 incident, done by Stevie (Kormat). Trends November saw 27 new production error reports of which 14 were resolved, and 13 remain open and carry over to the next month. Of the 301 errors still open from previous months, 16 were resolved. Together with the 13 carried over from November that brings the workboard to 298 unresolved tasks. Figure 1: Unresolved error reports by month <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/post/view/261/production_excellence…>. Outstanding errors Take a look at the workboard and look for tasks that could use your help. → https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/wikimedia-production-error/ 💡 Did you know: *To find your team's error reports, use the appropriate ***"Filter" link in the sidebar of the workboard***.* Issues carried over from recent months: Apr 2021: 9 of 42 issues left. May 2021: 16 of 54 issues left. Jun 2021: 9 of 26 issues left. Jul 2021: 11 of 31 issues left. Aug 2021: 10 of 46 issues left. Sep 2021: 10 of 24 issues left. Oct 2021: 20 of 49 issues left. Nov 2021: 13 of 27 new issues <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/query/0W0Nuk9umBDc/#R> are carried forward. Thanks! Thank you to everyone who helped by reporting, investigating, or resolving problems in Wikimedia production. Thanks! Until next time, – Timo Tijhof 🔗 Share or read later via https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/post/view/261/

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Security pre-release announcement: 1.35.5 / 1.36.3 / 1.37.1
by Sam Reed 13 Dec '21

13 Dec '21

Hi all, On Wednesday we will be issuing a security and maintenance release to all supported branches of MediaWiki. The new releases will be: - 1.35.5 - 1.36.3 - 1.37.1 This release includes fixes for multiple high severity authorization bypasses in MediaWiki core, it is recommended you patch immediately. A short LocalSettings.php configuration snippet will also be shared to disable the vulnerable functionality if you are unable to patch right away. This snippet should work across all vulnerable MediaWiki versions, including end-of-life ones. In addition to that, this will resolve other issues in MediaWiki core and also includes some fixes previously committed to git, including minor security and hardening patches along with bug fixes included for maintenance reasons. It also fixes 2 issues in MediaWiki tarball bundled extensions. We will make the fixes available in these respective release branches and master. Tarballs will be available for the above mentioned point releases as well. A summary of some of the security fixes that have gone into non-bundled MediaWiki extensions will also follow later.

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Wikitech-l December 2021