Wikitech-l August 2022

wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org

37 participants
43 discussions

Multi-DC deployment
by Tim Starling 31 Aug '22

31 Aug '22

The performance team are progressively deploying the MediaWiki multi-DC project. This project allows us to make use of servers in the Dallas data center which were previously idle. When the project is fully deployed, most MediaWiki backend GET requests will be routed to whichever data center is nearest to the CDN node at which the request is received. Deployment plan: * Stage 1: test.wikipedia.org and test2.wikipedia.org. Already done. * Stage 2: mediawiki.org. Planned for deployment on August 15. * Stage 3: traffic percentage. A small percentage of all requests will be sent to the nearest DC. Date undecided, but could be as early as August 22. * Stage 4: full deployment. Date TBA. But it will be soon. If you need to update your tools, please start updating. For more details, see T279664 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T279664>. I'm not aware of any blockers. As far as I know, we could fully deploy it now and it would more or less work. If you think otherwise, please let us know. -- Tim Starling

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A random thank you to the Wikimedia tech community
by Strainu 31 Aug '22

31 Aug '22

Hi all, With the risk of being off-topic, I want to express my gratitude to all the members of the Wikimedia tech community for being such a supportive and helpful group! Not only here, but on all communication channels. It's been years since one of my questions (most of which could be classified as obscure) has gone unanswered. Also, I recently had to go through all my emails since June and I noticed that except for a few announcements and obvious spam, all other other threads had at least one answer. For me, this is the sign of a great community to be in. Thanks again and keep up the good work! Strainu

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Breaking change to the DBPrimaryPos interface
by Daniel Kinzler 31 Aug '22

31 Aug '22

This is announcement of a breaking change without deprecation, per the Stable Interface Policy <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Stable_interface_policy>. If you have any objections, concerns or questions, please respond to this email as soon as possible. *What will change?* We are adding two methods to the DBPrimaryPos interface <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/core/+/828058>. Any classes implementing that interface will break if they do not implement these methods. Other usage of the class, such as calling methods, is unaffected. The change will be part of the 1.39 release. *Why is the change needed? *We need a plain data representation of the DBPrimaryPos objects, so they can be stored in a cache without relying on native PHP serialization of objects. Native PHP serialization should be avoided because it is brittle and insecure <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Development_policy#Implementation%20policies>. Issues may arise particularly when the class in question changes or PHP itself is updated. The problem that prompted this change is T316601 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T316601>. *Why is deprecation not feasible? *There is no backwards compatible way in PHP to add methods to an interface, nor is there a way to warn classes that are lacking the new methods. For this reason, it is generally recommended to provide a base class rather than expecting extensions to implement an interface directly. In this case however, there is no base class, and the interface is marked as /stable to implement./ But there appear to be no classes in extensions that implement the interface in question, so it seems reasonable to just add the methods. -- Daniel Kinzler Principal Software Engineer, Platform Engineering Wikimedia Foundation

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[Small Wiki Toolkit] Writing Wikidata Queries Using WDQS Tool Workshop On Tuesday, August 30th, 16:00 UTC
by Seyram Komla Sapaty 30 Aug '22

30 Aug '22

Hello everyone, The seventh workshop on the topic of "Writing Wikidata queries using the WDQS tool" is coming up - it will take place on Tuesday, August 30th at 16:00 UTC. You can find more details on the workshop and a link to join here <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Small_wiki_toolkits/Workshops#Writing_Wikid…> [1]. This session will focus on how to access and save information to Wikidata, including through page generators and queries++, using pywikibot. It will also cover the Wikidata conventions about bot-editing, including the bot approvals process. To participate in this workshop, you would need basic familiarity with Wikidata and Pywikibot installation. You can add your discussion ideas on the etherpad doc <https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/swt-wikidata-pywikibot-scripts>.[2] We look forward to your participation! [1]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Small_wiki_toolkits/Workshops#Writing_Wikid… [2]: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/swt-wikidata-pywikibot-scripts Thanks. -- Seyram Komla Sapaty Developer Advocate Wikimedia Cloud Services

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major upgrade of PageProperties extension (new special page "Manage Properties" and slots!)
by Thomas 30 Aug '22

30 Aug '22

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Reminder about WMF board elections - People who develop mediawiki extensions are eligible to vote
by Brian Wolff 29 Aug '22

29 Aug '22

I haven't seen too much discussion about this, but i just wanted to remind everyone that people who participate in mediawiki development (including many third party extensions) are eligible to vote in the current Wikimedia foundation board of trustees election, even if you don't edit any wikimedia wiki. You just have to have made one commit. Commits to third party mediawiki extensions not used by Wikimedia wikis count (including some hosted at github). The Wikimedia Foundation is the largest contributor to MediaWiki core, and the trustees control the direction of the Wikimedia Foundation. Hence your vote (indirectly) determines the direction of MediaWiki software! There is an unofficial list of eligible developers at https://i-want-to-vote.toolforge.org . I encourage anyone who participates in development of software in the mediawiki ecosystem to check if they are on the list. Even if you are not on that list you may still be eligible. You can learn more about the candidates at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Candida… . In particular, many of you might already know legoktm who is one of the candidates and is very active in the mediawiki developer community. You can vote now up until september 6 (however some eligible people must register to vote before sept 2). The link to vote is https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/vote/393 . People who are eligible to vote due to software development must pre-register via email before that link works for them and they must do so 4 days before the end of the election. See https://i-want-to-vote.toolforge.org for details. The full official list of eligibility criteria is at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Voter_e… . The key point for software developers, is you only have had to make 1 commit between Jan 5 and july 5, to any gerrit repo, any toolforge tool repo (including those outside gerrit), or any mediawiki extension/skin on MWStake's list of mediawiki extensions/skins developed outside of gerrit. If the above doesn't describe you, there are also other criteria that can make you eligible, like if you have made lots of edits to https://mediawiki.org or https://translatewiki.net, maintain or contribute to "tools, bots, user scripts, gadgets, and Lua modules on Wikimedia wikis", or "substantially engaged in the design and/or review processes of technical development related to Wikimedia." or are employed by the Wikimedia foundation or an affiliate of Wikimedia. Check the official rules for the full list. Anyways i encourage everyone to vote who is eligible. People who are voting by virtue of being a software developer MUST register 4 days before the end of the election (i.e. sept 2), so if that's you, be sure to do it in time. See the official rules or https://i-want-to-vote.toolforge.org for details. -- Bawolff p.s. Just to clarify, this isn't an official email, i just wanted to ensure that the wider mediawiki developer community was aware of this as i suspect many eligible developers may be unaware they are allowed to vote.

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Proposed change to the MediaWiki database policy
by Amir Sarabadani 28 Aug '22

28 Aug '22

Hello, We have a proposal to make small adjustments to the MediaWiki database policy which would make abstract schema an explicit requirement. Abstract schema was approved by TechCom in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T191231 and now core and all WMF-deployed extensions have migrated to abstract schema. You can find the proposal in here. Please take a look and comment: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:MediaWiki_database_policy If there are no major objections by the end of August 2022, I will codify this into the policy. Best -- *Amir Sarabadani (he/him)* Staff Database Architect Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

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Wikimania Hackathon: Thanks for coming!
by Haley Lepp 28 Aug '22

28 Aug '22

Dear Wikimania Hackathon Attendees, It was a pleasure spending the weekend hacking with you! I hope you had as much fun as I did playing with WikiData games, learning about clever ways to improve medical data on wikis, exploring Wikimedia Cloud Services, and engaging with all the other cool projects and sessions. If you missed the final showcase, it was recorded! You can watch it on YouTube. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ2tKvv3Hfc> The playlist of recorded sessions is also available. < https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3soxkz-0_y6xOBqgWuZXv4ZrGJTghXIA> There’s also information about all the projects on the Wikimania wiki. If you didn’t get the chance to present, you can still add your project there. <https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hackathon/Showcase> Finally, please consider giving feedback on the event! If you have ideas, things you liked, or things you’d like to see changed, this is your chance to share that so we can improve in the future. < https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/2022WikimaniaHackathon-FB> My best regards, Haley and the Developer Advocacy Team -- *Haley Lepp* Technical Community Program Manager Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

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Re: Commons app - v4.0 and my resignation
by Josephine Lim 28 Aug '22

28 Aug '22

Dan and Sage, Thank you very much for your kind words and well wishes! It means a lot to me to hear that. :) Best regards, Josephine On Fri, 26 Aug 2022 at 22:04, <wikitech-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote: > Message: 2 > Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2022 08:34:02 -0700 > From: Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia(a)gmail.com> > Subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Commons app - v4.0 and my resignation > To: Wikitech-l <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> > Message-ID: > <CA+QewsP2ypRG2ff7Poxg2pw7_ck8g= > F7ku0ZB2YgK1jJ_i_fFw(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: multipart/alternative; > boundary="000000000000a64aa005e7128719" > > Josephine, > > Thanks so much for all the work you've done on the Commons app. I'm really > grateful that you've maintained it so well; it's one of my favorite apps, > and there's nothing else out there that comes close to doing what it does. > > Good luck with your career change! > > You are awesome! > > -Sage > > > On Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 8:01 AM Dan Andreescu <dandreescu(a)wikimedia.org> > wrote: > > > Thanks so much for your leadership and work Josephine, it's been awesome > > to watch over the years. Good luck on your next adventures! > > > > On Thu, Aug 25, 2022 at 2:17 AM Josephine Lim <josephinelim86(a)gmail.com> > > wrote: > > > >> Hi all, > >> > >> Hope you have been well! We have just released v4.0 of the Commons > >> Android app to production on Google Play - this version includes tons of > >> new features (a map displaying nearby Commons pictures, custom SPARQL > >> queries, user profiles, and a custom picture selector), as well as fixes > >> for major bugs such as the "date uploaded" bug. The app can be > downloaded > >> from the Play Store[1] or directly from our GitHub repository[2]. > >> > >> I should probably also add that this will likely be my last release - I > >> am currently transitioning to a new career, and will be stepping down > from > >> the role of project lead, which I have held for the past 6 years. I > intend > >> to stick around on a volunteer basis, but the amount of time that I can > put > >> into the app from now on will be much more limited. I have discussed > this > >> with the app's community, and I believe that a new grant team might be > >> emerging, and one of the volunteers might step up to take on the project > >> lead role. > >> > >> Thank you very much for the support that you have all shown to the > >> Commons app over the years. It was an honor and a pleasure to work with > all > >> of you - I have learned so much and met so many amazing people in the > >> Wikimedia community, and I certainly hope to continue being part of it. > I > >> also hope that the app and the community surrounding it may have > benefited > >> from my work here, and that the new team will be able to bring it to > places > >> that I might not have ever foreseen. > >> > >> Best regards, > >> Josephine (User: Misaochan) > >> > >> [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.free.nrw.commons > >> [2] https://github.com/commons-app/apps-android-commons/releases > >> > >> >

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Presenting about transparency in Wikimedia's technical spaces - July 23, 17:00 UTC
by Kunal Mehta 27 Aug '22

27 Aug '22

Hi, Tomorrow at the HOPE 2022 conference, I'm giving a talk titled, "How to Run a Top-10 Website, Publicly and Transparently", discussing the impact of transparency in Wikimedia's technical spaces. A number of people have expressed interest in watching, including non-technical users, so I'm advertising it a bit more broadly. I apologize for the short notice, I didn't realize the stream would be free to watch until yesterday (thanks Ori!). Time: 2022-07-23 17:00 UTC (1pm ET) - https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1658595637 Stream: https://hope.net/416dac.html If you can't watch it live, a recording will be uploaded later on. I've documented all of this on-wiki, including the full abstract: <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Legoktm/HOPE_2022>. I am of course happy to answer any questions people might have after the talk! Thanks, -- Kunal / Legoktm

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Wikitech-l August 2022