Wikitech-l February 2023

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42 participants
40 discussions

Book creation
by Samuel Klein 15 Feb '23

15 Feb '23

I ran across another reference to our lovely, important book creation tools of yore, on a global Open Education forum <https://connect.oeglobal.org/t/what-happened-to-wikipedia-book-creator/4341…> . What is the best place to discuss the broad, important version of this? * How we support conversion to standalone formats, for reading and printing * Clarity for Dirk (M2L <https://mediawiki2latex.wmflabs.org/>), PediaPress, the PDF-feature <https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/PDF_Functionality>team, and other maintainers This is important to a wide range of reuse, and the uncertainty around what is possible, what is planned, and what is desired by various audiences makes it hard to make progress even when it's obvious that is important.

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Notification about Gerrit related request
by Zoran Dori 14 Feb '23

14 Feb '23

Hello, as per https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Gerrit/Privilege_policy , I want to notify you that I made task https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T323247 about granting me ownership of the Gerrit repository of the UnblockMe extension. I would appreciate your suggestions or +1s. :) Thank you for your time and consideration! Best regards, Zoran

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Which server answers 500?
by Bináris 14 Feb '23

14 Feb '23

Please help in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T329452 Which server told me 500? Is it a Gerrit problem? A Pywikibot problem? What is the next step? -- Bináris

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Re: Call for projects and mentors for Google Summer of Code 2023 and Outreachy Round 26 is ongoing!
by Susanna Ånäs 14 Feb '23

14 Feb '23

Hello all, We are excited to join this round of GSoC with this Wikidocumentaries proposal! Wikidocumentaries <https://wikidocumentaries-demo.wmcloud.org/> is a website that provides a language-independent way of browsing Wikimedia projects based on Wikidata items. It displays media from external repositories and integrates them as part of the pages. The idea is to allow the users to find relevant open content and contribute it to the Wikimedia projects by using the content for their purposes. So far, Wikidocumentaries has not been enabled for contributions to Wikimedia projects. The goal of the GSoC project is to establish the entire workflow for retrieving media related to the currently viewed topic in Wikidocumentaries from a given media repository, displaying it in Wikidocumentaries and uploading it to Wikimedia Commons, adding structured data statements to it. When this workflow has been completed, it will be possible to make available further features for matching, enriching or organizing the data. It is possible to expand the work to these areas, based on the interests of the intern. Tech: The UI code is created with Vue, and the API code is JavaScript. The work focuses on Structured Data on Commons, therefore understanding of the MediaWiki API, Wikidata and Structured Data on Commons is needed. - Mentors: TuukkaH, Susannaanas - Codebase: GitHub <https://github.com/Wikidocumentaries> - Phabricator: Ticket <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T329023>, Project <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/wikidocumentaries/>, Microtasks <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T329256> - Documentation website <https://wikidocumentaries.wmcloud.org/wiki/Main_Page> Looking forward to working together! Susanna and Tuukka AvoinGLAM

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Can't claim on Phabricator
by Bináris 14 Feb '23

14 Feb '23

Hi, my account is https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/p/binbot/ I don't see either claim or assign command at the tasks. Where is the problem? -- Bináris

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Wikipedia Library
by Martin Domdey 13 Feb '23

13 Feb '23

Hi! Is there an issue with Wikipedia Library: https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/ It seems to be down. Kind regards Doc Taxon ...

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[GSoC 2023] Contributing to Wikimedia Foundation
by Om Singh 12 Feb '23

12 Feb '23

Hi! I am Om Singh, a sophomore pursuing B.S. in Physics at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India. I noticed that Wikimedia Foundation has been participating in Google Summer of Code as a mentoring organisation for quite some time. I also found its past Project Ideas quite interesting and thought-provoking! I also intend to contribute to Wikimedia Foundation this Summer through the GSoC program, and contribute to its mission of providing free education through various means. I have attached my CV with this email. Can you please guide me regarding the Project Ideas for GSoC 2023? Is there some webpage where I could find those Ideas? Also, are there some known small bugs, which maybe I could fix, so as to assure that I am capable of participating in GSoC? Waiting for your reply.. With Regards, Om Singh (+91-9122966490)

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Contributing through block bases programming to the Wikimedia Codebase
by tim.herb＠gmx.de 08 Feb '23

08 Feb '23

Hello, I am interested in programming and I asked a question about potential use cases for block based programming within the Wikimedia projects in the last year on this Mailinglist. In the last months I tried different things to offer alternative ways of creating source code. I like for example the programming language COBOL as it is possible to write source code with only a few brackets and it is quite similar to short English sentences. I have experience with the programming languages R and COBOL. Do you think it is possible to collect the most used code snippets and create blocks for these code snippets. I wrote a script in the programming language R that enables the conversion of blocks to code. https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/hogue/block-to-code/-/tree/main/ There are two folders and I am still experimenting and changes are possible to make it more useful for code generation. From my point of view it could enable more people to contribute to the Wikimedia Codebase if it is possible to create programs through combining blocks in a visual programming language like Snap! or Scratch. I also tried it the other way with converting source code to blocks in the visual programming language Snap! and wrote a script to convert Spreadsheet functions to source code in Programming language R. Do you think the possibility to use of visual programming languages could enable more people to contribute to the Wikimedia Codebase. I am interested in extending the existing script to help people to contribute in such a way. Another advantage is the possibility to translate the blocks. This makes it possible to understand to contribute also without an understanding of English. Please tell me what you think about my thoughts and if and how I could do it from your point of view. Hogü-456

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[event] [crossposting] Wiki-based Business Process Tooling at NASA: The Need for Open CSP
by Erica Litrenta 08 Feb '23

08 Feb '23

The Tech Department at Wikimedia Foundation [1] invites you to a* special event on February 09, 2023, at 1600 UTC* [2]. *Richard Evans, Electronics & Data Systems Engineer At NASA Glenn Research Center *[3], will be presenting on *how MediaWiki is being used within NASA* to help manage the testing of very large spacecraft to prove they can survive the harsh conditions of launch, orbit, and re-entry. The management platform is built from MediaWiki and several key extensions that provide workflow support. This evolving platform plans to incorporate the extensions that form the MediaWiki-powered Open CSP platform [4]. This talk will explain the architecture and benefits of the NASA platform and motivate the need for Open CSP. We’ll also be recording the event to share with those who can’t make it. You can join the event through Google Meet [5]. Looking forward to seeing you there, *--on behalf of the Tech Department, Wikimedia Foundation.* *(For follow-ups, please reach out to *lnguyen(a)wikimedia.org.) [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Technology [2] https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1675958415 [3] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q618728#sitelinks-wikipedia [4] https://www.open-csp.org/Main_Page [5] https://stream.meet.google.com/stream/ce81307c-cdb7-4a5e-9697-65c423f27614 -- ________________________________ Erica Litrenta (she/her) Senior Manager, Community Relations Specialists (Product) Wikimedia Foundation

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Language team celebrates 10 years of MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle
by Niklas Laxström 08 Feb '23

08 Feb '23

Slightly over ten years ago the Language team released the first MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle, or MLEB for short. To date, we have made 64 releases supporting MediaWiki versions from 1.19 to 1.40alpha, and PHP versions from 5.2 to 8. Some things are still the same: * MediaWiki version compatibility policy * tarball releases * the goal of providing top notch language support in a convenient package Some things have changed: * we went from monthly releases to quarterly releases * LocalizationUpdate is no longer included in the bundle because it was made obsolete by automatic translation backports We don't know much about the users of the MLEB, but according to our statistics, each tarball release is downloaded on average approximately 300 times. Some people use MLEB releases via git. As the initiator of MLEB, I am happy to see how far we have come. Thanks belong to Abijeet Patro and Kartik Mistry who together have done the actual work to make the releases in the past years. Fun fact: the tool used to make MLEB releases is called melange. I don't remember for sure, but I think the name was chosen because it's short for "MEdiawiki LANGuagE'' and it had a quite appropriate meaning: "A mixture of different things; a disordered mixture" (English Wiktionary). The first release announcement is quoted below. -Niklas ke 28. marrask. 2012 klo 12.17 Niklas Laxström (niklas.laxstrom(a)gmail.com) kirjoitti: > The Wikimedia Language Engineering team is pleased to announce the > first release of the MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle. The bundle > is a collection of selected MediaWiki extensions needed by any wiki > which desires to be multilingual. > > This first bundle release (2012.11) is compatible with MediaWiki 1.19, > 1.20 and 1.21alpha. > Get it from https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MLEB > > The Universal Language Selector is a must have, because it provides an > essential functionality for any user regardless on the number of > languages he/she speaks: language selection, font support for > displaying scripts badly supported by operating systems and input > methods for typing languages that don't use Latin (a-z) alphabet. > > Maintaining multilingual content in a wiki is a mess without the > Translate extension, which is used by Wikimedia, KDE and > translatewiki.net, where hundreds of pieces of documentation and > interface translations are updated every day; with Localisation Update > your users will always have the latest translations freshly out of the > oven. The Clean Changes extension keeps your recent changes page > uncluttered from translation activity and other distractions. > > Don't miss the chance to practice your rusty language skills and use > the Babel extension to mark the languages you speak and to find other > speakers of the same language in your wiki. And finally the cldr > extension is a database of language and country translations. > > We are aiming to make new releases every month, so that you can easily > stay on the cutting edge with the constantly improving language > support. The bundle comes with clear installation and upgrade > installations. The bundle is tested against MediaWiki release > versions, so you can avoid most of the temporary breaks that would > happen if you were using the latest development versions instead. > > Because this is our first release, there can be some rough edges. > Please provide us a lot of feedback so that we can improve for the > next release. > > -Niklas > > -- > Niklas Laxström >

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Wikitech-l February 2023