Yesterday there was a conversation about code review on irc and among other
things, how sometimes patches can get "stuck".
I had an idea for a way to improve things. I'm not sure if it is a good
idea, but there's only one way to find out.
So without further ado, announcing the Code Review Patch Board:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_review/patch_board
In short - each person is allowed to list one of their patches on the board
that they would really like to see reviewed. You can only list one patch at
a time, and it should be a patch that you have been unable to get review
for for at least a week through normal means. See the page for the full
list of guidelines.
I encourage people to give it a try. Add a patch you wrote that you cannot
get a review for. Or if you have +2 rights, try giving some love to these
underloved patches.
I would also love to hear feedback on the general idea as well as the
current guidelines.
To repeat, the url is:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_review/patch_board
Thanks,
bawolff
TL;DR: The legacy Mobile Content Service is going away in July 2023. Please
switch to Parsoid or another API before then to ensure service continuity.
Hello World,
I'm writing about a service decommission we hope to complete mid-July 2023.
The service to be decommissioned is the legacy Mobile Content Service
("MCS"), which is maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation's Content
Transform Team. We will be marking this service as deprecated soon.
We hope that with this notice, people will have ample time to update their
systems for use of other endpoints such as Parsoid [1] (n.b., MCS uses
Parsoid HTML).
The MCS endpoints are the ones with the relative URL path pattern
/page/mobile-sections* on the Wikipedias. For examples of the URLs see the
"Mobile" section on the online Swagger (OpenAPI) specification
documentation with matching URLs here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/#/Mobile
== History ==
The Mobile Content Service ("MCS") is the historical aggregate service that
originally provided support for the article reading experience on the
Wikipedia for Android native app, as well as some other experiences. We
have noticed that there are other users of the service. We are not able to
determine all of the users, as it's hard to tell with confidence from the
web logs.
The Wikimedia Foundation had already transitioned the Wikipedia for
Android and iOS apps to the newer Page Content Service ("PCS") several
years ago. PCS has some similarities with MCS in terms of its mobility
focus, but it also has different request-response signatures in practice.
PCS, as with MCS, is intended to primarily satisfy Wikimedia
Foundation-maintained user experiences only, and so this is classified with
the "unstable" moniker.
== Looking ahead ==
Generally, as noted in the lead, we recommend that folks who use MCS (or
PCS, for that matter) switch over to Parsoid for accessing Wikipedia
article content programmatically for the most predictable service.
The HTML produced by Parsoid has a versioned specification [2] and because
Parsoid is accessed regularly by a number of components across the globe
tends to have fairly well cached responses. However, please note that
Parsoid may be subject to stricter rate limits that can apply under certain
traffic patterns.
At this point, I do also want to note that in order to keep up with
contemporary HTML standards, particularly those favoring accessibility and
machine readability enhancements, Parsoid HTML will undergo change as we
further converge parsing stacks [3]. Generally, you should expect iteration
on the Parsoid HTML spec, and of course as you may have come to appreciate
that the shape of HTML in practice can vary nontrivially wiki-by-wiki as
practices across wikis vary.
You may also want to consider Wikimedia Enterprise API options, which range
from no cost to higher volume access paid options.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise#Access
== Forking okay, but not recommended ==
Because MCS acts as a service aggregate and makes multiple backend API
calls, caveats can apply for those subresources - possibility of API
changes, deprecation, and the like. We do not recommend a plain fork of MCS
code because of the subresource fetch behavior. This said, of course you
are welcome to fork in a way compatible with MCS's license.
== Help spread the word ==
Although we are aware of the top two remaining consumers of MCS, we also
are not sure who else is accessing MCS and anticipate that some downstream
tech may break when MCS is turned off. As we are cross-posting this
message, we hope most people who have come to rely upon MCS will see this
message. Please feel free to forward this message to contacts if you know
they are using MCS.
== Help ==
Although we intend to decommission MCS in July 2023, we would like to share
resources if you need some help. We plan to hold office hours in case you
would like to meet with us to discuss this or other Content Transform Team
matters. We will host these events on Google Meet. We will provide notice
of these office hours on the wikitech-l mailing list in the coming weeks
and months.
Additionally, if you would like to discuss your MCS transition plans,
please visit the Content Transform Team talk page:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Content_Transform_Team
Finally, some Content Transform Team members will also be at the Wikimedia
Hackathon [4] if you would like some in-person support.
Thank you.
Adam Baso (he/him/his/Adam), on behalf of the Content Transform Team
Director of Engineering
Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Specs/HTML
[3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid/Parser_Unification/Updates
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023
Hello!
Please take our annual* *Developer Satisfaction Survey*!
Link: https://wikimediafoundation.limesurvey.net/484133
The survey is open until Fri, 17 Feb 2023—two weeks from today.
____
This survey is for members of the *Wikimedia Developer Community* and
covers the following topics:
-
Code review tooling and process
-
Code quality
-
Phabricator
-
Continuous Integration
-
MediaWiki development environments
-
Beta cluster / Staging
Please take the survey if you’ve used the above tools as part of your role
developing software for the Wikimedia community.
We’re soliciting your feedback to:
-
Measure developer satisfaction, and
-
determine where to invest resources in the future
We will anonymize, explore, and report the data we gather on mediawiki.org.
View previous years' survey results:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Satisfaction_Survey
Privacy statement: This survey will be conducted via a third-party service,
which may subject it to additional terms. For more information on privacy
and data-handling, see the survey privacy statement
<https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal:2023_Developer_Satisfaction_Sur…>
.
Thank you!
Tyler Cipriani (he/him)
Engineering Manager, Release Engineering
Wikimedia Foundation
____
*: “annual,” except we missed 2022 🙁
Dear Wikitechians,
On *Wednesday March 1st*, the SRE team will run a planned data center
switchover, moving all wikis from our primary data center in Virginia to
the secondary data center in Texas. This is an important periodic test of
our tools and procedures, to ensure the wikis will continue to be available
even in the event of major technical issues in our primary home. It also
gives all our SRE and ops teams a chance to do maintenance and upgrades on
systems in Virginia that normally run 24 hours a day.
The switchover process requires a *brief read-only period for all
Foundation-hosted wikis*, which will start at *14:00 UTC on Wednesday March
1st*, and will last for a few minutes while we execute the migration as
efficiently as possible. All our public and private wikis will be
continuously available for reading as usual, but no one will be able to
save edits during the process. Users will see a notification of the
upcoming maintenance, and anyone still editing will be asked to try again
in a few minutes.
CommRel has already begun notifying communities of the read-only window. A
similar event will follow a few weeks later, when we move back to Virginia.
This is currently scheduled for *Wednesday, April 26th*.
If you like, you can follow along on the day in the public
#wikimedia-operations channel on IRC (instructions for joining here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Instructions>). To report any issues,
you can reach us in #wikimedia-sre on IRC, or file a Phabricator ticket
with the *datacenter-switchover* tag (pre-filled form here
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/edit/form/1/?projects=Data…>);
we'll be monitoring closely for reports of trouble during and after the
switchover. (If you're new to Phab, there's more information at
Phabricator/Help.) The switchover and its preparation are tracked tracked
in Phabricator Task T327920 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T327920>
On behalf of the SRE team, please excuse the disruption, and our thanks to
everyone in a number of departments who've been involved in planning this
work for the past weeks. Feel free to reply directly to me with any
questions.
Thank you,
--
Clément Goubert (they/them)
Senior SRE
Wikimedia Foundation
*Fixing my list addressing errors...*
TLDR: The Foundation will be conducting a retrospective on the Technical
Decision Making Process.
To the entire Wiki technical community,
For quite some time now, we have experienced issues with the Technical
Decision Making Process (TDMP). Volunteer contributors and staff have asked
if we are still operating the Technical Decision Forum (TDF, the member
body that participates in the TDMP). Communication about it from the
Foundation has been inconsistent, and interest from the volunteer community
in joining has been low. Some of our most senior engineers on Foundation
staff have expressed that the process is flawed, doesn’t create room for
discussion about the technical issues surrounding a decision, and doesn’t
ensure participation by all stakeholders who may be affected by the
decision. Suffice it to say, the current state of affairs leaves many
participants wanting more.
We must also remind ourselves of the purpose of a decision making process.
The decisions are not meant to be random or isolated. They should be
aligned to our technical strategy, and we should be able to look at the
decisions we have made and understand how they advance our progress against
that strategy. If the process is working as it should, the decisions that
are produced should represent settled wisdom, and not need to be revisited
too quickly. The goals for a well-run process include:
-
A straightforward, widely understood decision making process, that
-
Facilitates impactful technical decisions to be made in a timely manner,
-
Incorporates input from staff and volunteers in our technical community,
with
-
Decisions that align with accountability for decision outcomes, and
-
Clear communication and transparent operations throughout the process.
On examination of the contributing factors that have led us to this point,
the factor that stands out to me is the need for clear accountability:
accountability for the TDMP itself and accountability for each of the
decisions we make. Technical decision making, beyond a certain magnitude,
is a core organizational process for any engineering organization. It is
therefore important for us to examine and improve this process from time to
time to ensure organizational effectiveness. Not unrelated, regular
retrospectives are a routine agile software engineering practice to enact
continuous improvement. To keep our decision making process effective and
efficient, we need to conduct regular retros. Overall accountability for
maintaining an effective decision making process should rest with a person
who is sufficiently able to marshal resources and address problems at a
large scale – here at the Foundation, that resides in the executive level.
The Foundation will be conducting a retro on the TDMP over the next couple
of months. Because we don’t yet have a habit of doing retros on this
process, and because there is a wide range of stakeholders we seek to hear
from, the process will be a bit more structured than an ordinary retro, and
will take more time. As we do more of these, we should get better at them.
The feedback gathered through the retro will be used to make changes to
improve the TDMP.
Foundation staff will follow up with more information about the kickoff of
the retro and what steps will follow. I am looking forward to wide
participation in this retro.
Here are the links to the relevant wiki page and Phab ticket:
- Wiki page
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Technical_Decision…>
- Phabricator ticket <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T333235>
Thank you! And apologies for all the crossposting.
Tajh Taylor (he/him/his)
VP, Data Science & Engineering
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hi All,
The Wikimedia Foundation’s Tech & Product departments have published a
first overview on current annual planning work for the fiscal year
2023/2024 (July 1st-June 30th). Comments and questions are welcome on the
talk page:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2023-2024/…
This is an almost real time “snapshot” of the work that is currently
underway to develop the Technology & Product annual plan in a
cross-departmental effort. The plan is still at the very high level and
work in progress - main areas of work (“buckets”), possible annual
objectives <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR>, initiatives that could help
achieve these, first versions of annual key results that could roll into
these objectives. Content on the page will change as things evolve, and new
thoughts and feedback are incorporated.
If you have thoughts or questions at this early stage, please comment on
the talk page so that we can keep discussions in one place. If you prefer
to wait until things become clearer - this is perfectly fine too!
A call for feedback on the specifics of the annual plan is planned for
later in the process - this is just a start.
Thanks,
Birgit
--
Birgit Müller (she/her)
Director of Technical Engagement
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hello all!
The Search Platform Team usually holds an open meeting on the first
Wednesday of each month. Come talk to us about anything related to
Wikimedia search, Wikidata Query Service (WDQS), Wikimedia Commons Query
Service (WCQS), etc.!
Feel free to add your items to the Etherpad Agenda for the next meeting.
Details for our next meeting:
Date: Wednesday, April 5, 2023
Time: 16:00-17:00 UTC / 08:00 PDT / 11:00 EDT / 17:00 CET
Etherpad: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Search_Platform_Office_Hours
Google Meet link: https://meet.google.com/vgj-bbeb-uyi
Join by phone: https://tel.meet/vgj-bbeb-uyi?pin=8118110806927
Have fun and see you soon!
Guillaume
--
*Guillaume Lederrey* (he/him)
Engineering Manager
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hello all,
Following up on Tajh’s announcement email, the TDMP Retro team would like
to invite you to engage with us on this retro process. As was mentioned,
this retro will open the door for input from varied stakeholders and input
will be requested through multiple venues, to make sure all stakeholders
are able to contribute to the conversation.
As a first step, the core team would like to invite you to read our
planning document
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Technical_Decision…>,
and offer insights
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Technical_decision_making/Technical_Dec…>
on the administrative side of this retro process:
-
Are there any stakeholders we have left out?
-
Any unclear parts of the retro process?
-
What communication channels are important for engagement in the retro
process? Ex: Mailing list, Talk pages, IRC, other?
We will soon start working towards the next steps, which will delve into
the substantive input about the process from all stakeholders.
We are hopeful that this process will enable and encourage all voices to be
heard, and result in valuable insights into the needs and requirements of
the technical community when it comes to decision-making.
You can communicate with us through:
-
The MediaWiki talk page:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Technical_Decision…
-
Phabricator ticket: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T333235
-
Core team mailing list: tdf-retro-2023(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Thank you,
Moriel, on behalf of the TDMP Retro Core Group
Core group:
-
Moriel Schottlender (chair)
-
Daniel Kinzler
-
Chris Danis
-
Kosta Harlan
-
Temilola Adeleye
On Thu, Mar 30, 2023 at 7:48 AM Tajh Taylor <ttaylor(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> TLDR: The Foundation will be conducting a retrospective on the Technical
> Decision Making Process.
>
> To the entire Wiki technical community,
>
> For quite some time now, we have experienced issues with the Technical
> Decision Making Process (TDMP). Volunteer contributors and staff have asked
> if we are still operating the Technical Decision Forum (TDF, the member
> body that participates in the TDMP). Communication about it from the
> Foundation has been inconsistent, and interest from the volunteer community
> in joining has been low. Some of our most senior engineers on Foundation
> staff have expressed that the process is flawed, doesn’t create room for
> discussion about the technical issues surrounding a decision, and doesn’t
> ensure participation by all stakeholders who may be affected by the
> decision. Suffice it to say, the current state of affairs leaves many
> participants wanting more.
>
> We must also remind ourselves of the purpose of a decision making
> process. The decisions are not meant to be random or isolated. They
> should be aligned to our technical strategy, and we should be able to look
> at the decisions we have made and understand how they advance our progress
> against that strategy. If the process is working as it should, the
> decisions that are produced should represent settled wisdom, and not need
> to be revisited too quickly. The goals for a well-run process include:
>
> -
>
> A straightforward, widely understood decision making process, that
> -
>
> Facilitates impactful technical decisions to be made in a timely
> manner,
> -
>
> Incorporates input from staff and volunteers in our technical
> community, with
> -
>
> Decisions that align with accountability for decision outcomes, and
> -
>
> Clear communication and transparent operations throughout the process.
>
> On examination of the contributing factors that have led us to this point,
> the factor that stands out to me is the need for clear accountability:
> accountability for the TDMP itself and accountability for each of the
> decisions we make. Technical decision making, beyond a certain magnitude,
> is a core organizational process for any engineering organization. It is
> therefore important for us to examine and improve this process from time to
> time to ensure organizational effectiveness. Not unrelated, regular
> retrospectives are a routine agile software engineering practice to enact
> continuous improvement. To keep our decision making process effective and
> efficient, we need to conduct regular retros. Overall accountability for
> maintaining an effective decision making process should rest with a person
> who is sufficiently able to marshal resources and address problems at a
> large scale – here at the Foundation, that resides in the executive level.
>
> The Foundation will be conducting a retro on the TDMP over the next couple
> of months. Because we don’t yet have a habit of doing retros on this
> process, and because there is a wide range of stakeholders we seek to hear
> from, the process will be a bit more structured than an ordinary retro, and
> will take more time. As we do more of these, we should get better at them.
> The feedback gathered through the retro will be used to make changes to
> improve the TDMP.
>
> Foundation staff will follow up with more information about the kickoff of
> the retro and what steps will follow. I am looking forward to wide
> participation in this retro.
>
> Here are the links to the relevant wiki page and Phab ticket:
>
> - Wiki page
> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Technical_Decision…>
> - Phabricator ticket <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T333235>
>
> Thank you! And apologies for all the crossposting.
>
> Tajh Taylor (he/him/his)
>
> VP, Data Science & Engineering
>
> Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
>
>
--
Moriel Schottlender (she/her <https://pronoun.is/she>)
Principal System Architect, Architecture Team
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Architecture_Team>
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/