*Registration for the 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon is now open! *
*(with apologies for cross-posting)*
The annual Wikimedia Hackathon
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2025> is organized by
the Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/> in
collaboration with Wikimedia User Group Turkey (WMTR)
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Turkey> and
will be taking place in Istanbul, Turkey, from May 2nd through May 4th,
2025 at the Renaissance Polat Istanbul Hotel
<https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/istrn-renaissance-polat-istanbul-hote…>
.
The Hackathon is an on-site, in-person event. Those people who cannot
attend the Hackathon in-person will be able to follow some of the program
content online, but should not register using the link provided below. More
information will be provided closer to the event on how to participate
remotely. Registration will be open until mid April 2025, or until we reach
event capacity.
The Hackathon event is free for all* to attend *and each person that
attends the Hackathon is required to register.
- Catering (lunch, dinner, snacks, and drinks) will be provided during the
event.
- Covid-related equipment will also be available upon request (e.g. self
test kits and masks).
- We’ll have discounted room codes for those that want to stay at the hotel
venue, to be announced in the coming weeks.
- Check if your passport is up to date and if you will need a visa (or an
e-visa) to travel to Turkey, citizens of most countries can apply for an e-visa
online <https://www.mfa.gov.tr/visa-information-for-foreigners.en.mfa>.
Participants are expected to book their own travel arrangements and
accommodation. However, the Wikimedia Foundation is offering to take care
of travel and accommodation for a limited number of scholars and you will
be able to apply for a scholarship during the registration process.
Scholarship applicants - please note:
-
*Scholarship application and Wikimedia Foundation staff sponsorship will
only be available to request until December 10th, 2024. *
-
Priority will be given to scholars who can mentor or support in areas
of high demand and staff with ambitious or impactful projects.
-
Those that have requested a scholarship or sponsorship will be notified
by mid to late December 2024 about the status of their application.
-
All scholarships provided will adhere to the WMF travel policy
<https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Scholarship_travel_policy>
guidelines.
*Scholarship to this event will cover:*
-
Roundtrip airfare between your city of residence and Istanbul, Turkey -
arriving on May 1, 2025 and departing on May 5, 2025.
-
Private accommodation at the conference hotel for up to 4 nights
-
Medical Insurance Coverage for any scholars traveling outside of their
home country. (Scholars local to Turkey will need to use their regular
insurance coverage.).
-
Airport transfers between the Istanbul Airport (IST) and the conference
hotel.
-
All meals will be provided for the duration of the event (lunch, drinks,
snacks, and dinner will be provided on event days; breakfast will be
provided by the hotel for guests staying there). In addition, dinner will
be provided on Thursday before the Hackathon officially kicks off.
-
Fees associated with obtaining a visa to travel to Turkey (visa
application fees, and travel to in-person travel visa appointment (if
needed)).
-
Citizens of most countries can apply for an e-visa online
<https://www.mfa.gov.tr/visa-information-for-foreigners.en.mfa>.
*Scholarship to this event will not cover:*
-
Per diem costs on travel days.
-
Ground transportation costs between your residence and home airport.
-
Insurance for your personal possessions.
The Hackathon registration form runs on Pretix (a free, open-sourced
third-party platform that helps organize and manage events) which may
subject your data to additional terms <https://pretix.eu/about/en/privacy>.
For more information on WMF’s privacy and data-handling for the Hackathon,
please read the privacy statement
<https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal:Wikimedia_Hackathon_Privacy_Sta…>
.
<https://pretix.eu/wikimedia/hackathon2025>
If you encounter any issues while registering, or have questions about the
registration process, feel free to contact the coordination team at
hackathon(a)wikimedia.org.
Cheers,
Deb
--
deb tankersley (she/her)
developer outreach program management
Wikimedia Foundation
What's the status of the project to create a grammar for Wikitext in EBNF?
There are two pages:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikitext_Metasyntaxhttp://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Markup_spec
Nothing seems to have happened since January this year. Also the comments on
the latter page seem to indicate a lack of clear goal: is this just a fun
project, is it to improve the existing parser, or is it to facilititate a
new parser? It's obviously a lot of work, so it needs to be of clear
benefit.
Brion requested the grammar IIRC (and there's a comment to that effect at
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7
), so I'm wondering what became of it.
Is there still a goal of replacing the parser? Or is there some alternative
plan?
Steve
Hi everyone,
Summary
After a long series of consultations with various teams in the Wikimedia
Foundation, I find myself happy to inform you of the sunset of an API from
the current Wikimedia offerings.
That would be *recommendation-api*, the one powering
*https://<project_domain>/api/rest_v1/#/Recommendation* family of
endpoints, e.g. https://commons.wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/#/ or
https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/#/Recommendation.
The codebase of that API resides in
*https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/mediawiki/services/recommendation-api
<https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/mediawiki/services/recommendation-api>*.
The removal date will be 2025-03-31.
There is some more information below as to why, what and how as well as an
estimation of the impact this is expected to have (minimal to zero). It is
also my intention to proceed with a diff <https://diff.wikimedia.org/> post
explaining our process in more detail.
Intro
Recommendation-api was being used solely by the Wikipedia official Android
application. Given that recently <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T373611>,
the Android Wikipedia Official application has moved away from using this
API, the SRE team wanted to remove this service from production to focus on
more impactful services. The problem was ensuring that we turn off this API
responsibly so that we do not have a significant impact on users who have
not yet upgraded their apps and do not waste SRE effort on supporting a
service we are moving away from, for more than we need to. A complication
was that the service wasn't anymore owned by anyone, meaning maintenance
(Node.js and Operating System upgrades) had to be carried out by people
that were not acquainted at all with the code base.
Process
To achieve the above goals, a process was jump started by a group of
Principal Engineers in the Foundation (Jon Robson, Moriel Schottlender and
yours truly) collecting data and feedback regarding the remaining usage of
the API as well as the estimated amount of effort that would be needed to
continue maintaining the service vs sunsetting it. Since October, we spoke
to various stakeholders in the Foundation to figure out the best possible
plan, going through a variety of possible paths. We ended up recommending
that the service be sunset at 2025-03-31, a recommendation that was
accepted.
Impact
The service is only accessed by users of the Wikipedia Android application.
Recent versions of it no longer rely on it and there will be zero (0)
impact on users of these. But users with application versions older than 6
months by the time of removal (2025-03-31), will see reduced functionality
in the form of the *Suggested Edits* part of the application no longer
functioning. The rest of the application will continue to function as
usual. We encourage users of versions older than *r/2.7.50504-r-2024-10-01
<https://github.com/wikimedia/apps-android-wikipedia/releases/tag/r%2F2.7.50…>*
to
update.
We wanted to make sure we don't break 3rd party users without giving them a
heads up. Going through access logs and metrics, we identified no valid 3rd
party users. Furthermore, we intend to review traffic/errors to that API 1
month past the cutoff date and evaluate the effectiveness of our solution.
Note
This API should not be confused with another one, also named
recommendation-api
<https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/research/recommendation-api/>,
and exposed by LiftWing, under the
https://api.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lift_Wing_API/Reference/Get_content_translat…
endpoint.
The latter is powered by a different codebase and, conflicting naming
aside, has no other relation to the former or this sunsetting.
Regards,
--
Alexandros Kosiaris
Principal Site Reliability Engineer
Wikimedia Foundation
Hi all -
Unfortunately, the Wikimedia Foundation will not be participating in this
year's Google Summer of Code <https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/>
program. We look forward to coming back in 2026. In the meanwhile, we will
be participating in Outreachy <https://www.outreachy.org/> round 30 this
summer. You can find out more in our call for projects
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/…>.
Thank you for your patience and support.
- Developer Outreach team
--
Lani Goto (they/them)
Senior Technical Program Manager
Hello tools builders, bot maintainers, researchers, and all other Wikimedia
web API users!
I am interested in learning more about your experience as a Wikimedia
developer, and how it compares to other API experiences that you know and
love.
To kick off the conversation, I’d love your answers to the following
questions:
1.
What is the best web/HTTP API you’ve ever worked with? (it doesn’t have
to be from Wikimedia!)
2.
What makes you love it?
3.
Which Wikimedia web/HTTP API do you love most?
4.
What is your biggest frustration working with Wikimedia web/HTTP APIs?
5.
If you could change one thing about the Wikimedia developer experience,
what would it be?
In addition to answering the questions directly, please grab a time on my
calendar <https://calendar.app.google/F9mNSRypP4qQ9BiH8> if you are
interested in sharing more details about your experiences, or if there are
specific topics you’d like to discuss in more detail! Your feedback will
shape the future of the Wikimedia API offering, including how we can make
our APIs easier to use and more appealing for generations to come :)
Thanks,
Halley
*Halley Coplin* (she/her)
Sr. Product Manager, MediaWiki Interfaces
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hello everyone!
We’re excited to announce that the next *Language Community Meeting* is
happening soon, *February 28th at 14:00 UTC*! If you’d like to join, simply
sign up on the *wiki page
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Language_and_Product_Localization/…>*
.
This is a participant-driven meeting where we share updates on
language-related projects, discuss technical challenges in language wikis,
and collaborate on solutions. In our last meeting, we covered topics like
developing language keyboards, creating the Moore Wikipedia, and updates
from the language support track at Wiki Indaba.
*Got a topic to share?* Whether it’s a technical update from your project,
a challenge you need help with, or a request for interpretation support,
we’d love to hear from you! Feel free to *reply to this message* or add
agenda items to the document *here
<https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/language-community-meeting-feb-2025>*.
Also, we wanted to highlight that the sixth edition of the Language &
Internationalization newsletter (January 2025) is available here
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Language_and_Product_Localization/…>.
This newsletter provides updates from the October–December 2024 quarter on
new feature development, improvements in various language-related technical
projects and support efforts, details about community meetings, and ideas
for contributing to projects. To stay updated, you can subscribe to the
newsletter on its wiki page
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Language_and_Product_Localization/…>
.
We look forward to your ideas and participation at the language community
meeting, see you there!
Cheers,