Wikitech-l May 2025

wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org

26 participants
31 discussions

RESTBase Sunset: Deprecation of emitted events to resource_change topic for URL /page/html
by Mateus Santos 27 May '25

27 May '25

Hello everyone, As part of the RESTBase Sunset, we will deprecate emitting events from RESTBase/Parsoid to the resource_change events topic for *URLs: /page/html/<title>*. We have done a preliminary investigation and we don’t foresee any disruptions since we haven’t found obvious consumers. However, we would appreciate any questions or concerns you might have. The deprecation will happen in 2 weeks, on *June 9th 2025*. Best, -- Mateus Santos Product Manager MediaWiki Engineering Group

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Tech News 2025, week 22
by Uzoma Ozurumba 26 May '25

26 May '25

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Tech News 2025, week 21
by Nick Wilson (Quiddity) 20 May '25

20 May '25

Latest *tech news <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News>* from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2025/21> are available. *Weekly highlight* - The Editing Team and the Machine Learning Team are working on a new check for newcomers: Peacock check <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Edit_check/Peacock_check>. Using a prediction model, this check will encourage editors to improve the tone of their edits, using artificial intelligence. We invite volunteers to review the first version of the Peacock language model for the following languages: Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, English, and Japanese. Users from these wikis interested in reviewing this model are invited to sign up at MediaWiki.org <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Edit_check/Peacock_check/model_test>. The deadline to sign up is on May 23, which will be the start date of the test. *Updates for editors* - From May 20, 2025, oversighters <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Oversight_policy> and checkusers <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Meta:CheckUsers> will need to have their accounts secured with two-factor authentication (2FA) to be able to use their advanced rights. All users who belong to these two groups and do not have 2FA enabled have been informed. In the future, this requirement may be extended to other users with advanced rights. Learn more <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Mandatory_two-factor_aut…> . - [image: Wishlist item] Multiblocks <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Community_Wishlist_Surve…> will begin mass deployment by the end of the month: all non-Wikipedia projects plus Catalan Wikipedia will adopt Multiblocks in the week of May 26, while all other Wikipedias will adopt it in the week of June 2. Please contact the team <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Wishlist_Survey_2023/Multibl…> if you have concerns. Administrators can test the new user interface now on your own wiki by browsing to Special:Block?usecodex=1 <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Block&usecodex=1>, and can test the full multiblocks functionality on testwiki <https://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Block>. Multiblocks is the feature that makes it possible for administrators to impose different types of blocks on the same user at the same time. See the help page <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Help:Manage_blocks> for more information. [1] <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T377121> - Later this week, the Special:SpecialPages <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SpecialPages> listing of almost all special pages will be updated with a new design. This page has been redesigned <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T219543> to improve the user experience in a few ways, including: The ability to search for names and aliases of the special pages, sorting, more visible marking of restricted special pages, and a more mobile-friendly look. The new version can be previewed <https://meta.wikimedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Special:SpecialPages> at Beta Cluster now, and feedback shared in the task. [2] <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T219543> - The Chart extension <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Extension:Chart> is being enabled on more wikis. For a detailed list of when the extension will be enabled on your wiki, please read the deployment timeline <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Extension:Chart/Project#D…> . - Wikifunctions <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikifunctions:Main_Pa…> will be deployed on May 27 on five Wiktionaries: Hausa <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ha:>, Igbo <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ig:>, Bengali <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bn:>, Malayalam <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ml:>, and Dhivehi/Maldivian <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dv:>. This is the second batch of deployment planned for the project. After deployment, the projects will be able to call functions from Wikifunctions <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikifunctions:Introdu…> and integrate them in their pages. A function is something that takes one or more inputs and transforms them into a desired output, such as adding up two numbers, converting miles into metres, calculating how much time has passed since an event, or declining a word into a case. Wikifunctions will allow users to do that through a simple call of a stable and global function <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikifunctions:Catalog…>, rather than via a local template. - Later this week, the Wikimedia Foundation will publish a hub for experiments <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/07/09/on-the-value-of-experimentation/>. This is to showcase and get user feedback on product experiments. The experiments help the Wikimedia movement understand new users <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/07/13/exploring-paths-for-the-future-of-fre…>, how they interact with the internet and how it could affect the Wikimedia movement. Some examples are generated video <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Future_Audiences/Generat…>, the Wikipedia Roblox speedrun game <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Future_Audiences/Roblox_…> and the Discord bot <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Future_Audiences/Discord…> . - [image: Recurrent item] View all 29 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/Recently_resol…>. For example, there was a bug with creating an account using the API, which has now been fixed. [3] <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T390751> *Updates for technical contributors* - Gadgets and user scripts that interact with Special:Block <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Block> may need to be updated to work with the new manage blocks interface <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Help:Manage_blocks>. Please review the developer guide <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Manage_blocks/Developers> for more information. If you need help or are unable to adapt your script to the new interface, please let the team know on the talk page <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help_talk:Manage_blocks/Developers>. [4] <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T377121> - The mw.title object allows you to get information about a specific wiki page in the Lua <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Wikipedia:Lua> programming language. Starting this week, a new property will be added to the object, named isDisambiguationPage. This property allows you to check if a page is a disambiguation page, without the need to write a custom function. [5] <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T71441> - [image: Advanced item] User script developers can use a new reverse proxy tool <https://iw.toolforge.org/gitlab-content> to load javascript and css from gitlab.wikimedia.org with mw.loader.load. The tool's author hopes this will enable collaborative development workflows for user scripts including linting, unit tests, code generation, and code review on gitlab.wikimedia.org without a separate copy-and-paste step to publish scripts to a Wikimedia wiki for integration and acceptance testing. See Tool:Gitlab-content on Wikitech <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tool:Gitlab-content> for more information. - [image: Recurrent item] Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.45/wmf.2> *Meetings and events* - The 12th edition of Wiki Workshop 2025 <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wiki_Workshop_2025>, a forum that brings together researchers that explore all aspects of Wikimedia projects, will be held virtually on 21-22 May. Researchers can register now <https://pretix.eu/wikimedia/wikiworkshop2025/>. *Tech news <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News> prepared by Tech News writers <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/Writers> and posted by bot <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/User:MediaWiki_message_d…> • Contribute <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News#contribute> • Translate <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2025/21> • Get help <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech> • Give feedback <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tech/News> • Subscribe or unsubscribe <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_message_delivery/Targets/Tech_ambass…>.* -- Nick "Quiddity" Wilson (he/him) Movement Communications Specialist Wikimedia Foundation

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Deleting patchdemo-legacy / new mailing list
by Tyler Cipriani 19 May '25

19 May '25

This email is for Patch Demo <https://patchdemo.wmcloud.org> users; you can stop reading if you don’t use Patch Demo. — We want to delete patchdemo-legacy and all its wikis the week of Mon, 16 Jun 2025. http://patchdemo-legacy.wmcloud.org <http://patchdemo-legacy.wikimedia.org> holds test wikis created before Aug 2024. We suspect patchdemo-legacy wikis are no longer used, given most were made with old, merged changes (and most traffic to these wikis comes from <https://openai.com/gptbot>gptbot). But if you need to keep a wiki from patchdemo-legacy, reach out to us: - Deadline: Fri, 13 Jun 2025 - Use this form to file a task for PatchDemo <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/edit/form/1/?tags=patchdem…> Deleting patchdemo-legacy will help free space and lessen our maintenance burden. — If you use Patch Demo, you should subscribe to patchdemo(a)wikimedia.org. We will use this list to: - Announce new features. - Consult with users about changes, features, and ideas. We hope that the list will be low-volume and should limit wikitech-l noise. Thanks all! – Tyler (and the other PatchDemons) Tyler Cipriani (he/him) Engineering Manager, Release Engineering Wikimedia Foundation

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Phabricator mail notifications: Removing the To: and CC: footer lines
by Andre Klapper 17 May '25

17 May '25

Dear Wikimedia Phabricator users, if anyone relies on the "To:" and "CC:" lines at the bottom of every Phab email notification to filter their incoming messages: I would like to remove these two lines soon. Please check how to instead filter your Phab mail notifications: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Help/Managing_mail#Filter_notifi… If that wiki page does not cover your use case, please leave a comment on its talk page or in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T391924 Thanks!, andre To: wikitech-l Cc: Aklapper -- Andre Klapper (he/him) | Bugwrangler https://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/

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Wikimedia’s new MediaWiki deployment tool
by Tyler Cipriani 16 May '25

16 May '25

tl;dr: Check out SpiderPig[0], a web frontend for deploying code changes to Wikimedia’s MediaWiki. — What is SpiderPig? SpiderPig is a web app that deploys code to Wikimedia’s production MediaWikis. — How do I use it? Today, anyone who has deployed a backport in the past year[1] can log in at https://spiderpig.wikimedia.org. Follow instructions on Wikitech to learn how to use SpiderPig[2] or request access[3]. Join Release Engineering for a deployment party 🥳 to try out SpiderPig: *Mon, 12 May 2025* – *Thu, 15 May 2025* members of Release Engineering will be in the #wikimedia-operations IRC channel for daily backport windows to share the joy of SpiderPig: - UTC afternoon backport window (13:00 UTC) - UTC late backport window (20:00 UTC) More details on the deployment calendar.[4] — Why? During backport windows[5], deployers traditionally use our `scap backport` command-line tool to ship code. Meanwhile, developers wait on standby to check the code. For many deployments, deployers punch in commands and relay information to developers. SpiderPig eliminates the need to punch in commands for simple changes, freeing deployers to focus on complex changes. SpiderPig is like showing up for a backport window to get a change deployed: Enter a Gerrit change number in the search and click “Start backport.” When prompted, check it on the staging servers[6]. Confirm that the change looks good on staging to make it live everywhere! — Thanks to: - Alexandros Kosiaris for his partnership in getting SpiderPig into production. - Lauralyn Watson, Eric Gardner, and other folks working on Codex for their help integrating Codex and Vue. - Simon Lyngshede and Moritz Mühlenhoff for their help integrating with our single sign-on system. - Ahmon Dancy for leading this project and the Release Engineering team for all their work to make deployments better. Tyler Cipriani (he/him) Engineering Manager, Release Engineering Wikimedia Foundation [0]: <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scap/SpiderPig> [1]: <https://ldap.toolforge.org/group/spiderpig-access> [2]: <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scap/SpiderPig#Log_in_to_SpiderPig> [3]: <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scap/SpiderPig#Access_to_SpiderPig> [4]: <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments> [5]: <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Backport_windows> [6]: <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikimediaDebug>

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Beta Cluster infrastructure monitoring now available via a mailing list
by Bryan Davis 13 May '25

13 May '25

If you have ever thought to yourself "boy I really wish I could get email alerts for monitoring failures in the Beta Cluster", now you can! The betacluster-alerts(a)lists.wikimedia.org list is now receiving alerts from the https://prometheus-alerts.wmcloud.org Alertmanager. Sign up at https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/betacluster-alerts.lists.wikime… The wmcs-alerts IRC bot should start announcing alertmanager issues in #wikimedia-releng too. Thanks to Ahmon for the nudge to get these back on email somewhere and Taavi for doing the needful to configure the Cloud VPS metricsinfra project to broadcast the alerts. Bryan -- Bryan Davis Wikimedia Foundation Principal Software Engineer Boise, ID USA [[m:User:BDavis_(WMF)]] irc: bd808

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Tech News 2025, week 20
by Uzoma Ozurumba 13 May '25

13 May '25

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FYI: Edge Uniques
by Brandon Black 12 May '25

12 May '25

Hi everyone, If you follow any technical Wikimedia news, you might have read about this in Tech News or on Diff already, but in case you missed it: The Wikimedia Foundation is working on a system called Edge Uniques which will enable A/B testing, help mitigate DDoS attacks, and eventually give better visitor metrics. We’re doing this by adding a first-party cookie named "WMF-Uniq" which is handled *only* on our CDN edge servers directly. This cookie contains a randomly-generated unique identifier and a few bits of minimal metadata about site visit history. We've explicitly designed this system such that we do *not* need to or intend to store these cookies or their identifiers in any databases or logs anywhere on our servers, or forward them to any other complex parts of our internal server-side infrastructure where the risks of accidental leakage or storage might be higher. It's a fairly unique system, and one that we've tried to design for maximal privacy preservation and data minimization for Wikimedians while also meeting our needs around both A/B testing of reader-oriented features and helping to control the server load from botnets of various kinds with resource-abusive patterns. The A/B testing portion of this design can record relevant, specific, pre-defined metrics into our analytics databases for those agents selected for testing (e.g. "an agent in Test123/GroupA clicked the new blue button"), but these metrics records use a temporary, per-experiment derivative identifier created by a one-way hash, making them non-reversible back to the original cookie identifiers. You can read more details on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Edge_Uniques If you want to talk to us about this, we’re happy to discuss it on the project talk page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Edge_Uniques We’re also hosting an office hours/community call to answer questions or discuss the topic further on April 29, 14:00 UTC. See more info here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Edge_Uniques#Next_steps -- Brandon Black Principal Site Reliability Engineer, SRE Traffic Team Wikimedia Foundation

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gitlab-content.toolforge.org: a reverse proxy for gitlab.wikimedia.org raw files
by Bryan Davis 10 May '25

10 May '25

Tool: <https://gitlab-content.toolforge.org/> Source code: <https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/toolforge-repos/gitlab-content> Issues: <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/tool-gitlab-content/> Docs: <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tool:Gitlab-content> Wikimedia GitLab content proxy (<https://gitlab-content.toolforge.org/>) is a reverse proxy for fetching raw file content from gitlab.wikimedia.org. This functionality can be combined with mw.loader.load to enable side loading content hosted on our gitlab server from a userscript, a user's common.js and global.js, or similar JavaScript workflow customization contexts. Directly fetching a raw file from gitlab will always respond with a `text/plain` mime type to prevent various cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks against gitlab itself. By running in an isolated Toolforge domain gitlab-content can safely add useful mime types like `text/javascript` or `text/css`. The general use I envision for a proxy like this is enabling a collaborative development workflow including linting, unit tests, code generation, and code review on gitlab.wikimedia.org without a separate copy-and-paste step to publish scripts to a Wikimedia wiki for integration and acceptance testing. I do not have an example userscript repo showing how to set up all those workflow tools yet, but I expect that the community will come up with their own examples soon if the workflow is actually useful. See the tool's documentation for some discussion of the risks that using a reverse proxy like this one in your own userscripts or global.js. The tool can technically be used in other on-wiki javascript contexts, but I would caution against using it with published gadgets, site-wide MediaWiki:Common.js, or other similar pages. These are shared spaces and some of them affect people who do not even know they are there. Bryan -- Bryan Davis Wikimedia Foundation Principal Software Engineer Boise, ID USA [[m:User:BDavis_(WMF)]] irc: bd808

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Wikitech-l May 2025