What proportion of MediaWiki installations run on 32-bit systems? How much
memory is available to a typical MediaWiki install? How often is the Oracle
database backend used?
These are the kinds of questions that come up whenever we debate changes
that impact compatibility. More often than not, the questions go
unanswered, because we don't have good statistical data about the
environments in which MediaWiki is running.
Starting with version 1.28, MediaWiki will provide operators with the
option of sharing anonymous data about the local MediaWiki instance and its
environment with MediaWiki's developer community via a pingback to a URL
endpoint on
MediaWiki.org.
The configuration variable that controls this behavior ($wgPingback) will
default to false (that is: don't share data). The web installer will
display a checkbox for toggling this feature on and off, and it will be
checked by default (that is: *do* share data). This ensures (I hope) that
no one feels surprised or violated.
The information that gets sent is described in <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Schema:MediaWikiPingback>gt;. Here is a
summary of what we send:
- A randomly-generated unique ID for the wiki.
- The chosen database backend (e.g., "mysql", "sqlite")
- The version of MediaWiki in use
- The version of PHP
- The name and version of the operating system in use
- The processor architecture and integer size (e.g. "x86_64")
- The name of the web server software in use (e.g. "Apache/1.3.14")
Neither the wiki name nor its location is shared.
The plan is to make this data freely available to all MediaWiki developers.
Before that can happen, I will need to solicit reviews from security folks
and from the WMF's legal team, but I don't expect any major issues.
Please chime in if you have any thoughts about this. :)
The change-set implementing this functionality is <
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/296699/>gt;, if you want to take a look.