Hey folks, this is an occasional reminder about how to spread basic information about technical changes to the Wikimedia communities. There are enough new people coming into the Wikimedia technical spaces that I send this out every now and then. If it's not relevant to you, or you know everything about Tech News, you can stop reading now.
Tech News is the technical newsletter for the Wikimedia wikis. It’s not the only way to reach our communities, and major projects will reach out in many ways, but it is our main way of keeping them informed of changes big and small.
Here is the latest issue of the newsletter:
ABOUT TECH NEWS
a) What is Tech News?
Tech News is a newsletter for reaching out with technical updates to the general Wikimedia editor communities, to make sure they can keep track of what’s happening. Most items talk about changes from the Foundation, but many items are about work done by volunteer developers or Wikimedia Deutschland staff. It’s typically distributed in 18–24 languages, reaching roughly 100 community pages (Village Pumps etc) in addition to those who read it on Meta, see it included in the Signpost, get it in their email inbox, or are among the 850 individual subscribers. Typically, this is how we tell our editors we are changing or planning to change something.
b) How is Tech News written?
Simplification is key. Technical news for non-technical readers. Should be easy to translate as well as be written with en-1 and en-2 readers in mind. A couple of sentences per item, then a link to a Phabricator task, wiki page or email if they need more information. Too long and we put an unreasonable burden on the translators. This doesn’t mean you should avoid adding things because all of this seems difficult – we’ll edit it, if necessary. It’s a wiki, after all.
c) I’ve done something technical. The communities should know. How do I add it?
(You can also add the “user-notice” tag in Phabricator together with a simple 1–3 sentence explanation of what this is and how it affects editors. Don’t worry about polish; we’ll take care of that. Or if you’re not sure if it fits the newsletter – we’ll take a look, and if it doesn’t, we’ll just remove the tag.)
d) When is it distributed?
Weekly, each Monday afternoon/evening UTC. The deadlines for additions are several days prior to that to give the translators time to do their work.
This is typically earlier than people tend to assume.
e) What is Tech News not?
* A general Wikimedia newsletter. Everything in the Wikimedia world is at most one step removed from being technical. This doesn’t mean Tech News is the best place. Typical items are new or upcoming features or potential breaking changes.
* The way to reach the Wikimedia technical community. If you want to reach Wikimedia developers, an email to wikitech-l is usually better than an item in Tech News. Tech News is a way to keep Wikimedia contributors up-to-date with technical changes.
* A way to talk about all the important things that happen in the background. They’re often awesome and we should talk more about them, but if they don’t affect how contributors interact with the sites, then this is not the place.
* A place for updates about one wiki. If it’s just relevant for English or German Wikipedia, you should inform English or German Wikipedia, not the entire Wikimedia community. Exceptions to this rule are Commons and Wikidata, because they’re used by so many other Wikimedia wikis.
The best time to do this for minor things is typically the week they go out, i.e. you add it by Thursday the week before the change we’re talking about, which means it’s in the newsletter delivered on the Monday before the train goes out Tuesday through Thursday, but anything major should probably be flagged under “future news” much earlier – preferably while it's still possible to act on relevant community feedback.
//Johan Jönsson
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