To account for planned use of Etherpad for Wikimedia Hackathon 2026 as well as other scheduled events the Etherpad database truncation will be postponed until end of May (exact date to follow). This should provide enough buffer ahead of Wikimania in July.
On Mon, Feb 23, 2026 at 10:15 AM Lukasz Sobanski lsobanski@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Pine
Thanks again for the constructive feedback. As I mentioned before, the communication step was missed here and I treat this as a learning experience.
On Mon, Feb 23, 2026 at 8:44 AM Pine W via Wikitech-l < wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi Netha, thanks for taking the initiative to make that list. There's a lively discussion in Phab ticket https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T415237, and I see that you posted the link there. Thank you.
For others who are trying to figure out the best path forward, thank you for working on this, although I remain disappointed that the original announcement was made the way that it was. In my opinion, thinking about downstream impacts isn't optional, and such a thought process should have led to a decision that a communications plan was an essential component of this initiative. Also, allowing a pile of risk to accumulate, and then one day moving suddenly and disruptively to address it by treating the pileup as an urgent problem, isn't an approach that I'd recommend.
Pine🌲
On Thu, Feb 12, 2026 at 4:58 AM Netha Hussain via Wikitech-l < wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hello!
Many users and conferences have created Etherpads for collaboration and then pasted the link to them to Metawiki. I ran code using Claude AI to get a list of Etherpads mentioned on MetaWiki, then used the same program to classify them by topic. Here is the output containing an inventory of external links to Etherpads from metawiki: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Netha_Hussain/MetaWikiEtherpadLinks
I hope this inventory helps you to find the etherpads that are valuable for you and then archive them elsewhere.
Regards User: Netha Hussain
On Thu, 12 Feb 2026 at 09:20, Pine W via Wikitech-l < wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hello,
Thanks to Lukasz & the SRE team for the date change and softening the plan for what will happen at the target date.
I would suggest that the applicable engineering team(s) consult the Movement Communications Team https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation/Communications/Movement_Communications regarding the communications plan.
In the bigger picture, I'm concerned that detailed thought about communications may have been missed before making an announcement that amounts to a "breaking change" in the sense of potentially impacting other teams' and volunteers' plans. I would suggest that, if WMF doesn't already have a documented guideline or standard of practice for when to develop a formal communications plan & when to consult the Movement Comms team, that such documentation be created. Optionally, the document could be written as a learning pattern https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Learning_patterns.
Thanks, Pine🌲
On Wed, Feb 11, 2026 at 7:37 AM Travis Briggs via Wikitech-l < wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
Thanks Lukasz! An April 30th deadline sounds much more reasonable. I would also suggest being flexible to extend it further based on needs expressed by the community in response to posting notices wider.
As mentioned, I posted on the Phabricator task ( https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T415237) with a suggested notice to send to non-technical editors: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Etherpad#Etherpad_wipe/deletion/clean_s...
At this point, anyone who is interested in helping work on the wording of that notice should feel free. I would also welcome suggestions on where the "canonical" version of the notice should live, though I think the current talk page for the Etherpad instance itself isn't too awful.
Additionally, ideas, on specific email lists and wiki pages to notify and link to the notice, are very welcome!
Thanks, -Travis
On Wed, Feb 11, 2026 at 5:00 AM Lukasz Sobanski via Wikitech-l < wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi,
Speaking on behalf of the SRE team that owns Etherpad I wanted to chime in here.
The arguments for extending the deadline and broader communication are reasonable.
- We can extend the deadline to April 30th, if there are still
migration projects in progress at that point then we can revisit the date on a case by case basis.
- I will follow up internally to identify the right groups to notify,
if you have suggestions please send them directly to me (I already saw a proposed posting on a Village Pump in the related Phabricator task).
I also agree that any planned future clean up should be communicated in advance.
As for backing up information, after identifying the pads they can be exported in txt or html using appropriate public endpoints:
- http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/<pad_title>/export/txt
- http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/<pad_title>/export/html
On Wed, Feb 11, 2026 at 10:57 AM Strainu via Wikitech-l < wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Hello Jetlo, > > I want to support the idea expressed by my fellow volunteers that > this decision does not adequately support the community's use-cases. I > fully understand that Etherpad was designed as a temporary collaboration > tool, but: > * it is not only used by the tech community, so such an announcement > *must* go out as widely as possible, especially on the lists > dedicated to conference organizers and wikimedia-l > * *17 days is not enough* heads up for the community to organize > and sort/backup decades of meeting minutes. I believe that for the first > cleanup, *3 months* would a more realistic timeline > * future purges should also have a *predictable schedule and be > announced* at least a month in advance, to allow people to save > their work > > I hope your team will reconsider their decision to cater for the > needs of the wider community. > > Best, > Strainu > > În mar., 10 feb. 2026 la 14:57, Jelto Wodstrcil via Wikitech-l < > wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org> a scris: > >> Hello everyone >> >> If you don't use etherpad, you can ignore this message. >> >> We will *delete all pads after 1st March 2026*! If you need any of >> your pads, please make a local backup. We will not be able to recover the >> data after 1st March. >> >> The pad cleanup helps to reduce the size of the database and the >> footprint on our infrastructure. After the cleanup, etherpad can still be >> used for real-time collaboration but please do not expect long term >> storage. Additional cleanups might happen after that unannounced. >> >> See also https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T415237 for >> more information. >> >> Greetings and thank you >> >> Jelto >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> To unsubscribe send an email to >> wikitech-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org >> >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/ > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/
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