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
Le 10/02/2026 à 13:56, Jelto Wodstrcil via Ops a écrit :
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
Hi,
It seems we never purged EtherPad?
My former team (platform engineering) took notes there and since we were aware EtherPad was not a permanent store we copy/pasted the text to mediawiki.org.
Then not everyone was aware of the ephemeral state of EtherPad. In the early days it has been used for note keeping during various events and meetings. https://www.mediawiki.org/%C2%A0shows plenty of articles pointing to EtherPad which would indicate their content were not transferred toward permanent storage. Or maybe they were and the left over pad got changed with a link to the wiki page.
I understand there has been no promise to keep the pads permanently, then I am not sure people were necessarily aware. I also understand the challenge of having to support for a huge database table and it is very legitimate to get rid of it.
However, I am concerned about the lost of history which might be valuable for history of the movement. Would it be possible to generate a static dump of those pads similar to what we did when phasing Extension:CodeReview? Though there might be privacy concerns since some pads were not necessarily intended to be public :-\ Or maybe I am just a data hoarder and like to have archive kept.
Antoine "hashar" Musso Wikimedia Release Engineering
I agree, there are a substantial number of etherpads that form part of the public documentation for events and decisions. While some were archived to the wikis, many have not been, and ensuring that these records are archived is a large task that is likely not possible to complete with the less then a month of notice that's been given. A public archive of the entire etherpad database is not feasible due to privacy concerns though.
AntiCompositeNumber (they/them)
On Tue, Feb 10, 2026, at 10:23, Antoine Musso via Wikitech-l wrote:
Le 10/02/2026 à 13:56, Jelto Wodstrcil via Ops a écrit :
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
Hi,
It seems we never purged EtherPad?
My former team (platform engineering) took notes there and since we were aware EtherPad was not a permanent store we copy/pasted the text to mediawiki.org.
Then not everyone was aware of the ephemeral state of EtherPad. In the early days it has been used for note keeping during various events and meetings. https://www.mediawiki.org/ shows plenty of articles pointing to EtherPad which would indicate their content were not transferred toward permanent storage. Or maybe they were and the left over pad got changed with a link to the wiki page.
I understand there has been no promise to keep the pads permanently, then I am not sure people were necessarily aware. I also understand the challenge of having to support for a huge database table and it is very legitimate to get rid of it.
However, I am concerned about the lost of history which might be valuable for history of the movement. Would it be possible to generate a static dump of those pads similar to what we did when phasing Extension:CodeReview? Though there might be privacy concerns since some pads were not necessarily intended to be public :-\ Or maybe I am just a data hoarder and like to have archive kept.
Antoine "hashar" Musso Wikimedia Release Engineering
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/
Every time you try to create a new pad. You see this warning:
Keep in mind as well that there is no guarantee that a pad's contents will always be available. A pad may be corrupted, deleted or similar. Please keep a copy of important data somewhere else as well.
And this has been the case for many many years now.
Expecting people to read such boilerplate when they are busy annotating a live conference presentation is little better than the famed notice in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
On Tue, 10 Feb 2026 at 15:46, Amir Sarabadani via Wikitech-l wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
Every time you try to create a new pad. You see this warning:
Keep in mind as well that there is no guarantee that a pad's contents will always be available. A pad may be corrupted, deleted or similar. Please keep a copy of important data somewhere else as well.And this has been the case for many many years now. _______________________________________________ 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/
On Tue, 2026-02-10 at 17:04 +0000, Andy Mabbett via Wikitech-l wrote:
Expecting people to read such boilerplate when they are busy annotating a live conference presentation is little better than the famed notice in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
Expecting Wikimedia to forever host text in an ephemeral medium, created by folks who write but do not read, feels a bit strange. We do offer wikis to document and long-term archive text though.
andre
I strongly agree with Antoine.
Furthermore, this should be announced far more widely than the tech-oriented mailing lists, and with longer notice.
On Tue, 10 Feb 2026, 15:27 Antoine Musso via Wikitech-l, wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
Le 10/02/2026 à 13:56, Jelto Wodstrcil via Ops a écrit :
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
Hi,
It seems we never purged EtherPad?
My former team (platform engineering) took notes there and since we were aware EtherPad was not a permanent store we copy/pasted the text to mediawiki.org.
Then not everyone was aware of the ephemeral state of EtherPad. In the early days it has been used for note keeping during various events and meetings. https://www.mediawiki.org/ shows plenty of articles pointing to EtherPad which would indicate their content were not transferred toward permanent storage. Or maybe they were and the left over pad got changed with a link to the wiki page.
I understand there has been no promise to keep the pads permanently, then I am not sure people were necessarily aware. I also understand the challenge of having to support for a huge database table and it is very legitimate to get rid of it.
However, I am concerned about the lost of history which might be valuable for history of the movement. Would it be possible to generate a static dump of those pads similar to what we did when phasing Extension:CodeReview? Though there might be privacy concerns since some pads were not necessarily intended to be public :-\ Or maybe I am just a data h
Hi there,
Hmm. I can understand that the overhead of maintaining notes that no one seems to want isn't worth the cost & effort, and that teams who need said notes already have had years of notice that Etherpad was not intended for long-term storage. On the other hand, unless there is some urgent need to reduce Etherpad storage (and if there is one then maybe WMF could explain why this wasn't foreseen long in advance) I would think that there should be a well-considered communications plan for reaching "customers" who may have taken for granted that Etherpad was stable, and I would also think the owning WMF team should have a proposed automated migration plan and/or a request for proposals for migration plans (+1 to Hashar's email) before making a relatively sudden change that could impact customers' work plans in the next month when said customers of Etherpad may not have been planning to scramble to check if they need to design & execute team-by-team plans to find & save notes.
I hope that this feedback is useful.
Pine🌲
On Tue, Feb 10, 2026 at 4:57 AM Jelto Wodstrcil via Wikitech-l < wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
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/
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/
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/
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/
-- Lukasz _______________________________________________ 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/
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/
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-- Lukasz _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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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
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-- Lukasz _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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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
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-- Lukasz _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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-- Netha Hussain (she/her)
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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
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-- Lukasz _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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-- Netha Hussain (she/her)
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Thanks Pine. Yes, we are now in touch - we had missed this step.
On Thu, Feb 12, 2026 at 9:20 AM 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
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-- Lukasz _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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