Hey everyone,

This is a reminder about Tech News and how it works. If you know exactly what it is and how to add items to it, or never have reasons to spread or help others spread technical news to our communities, you can stop reading now.

We're big enough to get new folks on a pretty regular basis, so I send this out to this mailing list maybe once a year or so, which I hope is somewhere in the right balance between keeping newcomers informed and not spamming everyone.

Here is the current draft, which will be sent out to the wikis on Monday: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2019/15

ABOUT TECH NEWS

a) What is Tech News?

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/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. It's typically distributed in 14–20 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 740 individual subscribers. Typically, this is how we tell our editors we are changing or planning to change something, or explain technical problems we have or have had.

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?

Just add it. This is the best and simplest way.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/Next will take you to the relevant issue. Remember to always link to a relevant Phabricator task, wiki page or mailing list email.

(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. Or you can write on https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk: Tech/News – but adding it yourself is the simplest way.)

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.

See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News /For_contributors#When_is_the_work_done.3F for when to add things to have them included in the next newsletter.

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 best 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 update 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.

More: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News /For_contributors#What_is_typically_not_included

//Johan Jönsson --