[Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage project launch/migration update

[Erik Moeller]

Hi folks,

a quick update on the launch of a travel project under the WMF
umbrella, and the import of the existing Wikivoyage site.

* The name of the new site will be wikivoyage.org, per community vote.
Language domains will live at (foo).wikivoyage.org.

* A mailing list has been set up at
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikivoyage-l

* We're not planning to import "Wikivoyage Shared" (which is a media
repository similar to Commons) and are encouraging the community to
help with transferring appropriately licensed files to Wikimedia
Commons.

* The Wikivoyage Association is currently finalizing details of a
domain name transfer with WMF. They have also recently secured
wikivoyage.com.

* The technical launch team at WMF consists of Chris Steipp, Daniel
Zahn, Sam Reed, Matthias Mullie, and myself. Everyone is encouraged to
help. Technical updates will be posted to
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikivoyage_migration and related pages.

We're using #wikimedia-wikivoyage on irc.freenode.net to coordinate,
so feel free to join us there any time and use it for other related
issues.

* We've received a tarball of extensions running on the Wikivoyage
sites, have imported them into Wikimedia's Git repo, and are currently
reviewing them and making changes where needed to ensure they're ready
for WMF. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikivoyage_migration/Extensions
for a list of extensions if you want to help (and feel free to comment
on the priorities suggested by the Wikivoyage folks)

We may not be able to deploy all extensions; we're using the two week
time-box for the launch as the main forcing function.

* The hairiest part is to properly migrate user accounts. We can only
migrate with users' permission, so Wikivoyage will kick off an opt-in
process shortly to ask users to consent to transferring their private
account data. On the WMF side, we have to reconcile account names with
existing ones and require renames if necessary.

We'll set up an initially private test instance in Labs and iterate
over it with a (possibly reduced) content import, to ensure that all
the tricky legal bits (e.g. attribution) are handled correctly. Then
we'll set up the production cluster wikis.

* Our goal is to go live by the end of this month. That might slip
depending on the domain name transfer and unexpected technical hurdles
or emergencies on the WMF side. We will aim to minimize downtime for
current users, and to ensure that the old sites can be available in
read-only mode for a little while longer to make it possible to
compare site behavior.

Let me know if you have any questions about the process. :-)

All best,
Erik


-- 
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate