Wikitech-l August 2017

63 participants
67 discussions

How to make commits from mirrored Wikimedia repos show up on your GitHub profile
by Bartosz Dziewoński 28 Jun '24

28 Jun '24

I know it has been annoying a couple of people other than me, so now that I've learned how to make it work I'll share the knowledge here. tl;dr: Star the repositories. No, seriously. (And yes, you need to star each extension repo separately.) (Is there a place on mw.org to put this tidbit on?) ------- Forwarded message ------- From: "Brian Levine" <support(a)github.com> (GitHub Staff) To: matma.rex(a)gmail.com Cc: Subject: Re: Commits in mirrored repositories not showing up on my profile Date: Tue, 09 Jul 2013 06:47:19 +0200 Hi Bartosz In order to link your commits to your GitHub account, you need to have some association with the repository other than authoring the commit. Usually, having push access gives you that connection. In this case, you don't have push permission, so we don't link you to the commit. The easy solution here is for you to star the repository. If you star it - along with the other repositories that are giving you this problem - we'll see that you're connected to the repository and you'll get contribution credit for those commits. Cheers Brian -- Matma Rex

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Research FAQ gets a facelift
by Dario Taraborelli 25 Jun '24

25 Jun '24

We just released a new version of Research:FAQ on Meta [1], significantly expanded and updated, to make our processes at WMF more transparent and to meet an explicit FDC request to clarify the role and responsibilities of individual teams involved in research across the organization. The previous version – written from the perspective of the (now inactive) Research:Committee, and mostly obsolete since the release of WMF's open access policy [2] – can still be found here [3]. Comments and bold edits to the new version of the document are welcome. For any question or concern, you can drop me a line or ping my username on-wiki. Thanks, Dario [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:FAQ [2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Open_access_policy [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Research:FAQ&oldid=15176953 *Dario Taraborelli *Head of Research, Wikimedia Foundation wikimediafoundation.org • nitens.org • @readermeter <http://twitter.com/readermeter>

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bluejeans
by Jeremy Baron 23 Feb '23

23 Feb '23

Hi, On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 3:36 PM, David Strine <dstrine(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: > We will be holding this brownbag in 25 minutes. The Bluejeans link has > changed: > > https://bluejeans.com/396234560 I'm not familiar with bluejeans and maybe have missed a transition because I wasn't paying enough attention. is this some kind of experiment? have all meetings transitioned to this service? anyway, my immediate question at the moment is how do you join without sharing your microphone and camera? am I correct thinking that this is an entirely proprietary stack that's neither gratis nor libre and has no on-premise (not cloud) hosting option? are we paying for this? -Jeremy

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New DB_REPLICA constant; DB_SLAVE deprecated
by Aaron Schulz 04 Jul '20

04 Jul '20

As of 950cf6016c, the mediawiki/core repo was updated to use DB_REPLICA instead of DB_SLAVE, with the old constant left as an alias. This is part of a string of commits that cleaned up the mixed use of "replica" and "slave" by sticking to the former. Extensions have not been mass converted. Please use the new constant in any new code. The word "replica" is a bit more indicative of a broader range of DB setups*, is used by a range of large companies**, and is more neutral in connotations. Drupal and Django made similar updates (even replacing the word "master"): * https://www.drupal.org/node/2275877 * https://github.com/django/django/pull/2692/files & https://github.com/django/django/commit/beec05686ccc3bee8461f9a5a02c607a023… I don't plan on doing anything to DB_MASTER, since it seems fine by itself, like "master copy", "master tape" or "master key". This is analogous to a master RDBMs database. Even multi-master RDBMs systems tend to have a stronger consistency than classic RDBMs slave servers, and present themselves as one logical "master" or "authoritative" copy. Even in it's personified form, a "master" database can readily be thought of as analogous to "controller", "governer", "ruler", lead "officer", or such.** * clusters using two-phase commit, galera using certification-based replication, multi-master circular replication, ect... ** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master/slave_(technology)#Appropriateness_of_… *** http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/master?utm_campaign=sd&utm_medium… -- -Aaron

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Roadmap for CX?
by Strainu 06 Sep '18

06 Sep '18

Following the recent outage, we've had a new series of complaints about the lack of improvements in CX, especially related to server-side activities like saving/publishing pages. Now, I know the team is involved in a long-term effort to merge the editor with the VE, but is there an end in sight for that effort? Can I tell people who ask "look, 6 more months then we'll have a much better translation tool"? Is there a publicly available roadmap for this project and more generally, for CX? Thanks, Strainu

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Selenium Ruby framework deprecation
by Željko Filipin 31 Oct '17

31 Oct '17

As announced in April[0], we are replacing Selenium tests written in Ruby with tests in Node.js. Now is the last responsible moment to make the move. There will be two more reminders, in September and October. In the meantime, only critical problems will be resolved in the Ruby stack. After October we will no longer maintain it. You can follow task T139740[1] for more information. Extensive documentation is available at mediawiki.org[2]. If you need help with the migration, I am available for pairing and code review (zfilipin in Gerrit, zeljkof in #wikimedia-releng). Željko Filipin -- 0: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2017-April/087888.html 1: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T139740 2: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Selenium/Node.js

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Upgrade of QUnit from 1.x to 2.x is underway
by Krinkle 25 Oct '17

25 Oct '17

TL;DR: MediaWiki core is upgrading its version of QUnit from 1.x to 2.x. This means extensions or skins with QUnit tests must now be compatible with 2.x. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T170515 and https://qunitjs.com/upgrade-guide-2.x/. Hi all, ### Deprecated API In 2014, QUnit started to overhaul its API, to be more robust and better support async workflows. The most notable change was the removal of global and static functions, in favour of more contextual methods. The first part of this released in 1.15, and more was gradually introduced in later releases. The vast majority of our codebases are already using the new interfaces. In fact, the vast majority of our QUnit tests were written after 2014 and never used the old interfaces in the first place. For a short list of removed functions, see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T170515. If you find a QUnit Jenkins job for a MediaWiki extension or skin repo starts failing, it is most likely due to this. Look for errors such as "QUnit.start undefined", "test.callback is not a function", "QUnit.asyncTest is undefined", and "QUnit.push is undefined", There are also some methods that have been deprecated over the past few years. These still work in QUnit 2. Please take a moment to familiarise yourself with the renamed methods and new methods. Doing so will avoid confusion when reading new code that uses them. See https://qunitjs.com/upgrade-guide-2.x/. ### New features The 'setup' and 'teardown' module hooks are now called 'beforeEach' and 'afterEach'. The old names still work, but the new names clarify that these hooks are run for each QUnit.test(). QUnit 2.0 also adds new 'before' and 'after' hooks, which run only once per module. This is somewhat analogous to use of setUpBeforeClass() in PHPUnit. Since QUnit 1.16, QUnit.test() supports returning a Promise from the test callback. This automatically attaches an assert.async() handler and waits for the promise to complete. It also asserts that the Promise will be resolved, and fails the test if rejected. This helps avoid a common pitfal where a test could timeout when forgetting to attach a promise.fail() handler. ## Upgrade The version used on Special:JavaScriptTest has already been upgraded. – https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/365757. The copy used for command-line usage (grunt-karma) and Jenkins will be upgraded by https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/367838 -- Timo

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Recommending Firefox to users using legacy browsers?
by Legoktm 08 Sep '17

08 Sep '17

Hello, This was something that came up during "The Big Open" at Wikimania, when Katherine Maher talked with Ryan Merkley (CEO of Creative Commons) and Mark Surman (ED of Mozilla Foundation). One of the themes mentioned was that our projects need to work together and support each other. In that vein, I'm interested in what people think about promoting Firefox to users who are using legacy browsers that we don't support at Grade A (or some other criteria). As part of the "drop IE8 on XP" project[1] we're already promoting Firefox as the alternative option. I was imagining it could be a small and unobtrusive bubble notification[2], similar to those that Google pushes Chrome on people with. If users use modern browsers, they're going to have better security support, and most likely a better experience browsing Wikimedia sites too. We'd be improving the web by reducing legacy browsers, and allowing us to move forward with newer technology sooner (ideally). And we'd be supporting a project that is ideologically aligned with us: Mozilla. Thoughts, opinions? [1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T147199 [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bubble_notifications Thanks, -- Legoktm

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Readers monthly update for August 2017
by Chris Koerner 01 Sep '17

01 Sep '17

Good day, I'm here again with the monthly update from the Readers department. As always, feedback and questions are welcome. == Discussions == * Discussion around the mobile app Reading List feature will be starting soon (Draft). [0] === Apps === * The Android app rolled out an update with improvements to the Reading Lists and offline capabilities of the app. [1] [2] * Android continues work on supporting the ZIM file format to make offline libraries a built-in part of the app experience. This week we began user testing with users in India. [3] [4] * iOS released version 5.6, which included Reading Themes, such as dark and sepia modes, to make it more personal and comfortable to read wikipedia, especially at night. The release has been well received, resulting in our best ever user reviews and prominent featuring by Apple in the Store, resulting in a 200% increase in downloads. [5] * iOS also included a pack of Wikipedia themed iMessage stickers. The stickers themselves are Public Domain and available on Commons, and hopefully will be popping up on all Wikimedian's social channels soon. [6] * Both apps teams are excited by the progress of the ReadingLists extension, and will be implementing syncing of reading lists for logged in users as soon as the Extension is fully released! === Web === * Page previews are now live on all Wikipedias except German and English * An A/B test for page previews has begun on German and English Wikipedias as a final feature evaluation prior to release on these wikis * A perplexing bug in Firefox caused issues with EventLogging. Wanting to make sure our logging worked, the deployment of Page Previews was delayed (but is now back on schedule!) [7] * We've been continuing work on desktop and mobile PDFs [8] [9] === Reading Infrastructure === * Wrote Extension:ReadingLists (currently undergoing review) for the Reading Lists project [10] [11] * Helped evaluating options for replacing OCG with a more maintainable system [12] === New Readers === * New Reader updates can be found at Meta. [13] === Multimedia === * There was a Structured Data on Commons program offsite following Wikimania. All of Multimedia was present, along with one or more members from just about every team involved in the program. * Consultation around 3D licensing and weaponry model risks continues. The Multimedia team will be preparing a suggested implementation that streamlines user prompting, pending design mocks. * The consultation around enabling the upload of MP3 files to Commons continues. Commons contributors are encouraged to participate. [14] === Discovery === The Discovery team provides weekly updates. Here are their updates for the month of August. * 2017-08-14 [15] * 2017-08-21 [16] * 2017-08-28 [17] [0] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/CKoerner_(WMF)/Reading_List_Discussion [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.wikipedia&hl=en [2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mobile-l/2017-August/010555.html [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T166599 [4] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T167129 [5] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T169142 [6] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_digital_stickers [7] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/post/view/61/beacons/ [8] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/PDF_Functionality [9] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Projects/Print_Styles#Mobile_Pri… [10] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ReadingLists [11] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Reading_Lists [12] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Offline_content_generator [13] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers/Updates [14] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#A_discussion_about_… [15] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/Status_updates/2017-08-14 [16] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/Status_updates/2017-08-21 [17] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/Status_updates/2017-08-28 --- The archive of all past updates can be found on MediaWiki.org: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Status_updates Yours, Chris Koerner Community Liaison Wikimedia Foundation

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Wikilabels incident: Reversed diffs
by Amir Tafreshi 01 Sep '17

01 Sep '17

Hello, Today, we discovered a major regression in Wikilabels. We've patched the issue and made an emergency deployment. We also deleted some labels that were saved while the system was compromised. Here is the details of of what happened: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/phame/post/view/69/wikilabels_incident_re… We're very sorry for this inconvenience, Yours truly -- Amir Sarabadani Tafreshi Software Engineer (contractor) ------------------------------------- Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin http://wikimedia.de Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.

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Wikitech-l August 2017