Thanks for being on this list and helping communicate about technology
on Wikimedia sites.
What kinds of discussions or notifications would you like to have on
this list? Or in general, if you don't think they quite belong here?
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Engineering Community Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
Hi,
I am launching a wiki that is aimed at an older target market in Ireland. I am wondering if there are any good tutorials in existence for users, so I can point to them.
Any help would really be appreciated.
Regards,
Seamus
Hello all,
I have put the question in the general talk page at nl-wiki:
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:De_kroeg#Feedback_van_lokale_gemeen…
Several reactions came on that:
* users experience Bugzilla as unfriendly, and rather use w wiki page for bugs.
* other users do not know where to put their questions and problems.
* users want technicians be more visible and better reachable.
* one user had been searching for a technician to help for a year long and couldn't find one.
I try to fullfill my role as ambassador between tech and local users of Dutch projects. I do have a bit more feeling with Bugzilla, and what I try is to translate bugs to Bugzilla. On the Dutch Wikipedia we have a technical discussion room ( https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SHEIC ), we will transform that page to one where people can add their bugs and problems. In this way we hope to help users better to solve problems/bugs directly (often personal preferences, already known bugs, error in template or just the outlook of a page messed up by inserted code, etc).
I think a lot of the communication can and should be picked up by local users with enough technical knowledge and experience to help in that local language.
Greetings - Romaine
> Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2012 17:03:52 +0100
> From: Guillaume Paumier <gpaumier(a)wikimedia.org>
> To: "Coordination of technology deployments across
> languages/projects"
> <wikitech-ambassadors(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: [Wikitech-ambassadors] Local discussions about how
> to improve
> communication between users and
> developers
> Message-ID:
> <CAHLKNV2TjuwnryCqODj2oYRE6nX2H+4R+=1su2dxMxzYdHDh6Q(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Greetings,
>
> Summary: I'm trying to get comments and ideas on how to
> improve
> communication between developers and Wikimedia editors, and
> I'd like
> to ask the help of people on this list to ask your local
> communities
> what they think, and post the results of those discussions
> here.
>
> Longer version:
>
> Communication between Wikimedia contributors and "tech
> people"
> (primarily MediaWiki developers, but also designers and
> other
> engineers) hasn't always been ideal. In recent years,
> Wikimedia
> employees have made efforts to become more transparent, but
> what I'd
> like to discuss today is how we can better engage in true
> collaboration and 2-way discussion, not just reports and
> announcements. It's easy to post a link to a new feature
> that's
> already been implemented, and tell users "Please provide
> feedback!".
> It's much more difficult to truly collaborate every step of
> the way,
> from the early planning to deployment.
>
> Some "big" tech projects sponsored by the Wikimedia
> Foundation are
> lucky enough to have a Community Liaison who can spend a lot
> of time
> discussing with editors, basically incarnating this 2-way
> communication channel between users and engineering staff.
> But one
> person can only do so much: they have to focus on a handful
> of
> features, and primarily discusses with the English
> Wikipedia
> community. We want to be able to do this for dozens of
> engineering
> projects with hundreds of wikis, in many languages, and
> truly
> collaborate to build new features together. Hiring hundreds
> of
> Community Liaisons isn't really a viable option.
>
> There are probably things in the way we do tech stuff (e.g.
> new
> software features and deployments) that drive editors
> insane. You
> probably have lots of ideas about what the ideal situation
> should be,
> and how to get there: What can the developer community
> (staff and
> volunteers) do to get there? (in the short term, medium
> term, long
> term?) What can users do to get there?
>
> Instead of just postulating that "The problem is X" and "The
> solution
> is obviously Y", I've started an extensive consultation
> process to
> learn from users, to hear you, to listen to your complaints
> and your
> ideas on how to fix the issues. I'm hoping that this open
> and
> collaborative thinking process will yield better results
> than a
> one-sided analysis.
>
> An preliminary consultation took place last month with
> projects in
> English and French. I've summarized the initial findings
> and
> proposals:
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_communications/Fall_2012_consultat…
>
> I'm hoping that we can now expand this consultation to more
> projects
> and more languages, with your help. It isn't feasible for me
> to launch
> a discussion on each wiki in each language, but I'm hoping
> that you
> can help me spread this message and start those discussions
> with your
> local communities.
>
> I realize this will take some of your time, but I think it's
> worth
> spending a little time to discuss this now in order to make
> big
> improvements later on how we communicate with each other.
>
> I'm available to answer comments, concerns and questions.
>
> Many thanks for your help!
>
> --
> Guillaume Paumier
> Technical Communications Manager ? Wikimedia Foundation
> https://donate.wikimedia.org
FYI
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 1:10 AM
Subject: [Site issue] s3 wikis read-only until replication catches up
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Wikimedia wikis hosted on the "s3" cluster (pretty much all but the
very large wikis, click on the "s3" box in
https://noc.wikimedia.org/dbtree/ to get a full list) are currently in
read-only mode due to severe replication lag. This problem was
apparently caused by a logic issue in the job queue, which should now
be fixed, but it will still take at least 2-3 hours for replication to
catch up. We apologize for the inconvenience, and are continuing to
monitor the situation.
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
See
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.21/wmf6#Breaking_changes>
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.21/Roadmap#Schedule_for_the_depl…>
Is someone taking care of these notifications? Please help
1) checking that the instructions are clear and complete (e.g. what
updates are needed for custom enotif_body),
2) listing the affected wikis.
Note that it's also very unclear what sort of changes are legally
allowed for wikimedia-copyrightwarning, some wikis like it.wiki have
changed the copyright/terms of use warnings drastically (besides adding
tons of other crap) but the legal department only checks/advises en.wiki.
Unless for some mysterious reason a wiki is very sure of how it should
be, my personal suggestion is to keep the default, but as such I didn't
write it on the wiki page.
Nemo
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.21/wmf6#Most_important_changes
This week and next week we're deploying a new version of MediaWiki to
your wiki, as usual. This upgrade is now out to mediawiki.org and
test2.wikipedia.org in case you want to try it out before it comes to
your wiki -- for instance, you could log in and put your user scripts in
your userspace to make sure everything still works. Key changes:
Display changes:
* The message "wikimedia-editpage-tos-summary" (displayed below the edit
form) has been removed; if it was customized on your wiki, its contents
will have to be merged with "wikimedia-copyrightwarning".
* We changed the wording of the protectedpagetext message to include
moving and other actions.
* MediaWiki:Contributions now reflects the gender of the user.
* We're displaying IPv6 addresses more nicely.
Fixes:
* Bogus page creation e-mail notifications were being sent when a page
was actually being deleted. We think we've fixed that.
* We fixed the mobile version of the website so that, if you disable
images, it doesn't also strip other content.
* Your "enhanced changelist" displays minor/bot changes better.
New:
* There's a new DynamicSidebar - tell us if your sidebar acts weird.
* TimedMediaHandler now supports embedding a smaller audio player of
35-pixel width, and reorders the controls so that small players get a
play/pause button and volume first.
* In WebFonts we've added the Gubbit font, replacing Kedage, for Kannada.
As always, more at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.21/wmf6
and deployment dates at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.21/Roadmap . Please let us
know of any bugs! Thank you for your feedback!
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Engineering Community Manager
Wikimedia Foundation