Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-12-17/Technology report

MediaWiki groups get underway


MediaWiki users (including Wikimedians) can now organise themselves into groups, receiving recognition and support-in-kind from the Wikimedia Foundation. The project, backed by new Wikimedia technical contributor coordinator Quim Gil, has seen five proposals lodged in its first week of operation.

Of those five, one (a local group centring on the Indian city of Ahmedabad) was proposed by a non-staff member and has easily surpassed the three signatures that will bring it into being. Of the other four, a second local group—this one based in San Francisco—has also met the participation threshold. The three proposed "thematic" groups (features testing, browser testing and marketing), proposed by staff, are struggling a little more, though all three will probably surpass the three signature barrier.

The idea of MediaWiki groups mimics that of Wikimedia User Groups, of which there are six. Gil wrote: "This is not about devs alone, but about people interested in all MediaWiki aspects, like testing fresh software, translating strings, participating in the UX design of a feature, helping triaging forgotten bug reports or enhancement requests".

What is: Snuggle?
In the first of a series exploring some of the newer and less well-known tools (editing aids) available to Wikimedia, the Signpost this week caught up with Aaron Halfaker (User:EpochFail), research analyst at the Foundation, about the tool he's been working on in his spare time, Snuggle.

Aaron reports that the system is currently in its early development phase. "I need your help to prioritize new features and to make sure the system is actually usable." He points potential testers to the current version, an IRC demo and feedback session (#wikimedia-office, 4 January at 1700 UTC/11AM CST), his talk page, and a newsletter. Interested developers can also submit bugs, features and pull requests to the public repository.

In brief
Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for several weeks.
 * Deployment slows for Christmas break: The impending onset of Christmas and its associated public holidays in many of the countries where Wikimedia developers are based has begun to push schedules back as the Foundation tries to avoid breaking wikis without having the time to fix them (wikitech-l mailing list). The phenomenon, which has long been part of the software development orthodoxy, will see two weeks become three for two consecutive MediaWiki deployment cycles (wmf7 and wmf8) and will delay the deployment of Wikidata to the Hungarian Wikipedia until "mid-January".
 * FLOSS Outreach Program for Women interns announced: Wikimedia's participation in the FLOSS Outreach Program for Women took a step forward this week with the names of the six interns selected to participate (Wikimedia blog). During a competitive process, 25 women who showed interest eventually became six; they will perform MediaWiki-related tasks full-time during January, February and March in return for a stipend similar to that offered by the Google Summer of Code programme. "We have no doubt they can all become top contributors and have future opportunities" wrote Wikimedia technical contributor coordinator Quim Gil, announcing the names.
 * This page, served by MariaDB (possibly): One of the main database servers for the English Wikipedia is now running MariaDB as its database management system (wikitech-l thread). Although the practical implication of the switch from one branch of popular DMS MySQL (mysqlatfacebook) to another (MariaDB) should be minimal—initially at least—it is seen as an important endorsement for the open-source project, which seeks to protect the MySQL codebase from any potential restrictions that might be imposed by trademark owner Oracle.