Posts Tagged announcement
Click Tracking on Edit Toolbar deployed
After many a hearty SQL battle, we finally have click tracking deployed on the wikimedia projects!
Data on button usage
What’s being tracked?
Which buttons are clicked on the toolbar during editing
What information is being recorded?
The button clicked, the time of the click, total edit count of the user clicking, and edit count for the last 1, 3, 6 months
What information is NOT being recorded?
Individually identifiable information of any sort (eg who exactly clicked what) and anything that would violate our privacy policy in general
Why?
As we revamp the UI, rather than randomly throwing buttons up there we think are pretty (we think they’re all pretty), we thought we’d put buttons up and features that people actually use. Novel, right?
What about the edit history and stuff?
We figure the way a novice editor uses the toolbar is different form a ‘power’ editor, and that there’s probably some gradation in between. Is there? Well, that’s what we hope to find out…
–Nimish
MediaWiki’s new discussion system in testing on Wikimedia Labs
Posted by andrew in mediawiki, software, summer of code, wikimedia on October 1st, 2009
I’m very excited to announce that LiquidThreads, the next-generation discussion system that I’ve spent the last few months developing for the Wikimedia Foundation, is now in beta testing on liquidthreads.labs.wikimedia.org.
Sample of the LiquidThreads interface
Announce: Brion moving to StatusNet
I’d like to share some exciting news with you all… After four awesome years working for the Wikimedia Foundation full-time, next month I’m going to be starting a new position at StatusNet, leading development on the open-source microblogging system which powers identi.ca and other sites.
I’ve been contributing to StatusNet (formerly Laconica) as a user, bug reporter, and patch submitter since 2008, and I’m really excited at the opportunity to get more involved in the project at this key time as we gear up for a 1.0 release, hosted services, and support offerings.
StatusNet was born in the same free-culture and free-software community that brought me to Wikipedia; many of you probably already know founder Evan Prodromou from his longtime work in the wiki community, launching the awesome Wikitravel and helping out with MediaWiki development on various fronts. The “big idea” driving StatusNet is rebalancing power in the modern social web — pushing data portability and open protocols to protect your autonomy from siloed proprietary services… People need the ability to control their own presence on the web instead of hoping Facebook or Twitter always treat you the way you want.
This does unfortunately mean that I’ll have less time for MediaWiki as I’ll be leaving my position as Wikimedia CTO sooner than originally anticipated, but that doesn’t mean I’m leaving the Wikimedia community or MediaWiki development!
Just as I was in the MediaWiki development community before Wikimedia hired me, you’ll all see me in the same IRC channels and on the same mailing lists… I know this is also a busy time with our fundraiser coming up and lots of cool ongoing developments, so to help ease the transition I’ve worked out a commitment to come into the WMF office one day a week through the end of December to make sure all our tech staff has a chance to pick my brain as we smooth out the code review processes and make sure things are as well documented as I like to think they are. ;)
We’ve got a great tech team here at Wikimedia, and we’ve done so much with so little over the last few years. A lot of really good work is going on now, modernizing both our infrastructure and our user interface… I have every confidence that Wikipedia and friends will continue to thrive!
I’ll start full-time at StatusNet on October 12. My key priorities until then are getting some of our key software rollouts going, supporting the Usability Initiative’s next scheduled update and getting a useful but minimally-disruptive Flagged Revisions configuration going on English Wikipedia. I’m also hoping to make further improvements to our code review process, based on my experience with our recent big updates as well as the git-based workflow we’re using at StatusNet — I’ve got a lot of great ideas for improving the CodeReview extension…
Erik Moeller will be the primary point of contact for WMF tech management issues starting October 12, until the new CTO is hired. I’ll support the hiring process as much as I can, and we’re hoping to have a candidate in the door by the end of the year.
– brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)
CTO, Wikimedia Foundation
San Francisco
Update: Evan’s announce is up on the StatusNet blog.
Server Donation Entry Period Ending
Just to let folks know, we have had quite a large interest in our donation of some of our decommissioned servers. In fact, I have way too many emails!
So to be fair, rather than just stop today, we will stop accepting submissions for this next Monday, September 28th. That means if you want your proposal/request in the running, you have to have it emailed to servers@wikimedia.org by Midnight GMT this coming Sunday, Sept. 27th.
For ease of reference, here is a copy of the post from the start of this process:
It is that time again. We have approx 35 servers to donate to a good home. These are servers that Wikimedia has used on the projects for 3+ years, so they are out of warranty and just not fast enough for us to keep using on the cluster.
The servers will go out to homes for folks who are willing to pay for the freight. They are as follows:
- Dual CPU 2.5 GHz AMD
- 3-4GB RAM Each
- Most have 80 GB or larger HDD
Disclaimers: The Wikimedia Foundation does not guarantee the operation or use of these servers in any shape or form. They are old, some may have dying fans, bad hdd sectors, and the like. Servers have been wiped of information, and they ran through that, but no promises on function!
If you would like to receive some of these servers for your NONPROFIT use, please email servers@wikimedia.org. Please include in your email how you will be using the servers, and the address they would be shipped to. We will review all requests and try to fairly pick out where they go. (Selection process may be refined, but it also may just include throwing darts at a board to break up ties.)
Additions: Due to request, the servers are indeed located in Tampa, FL USA. Zip code 33602 for shipping purposes. This means that if you are international, shipping this hardware is really not cost effective for you. If you want to be in the running still, and are comfortable with personally handing all customs, duties, export, and tax issues, go ahead and email us.
Correction: Dates were off.
Google Summer of Code student projects accepted!
Posted by brion in open-source, summer of code on April 22nd, 2009
Reposting the announce from Roan’s wikitech-l mailing list post:
Yesterday, the selection of GSoC projects was officially announced. For MediaWiki, the following projects have been accepted:
- Niklas Laxström (Nikerabbit), mentored by Siebrand, will be working on improving localization and internationalization in MediaWiki, as well as improving the Translate extension used on translatewiki.net
- Zhe Wu, mentored by Aryeh Gregor (Simetrical), will be building a thumbnailing daemon, so image manipulation won’t have to happen on the Apache servers any more
- Jeroen de Dauw, mentored by Yaron Koren, will be improving the Semantic Layers extension and merging it into the Semantic Google Maps extension
- Gerardo Antonio Cabero, mentored by Michael Dale (mdale), will be improving the Cortado applet for video playback (I’m a bit fuzzy on the details for this one)
The official list with links to (parts of) the proposals can be found at the Google website; lists for other organizations can be reached through the list of participating organizations.
The next event on the GSoC timeline is the community bonding period, during which the students are supposed to get to know their mentors and the community. This period lasts until May 23rd, when the students actually begin coding.
Starting now and continuing at least until the end of GSoC in August, you will probably see and hear from the students on IRC and the mailing lists and hear about the projects they’re working on. To repeat the crux of an earlier thread on this list: be nice to these special newcomers, make them feel welcome and comfortable, and try not to bite them :)
To the mentors and students: have fun!
Roan Kattouw (Catrope)