Wikitech-l October 2023

28 participants
35 discussions

Database dumps
by Byrial Jensen 17 Apr '25

17 Apr '25

Until some weeks ago http://dumps.wikimedia.org/backup-index.html used to show 4 dumps in progress at the same time. That meant that new database dumps normally was available within about 3 weeks for all databases except for enwiki and maybe dewiki where the dump process due to size took longer time. However the 4 dumps processes at one time become 3 some weeks ago. And after massive failures at June 4, only one dump has been in progress at the same time. So at the current speed it will take several months to come thru all dumps. Is it possible to speed up the process again using several dump processes at the same time? Thank you, Byrial

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User-Agent:
by Domas Mituzas 17 Apr '25

17 Apr '25

Hi! from now on specific per-bot/per-software/per-client User-Agent header is mandatory for contacting Wikimedia sites. Domas

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Acquiring list of templates including external links
by Takashi OTA 17 Apr '25

17 Apr '25

Hoi, This is an inquiry from my friend in academia, researching about Wikipedia. He would like to know whether there's a way to acquire a list of templates including external links. Here are some examples including external links. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:JOI/doc https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Twitter/doc Such links are stored in externallinks.sql.gz, in an expanded form. When you want to check increase/decrease of linked domains in chronological order through edit history, you have to check pages-meta-history1.xml etc. In a such case, traditional links and links by templates are mixed, Therefore, the latter ones (links by templates) should be expanded to traditional link forms. Sorry if what I am saying does not make sense. Thanks in advance, --Takashi Ota [[U:Takot]]

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EBNF grammar project status?
by Steve Bennett 01 Apr '25

01 Apr '25

What's the status of the project to create a grammar for Wikitext in EBNF? There are two pages: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikitext_Metasyntax http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Markup_spec Nothing seems to have happened since January this year. Also the comments on the latter page seem to indicate a lack of clear goal: is this just a fun project, is it to improve the existing parser, or is it to facilititate a new parser? It's obviously a lot of work, so it needs to be of clear benefit. Brion requested the grammar IIRC (and there's a comment to that effect at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7 ), so I'm wondering what became of it. Is there still a goal of replacing the parser? Or is there some alternative plan? Steve

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Phabricator upstream shutdown
by Brian Wolff 21 Mar '25

21 Mar '25

It sounds like phabricator upstream is going away: https://admin.phacility.com/phame/post/view/11/phacility_is_winding_down_op… Just curious, are we planning to continue using it long term or move to something else? -- Brian

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Missing Section Headings
by Marc Riddell 13 Sep '24

13 Sep '24

Hello, I have been a WP editor since 2006. I hope you can help me. For some reason I no longer have Section Heading titles showing in the Articles. This is true of all Headings including the one that carries the Article subject's name. When there is a Table of Contents, it appears fine and, when I click on a particular Section, it goes to that Section, but all that is there is a straight line separating the Sections. There is also no button to edit a Section. If I edit the page and remove the "== ==" markers from the Section Titles, the Title then shows up, but not as a Section Heading. Also, I don't have any Date separators on my Want List. This started 2 days ago. Any thoughts? Thanks, Marc Riddell [[User:Michael David]]

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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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[action requested] Technical Decision-Making Retrospective Survey
by Moriel Schottlender 23 Apr '24

23 Apr '24

Hello all, The Technical Decision-Making Forum Retrospective team <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making> invites you to complete a survey about Wikimedia's technical decision-making processes. While there will be more ways to participate, this is the first and most important step in our data collection. It aims to gather information about your experience, thoughts, and needs regarding the process of making technical decisions across the Wikimedia technical spaces. This survey will be used for gathering information about the process and the needs around technical decision-making that touches our production systems. You can find the survey link here: https://wikimediafoundation.limesurvey.net/885471?lang=en Who should take this survey? People who do technical work that relies on software maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) or affiliates. If you contribute code to MediaWiki or extensions used by Wikimedia, or you maintain gadgets or tools that rely on WMF infrastructure, this survey is for you. What is the deadline? *August 7th, 2023 * What will the Retrospective team do with the information? The retrospective team will synthesize the collected data and publish an anonymized analysis that will help leadership make decisions about the future of the process. We will collect anonymized information that we will analyze in two main ways: - Sentiments based on demographic information: these will tell us whether there are different needs and desires from different groups of people. - General needs and perceptions about decision-making in our technical spaces: This will help us understand what kind of decisions happen in the spaces, who is involved, and how to adjust our processes accordingly. Is the survey the only way to participate? The survey is the most important way for us to gather information because it helps us gather input in a structured manner. But it will not be the only way you can share your thoughts with us - we will have more information soon about upcoming listening sessions where you can talk with us live. In the meantime, you are always welcome to leave feedback on the talk page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Technical_decision_making/Technical_Dec… Where can I see more information? There are several places where you can find more information about the Technical Decision-Making Process Retrospective: - The original announcement about the retrospective from Tajh Taylor: https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/… - The Technical Decision-Making Process general information page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making - The Technical Decision-Making Process Retrospective on MediaWiki: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Technical_Decision… - Phabricator ticket: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T333235 How to contact the retrospective core team: - Write to the core team mailing list: tdf-retro-2023(a)lists.wikimedia.org - The Technical Decision-Making Process Retrospective on MediaWiki talk page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Technical_decision_making/Technical_Dec… Thank you, Moriel, on behalf of the TDMP Retro Core Group Core group: - Moriel Schottlender (chair) - Daniel Kinzler - Chris Danis - Kosta Harlan - Temilola Adeleye -- Moriel Schottlender (she/her <https://pronoun.is/she>) Principal Software Engineer Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/

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Changes in schema of pagelinks tables
by Amir Sarabadani 15 Apr '24

15 Apr '24

(If you don’t work with pagelinks table, feel free to ignore this message) Hello, Here is an update and reminder on the previous announcement <https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/…> regarding normalization of links tables that was sent around a year ago. As part of that work, soon the pl_namespace and pl_title columns of pagelinks table will be dropped and you will need to use pl_target_id joining with the linktarget table instead. This is basically identical to the templatelinks normalization that happened a year ago. Currently, MediaWiki writes to both data schemes of pagelinks for new rows in all wikis except English Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons (we will start writing to these two wikis next week). We have started to backfill the data with the new schema but it will take weeks to finish in large wikis. So if you query this table directly or your tools do, You will need to update them accordingly. I will write a reminder before dropping the old columns once the data has been fully backfilled. You can keep track of the general long-term work in T300222 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T300222> and the specific work for pagelinks in T299947 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T299947>. You can also read more on the reasoning in T222224 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T222224> or the previous announcement <https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/…> . Thank you, -- *Amir Sarabadani (he/him)* Staff Database Architect Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

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Wikitech-l October 2023