Hi All,
Welcome to the monthly MediaWiki Insights email!
Enable more people to know MediaWiki and contribute effectively
In the last MW insights email
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Product_Insights/Reports/September_2023>
we gave a preview into the work that is underway to help people feel more
comfortable touching MediaWiki, enable teams and volunteers to contribute
effectively, and retain and grow the number of contributors to MediaWiki in
Wikimedia production (WMF Annual Plan, WE3.2
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2023-2024/Product_%26_Technology/OKRs#Bucket_1:_Wiki_Experiences>).
We’ve used the first quarter to invest in code improvements, consultancy
and code review, explore and test approaches and defined three main focus
areas:
1. Design low-entry-level initiatives for contributions to MediaWiki
core and a set of extensions, enriched by workshops, improved
documentation, code review and support to enable more people to feel
confident contributing to MediaWiki.
2. Provide consultancy for Wikimedia’s teams in projects that touch
MediaWiki core domains to help sustain current contributors and to enable
more people to contribute to MediaWiki effectively.
3. Invest in code improvements, logging, monitoring and test coverage in
specific areas to make it easier to debug issues and ease onboarding in
MediaWiki.
Target audiences are Wikimedia staff and volunteers. For example, as part
of the work above and as a practice from early on, the MediaWiki Platform
team provided code review for around 200 patches submitted by volunteers in
the first quarter (
https://w.wiki/7qa3).
The goal is both retention, and growth (a 20% increase in the number of
authors who have submitted >5 patches to a selected set of MediaWiki
repositories in Wikimedia production).
Currently the numbers are trending positive: We can observe a 17% increase
in the number of people who have submitted >5 patches to MediaWiki core
from July 1st - October 30th, 2023 compared to the same time period last
year. However, we’re still at the start of this and it’s too early to cheer
:).
A draft overview on approach, baselines and work underway can now be found
on this page
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Product_Insights/Contributor_retention_and_growth>
.
Project snapshot: New database features, new security feature, and Source
Maps now live on all Wikimedia wikis + default in MediaWiki
The Data Persistence team (lead: Amir Sarabadani) is currently
undertaking several
improvements <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T343098> to the MediaWiki
Rdbms <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Rdbms> library’s interface to make it
easier for developers to get database connections and perform common
queries. One improvement is a new database feature that allows extension
developers to specify more cleanly when they need special external
databases (T330590 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T330590>). As part of
phasing out accepting and passing around raw SQL in the MediaWiki rdbms
library (T210206 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T210206>), there is now
also a new basic expression builder for use in conditions. This work is
done to improve security, readability and to ease onboarding in MediaWiki.
The team will soon create tickets for extensions that build raw SQL to ask
to migrate to expression builders (see this change
<https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/core/+/967554> for an example).
If you have questions or already want to get started, T350075
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T350075> is the ticket to coordinate the
work and get in touch. Amir Sarabadani, Timo Tijhof and Bartosz Dziewonski
can help with questions.
More on security: There is a new security feature that allows developers to
set the language as x-xss to help find potential cross-site scripting
vulnerabilities. See T340201 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T340201>for
more information. Many thanks to Lukas Werkmeister for the idea and work on
this! <3
Finally, Source Maps <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T47514> (already
highlighted in the last MW Insights email) is now live on all Wikimedia
wikis and shipped by default in MediaWiki.
Part of the initial work done by the new MW group is about setting the
teams up to be effective stewards. One upcoming focus of the MW Platform
team is on improving logging, monitoring and test coverage for the
authentication-related components to make it easier to debug issues,
respond to incidents and enable periodic health checks and alerts. See
T348206 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T348206> for an initial
assessment of the situation and possible improvements.
MediaWiki within Wikimedia’s ecosystem. Next: WikiCon NorthAmerica
Conversations with staff and volunteers on their experiences with
contributing to MediaWiki, challenges and opportunities around MediaWiki
within Wikimedia’s ecosystem are still ongoing. Next “stop” is at WikiCon
North-America from Nov 9-12 <https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2023>: We’re
hoping for many hallway-track conversations and possibly an unconference
session on topics like: “What does core functionality mean to you?” - which
is one of the questions we’re exploring on the way to develop a strategy
for MediaWiki. Hope to see some of you there - reach out to me if you want
to connect!
We expect to wrap up the first round of interviews and explorations by mid
of November and publish the outcome (first “Product Insights report”)
around the beginning of December (which is a small delay from the original
plan to have this ready to share in November).
Thanks for reading!
Birgit
--
Birgit Müller (she/her)
Director of Product, MediaWiki and Developer Experiences
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>