Hello folks!

For some years now, I've been the main or only point of contact for the Wiki project sql/xml dumps semimonthly, as well as for a number of miscellaneous weekly datasets.

This work is now passing to Data Platform Engineering (DPE), and your new points of contact, starting right away, will be Will Doran (email:wdoran) and Virginia Poundstone (email:vpoundstone). I'll still be lending a hand in the background for a little while but by the end of the month I'll have transitioned into a new role at the Wikimedia Foundation, working more directly on MediaWiki itself.

The Data Products team, a subteam of DPE, will be managing the current dumps day-to-day, as well as working on a new dumps system intended to replace and greatly improve the current one. What formats will it produce, and what content, and in what bundles?  These are all great questions, and you have a chance to help decide on the answers. The team is gathering feedback right now; follow this link [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScp2KzkcTF7kE8gilCeSogzpeoVN-8yp_SY6Q47eEbuYfXzsw/viewform?usp=sf_link] to give your input!

If you want to follow along on work being done on the new dumps system, you can check the phabricator workboard at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/6630/ and look for items with the "Dumps 2.0" tag.

Members of the Data Products team are already stepping up to manage the xmldatadumps-l mailing list, so you should not notice any changes as far as that goes.

And as always, for dumps-related questions people on this list cannot answer, and which are not covered in the docs at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dumps or https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Dumps you can always email ops-dumps (at) wikimedia.org.

See you on the wikis!

Ariel Glenn
ariel@wikimedia.org