We've had a few hiccups, but project migration is going reasonably
well. You can check on the current migration status of a project here:
https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Labs_Eqiad_Migration/Progress
About 20 or so projects are still in the 'pending' section up top.
If your project is among them, please finish up and file your project
entry in the appropriate section (presumably, 'Finished migration'). I
don't have any open migration bugs in bugzilla, so if you are waiting
for me to help with something, I don't know about it. Please contact me
immediately if you still need migration help from me.
Friday Deadline
On Friday I'll be shutting down all pmtpa instances. They won't be
immediately deleted, but they will become inaccessible, and wikitech
will no longer display an interface for pmtpa. DNS for the old bastions
(e.g. bastion.wikimedia.org) will be changed to point to bastions in eqiad.
Shared Storage copies from pmtpa
I've copied the shared data from /home and /data/project in every
project to eqiad. Copies of this data can be found filed away in each
project's new shared directories. If you browse to /data/project or
/home in your new eqiad instance you will see two directories,
"glustercopy" and "pmtpa_nfs_copy". These dirs contain backups of the
shared gluster and nfs data from pmtpa. Note, however, that these
copies were made at unpredictable times during the last couple of
weeks. If you require a live, up-to-date copy of your data, please file
a bug so that I know to re-sync the data after pmtpa instances are fully
shut off.
Next steps, coming weeks
After pmtpa instances are shut down, I'll wait a few days for the
dust to settle and to listen for surprised shouts of alarm from folks
who haven't been following this list.
I will also migrate wikitech from virt0 (the pmtpa web host) to
virt1000 (the equivalent host in eqiad.) This will entail a small
amount of downtime, to be announced in a future email.
Sometime after the first of the month (that's next Tuesday) we will
start shutting down pmtpa in earnest -- powering off machines, wiping
drives, packing servers into crates, etc. Anything that's left in pmtpa
by then will be truly lost for good.
Next steps, coming months
The mothballed projects are currently on long-term probation. In a
few months I'll review the list and determine which projects remain
entirely untouched. Projects that seem fully abandoned will be wiped
from eqiad as well, and their resources returned to the pool for use by
new projects. I will, of course, provide a further series of
announcements and warnings before anything of this nature happens.
Thank you all for your patience and assistance during this difficult
process!
-Andrew
Hello everyone,
I have applied for GSoC 2014 with Mediawiki aiming to create a plugin that
can annotate statements in various websites and feed then as statements (
with references taken as website url and author in the case of Google
books, Wikisource etc.
Project Proposal is currently hosted at :
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikidata_annotation_tool
I need to get more feedback from community such as what extra features we
require
from the tool which can prove this project more useful. I hope this project
is considered useful by the community.
So kindly, take a look at proposal and provide any valuable comments you
can.
Thanks
Note:
This mail has been crossposted to wikidata-l and wikitech-l
--
Amanpreet Singh,
IIT Roorkee
Hello!
My name is Frances Hocutt, and I'm applying for the OPW internship
program. Specifically, I'm interested in improving the documentation
around the available Mediawiki API libraries, writing specifications for what
makes a good one, and generally making API:Client Code a more useful page.
I've been coordinating my application with Sumana Harihareswara, and my co-
mentor will be Tollef Fog Heen. Brad Jorsch and Merlijn van Deen have
agreed to offer technical advice as well. Thanks to everyone!
You can find my userpage here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Fhocutt. I've been drafting my
proposal here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Evaluating_MediaWiki_web_API_client_libraries
(working title). And I've started a page for my microtask here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Client_Code/Access_Library_Comparison.
I'll be comparing two of the Python API libraries; right now I'm figuring out
what criteria I'll be using. I'm looking at the Google Android, Drive, and
Youtube API documentation along with the AWS S3 Ruby API as starting
examples. Are there any other API client libraries that you've found exemplary,
related to Wikimedia or not?
Looking forward to contributing,
Frances Hocutt
We have discussed extensively the topic of CAPTCHA techniques for combating
spam. The last round of discussions came after the fact that we featured a
project related to captchas in our GSoC and OPW project ideas pages.
See Bug 62960 - Prototype CAPTCHA optimized for multilingual and mobile
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62960
I think we can make this a good GSoC project idea, basically by
* acknowledging that we have a problem with our deployed captchas, and the
investigation of alternatives is welcomed
* limiting the scope to mobile + multilingual, two key areas where our
current implementation is clearly lacking.
* limiting the expectation on efficiency to anything better than the
current implementation, not to a perfect system
* limiting the expectation on deliveries to a prototype, not to a full
solution to be deployed in five months from now
Pau Giner and Emufarmers are willing to co-mentor, but they lack the
experience required in programming. If the Language and Mobile teams are
interested in this prototype, could they pull/pool the mentoring time
required for this project? Is there anybody else willing to help?
In my non-expert opinion, the fact that we are aiming to have a prototype
reduces a bit the demand for code perfection. Still, programming experience
is needed to evaluate properly our current candidates, and also to assess
whether the plans drafted during the project are technically appropriate.
The current proposals, sorted by date:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:AalekhN/GSoC_proposal_2014 by Aalekh
Nigam
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/CAPTCHA/Image_completion_captchas by Thanuditha
Ruchiranga Wickramasinghe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shashank2016/Multilingual,_usable_and_ef…
by
Shashank Jaiswal
Even if it is tempting to evaluate their CAPTCHA methods proposed first, in
fact that doesn't matter as much as evaluating the skills, experience and
collaboration style of the candidates themselves.
This is why we need now your help, even as no-mentors, proposing technical
tasks to the candidates, and helping evaluating them.
--
Quim Gil
Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil
Let me draw your attention to three GSoC proposals trying to improve the
current situation with MediaWiki skins. They didn't come from our list of
featured projects,but they point to problems the community has
acknowledged, and so far they are responding well to feedback. Your
attention and help is welcome.
Sorted by date:
A modern, scalable and attractive skin for MediaWiki, by Jack Phoenix
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Jack_Phoenix/A_modern,_scalable_and_att…
Isarra and Emufarmers are volunteering as mentors. All the basics seem to
be in place, more scrutiny is welcomed.
Separating skins from core MediaWiki, by Bartosz Dziewoński
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Matma_Rex/Separating_skins_from_core_Me…
No mentors assigned yet, Jon Robson is volunteering. More than classical
mentors, this proposal needs explicit community consensus, and a clear
backing from MatmaRex's fellow Vector maintaners: Trevor Parscal, Roan
Kattouw, Timo Tijhof. In fact, one of these (or someone else with +2 amb
familiarity with skins) should be a co-mentor to offer a third pair of eyes
to the plans and the code reviews.
Frontend for Vector skin CSS customizations, by Ioannis Protonotarios
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Protnet/Frontend_for_Vector_skin_CSS_cu…
No mentors assigned, and nobody is volunteering so far. The proposal is
receiving good feedback from known experts in that area. While the previous
two candidates are already maintainers in the areas they are proposing to
work, and while Ioannis provides details about his experience, he needs
mentors happy to evaluate him with microtasks and tough questions.
--
Quim Gil
Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil
Hi all,
I am Ruchiranga Wickramasinghe, a 1st year Computer Science and Engineering
undergraduate at University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. I am interested in
working on the project "Multilingual, usable and effective captchas" as a
GSoC 2014 project and i have created a wiki page for my proposal. The
proposal can be found here.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/CAPTCHA/Image_completion_captchas
I also have submitted the proposal on google melange as well. Comments are
welcomed.
Thanks.
Ruchiranga Wickramasinghe,
Department of Computer Science and Engineering,
University of Moratuwa.