Finding software problems

As part of the Wikimedia Foundation’s mandate to operate the Wikimedia sites, a small technical team is responsible for maintaining the MediaWiki core platform, along with its features and extensions. The developers who maintain key software in the stack, improving and enhancing the functionality of MediaWiki, include people outside and inside the Wikimedia Foundation, working side by side — and similarly, volunteers and staff work together to detect and diagnose problems to fix. Unusual among many of its tech peers, the engineering team at the Wikimedia Foundation is helped in this process by a contingent of dedicated volunteers who aid in finding, reporting and fixing unintended software problems, or bugs.

Bugzilla is the website where any user or developer can report a software bug or, if they have an idea, request a feature enhancement be made to MediaWiki. Users of Bugzilla can also search current reports to add new comments or information and search for previous reports about a similar bug.

Andre Klapper, Bug Wrangler

The first step in resolving bugs is getting each Bugzilla report to the developer who handles that area of software code. Wikimedia’s Bug Wrangler, Andre Klapper, takes a look at each bug report to figure out the correct product, such as MediaWiki or MediaWiki extensions, and the related subcomponent that each bug falls into. As Bug Wrangler, it’s also his job to make sure each report has enough information for the developers to fix the bug.

“I’m responsible for triaging, and there are some great community members who help me with that,” said Klapper. “When I see problems that are urgent or really critical, I escalate by making developers explicitly aware of such problems. I also try to keep an eye on the many forums (such as Village Pumps) and places where users report problems, and make sure that software bugs end up as a report in Bugzilla, so developers can find them.”

In describing the open platform used by the Wikimedia Foundation, Klapper added, “Basically anybody can define or correct the priority of bug reports and feature requests. Often it’s members of development teams or other volunteers who triage, or I set priorities in order to help developers see what’s the most important stuff to work on.”

Klapper, who joined the Wikimedia Foundation in 2012, estimates that 70 percent of bugs are reported by Foundation staff and developers, 30 percent by users. The role of Bug Wrangler was a natural fit for him because the “position described pretty well what I’ve worked on before” at GNOME and the now defunct Maemo/MeeGo.

Bugzilla has taken its share of knocks from critics, said Klapper (who counts himself among them), because it requires a separate registration, the user interface is complex and it lacks dashboards. He said the developers at bugzilla.org are working on these issues for the next Bugzilla version, and in the meantime, he has started a weekly blog entry called “Bugzilla Tips,” where he gives advice for using the tool.

“I try to make Bugzilla work better for everybody and, hence, ask teams what they are missing, or try to help establish good workflows,” he said. “For example, I introduced a new Bugzilla front page on bugzilla.wikimedia.org recently that provides quicker access to the main tasks.”

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Today, the Wikimedia Foundation enabled VisualEditor–the visual interface to edit wiki pages–for all logged-in users on the English Wikipedia. Now, we need your help to ensure that editors are informed about how VisualEditor works, and that they can find help if they need it.

Among the tools brought by VisualEditor, the Reference dialog provides an interface for editing references that is more convenient than editing <ref> tags in the middle of the page’s source wikitext.

There are various reasons that lead existing and prospective contributors not to edit; among them, the complexity of wiki markup is a major issue. One of VisualEditor’s goals is to empower knowledgeable and good-faith users to edit and become valuable members of the community, even if they’re not wiki markup experts. We also hope that, with time, experienced editors will find VisualEditor useful for some of their editing tasks.

VisualEditor has been available for several months now on the English Wikipedia, as an opt-in alpha test. A week ago, we also started an A/B testing campaign where VisualEditor was automatically enabled for half of the newly-registered contributors, while the other half continued to use the classic wikitext source editor.

Now, all registered users can benefit from VisualEditor without needing to explicitly turn it on in their preferences. Of course, the classic wikitext source editor remains available to edit both pages and page sections. While we hope that experienced editors will gradually transition to VisualEditor, this new interface doesn’t yet support the broad range of functionality that raw wikitext allows. We also appreciate that some editors may prefer to use wikitext; we are happy to stress that there are currently no plans to remove the ability to edit the wikitext source.

VisualEditor brings major changes to how you and your fellow contributors edit Wikipedia. In order to minimize the disruption, we’ve prepared a lot of documentation to guide users through the process. This includes a Portal page, a list of frequently asked questions and an extensive user guide illustrated with many screenshots.

The template dialog allows you to change template parameters in a way that is more robust than with wikitext, provided that the right metadata have been added to the template.

Early adopters of VisualEditor have provided us with a mountain of feedback, and we’re immensely grateful for your help. This has allowed us to work with developers to fix many of the bugs and improvements that you reported. Thanks to you, VisualEditor has been much improved, and it is in good shape for wider adoption.

But there’s also a caveat: not all browsers will be supported by VisualEditor immediately. Supported browsers include the current and recent versions of Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Note that Internet Explorer is not a supported browser at this time.

How you can help

You can help with the following activities:

• Continue to provide feedback as you notice issues with VisualEditor.
• Update Wikipedia’s Help pages — Over the years, volunteers have created many help pages to guide new editors as they figured out the wiki markup language. We now need help to update them so that they reflect the new editing interface.
• Add TemplateData — Templates are one of the most difficult wikitext elements to edit. VisualEditor provides a nice interface in the form of a dialog where you can add values to a template’s parameters. In order for this to work automatically, however, metadata need to be added to the template’s documentation subpage. Usually, the information is already there in the form of a list of possible parameters, and it just needs to be formatted using the TemplateData syntax.
• Translate and localize the documentation — If you edit Wikipedia in languages other than English, VisualEditor will soon be enabled on your wiki as well, and we need your help to make sure your fellow contributors can benefit from the documentation and help pages we’ve prepared.

The next few weeks are going to be busy, as we iron out issues and work together to adapt to the new interface, updating help pages and templates, and welcoming new editors. We hope that you’ll join us in our efforts to make this transition as painless as possible.

Philippe Beaudette, Director, Community Advocacy
James Forrester, Product Manager, VisualEditor and Parsoid
Wikimedia Foundation

The Universal Language Selector (ULS), a MediaWiki extension to configure language settings, has now been deployed on more than 150 Wikimedia wikis. Deployment started with the first phase on June 11, and over 5 phases it will be made available on all Wikimedia wikis. ULS replaces the extensions Narayam and WebFonts which were used to configure input and font settings respectively.

Click on the image to play a short video about typing in Telugu using ULS; created by Subhashish Panigrahi

During the last two development sprints, the Wikimedia Language Engineering team worked with the wiki communities to resolve critical bugs and enhancement requests, and to test features, and we communicated widely while completing 2 more phases of deployment. In the 2nd and 3rd phases, deployment was completed for Wikipedia wikis ranked in size between 11-20 and for wikis with no language versions.

User setting features were tested in major web-browsers and operating systems. This includes recent versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera. The tests were manually done using a test plan based on user scenarios for different functionality.

The announcement on Meta-Wiki is also available in more than 40 languages. This announcement page will be used for all deployment phases. Prior to deployment, all the updated wikis were informed about the this change simultaneously on their respective community portals.

Besides the wikis, the current version of the ULS can be viewed and tested on the beta installation of the English language Wikipedia. Bug fixing and integration testing will continue. The test steps can be used to verify the functionality.

Next phase of deployment

On July 2, 2013, ULS will be deployed on the English Wikipedia. More information about the Universal Language Selector can be found on the feature page, and the FAQ. Feedback can be sent using Bugzilla, via the mailing list, and on IRC (#mediawiki-i18n on freenode). The deployment of this extension was also discussed and queries were addressed during our last office hour (complete log of discussion). The Language Engineering team will be following up with more announcements, translation requests and Village Pump/Community Portal interactions to optimize the Universal Language Selector on the wikis.

Runa Bhattacharjee, Outreach and QA coordinator, Language Engineering

This post is available in 2 languages:

Español  • English

English

Joe Slovo Park (Cape Town, South Africa) as seen from the entrance to Sinenjongo High School.

Joe Slovo Park is a slum.

Mass unemployment. Drunkenness and drug addiction. Gangs. Teenage pregnancy. Tuberculosis. HIV/AIDS. Single room shacks that house five people. Illegal power connections. Lots of children without shoes. It’s a shantytown made up of whatever materials people can scrape together. It’s overcrowded and dirty. You have to know people to be safe.

In the middle of this place there is a high school made of used shipping containers and prefab buildings where students from the area come to study and learn. A class of students at the school has a simple request: they want free access to Wikipedia from their mobile phones so that they can do their homework. They started a campaign on Facebook for “Free Access to Wikipedia from Cellphones” and wrote an open letter to all the telecoms in the country:

 

Kul Wadhwa speaking at 0:55:05 about a news article about the class at Sinenjongo High School.

The Grade 11A Class who penned the open letter for free access to Wikipedia on their cellphones, (photographed in February 2013 as the 12A class).

A cellphone repair shop built from a shipping container in Joe Slovo Park. The store is across the street from the school.

Children in Joe Slovo Park, photographed next to computer and cellphone repair stores.

A small internet services store in Joe Slovo Park.

Pam Robertson, Grade 12A maths and science teacher at Sinenjongo High School.

Here I am on a photo walk through Joe Slovo Park with the 12A class.

Sorry, your browser either has JavaScript disabled or does not have any supported player.You can download the clip or download a player to play the clip in your browser. 

 

I had given out Wikipedia stickers to the learners earlier in the week and when I came to Ntsika’s house, I saw that he had put the sticker on his refrigerator. I asked him why he did that.

Myself, Charlene Music and Oarabile Mudongo setting up cameras in one of the two computer labs at Sinenjongo High School.

Charlene Music explaining to Sinako (one of the learners) how to shoot a documentary.

 

A sample from a Cape Town radio interview between Kieno Kammies and Pam Robertson, Maths and Science teacher at Sinenjongo High School about her class and their campaign for free access to Wikipedia on their cellphones.

Open letter to Cell C, MTN, Vodacom and 8ta

We are learners in a Grade 11 class at Sinenjongo High School, Joe Slovo Park, Milnerton, Cape Town. We recently heard that in some other African countries like Kenya and Uganda certain cell phone providers are offering their customers free access to Wikipedia.

We think this is a wonderful idea and would really like to encourage you also to make the same offer here in South Africa. It would be totally amazing to be able to access information on our cell phones which would be affordable to us.

Our school does not have a library at all so when we need to do research we have to walk a long way to the local library. When we get there we have to wait in a queue to use the one or two computers which have the internet. At school we do have 25 computers but we struggle to get to use them because they are mainly for the learners who do CAT (Computer Application Technology) as a subject. Going to an internet cafe is also not an easy option because you have to pay per half hour.

90% of us have cell phones but it is expensive for us to buy airtime so if we could get free access to Wikipedia it would make a huge difference to us.

Normally when we do research Wikipedia is one of the best sites for us to use and so we go straight to it. The information there is clear, updated and there is information on just about every topic.

Our education system needs help and having access to Wikipedia would make a very positive difference. Just think of the boost that it will give us as students and to the whole education system of South Africa.

— From Sinombongo, Sinako, Busisiwe, Ntswaki, Bomkazi, Lindokuhle, Ntsika, Patrick, Ndumiso, Sinazo, Bathandwa, Nokuthembela, Lutho, Mandlilakhe, Zingisile, Aviwe, Nezisa, Ncumisa, Nokubonga, Pheliwe, Zama, Unathi, Malixole and Ntombozuko.

The letter made headlines in the South African press, and my colleague Kul Wadhwa, who manages the Wikipedia Zero program at the Wikimedia Foundation, shared the news with me. I’m always looking for stories to tell about Wikipedia and this was the first grassroots effort (that I know of) that anyone made to get this kind of access to Wikipedia.

Three months ago, I didn’t know anything about this school and had never been to Africa. Being a Wikipedian at heart, I started a page for the school thinking that maybe the page might grow and help me with my research. I then got ahold of Pam Robertson (one of the teachers) at the school via the Facebook campaign page. I asked if I could ask her pupils a few questions (I later learned that the ‘learners,’ as they call themselves, were excited that someone in America even read their letter). I asked her pupils three things: Who are you? Where are you from? What does Wikipedia mean to you?

Here are a few quotes from emails they sent me:

…I attend school at Sinenjongo high school one of the public school in Cape Town. If I can draw you a picture of school, it can look as follows; my school is made of prefabs, it is surrounded by many shacks, there rubbish dump in front of our school, About 15 classes,1 science lab, 2 computer labs, very tiny garden, no playing fields. Nonetheless our school is one the schools that is obtaining good matric results, this shows that we have potentials. After school I want to have a job that i will earn good money so that I can provide for family and live my life to the fullest-not forgetting about giving back to my community. I want to be a role model. Wikipedia means the world. Wikipedia is up dated, it has valid information and it can link you to other websites. We also use it for our projects. If we can get wikipedia free our lives can be easy.

— Nezisa Mdludlu

I am a 17 year old boy staying with a single mother, sister and a brother not forgetting my cousin and her child. We stay in a small shack having no one working surviving with only R1100 supporting grant in each and every month…When I pass my grade 12 I want to do Bsc Degree in Geology and work here at South Africa. Wikipedia can be very useful to me in such a way that when I am doing my assignments and projects I just go to wikipedia and it provide every information I need. Every term my marks are improving because of the information that I get on Wikipedia.

— Lutho

…I would love studying something like Actuarial Science, Astronomy or Medicine. Big complicated numbers and the amazing theories of the birth and the current state of universe fascinate me a lot.

— Sinombongo

…my brother was shot in 2005… Wikipedia is one of the most sites I use to search for information for my career it help of use for project because the isn’t facilities at school and the local library is to far that’s why it’s much easier to use our phones for the internet. But it costs us a lot because we have to stay on the internet for hours and most of the airtime is used and sometimes we save our pocket money to buy airtime. So by having free internet on our phones is easy and saves time.

— Ndumiso

…In my community we don’t have places where we can express our careers…

— Patrick

…As much as we do not have adequate facilities at my school we are determined, proud pupils in the way we perform. The current matric results were rating 94% and we are one of the most improving schools in the Western Cape…

— Sinazo

…I live with my mother and my three brothers; we stay in a one roomed house…

— Lindokuhle

…Learning conditions are poor because we lack sources for over time studies like research, internet for finding new things that are being established now. I would like to be a surgeon, study medicine at university and help my family, provide the love for my mother that she is giving me right now…

— Unathi

…The minute i heard about Wikipedia zero by Mr Piet Strieker I became very interested and would be very happy to access it from my cellphone. Without Wikipedia my schoolwork and my assignments are worth no marks.

— Zamatshatshu

After about the second paragraph, I had tears running down my face. I read pages and pages of quotes like these, describing similar circumstances, each from a different point of view.

I did some more research and found that the principal of the school had made a TED presentation about how she had turned Sinenjongo High School around from a joke of a school that was going to be closed and made it one that gets a 98 percent graduation rate. She did this in 2 years. In the video she talked about how she made the school work:

True transparency and trust…I was open in every decision, every advice from anyone…it was easy for me to gain their trust… People believe in transparency and also people believe in honesty and openness….Everyone is going to be owning this school, it belongs to all of us, not only me.

— Malinga Nopote

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Tech News is a weekly tech newsletter delivered on your talk page and translated into many languages.

If you’ve ever wanted to be kept informed of technical changes likely to impact your Wikimedia experience, you’ll want to subscribe to Tech News, a weekly newsletter than can be delivered directly to your talk page.

The amount of technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement as well as the number of different discussion venues make it increasingly more difficult and time–consuming to monitor changes relevant to one’s involvement in Wikimedia projects. Understanding technical issues and discussions is especially hard since they contain a lot of jargon terms and are mostly conducted only in English.

Tech News is intended to make it easier to keep track of such noteworthy changes and understand them better. By using jargon–free language, we aim to reach regular Wikimedia contributors who are most likely to be affected by upcoming software and configuration changes.

The newsletter is assembled by Tech ambassadors, a group of technically-minded volunteers who help other Wikimedians with technical issues, and act as bridges between developers and local wikis. They’re the ones who monitor technical changes across numerous (and scattered) channels and put together the high-level, plain English summary.

Volunteer translators are the other unsung heroes of Tech News. They’ve been doing an amazing job, which we are very thankful for: not only have they translated every issue so far into around 10 languages on Meta-Wiki (making the newsletter available for users speaking languages other than English), but their responsiveness has even allowed us to distribute translated versions of the newsletter to subscribers on their wikis.

Four issues of the newsletter have been published so far, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Heartwarming comments have for instance described the newsletter as “clear, concise and useful info all in one.” Readers have generally welcomed the initiative, and have provided feedback that helped us further improve the format of the newsletter.

The Wikipedia Signpost has already started making use of Tech News, and we’re hoping that, along with their counterparts in other languages, the Signpost writers will join forces with us to monitor technical changes.

There are a few ways in which you can contribute to Tech News: by translating the latest issue into your language, adding relevant information or links to the next issue, or just by sharing the news with your community.

If you’d like to subscribe to Tech News, add your username to our global delivery list or sign up for the wikitech-ambassadors mailing list to get more frequent updates. If there is local consensus, it’s also possible to receive the newsletter directly on your local community discussion page.

Tomasz W. Kozlowski and Guillaume Paumier

Major news in May include:

• An invitation from the Language engineering team to collaborate on language-related projects;
• A new Notifications system enabled on the English Wikipedia;
• Recent developments in language engineering, and the upcoming deployment of the Universal language selector on all wikis;
• The start of a discussion around Flow, a proposed discussion system for Wikimedia sites;
• A call for proposals to manage the MediaWiki release cycle;
• An experience-sharing exercise by the Mobile engineering team about distributed collaboration;
• “Nearby“, a feature showing Wikipedia articles about nearby places on location-aware devices;
• Tool Labs, which is now operational and ready to host tools migrated from the Toolserver;
• A test wiki to try out new features in right-to-left languages
• Tech news, a weekly tech newsletter to help users stay informed of technical changes going to impact them.

Note: We’re also providing a shorter, simpler and translatable version of this report that does not assume specialized technical knowledge.

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The Universal Language Selector (ULS) provides a flexible way to configure and deliver language settings like interface language, fonts, and input methods (keyboard mappings). It combines the features of two earlier Mediawiki extensions Narayam and WebFonts. From June 11, 2013 on, ULS will be made available to all Wikimedia wikis in 5 phases.

In the first phase, ULS will replace the Narayam and WebFonts extensions on 84 wikis. User preferences from the replaced extensions will not be preserved. Affected communities will be notified by the Wikimedia Language Engineering team of the upcoming change.

In the 5 weeks that follow, ULS will be deployed on Wikipedias in size 11-20 (phase 2), all projects without language versions (phase 3), English language Wikipedia (phase 4) and all other wikis (phase 5).

The Universal Language Selector can be visible in two ways: In the sidebar for wikis with language versions, like Wikipedia, or in the personal toolbar at the top of wiki pages for wikis without language versions, like Wikimedia Commons and Meta-Wiki. Based on the geographic location of users, the initial set of language preferences is presented. Users can set the input methods and fonts to that they want to use. Logged-in users can also change the language for the MediaWiki menu items.

Universal Language Selector is already available on several Wikimedia wikis like Wikimedia Commons and Meta-Wiki. The appearance on wikis like Wikipedia is available in the beta installation of the English language Wikipedia on Wikimedia Labs. A cog icon is present in the “Languages” section of the sidebar menu. Clicking the icon opens the Language settings panel that can be used to set the display and input settings.

Please have a look at the Universal Language Selector feature description or the Frequently Asked Questions for more detailed information.

Runa Bhattacharjee, Outreach and QA coordinator, Language Engineering

 
After several years of development and testing, VisualEditor, the new visual interface to edit Wikipedia pages, will soon be available in “beta” form for all users. This lets Wikipedia editors create and modify articles visually, using a new system where the articles they edit will look the same as they show for reading, and their changes show up as they enter them — like writing a document in a word processor.

VisualEditor removes the need to learn complex wiki markup, and so simplifies editing for both new and experienced editors. We hope that this will open up editing to more people, and along with other efforts will encourage more editors to start and continue to contribute.

We plan to enable it for all logged-in users of the English Wikipedia in early July, later that month extending it to logged-out users, and then the other Wikipedias. Ahead of rolling out VisualEditor in July, we will be carrying out a test of VisualEditor for some randomly-selected new accounts on the English Wikipedia beginning on 17 June. During this testing period, we will be monitoring the impact on users, listening to feedback, and solving problems.

The “alpha” prototype was previously available only to users with a registered account who opted in to test out VisualEditor. First made available on the English Wikipedia in December 2012, it was extended to 16 more language editions in April, and will be made available on all remaining Wikipedias later this week. A lot of valuable feedback has been provided by the early testers of this alpha, and we would like to thank them for their help.

Visual HTML editors are now common on the Web, but building one for Wikipedia (and its sister sites) has been a challenge in itself, due to our specialized requirements and the need to integrate with our existing software, MediaWiki. Behind the scenes, VisualEditor heavily relies on Parsoid, a new complex software component for MediaWiki that translates between wiki markup and annotated HTML+RDFa.

We need your help!

What you can do to help: over the past few months, we have asked you to try out the alpha version of the VisualEditor, and many of you did. Since then, it has changed significantly, and so we’re asking that you try it again. It’s very important that we fix as many critical issues as possible prior to the deploying for everyone in a few weeks’ time — of course, we’d love to fix them all, but that may not be possible. So please, enable the VisualEditor (it’s in your preferences, under the editing tab — check the box labeled “Enable VisualEditor”) and submit any bugs that you find. Your early testing means that we can ensure a better VisualEditor and a smoother deployment for everyone.

Philippe Beaudette, Director, Community Advocacy
James Forrester, Product Manager, VisualEditor and Parsoid
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149 participants from 31 countries came to Amsterdam in late May to teach each other and improve Wikimedia technology.

Developers work near sticky-notes representing topics and ideas at the Amsterdam hackathon in May 2013.

Technologists taught and attended sessions on how to write and run a bot, use the new Lua templating language, how to move from Toolserver to the new Wikimedia Labs, design, Wikidata, security, and the basics of Git and Gerrit. Check out the workshops page for slides, tutorials, and other reference material; videorecordings of sessions are due for uploading to Wikimedia Commons soon.

Wikimedia Netherlands, Wikimedia Germany, and the Wikimedia Foundation subsidized travel and accommodation for dozens of participants, enabling the highest participation in this event’s history. As one subsidized participant wrote, “One of the wonderful things about the Wikipedia world is the support given to the volunteers from the different chapters and the parent Wikimedia Foundation to promote community growth and building awesome stuff that the whole world can use….It’s such surprises that makes one love contributing to open source.” Organizers also put together a social events program that included a boat cruise of Amsterdam’s canals.

Participants are still listing what they accomplished or learned during the event, but here’s a sample:

• The Wikimaps project aims to present historical maps on Wikimedia sites, and to work together with OpenStreetMap Historic “to find a common way to model historical geodata” (more details). Maps aficionados discussed the project and made plans in Amsterdam. One volunteer, Arun Ganesh, wrote a prototype wiki atlas: an interactive SVG file that comes with automatic labelling (details).
• Moritz Schubotz, a volunteer, worked on improving search and math functionality in MediaWiki.
• The Foundation testing and quality assurance team improved test coverage and the test environment, and taught other participants how to do QA for Wikimedia.
• Pau Giner, a designer at the Foundation, wrote code to use an SVG for the collapsible section arrow in MediaWiki’s Vector skin. This will make the image less fuzzy-looking.
• 

  A WMF staffer holds a microphone to amplify a volunteer’s voice during the closing demo session at the Amsterdam hackathon.

  User:Ruud Koot wrote a Wikivoyage listing editor that will make it easier to improve the specific parts of a travel suggestion without having to load the whole page.

• Several volunteers worked on the account creation tool and process for English Wikipedia, to help the ACC team deal with prospective editors who have not been able to create an account via the web interface. The improved tool (code) streamlines the workflow, helping volunteers do their work faster.
• A group of staffers and volunteers interested in statistical data improved the User Metrics API‘s reliability and security. Another wrote a proof-of-concept MediaWiki extension enabling editors to embed Limn graphs in wiki pages via wikitext.

So far, 90 participants have submitted the post-event survey and results are largely positive, with (of course) several suggestions for improvements in the future. For instance, next year, organizers should help trainers prepare more, and help participants with common interests find and work with each other more easily.  We don’t yet know where or when next year’s developer meeting will be, but it’ll happen; subscribe to the low-traffic wikitech-announce mailing list to hear when it’s settled.

You may also wish to read the Wikipedia Signpost report on the event.

Thanks are due to staffers at the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Netherlands, and Wikimedia Germany who made the event possible, and to volunteers who ran the event, especially lead Maarten Dammers.  And thanks to all the participants who gave up their weekend to make our sites better.

Sumana Harihareswara
Engineering Community Manager, Wikimedia Foundation

In the recently concluded development sprint, the Wikimedia Language Engineering team fixed critical bugs for the Universal Language Selector, participated in several events around the world and also announced the release of the latest version of the MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle.

MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle and Updates to ULS

As the date for the first phase of deployment of Universal Language Selector (ULS) draws close, the team has been fixing critical bugs and testing the fixes. These included bugs related to the behavior of the ULS activation ‘cog’ icon. Significant design changes were also made on the input settings panel. Additionally, ULS has been hidden for users who do not use JavaScript on their browsers.

These updates are also part of the latest version of MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle (MLEB). Besides ULS, miscellaneous maintenance bugs were fixed for the Translate extension editor. This further improves the stability of the Translation Editor – TUX. CLDR has been updated to version 23.1.

Amsterdam and Tel-Aviv Hackathons and Community Programs

Members of the Language Engineering team participated and also helped in organizing hackathons at Amsterdam and Tel Aviv. At the hackathon in Amsterdam, organized by Wikimedia Nederland, team members interacted with their peers. Besides attending the workshops, they also submitted and merged patches for various internationalization extensions. A session for automated browser testing with the Wikimedia QA team was particularly well-received in view of the upcoming ULS deployment.

At the hackathon organized by Wikimedia Israel, Amir Aharoni led the event and brought together more than thirty local participants to explore various aspects of contributing to MediaWiki projects. The full report of the accomplishments from the event has been documented by him.

Alolita Sharma presented a talk about Internationalization in Wikimedia projects at IMUG. The entire video of the talk and presentation slides are available online.

Google Summer of Code

The Language Engineering team also welcomed the 4 students who will be participating in Wikimedia’s Internationalization projects for this year’s Google Summer of Code (GSoC). They will be contributing to the jQuery.ime project, Language Coverage dashboard, mobile app for Translate and right-to-left support on VisualEditor.

Coming up

Preparations for deployment of ULS and extending support to the GSoC candidates during the community bonding period are important focus areas during the next 2 weeks.

For information about the Language Engineering team and our projects, please write me at runa at wikimedia dot org or find team members on our IRC channel #mediawiki-i18n on Freenode.

Runa Bhattacharjee, Outreach and QA coordinator, Language Engineering