Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-07-05/Technology report

On the Wikimedia Techblog, Mark Bergsma explained the root of problems users encountered the morning of Monday, July 5:

Fortunately, the technicians managed to get everything back up and running shortly afterwards.

Following a blog post by Phoebe about Wikimedia's future strategies, Brion Vibber left a detailed comment giving his thoughts. As a former Chief Technical Officer (CTO) and all-round maintainer of Wikimedia projects and the software behind them for a number of years – not to mention the namesake of this report – his thoughts provided a useful insight into the past, present and future of the Wikimedia Foundation's "tech" department:

The full comment is available here. Regular Signpost readers will be pleased to know that an interview with Danese Cooper – to whom Brion referred – should be available shortly.

Wikimania 2010, in Gdansk, Poland, opens on July 9. It is scheduled to include a number of talks, workshops and tutorials useful to developers. One session From WMF with love, expressly aimed at the technically minded, is scheduled for Sunday. Its programme comprises:

• "Wikimedia's mobile and offline initiatives",
• "Performance, scalability and security for extension developers" and
• "Wikimedia Germany's software and infrastructure projects".

The session For developers: free software, batch uploading, mobiles is set to include:

• "How we make Wiki use in mobiles friendly",
• "Free software for users" and
• "Batch uploading at Commons".

These are in addition to a wide range of other talks arranged for the long weekend, which is expected to be attended by hundreds of Wikimedians from around the globe.

Note: not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for many weeks. Wikimedia sites now have their own "branch", meaning that it is no longer possible to say that they are running revision X; rather, they are running a mix of different revisions prioritised by importance.

• Bug #24167 has been fixed, preventing multiple "warn" edit filters from conflicting with each other and thus preventing an edit from getting through at all.
• The 'Languages' section of the sidebar, used for interwiki links, will now stay collapsed if so desired across pages (bug #24140).
• The "Peachy" bot framework for PHP moves into official beta mode, with PHP bot operators required to put it through its paces.
• The Vector skin went live to 83 WMF wikis (see previous Signpost coverage). One, the Ukrainian Wikipedia, went back to Monobook since the skin had not been sufficiently translated.

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In this issue

5 July 2010 (all comments)

News and notes

In the news

Wikimania preview

WikiProject report

Features and admins

Arbitration report

Technology report

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• As the lead developer of Peachy, I disagree with the idea that bot operators are required to use it. I believe that everyone should have an option as to what framework to use. Peachy may be the best in some people's eyes, and in other eyes, it may be far too bloated for the purposes and they may want a small, barebones class. (X! · talk)  · @976  ·  22:25, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Whoops, disregard that. I read "PHP bot operators are required to put it through the paces" to mean that all PHP bot operators must change to Peachy, not that testers comprised of PHP bot operators are needed to assist in testing. (X! · talk)  · @978  ·  22:28, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• "[T]he namesake of this report"? This is "Technology report", not "Brion Vibber report"... OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:01, 7 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • See the initials of "Bugs, repairs, and internal operational news". --seav (talk) 16:15, 7 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • :O My mind is blown. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 18:17, 7 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

      I'm still sad that "The Report On Lengthy Litigation" feature got renamed to "Arbitration Report". - BanyanTree 02:32, 8 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

      • But we can still cling to DRAMA Discussion report... no, wait, the title of that is no longer a clever acronym either :'(. Have no fear people, BRION is going to remain BRION until... well, someone changes it I guess! - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 16:01, 8 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

←Was it indeed renamed "Arbitration report"? If so, thank the gods for it. The irony was lost on many readers ... :-) Tony (talk) 16:52, 8 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How did I never notice any of these for five years? OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:46, 13 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's actually pretty subtle. I didn't realize it myself a few years ago until it was pointed out. Check out the comments on the BRION report the week Brion resigned for an assurance that this report will remain at this title: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-09-28/Technology report :-) --seav (talk) 15:17, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]