Jarry1250 is the regular writer of The Signpost's weekly "Technology report", which covers technological developments as they happen. Here, he gives his roundup of the past year as a whole, and what might happen in the year ahead. The usual "Technology report", focussing on the events of the past 7 days, is available separately.
With 2012 now in full swing, it becomes possible to review the year gone in terms of its technological developments, particularly when compared with the predictions The Signpost made in January 2011. Of course, it is also possible to look ahead and make fresh predictions about 2012 and what it might have in store.
After the Vector rollout, and with the Usability Initiative coming up for renewal, further usability improvements to the main (desktop) interface of MediaWiki seemed to be in the pipeline. Although improvements to the editing interface never made it into the 2011 programme of deployments, the ease with which files could be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons took a major step forward in May 2011 with the rollout of a new UploadWizard. Arriving in late June, Extension:WikiLove was more controversial but is now in use on an increasing number of wikis. The Moodbar extension, deployed in July, was also a notable development in the field of new user integration; perhaps as a result of it and projects like it, the overall downward trend in the number of active editors on projects such as the English Wikipedia seemingly slowed during 2011. Taken as a whole, Wikimedia wikis received 2.2 page views for every human on the planet during 2011.
The mobile site took a greater than expected role, with the deployment of a new mobile site in September, allowing developers familiar with the main site to start transferring over functionality. Elsewhere, the creation of a "Localisation team" at the WMF helped to contribute to an internationalisation boom that included the deployment of the WebFonts and Narayam extensions to help the display and input of non-Latin characters, and the deployment and release of MediaWiki 1.18 (the second of two MediaWiki releases in 2011), which helped resolve directionality-related display issues on right-to-left wikis. Other headline issues fixed by MediaWikis 1.17 and 1.18 included the ease of installing MediaWiki, the rollout of a new "Resource Loader", improvements to category sorting, gender-specific page headings, and protocol-relative URLs.
Existing extensions also saw considerable development time; for example, the ArticleFeedback extension is now in its fifth version and has a full plan of action prepared for 2012. On the other hand, the LiquidThreads extension, which had been experiencing a lack of developer attention in late 2010, did not resurface in 2011, although a large amount of work was done behind the scenes to make it more deployable. The staff–volunteer divide that was highlighted last year continued to be a source of tension in during 2011, and long times for code review (which had been blamed for exacerbating matters) remained firmly on the agenda (surfacing separately in March, July, and even as recently as three weeks ago).
In sum, the "core" MediaWiki codebase received 7344 revisions in the 12-month period to December 2011, up 30 per cent year-on-year. Similarly, the official SVN repository, which includes both core code and a large number of extensions, was updated some 30 thousand times in 2011, compared with fewer than 20 thousand similar revisions in 2010. Although the figures alone do not capture the value of the programming work done during 2011, they do suggest that more developer hours were devoted to improving the software behind Wikimedia wikis in 2011 than in 2010, a finding supported by the leap in the number of bugs fixed during the year, up from from 2183 in 2010 to 3584 last year. In this area, hopes are high for Wikimedia Labs and the move to Git, to allow new developers to more easily integrate into the community.
With the aid of the current MediaWiki roadmap (as of time of writing) it is possible to sketch out details of the year ahead, although the dates will inevitably change.
As reported in this week's "Technology report", the cutoff for features development (and other major work) for inclusion in MediaWiki 1.19 has now passed. About 350 revisions are scheduled for review before the end of January, when a release branch will be "cut" from the main development version. A deployment to Wikimedia wikis is expected in February. Although this will be from the MediaWiki Subversion repository, it is likely to be the last of its kind, with 1.20 pencilled in as a release from competitor system Git. The move to Git will naturally need to be accompanied by discussion over how code review processes will work under it, which could prove to be a contentious issue if the new policy is seen to formalise existing differences in the way developer and volunteer code tends to be treated.
January is expected to be a busy month for Wikimedia mobile development, with the imminent market release of a general-use Android app, the testing of Wikipedia Zero on the Orange Tunisia mobile network (and "maybe others"), and potentially the deployment of a "mobile web upload" facility (a full "mobile upload" is planned for later in the year). Mobile-friendly editing is scheduled to follow in March, while work will continue throughout the year to allow thousands of users in Asia and Africa without full web access to browse via SMS and USSD.
Other things to look out for in 2012 include a "new page triage" special page (to replace Special:NewPages), the launch of the much-hyped Visual Editor (tentatively slated for April; see previous Signpost coverage for context), and the deployment of a series of video playback enhancements currently bundled as the TimedMediaHandler extension. Once again, a resurgence in the LiquidThreads projects is on the cards, although given its long, complex and difficult development history, exactly how and when this might happen is very difficult to pin down. Indeed, there is still time for the whole LT project to rise and fall in 2012, and hence still time for communities to shape how the software behind a top-ten website develops over the course of the next 12 months.
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The Wikimedia Foundation is the only leading online entity to sustain itself entirely on donations. The Foundation's annual fundraiser is its biggest single source of income, having grown with the project since early efforts from 2004 and 2003. This year, a goal of $20M was set (up from $16M last year), making up the bulk of the Foundation's $28.3M 2011–12 budget.
As with last year's drive, this year's event kicked off with Jimbo Wales' "personal appeal", which consistently received the highest feedback in previous drives and it has again this year (see previous Signpost coverage), with a new green banner curiously gathering increased contributions. The appeals featured then shifted their focus to the community, turning the spotlight on appeals from individual Wikimedians over the past few weeks.
That effort concluded successfully this week, with the $20M goal reached on 2 January 2012. According to Sue Gardner, who graced the CentralNotice banner for some time following the windfall, "Ordinary people use Wikipedia and they like it, so they chip in some cash so it will continue to thrive. That maintains our independence and lets us focus solely on providing a useful public service ... I promise them we will use their money carefully and well."
Although the average donor contribution has remained steady, the number of contributors has been rapidly expanding, increasing ten-fold since 2008.
What will the money be spent on? The 2011–12 annual financial plan outlines operating costs through mid-2012, with $12.4M (44%) going to tech support, $6.9M (24%) to finance and administration, $6.5M (23%) to special programs, $2.2M (8%) to fundraising, and $300K (1%) to governance.
The Sakha language Wikipedia reached the 8,000-article mark three minutes before the New Year, at the conclusion of a "Marathon 8,000", announced just two days before the year ended. At the time, the wiki needed just 102 articles to achieve this milestone; nonetheless, organizers stressed quality over quantity in the drive, and aimed to attract the Sakha-speaking community to contribute to the Sakha Wikipedia, one of the few international projects that supports the Sakha language online. Despite the short timeframe, Marathon 8,000 proved successful, with a sum total of 109 new articles written within two days.
The Sakha Wikipedia's Bureaucrat, Nikolai Pavlov, advertised the campaign in his and his friends' blogs and in announcements in the forums on Ykt.ru, the most popular news and forums portal of Yakutsk, the capital of the Sakha Republic. In the announcements he appealed to regular Sakha-speaking web surfers and called them to join Wikipedia in their language and to get their children to write, too. Surprisingly, just a few hours after publishing, the moderator of the forums removed the notices as inappropriate, putting the whole campaign in danger. The posts were restored after a personal request from the organizers; Pavlov said that he is sure that this was not an intentional disruption, but a misunderstanding and that he is confident that Ykt.ru will keep supporting the project, as it has done since its first steps.
The response to the campaign was immediate: dozens of editors, many of whom had never edited Wikipedia before, created new articles. The 8,000th article was about Mylajyn (Мылаадьын), a Sakha soldier in the Russian Civil War. Another marker of the campaign's success was that 1 and 2 January saw 20 new articles created by the new writers, an increase from normal levels and an "aftershock" of the campaign.
According to the Marathon's rules, the three winners are awarded an honorary title (in Sakha, "Марафон 8000 кыайыылааҕа"), and are entitled to display a badge on their user page as well as a framed certificate and a prize. The final results of the contest will be announced by 14 January.
Wikimedia UK hosted a workshop this past weekend for Wikimedia OTRS volunteers which was attended by a number of active OTRS agents and one OTRS admin. OTRS volunteers handle e-mails sent to the various e-mail addresses for different Wikimedia projects, and their work includes answering questions and concerns from readers, BLP issues, complaints about copyright and permissions to reuse images and text. At the event, a variety of issues with the current OTRS setup were discussed including how to improve governance of the OTRS system, improving the somewhat infuriating interface, recruiting more active Wikimedians to participate in OTRS, and better handling of difficult or angry people e-mailing the community.
Difficulties faced by OTRS users include handling cross-wiki issues like notability or BLP policies on different language versions of Wikipedia and explaining international copyright policies to correspondents. Better training and mentoring of OTRS volunteers is something that people at the workshop have committed to, as well as considering how practical it would be to try to institute a requirement that e-mails be responded to in under seven days.
The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) hosted a dozen Wikimedians this past week for a NARA ExtravaSCANza at their College Park, Maryland facility. The ExtravaSCANza was organized by Dominic McDevitt-Parks, the National Archives Wikipedian-in-Residence, culminating his 8-month stint at NARA.
In the evening on Wednesday, January 4, Wikimedians scanned NASA photos. The focus on Thursday was women’s suffrage and rights. On Friday and Saturday, Wikimedians worked on photos of Chile, along with battleship photos on Saturday. Wikimedians also helped out with the FedFlix project, digitizing videos, and experimenting with sound recordings. Highlights include radio broadcasts that encouraged Americans to answer questions from census-takers for the 1940 United States Census. Photos are being uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, and help is needed to categorize them.
Although NARA will be without a Wikipedian-in-Residence in the months ahead, collaborations will continue, including more scan-a-thon events.
Wikipedia raised $20 million thanks to Wikipedia donators during a fundraising campaign that ended on January 1, 2012. According to Sue Gardner, Wikimedia's executive director, it is the most successful campaign ever. MSNBC reports that Wikimedia told them that the money will be used for "servers and other hardware, to develop new site functionality, expand mobile services, provide legal defense for the projects, and support the large global community of Wikimedia volunteers."
According to Business Review USA, Wikimedia plans to spend $28.3 million with the remaining amount coming from grants, institutions, and other year-round donations.
Wales Online reports that Monmouthpedia is the first Wikipedia project to cover a single town. Monmouthpedia documents the "notable places, people, artifacts, flora and fauna" of the Welsh town of Monmouth. Monmouthpedia aims to use QRpedia (QR Code barcodes linking to Wikipedia articles, that can be read by smart phones). It is planned to have articles in 25 languages and 1,150 QR codes placed around Monmouth by May. The project was started by John Cummings who was inspired by the Derby Museum - GLAM/Wiki collaboration during a Wikipedia talk.
According to Digital Spy, Cummings said that "the project is already working with a variety of local groups", but he also advised that anyone with an interest in Monmouth local history can contribute.
Monmouth was chosen because of its "rich industry", first appearing in the Domesday Book.
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This week, we sat down for a jam session with Gyrofrog, a member of WikiProject Jazz. Started in July 2006, WikiProject Jazz has grown to include 15 pieces of featured content and 27 Good Articles. The project maintains a portal, a list of resources, a lengthy to-do list, and a variety of templates and categories.
What motivated you to join WikiProject Jazz?
Do you prefer a specific subgenre of jazz?
Who is your favorite musician?
Do you feel jazz is as well represented on Wikipedia as other music genres?
Does the project maintain a style guide, infobox, or any other standardization for jazz articles?
How well do broader style guides for music cover the needs of WikiProject Jazz?
How does the project handle biographical articles about jazz musicians? Has the project dealt with any issues about biographies of living people?
Does WikiProject Jazz collaborate with any other projects?
What are WikiProject Jazz's most pressing needs? How can a new member help today?
Next week, we'll toss back a cold one. Until then, see what else has been brewing in the archive.
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The featured article process was rocked this week by several lengthy and contentious discussions. Most were centered on a single issue: whether the positions of featured article (FA) director and delegate should be elected, or if the delegates should continue to be appointed by current FA director Raul654. In the midst of this, a shock came with the unrelated resignation of longtime FA delegate SandyGeorgia.
The discussions spawned from a lengthy post by SandyGeorgia, where she laid out points which she felt needed discussion based on feedback from the previous year. The section quickly became a heated debate between supporters and opposers of the FAC delegate selection system.
This should be understood with a consideration of the history behind the current FA setup. The term "featured articles" replaced "brilliant prose" in January 2004, and around this time Raul654 suggested that these articles should appear on the main page, which looked like this before. In late February 2004, this was done, and the now-standard main page setup of a featured article, in the news, did you know, and on this day were seen for the first time, though featured pictures were not yet included.
With the new system of selecting "featured" articles over "brilliant prose", Raul became the de facto FA director in mid-2004 and was officially recognized in August. Over the next several years, he was in charge of promoting or not promoting FA candidates (FACs) and scheduling articles for the main page (through Today's Featured Article). As traffic increased on the pages, he delegated some of the work at FAC to SandyGeorgia in November 2007, though there were some concerns over the process. Over time, Raul stepped further away from FA areas, adding new delegates in March 2009, November 2010, and current delegate Ucucha in August 2011, along with a TFA delegate in June 2011.
According to Raul, vacancies are filled in a consultative process between the FA director and the featured process (FAC, FAR, TFA) needing a delegate. Raul asks the current delegates for a short list of candidates, from which he picks an editor and gauges their interest. If they decline, he repeats the process with another editor on the list. When one accepts, Raul puts his choice on the process' talk page and assesses community reaction to his choice. So far, none of his choices have received sufficient opposition to warrant withdrawing their name. Delegate removals operate with a similar process, though the only reason serious enough to warrant removal in the last four years has been a lack of activity on-wiki.
Opposers of this system tend to believe that having one editor in such a position is at a disconnect with other processes that hold annual elections for leadership positions. Supporters counter that such a system insulates delegates from having to worry about an upcoming election when closing FACs.
A straw poll and RfC on the election issue were opened, but both were strongly opposed by editors with objections and concerns over the process, with a planned RfC drafted by editor Mike Christie (who managed the 2010 FAC RFC) coming in a few days. The first topic to be tackled in this RfC was left open to a straw poll, and it appears that leadership at FAC – whether it should be left to the current system or a voting procedure – will be examined first.
While these discussions were taking place, SandyGeorgia – a featured article delegate since 2007 and a reviewer for some time before that – tendered her resignation on 8 January, though she will continue to serve for thirty days or until another delegate is appointed to ease the transition. Before becoming a delegate, Sandy was a frequent editor of medical articles; with increasing problems of ensuring accuracy within this topic, along with POV issues in her other topic of choice, Venezuela-related articles, she believed it was time to resign to devote her editing to improving these areas.
Eight featured articles were promoted this week.
Four featured lists were promoted this week:
Three featured pictures were promoted this week.
The Arbitration Committee opened no new cases this week, and closed no cases, leaving four open.
A proposed decision was posted by arbitrator Kirill Lokshin on 3 January. The proposed principles included a discussion of community sanctions and recidivism. A large amount of discussion by arbitrators has centered around the remedy and the restrictions to be imposed on Betacommand. Proposals have ranged from a one year ban to offering Betacommand a clean start. No remedy has received a majority of support as of publication.
This open case, which has already attracted a great deal of attention (see previous Signpost coverage), entered its second week of evidence submissions. A total of 39 editors have submitted evidence, totalling more than 270 diffs. Due to the complexity of the case, arbitrator Risker has suggested extending the evidence deadline to 15 January (next Sunday). In parallel with the great deal of evidence, 21 users have offered proposals on the workshop page.
The current date set for the posting of a proposed decision is 26 January.
This case is moving towards the workshop phase, with the first-ever public posting of an arbitrator's viewpoints during the case itself. Drafter AGK posted this summary which contained his view as to what a final decision should look like. "In the decision", AGK wrote, "we will give some guidance to the disputants for engaging in similar content disputes in the future, and we will sanction a small number of [disruptive] editors." However, he cautioned that a decision on the inclusion (or not) of Muhammad images would remain subject to resolution by "the wider community". A discussion of the summary then began on the workshop talk page.
Wednesday January 11 is the deadline for evidence submissions.
This open case is close to the posting of a proposed decision by one of the drafters. Arbitrator Roger Davies wrote on the workshop talk page that a proposed decision will be posted in the coming days. He indicated that the proposal will eventually be opened for "public comment" before the start of voting.
The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for December 2011 was published last week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month. The three projects of particular note (WebFonts, Visual Editor, and ArticleFeedback version 5) were covered in the previous issues of The Signpost; however, the report did contain several items of note that were not.
The report contained updates on a number of events fixed for January and February: the San Francisco hackathon (21–22 January 2012, an "outreach-focused" weekend aimed at developers, with activities focusing on "mobile, the web-accessible API and our framework for JavaScript feature development", with 70 registrations at the time of writing); a similar hackathon in Pune, India (10–12 February 2012, with about 70 participants expected and a focus on "the gadgets framework, mobile Wikimedia access, and internationalization"), and GLAMcamp DC (10–12 February 2012, a GLAM conference with a technical track focussing on "mass upload and analytics functionality"). Elsewhere, more projects have taken up residence within the Wikimedia Labs infrastructure; and two new projects have joined the list of WMF-sponsored proposals: one to improve GPS storage and retrieval, a "critical component of the mobile projects [that] will replace our existing use of GeoNames.org and can also supplement GeoHack", and a second to "expose featured articles, In the news, and other main page content" via RSS feed, such that "our partners can better re-use our data".
Managing the release cycle for any software is difficult, and with a geographically distributed, part-volunteer contributor base this is even more the case. This week, a code "slush" was called to help temporarily simplify matters ahead of the branching of 1.19 (wikitech-l mailing list). The move closes the central repository to major changes, allowing time for code reviewers to catch up on the backlog before a release snapshot ("branch") is taken later in the month. After branching, the repository will be opened to major code changes and additions again, while the branch will receive only bug fixes.
In previous versions, branching had been performed relatively early, opening up the central repository to changes earlier, but this has proved "hard to manage", according to Brion Vibber, the Foundation's lead software architect. The pre-branch code "slush" (essentially a code freeze but with greater discretion) is likely to focus minds on code review, which has been lagging until relatively recently. If it proves insufficient, further code freezes may be required; these would help contribute to greater levels of testing at a small cost in terms of the level of active development undertaken.
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.
