Wikimedia Features engineering

The Wikimedia Foundation Features Engineering team is responsible for developing new features for MediaWiki. The group is managed by Terry Chay and is part of the larger Wikimedia Engineering team.

Current projects

Project	Description	Project lead & team	Status
Editor Retention:Editing Tools
Visual editor	[edit] Initial ideas and prototypes of a visual editor for MediaWiki	[edit] Terry Chay, Trevor Parscal, Roan Kattouw, Gabriel Wicke, Rob Moen, Inez Korczyński-Wikia, Christian Williams-Wikia, Audrey Tang	[edit] [add new] Status: (2012-05-23) Gabriel has set up a very basic parsoid service. browse english wikipedia as parsoid sees it POST wikitext -> HTML DOM POST HTML DOM -> wikitext. Note: round-tripping is limited. Does not support preservation of variable whitespace, templates and other complex constructs yet. Currently 154 parser tests are passing in the new --roundtrip mode that Subbu added last week. Also the team had a meeting with James
Editor Engagement
Article feedback	[edit] A feature to collaboratively assess article quality and incorporate reader ratings on Wikipedia.	[edit] Fabrice Florin, Howie Fung, Brandon Harris, Dario Taraborelli, Erik Möller, Roan Kattouw, Oliver Keyes, Yoni Shostak, Reha Sterbin, Pau Giner, Matthias Mullie	[edit] [add new] Status: (2012-05-22) Last week: (May 14) Developed and tested new design for feedback page and permalink page Develop and tested central feedback page (prototype) Deployed bug fixes and tweaks to new feedback page features (Relevance) New version of Abuse filter posted for review (new code for group filters) Developed CTA 5 (feedback page link), for deployment following week Prepared Metrics Stage 4 bucketing & clicktracking for feedback page tests Prepare Metrics Stage 4 survey second draft, with legal approval Finalized final feedback form design (expandable version of Option 1) Posted Bugzilla tickets for upcoming features (Throttling, Checkuser, Help pages, MyContribs, etc.) This week: (May 21) Test and deploy CTA 5 (feedback page link) and talk page link Test and deploy Metrics Stage 4 clicktracking for feedback page tests Test and deploy survey button ("What do you think?") and link to Survey Monkey Deploy more bug fixes and tweaks for new feedback page features Continue development of final feedback form (based on Option 1, progressive reveal) Define and develop solution for highlighting your last post on feedback page Invite editors to create more abuse filters, resolve questions about warning message, vandalism bug Write and edit help pages for new feedback page features (editors, monitors, oversighters) Prepare for follow-up IRC chat and wider socialization the week of May 28? Discuss and prepare feedback page usability tests with editors (user testing.com) Finalize requirements and estimates for remaining features (Throttling, Checkuser, Help pages, MyContribs, etc.) Finalize OmniTI contract extension, plan next steps through hand-off Start planning wider deployment, mobile platforms and internationalization
Article Creation Workflow	[edit] A feature to improve the article creation workflow for new editors.	[edit] Ian Baker, Fabrice Florin, Benny Situ, Ryan Kaldari, Brandon Harris, Oliver Keyes, Howie Fung, Dario Taraborelli, Terry Chay	[edit] [add new] Status: (2012-04-monthly) Ian Baker, Benny Situ, Ryan Kaldari and Brandon Harris have developed the Article Creation landing system, while focusing on deploying the New Page Triage (NPT) this month. Oliver Keyes prepared new templates for a proposed 'Create a Draft' section. Fabrice Florin managed the project and created a workflow diagram to illustrate the interdependencies between ACW and NTP. The goal is to collect and analyze usage data on ACW in May with Dario Taraborelli, in order to plan our next steps for this project, which is likely to be deployed alongside NPT in coming weeks. The current ACW prototype is available for testing on Wikimedia Labs.
Page Triage	[edit] Interface for triaging pages created in MediaWiki	[edit] Fabrice Florin, Ian Baker, Howie Fung, Brandon Harris, Benny Situ, Ryan Kaldari, Andrew Garrett, Terry Chay	[edit] [add new] Status: (2012-04-monthly) The editor engagement team continued to develop its prototype of Page Triage, which provides an enhanced list of pages to be reviewed by community patrollers. Benny Situ, Ian Baker and Ryan Kaldari developed new features for the list view of this feature, while Brandon Harris designed a new curation bar to appear on the article pages. Oliver Keyes acted as community liaison and Fabrice Florin managed this project with Howie Fung. Current goals are to complete development of the new curation toolbar in May, and deploy an integrated release version the following month, along with the Article Creation landing system. The latest prototype is available on Wikimedia Labs; our first incremental deployment to the English Wikipedia is planned for the first week in May.
Multimedia
TimedMediaHandler	[edit] An extension to display audio and video files on wiki with timed text support, real time stream switching and server-side transcoding support.	[edit] Terry Chay, Michael Dale, Jan Gerber, Ian Baker	[edit] [add new] Status: (2012-05-23) As of 5/18, Antoine updated beta config to closer track master branch (production) of Mediawiki via git/puppet. Video can be uploaded via UploadWizard and queued by TMH. Queue processing is blocking on the ffmpeg2theora missing from the configuration.
Architecture/Platform Support
ResourceLoader	[edit] A feature to improve the load times for JavaScript and CSS in MediaWiki.	[edit] Terry Chay, Roan Kattouw, Timo Tijhof	[edit] [add new] Status: (2012-04-monthly) The team is working on deploying ResourceLoader2's gadget manager on Wikimedia Labs. They also completed a number of tasks, and are preparing for a ResourceLoader tutorial at the June Berlin hackathon.
FlaggedRevs maintenance	[edit] A feature to allow changes made by logged-out and new users to be reviewed before they appear as the primary version of an article.	[edit] Terry Chay, Matthias Mullie, Aaron Schulz	[edit] [add new] Status: (2012-05-07) Assigning Mattias Mullie to work on it with Aaron Schulz and Ryan Kaldari will do code review. Still lining up some support from product.
Notifications	[edit] Initial ideas for the Notifications infrastructure and UI	[edit] Brion Vibber, Terry Chay, Brandon Harris, WMF team TBD, (Wikia)	[edit] [add new] Status: (2012-07-01) Official start date of Notifications rewrite.
Messaging	[edit] Initial ideas for the Messaging infrastructure and UI	[edit] Terry Chay, Brion Vibber, Brandon Harris, Andrew Garrett	[edit] [add new] Status: (2012-07-01) Official start date of Flow (messaging pages).
Support (Fundraising, Education…)
2012 Wikimedia fundraiser	[edit] Engineering support and development for the 2012 fundraiser of the Wikimedia Foundation	[edit] Katie Horn, Jeff Green, Jeremy Postlethwaite	[edit] [add new] Status: (2012-04-monthly) The fundraising team deployed GlobalCollect recurring functionality, and started transition to using Git and Gerrit for its software development process. They wrote the burn up chart for the next fundraising round (login: guest, password: guest). The team is still working on adding staff.
Wikipedia Education Program	[edit] A MediaWiki extension to support the Wikipedia Education Program	[edit] Terry Chay, Jeroen De Dauw	[edit] [add new] Status: (2012-04-monthly) Jeroen De Dauw has made the project almost feature complete. User testing is now finalized, and the team is still trying to get started getting code review.

Future and backburner projects

Project	Description	Project lead & team	Status
GlobalProfile	[edit] A set of features to help users provide information about themselves and associate by interests.	[edit] Alolita Sharma, Brandon Harris	[edit] [add new] Status: (2011-09-30) This project was on hold in September, because of a lack of development resources.
Community prototyping	[edit] Features development to support community research and community change experiments.	[edit] Alolita Sharma, Katie Horn	[edit] [add new] Status: (2011-05-01) Trevor Parscal continued to work with the Community department team in early April on the experiment to see the impact of a design and location change of the section edit button.
LiquidThreads 3.0	[edit] A rewrite of the LiquidThreads extension to improve its back-end and UI	[edit] Alolita Sharma, Andrew Garrett, Brandon Harris,	[edit] [add new] Status: (2011-10-31) Andrew Garrett started working on a conversion script to facilitate the transition from the old schema to the new one.
Etherpad lite integration	Create a project page for this activity (how-to)
MoodBar	[edit] A feature to encourage new users to provide feedback.	[edit] Alolita Sharma, Brandon Harris, Howie Fung, Ian Baker), Rob Moen, Benny Situ	[edit] [add new] Status: (2011-11-30) Benny Situ and Rob Moen familiarized themselves with the existing code, and the requirements for phase 2. Benny also added server-side validation for empty comment, and Rob fixed Internet Explorer bugs and added front end validation. On November 30th, there was a follow up deployment that added a preview mode to feedback response and also allowed the use of wikitext. Additionally, there was an update to the response template used in the user talk page. Dario Taraborelli uploaded a series of real-time dashboards for Moodbar data to the Toolserver.
UploadWizard	[edit] A feature that provides an easier way of uploading files to Wikimedia Commons, the media library associated with Wikipedia.	[edit] Alolita Sharma, Ian Baker, Erik Möller	[edit] [add new] Status: (2011-12-31) Users can now choose a default license for all uploads in their user preferences under "Upload Wizard" (bug 24702). All license choices now also link to the legal code of a license. The built-in feedback form more prominently links to Bugzilla.
Mobile/Athena	Create a project page for this activity (how-to)

Recently completed projects

Project	Description	Project lead & team	Status
Feedback Dashboard	[edit] A dashboard allowing experienced users to answer comments and concerns coming from MoodBar	[edit] Fabrice Florin, Brandon Harris, Ian Baker, Rob Moen, Benny Situ, Alolita Sharma	[edit] [add new] Status: (2012-01-31) We implemented a leaderboard of recent top responders on the feedback dashboard. New editor feedback is now added to a dedicated log. When feedback is marked as helpful, that fact is displayed on the feedback dashboard itself. Other than a few other smaller changes, we're now moving the project into maintenance mode to focus on article creation workflow and New Page Triage.
WikiLove	[edit] An extension to encourage expressions of appreciation between users.	[edit] Alolita Sharma, Ryan Kaldari, Jan Paul Posma, Roan Kattouw, Brandon Harris	[edit] [add new] Status: (2011-08-01) The code was completed, and the feature deployed to the English Wikipedia at the end of June. The Product research team published a basic analysis of its usage, and stories of its evolving usage and impact. This project is now considered to be completed.

Team meetings

See Category:Features team notes.