Wikivoyage migration/status

Last update on: 2012-11-monthly

2012-10-11
Wikimedia Foundation staffers will be working to get the new wikis (in multiple languages) set up, import content from Wikivoyage, import/migrate user data from Wikivoyage, review existing site customizations and extensions to determine whether they are deployable on the WMF cluster, and test and assure attributions, functionality, and appearance.

2012-10-16
Erik Möller sent this update to the wikimedia-l list:
 * The name of the new site will be wikivoyage.org, per community vote. Language domains will live at (foo).wikivoyage.org.
 * A mailing list has been set up at https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikivoyage-l
 * We're not planning to import "Wikivoyage Shared" (which is a media repository similar to Commons) and are encouraging the community to help with transferring appropriately licensed files to Wikimedia Commons.
 * The Wikivoyage Association is currently finalizing details of a domain name transfer with WMF. They have also recently secured wikivoyage.com.
 * The technical launch team at WMF consists of Chris Steipp, Daniel Zahn, Sam Reed, Matthias Mullie, and myself. Everyone is encouraged to help. Technical updates will be posted to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikivoyage_migration and related pages.
 * We're using #wikimedia-wikivoyage on irc.freenode.net to coordinate, so feel free to join us there any time and use it for other related issues.
 * We've received a tarball of extensions running on the Wikivoyage sites, have imported them into Wikimedia's Git repo, and are currently reviewing them and making changes where needed to ensure they're ready for WMF. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikivoyage_migration/Extensions for a list of extensions if you want to help (and feel free to comment on the priorities suggested by the Wikivoyage folks)
 * We may not be able to deploy all extensions; we're using the two week time-box for the launch as the main forcing function.
 * The hairiest part is to properly migrate user accounts. We can only migrate with users' permission, so Wikivoyage will kick off an opt-in process shortly to ask users to consent to transferring their private account data. On the WMF side, we have to reconcile account names with existing ones and require renames if necessary.
 * We'll set up an initially private test instance in Labs and iterate over it with a (possibly reduced) content import, to ensure that all the tricky legal bits (e.g. attribution) are handled correctly. Then we'll set up the production cluster wikis.
 * Our goal is to go live by the end of this month. That might slip depending on the domain name transfer and unexpected technical hurdles or emergencies on the WMF side. We will aim to minimize downtime for current users, and to ensure that the old sites can be available in read-only mode for a little while longer to make it possible to compare site behavior.

2012-10-30
The extension review is almost finished, and we've got an internal test setup on Wikimedia Labs that we've used to test imports and extensions. We've finalized the account migration strategy and started implementing it. We've developed a draft agreement with Wikivoyage e.V. about the transfer of the domain names. The Wikivoyage e.V. members are currently voting to approve the migration. It'll be final on Friday, after which point we can transfer wikivoyage.org to Wikimedia. Our current goal is to do the actual migration next week.

2012-11-15
Wikivoyage was launched into public beta on Nov 10th. The site is running on WMF servers, accounts and text content migrated, etc. Images from the old site have not been automatically imported, because some contain non-free content, and need to be added to each language wiki in accordance with the Exemption Doctrine Policy for that site. Public announcement and promotion of the site is delayed while the community is working on the image transfer.

2012-11-monthly
Wikivoyage was launched into public beta on November 10. The site is running on Wikimedia servers, and accounts and text content was migrated. Images from the old site have not been automatically imported, because some contain non-free content, and need to be added to each language wiki in accordance with the Exemption Doctrine Policy for that site. Public announcement and promotion of the site is delayed while the community is working on the image transfer.