Wikimedia Engineering/Report/2013/May

Engineering metrics in May:
 * unique committers contributed patchsets of code to MediaWiki.
 * The total number of unresolved commits went from about 815 to.
 * About shell requests were processed.
 * Wikimedia Labs now hosts projects and  users; to date  instances have been created.

Major news in May include:

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

Upcoming events
There are many opportunities for you to get involved and contribute to MediaWiki and technical activities to improve Wikimedia sites, both for coders and contributors with other talents.

For a more complete and up-to-date list, check out the Project:Calendar.

Work with us
Are you looking to work for Wikimedia? We have a lot of hiring coming up, and we really love talking to active community members about these roles.

Announcements

 * May Galloway joined the Product Development team as Visual Designer (announcement).
 * Jared Zimmerman joined the Engineering Department as Director of User Experience (announcement).
 * Jared Zimmerman joined the Engineering Department as Director of User Experience (announcement).

Technical Operations
Site infrastructure

Data Dumps
 * The routine dumps of wikidata ran into two roadblocks, one of them related to the way that rc patrol and autopatrolling are handled in MediaWiki. While a local workaround is in place, there has been discussion of revamping the patrolling mechanism including changes to the database .  The other issue, affecting the full history content dumps, also has a temporary workaround until we can decide what the meaning of the 'rev_len' field in the database for revisions really means.
 * The mwxml2sql utils have been through some testing and bug fixes, and a volunteer is interested in packaging them for Debian to accompany his code for local installation of a mirror of Wiipedia (or the project of one's choice).
 * Incremental dumps will be hacked on this summer by User:Svick as part of this year's GSOC program. We're happy to have him and can't wait for the finished code!

Wikimedia Labs

Kiwix
The Kiwix project is funded and executed by Wikimedia CH.



Wikidata
The Wikidata project is funded and executed by Wikimedia Deutschland.



Future

 * The engineering management team continues to update the Deployments page weekly, providing up-to-date information on the upcoming deployments to Wikimedia sites, as well as the engineering roadmap, listing ongoing and future Wikimedia engineering efforts.