Wikimedia Engineering/Report/2014/April/summary


 * This content is prepared for inclusion in the report>m:Wikimedia Foundation Report, April 2014|April 2014 Wikimedia Foundation report. It is a shorter and simpler version of the full engreport>:mw:Wikimedia engineering report/2014/April|Wikimedia engineering report for April 2014 that does not assume specialized technical knowledge.

Major news in April include:
 * the change of format of MediaWiki localization files from PHP to JSON, and the associated modernization of the LocalisationUpdate extension;
 * the move of Wikimedia Labs to a new data center;
 * the “Heartbleed” security vulnerability and how the Wikimedia Foundation's team responded to it;
 * an explanation of how the Mobile team uses Trello to plan their development sprints;
 * a project report on a grant to create "gadgets" for VisualEditor.

=== ve>:mw:Special:MyLanguage/VisualEditor/Portal|VisualEditor ===

In April, the VisualEditor team worked to improve the stability of the editor, adding some new features and improving usability so that users can create and edit pages more swiftly and intuitively with VisualEditor than before. When users edit templates, only a few parameters are now shown at first rather than all possible ones (some often-used templates like those for citations or infoboxes can have dozens of parameters). It now feels more natural to set the size of images. The page settings tool now includes the complete set of page options. The next version of the citation dialog was tested and simplified; "suggested" parameters are now always added, like "required" ones. Finally, a careful audit of all Wikimedia wikis led to fixing broken local community-written code, to ensure that VisualEditor runs on all of them.

The Parsoid team continued to fix bugs and tweak code on this parsing program that works behind the scenes of VisualEditor. Two areas in particular received a lot of attention: templates encapsulation and link handling. We worked on many special cases in template encapsulation code and its interaction with content from tables (caused by misnested tags in tables). We also fixed many unhandled scenarios and edge cases parsing and serializing links.

In addition to bug fixes, we also improved Parsoid's performance; some pages like Barack Obama should now parse 30% faster than before. We continued migrating our debugging and tracing code to use our new logger. April also saw additional progress providing support for visual editing of transclusion parameters.

=== ee>:mw:New editor engagement|Editor engagement ===

This month, the Flow team focused on back-end changes to improve moderation and history viewing, as well as implementing new front-end JavaScript templating to make Flow more responsive and easier to add new features onto. On the user-facing features side, we released the ability to close and summarize topics. This will allow users to manage active discussions and end ones that have come to a resolution. Flow is now the default discussion experience for many Beta Features discussions on mediawiki.org, and the team is accepting requests to enable Flow on more pages on that wiki for the purpose of testing complex multi-user discussion interactions.

In April, Growth switched gears to focus on a new experimental area: anonymous editor acquisition. The team prepared its first two experimental interface changes, aimed at asking anonymous editors to register accounts (expected to be launched in early May). The team also will be conducting basic research into the role anonymous editors play in Wikipedia − more at Research:Anonymous phenomena and Research:Anonymous editor acquisition.

=== mob>:mw:Wikimedia Mobile engineering|Mobile ===

The Mobile Apps team continued moving toward the first market release of the rebooted Wikipedia App for Android and iOS. The team focused on bug fixes, editing refinements, and UX polish. Several issues related to keyboard, navigation bar, edit summary, and abuse filter were fixed. The app now uses the newly created Wikifont which reduced the size of the app and the number of graphical assets. Articles should now look even closer to their mobile web counterparts. Product management switched from Kenan Wang to Maryana Pinchuk due to Kenan's departure, and the team welcomed Dmitry Brant as an Android software developer.

This month, the Mobile web team released history and contributions pages, as well as an updated watchlist view, for all users. We also promoted two new features geared toward "humanizing" Wikipedia for readers and new editors: a prominent "last modified" banner that indicates when articles haven't been edited in a while and may need some attention, and a user profile feature to provide a mobile-friendly snapshot of users' contributions and activity. For tablets, we updated typography and layout and worked on adding the ability to add and modify links via VisualEditor in beta, in preparation for redirecting tablets to the mobile site later this quarter.

During the last month, the Wikipedia Zero team continued setup tasks on the Partners portal, JSON configuration store, and graceful image quality reduction. The team also updated Android and iOS Wikipedia app reboot visual flourishes for Wikipedia Zero, analyzed anomalous access patterns and proxy-oriented configuration and tech documentation to close gaps, and created bugfixes for unnecessary charge warnings in the "Read in another language" language picker plus direct upload.wikimedia.org image hyperlinks on File: pages. The team also removed some legacy ETL code from the ZeroRatedMobileAccess extension.

Yuri did outreach abroad and continued analytics work on SMS/USSD pilot data. The team also generated two custom pageview analyses for an operator to distinguish traffic by high level device access characteristics as part of ongoing discussions. The team also explored legacy Android Wikipedia app trends.

Additionally, the team cut Android Wikipedia app alpha builds, worked on User-Agent string and URL format updates for the forthcoming iOS Wikipedia app to ensure pageview logging, and performed app code review.

Discussion with the community on MCC-MNC logging to address mobile IP drift was conducted, and it appears it is okay to proceed; the team will reduce the date granularity of log lines to the day (e.g., YYYYMMDD) with a patch to MediaWiki core, though.

Routine pre- and post-launch configuration changes were made to support operator zero-rating, and in-depth technical assistance was provided to operators and the partner management team to help add zero-rating and address anomalies.

The team emailed further about full-text search in reboots of Wikipedia apps, and may resume investigation of it later.

The team also examined requirements for portal and general partners engineering human resources.

IPKO in Kosovo launched Wikipedia Zero, bringing us to a total of 28 partners in 26 countries. We delivered 68 million free page views in April. Adele Vrana, Wikipedia Zero Partner Manager, visited South Africa to meet with MTN (current Wikipedia Zero partner), prospective partners, members of Wikimedia South Africa (WMZA) and the Singenjongo High School. This trip was part of a broader strategy to promote Wikipedia in our partners' corporate social responsibility (CSR) and education initiatives, increasing awareness and impact locally. We are identifying new collaboration opportunities with MTN and local organizations, including the Wikimedia chapter in South Africa and other mission-aligned nonprofits. Additionally, we will continue to support the local initiative created by Sinenjongo High School teachers and students.