Wikimedia Technical Engagement/Goals
Technical Engagement's main focus in FY 2022/23 lies on making our existing services and programs stronger in order to increase sustainability of the services that we provide to the Wikimedia movement.
The majority of the work that Technical Engagement does is foundational work. This includes maintaining and evolving Wikimedia Cloud Services including support for Striker, Paws and Quarry (Cloud Services). It includes maintaining and evolving Toolhub and the Developer Portal, coordinating the Techblog, and managing service requests around the tech community metrics dashboards (Production or third party services). It encompasses evolving Wikimedia's technical documentation and providing support for users of Phabricator, Toolhub and Cloud Services (Technical Documentation and Support). Finally, it includes coordinating initiatives and programs like Small Wiki Toolkits, Hackathons, Coolest Tool Award, Outreach- and internship programs, contributions to other open source projects, or advocacy for best FOSS practices (Outreach, Community and Capacity Building).
Planning framework[edit]
- Strengthen foundational work to make our existing services and programs stronger (80%).
- Focus/Experiment: Space for experiments to explore ideas and cross-functional focus projects to move the needle in a specific field (max 20%).
- Increase synergy effects and reduce SPOFs through cross-training and shared responsibilities.
- Broad annual direction for the different services and initiatives. Multi-quarter timelines for multi-quarter initiatives. Detailed planning and goal setting in quarterly planning cycles.
April-June 2023 (Q4)[edit]
This page is currently a draft.
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Cloud Services[edit]

![]() | Phabricator milestone: cloud-services-team (FY2022/2023-Q4) |
Release Toolforge Build Service - phab:T194332 (multi-quarter project)
- Release community beta phab:T267374
- Multiple language stacks phab:T325799
Find a sustainable local storage solution for cloud-vps phab:T324729
Move off from icinga and introduce alertmanager phab:T328502 (multi-quarter project)
Support 'unmanaged' projects in cloud-vps phab:T326818
Modernize openstack rbac phab:T330759
Move WMCS dashboards to grafana.wmcloud.org phab:T333568
Create CloudLB PoC in dev phab:T324992 (multi-quarter project)
Upgrade Ceph
- Upgrade Ceph and Host OS phab:T306820 phab:T309789
Technical Support and Documentation[edit]
Outreach, Community and Capacity Building[edit]

Previous quarters | ||
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January-March 2023 (Q3)[edit]Cloud Services[edit]
Implement Kubernetes as a Service (Magnum) - phab:T280792
Ensure alerting and on-call systems are sustainable and scalable - phab:T313444 (multi-quarter project)
Improve integration with WMCS of SRE cookbook automation - phab:T319401
Release Toolforge Build Service - phab:T194332 (multi-quarter project)
Upgrade ToolsDB - phab:T301949
Continue GridEngine deprecation (multi-quarter project)
Upgrade OpenStack
Upgrade Ceph
Shut down final remaining bare-metal NFS servers phab:T301280
Create CloudLB PoC in dev phab:T324992 (multi-quarter project)
Clarify database as a service offerings
Research and decide on new Openstack deployment paradigm phab:T326758
Research supporting unmanaged Cloud-VPS projects phab:T326818
Analyze and share results from Cloud Services Annual Survey - phab:T322500
Production or third party services[edit]Improve Toolhub record content coverage and consistency - Phab:T327558
Technical Support and Documentation[edit]Create on-wiki content based on Small Wiki Toolkits workshops conducted in 2022 - Phab:T327282
Improve Cloud Services documentation - Phab:T321582
Improve Pywikibot documentation - Phab:T320625
Add features to documentation (collection) metrics tool - Phab:T320626
Provide bugwrangler support in Phabricator Outreach, Community and Capacity Building[edit]Organise and run Wikimedia Hackathon 2023
Plan and run GSOC and Outreachy (summer round) - Phab:T326991
Support 2023 Wikimania Hackathon program planning Research and plan for integrating the Tech Blog with Diff - Phab:T327323
Launch tech swag program - Phab:T320768
Improve our understanding of the tool ecosystem and tool maintainers' needs - Phab:T323302
October-December 2022 (Q2)[edit]Cloud Services[edit]Upgrade OpenStack
Implement Kubernetes as a Service (Magnum) - phab:T280792 (multi-quarter project)
Ensure alerting and on-call systems are sustainable and scalable - phab:T313444 (multi-quarter project)
Move cloud hosts to single NIC implementation - phab:T319184 Improve integration with WMCS of SRE cookbook automation - phab:T319401
Finalize and Publish cross-realm guidelines for case 4 - phab:T296411 Release Toolforge Build Service - phab:T194332 (multi-quarter project)
Upgrade ToolsDB - phab:T301949 Allow self-service tool deletion - phab:T285403 Continue GridEngine deprecation (multi-quarter project)
Coordinate Cloud Services User Survey
Production or third party services[edit]Finalize taxonomy model for Toolhub - phab:T308030
Technical Support and Documentation[edit]Provide continuous support in Phabricator
Building community, social connection, and technical expertise around documentation (multi-quarter project)
Outreach, Community and Capacity Building[edit]Coordinate the Coolest Tool Award - phab:T313443 (multi-quarter project)
Coordinate Wikimedia's participation in Outreachy Round 25 and provide mentorship in one project (multi-quarter project)
Conclude the 2022 Small Wiki Toolkits workshops
Reward volunteer and mentor contributions through the yearly swag program (multi-quarter project)
Clarify responsibilities around Gerrit privilege handout workflow
Focus project[edit]Follow up of the experiment week projects in Q1 (planned start date: November, more info tba).
July-September 2022 (Q1)[edit]Cloud Services[edit]Deprecate Gridengine (continues, multi-quarter project)
Ensure alerting and on-call systems are sustainable and scalable - phab:T313444 (continues, multi-quarter project)
Release Toolforge Build Service - phab:T194332 (continues, multi-quarter project)
Update Striker to work with GitLab for Toolforge tool git hosting automation
Implement Kubernetes as a Service (Magnum) - phab:T280792 (continues, multi-quarter project)
Production or third party services[edit]Finalize taxonomy model for Toolhub - phab:T308030
Get more people to understand tech community metrics on wikimedia.biterg.io and increase redundancy across the team
Increase the number of blog posts on the Tech Blog - Phab:T313072
Technical Support and Documentation[edit]Make it easier to assess the state of documentation and contribute meaningful improvements (project board)
Complete basic content review and improvements for all on-wiki collection landing pages that are linked from the Developer Portal (Tracking: Phab:T312997)
Provide continuous support in Phabricator
Outreach, Community and Capacity Building[edit]Coordinate Wikimedia's participation in Outreachy Round 25 (continues, multi-quarter project)
Continue with 2022 Small Wiki Toolkits workshops
Clarify Technical Engagement support on Rapid Grants applications - Phab:T304380 (postponed)
Clarify responsibilities around Gerrit privilege handout workflow (continues)
Coordinate the Coolest Tool Award- phab:T313443 (continues, multi-quarter project)
Coordinate the 2022 Wikimania Hackathon - Phab:T313554 Define timeline and project plan
Implement the event
Experiment Week[edit]We've planned in a few days this quarter to explore two topics:
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