MediaWiki Stakeholders' March News Roundup

by Chris Koerner on 21 March 2017 11:41 (EDT)

Tags:	Event, Jobs, News, Updates
People:	Bernadette Clemente, Chris Koerner, Cindy Cicalese, Mark Hershberger, Markus Glaser, Peter Meyer, Yaron Koren

Here's another quick round of updates from across the MediaWiki world.

First up, the 2nd Enterprise MediaWiki Conference was a resounding success. 34 some odd folks showed up in McLean, VA for three days of presentations, panels, lightning talks, and participation in the create camp. A great thanks to the chairs, Cindy Cicalese, Bernadette Clemente, Yaron Karen, and Mark Hershberger. Videos and sides of the presentations are available on the conference page.

A few things that came out of the conference:

• Yaron Koren announced the release of the second edition of his seminal book "Working With MediaWiki". For the first time the book is available to read online in its entirety. eBook and physical versions are also available.
• EMWCon was live-streamed again this year with a peak of about 20 additional folks joining us throughout the event. The unedited videos are available on the conference YouTube channel. Edited versions will be coming soon.
• As a collaborative effort attendees were able to develop a document covering best practices for using MediaWiki. A resource for current and future MediaWiki users on how to best introduce and utilize a wiki inside organizations.
• The Wikimedia DC chapter hosted a Wikipedia edit-a-thon on the first night of the event. The results were a collaboration between EMWCon attendees and local Wikipedians in helping to restore citation links to whitehouse.gov that became invalid during the presidential transition. 60+ articles on the English Wikipedia were updated with correct links!

Other news:

• The Code of Conduct for technical spaces is now a community policy. There is currently a call for candidates to form the first Code of Conduct committee. Please consider proposing yourself or other community members who might be interested.
• The Wikimedia Foundation is hiring a Product Manager for MediaWiki! This position will be a pivotal role in defining the roadmap and future development of MediaWiki as a technological product of the foundation. Please apply if interested and share among the community.
• MediaWiki will be dropping javascript support for Internet Explorer 9 in the near future. It will be affecting Wikimedia wikis in April and be part of the 1.29 release of MediaWiki in May.
• The MediaWiki testimonials page hasn't seen any additions in a few years. With the urging of WMF staffer and Stakeholder member Chris Koerner [Editors note: That's me :) ], there's a renewed interest in updating the list of testimonials. Submissions are encouraged and welcomed!
• As Marcus mentioned, the MediaWiki Stakeholders' will be hosting a track at the upcoming Vienna Hackathon. Please attend and participate.