5 February 2021 MWstake Meeting

Date (UTC):	5 February 2021 16:30:00 - 5 February 2021 17:30:00
URL:	https://meet.google.com/mdd-ufhn-ksb
Etherpad:	https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/mwstake-2021-02
Attendees:	Bernhard Krabina, Bryan Hildebrand, Cindy Cicalese, Gergő Tisza, Ike Hecht, Jeroen De Dauw, Lex Sulzer, Mark Hershberger, Vincent Brooks

Click for time zone conversion

Meeting agenda

1. Wait for attendees & chat 5 min
2. Wiki Quickie 5 min TBD
3. MediaWiki News 20 min Mark
4. TBD 20 min TBD
5. Wiki Watercooler remaining Open Mic

Notes

The meeting voice transcription is available on the talk page.

1. Update from Vincent
   • Vincent I'm learning Ansible via an online course.
   • Vincent My goal is to contribute to Meza.
2. Connecting to New Users
   • Vincent Funny story about my first EMWCon. It was right after I started at NASA and didn't have much experience with MediaWiki. I listened to Lex's talk and I was in the front row, after the talk Lex approached me and asked me what I thought. One thing I didn't understand was what a Category was in a wiki so I asked him. Lex immediately asked if I was an "newbie".
   • Vincent I'd like to give a talk at the next EMWCon targeted at new users.
     • Bryan That would be amazing! I wish I had attended something like that at my first EMWCon and I'd still be really excited about that
3. MediaWiki Skins
   • Bernhard I talked to the developer of Tweeki
     • Bryan Tweeki shouldn't be confused with the alternate wiki platform Twiki
   • Trying to decide if there's a community need for Chameleon
   • Is it possible the community should choose Tweeki over Chameleon? It seems Chameleon is not being developed
   • Jeroen In related news, we are looking for a UI developer to collaborate wtih
   • Mark What's the difference between Tweeki & Chameleon? They are both just MW + Bootstrap
     • Bernhard One difference is Tweeki can identify logged-in users and present different information (special pages, etc.) that non-logged-in users don't see
   • Ike I love Chameleon, I use it often, and have contributed patches in the past
   • Joroen There's another new skin called Medik
   • Ike I think there's an advantage to having 2 options, 3 isn't as ideal, law of diminishing returns
   • Cindy Here's a link to different MW Skins
4. MediaWiki News
   • Gergo discussed what's new in MediaWiki
   • TechCom (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Technical_Committee) has been replaced by the Technical Decision Making Process (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_Decision_Making_Process). This is a discussion forum with no clear decisionmaking powers but wider participation. They are looking for developers who would represent various parts of the non-WMF developer community. People with +2 can apply / be nominated until February 15. Details here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_Decision_Making_Process/Draft_Proposal_Community_Representation
     • Giving out +2 was handled by TechCom; there is discussion on how it should be done in the future: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T273164
   • MediaWiki will be significantly slower on Debian Buster than on previous Debian releases, due to Spectre mitigations. More info: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2021-February/094230.html
   • New RfCs:
     • Replace the god object WikiPage with a value object: PageIdentity https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T208776
     • Factor out authorization-related functionality from the god object User to a new interface, Authority (for now still implemented via User) https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T231930
   • New library / MediaWiki feature: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Shellbox - updates Shell/ShellCommand classes to let you define the inputs and outputs for shell commands, and then execute those shell commands over a web service to limit the effect of vulnerabilities in external tools.
   • Older RfCs accepted:
     • Drop support for MediaWiki upgrades from versions before the last two LTS releases https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T259771
     • Various changes to the stable interface policy https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T268326
   • Documentation on documentation was expanded (as part of Google's Season of the Docs): https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation
   • You can apply to mentor Outreachy or Google Summer of Code participants: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2021-January/094199.html

Chat

• Jeroen pewpew
• Ike Have to jump off for a few
• Jeroen Haha Lex
• Jeroen burn hard!
• Bernhard https://tweeki.kollabor.at
• Bryan There's another wiki project I was confusing this for:
  • https://twiki.org/
• Jeroen Would love that handshake Bernhard
• Bryan The other skin being discussed:
  • https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Skin:Chameleon
• Cindy Here's the code: https://github.com/thaider/Tweeki
• Bernhard CSS/Specialist I work with who does knows how to do chameleon sub-skins:
  • wolfram.huber@doloops.net
  • +43 664 5211974
• Jeroen https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Skin:Medik
• Cindy https://skins.wmflabs.org
• Bernhard ah, tweeki is already in the wmflabs psge
• Mark https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/mwstake-2021-02
• Jeroen +1
• Ike https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Skin:Tweeki
• Ike https://skins.wmflabs.org/#/skin/tweeki
• Jeroen MW 1.36 alpha?
• Bernhard What would be helpful is a changelog from LTS to LTS version. I am on MW 1.31 and go directyl to MW 1.35...

Action board

Search actions Add an action See this page for more information

Open
None of these labels	+ MWStake