3 February 2023 MWstake Meeting

Date (UTC):	3 February 2023 16:30:00 - 3 February 2023 17:30:00
URL:	https://meet.google.com/mdd-ufhn-ksb
Etherpad:	https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/mwstake-2023-02
Attendees:	Bernhard Krabina, Brian Wolff, Bryan Hildebrand, Charlot Cobben, Cindy Cicalese, Gergő Tisza, Greg Rundlett, Jared Olson, Jeffrey Wang, Lex Sulzer, Mark Hershberger, Markus Glaser, Michael Barylak, Yaron Koren

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1. Wait for attendees & chat 5 min
2. MediaWiki News 20 min Gergo
   • Notes: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/mwstake-2023-02
   • Jumping from 1.31 to 1.39 is problematic, until it's patched you need to jump to 1.35 first
3. Microsoft's extensions 20 min Jeffery Wang
   • I worked to get to open source all of the 20+ extensions written by Microsoft.
   • I've picked a few of them to start with and we'll go from there.
   • The team that wrote it is currently busy with other priorities, so I will be personally cleaning up the code in my spare time to make it ready for public release.
   • There were 10 reasons why Microsoft used MediaWiki internally over SharePoint 10 years ago, but lately they are concerned with accessibility and couldn't get patches into MW to support their needs so switching away.
4. New functionality for uploading documents, converting them in to wikitext, and adding them to a Wiki page 10 min Charly
   1. Background
      • About three years ago WikiBase Solutions made a MediaWiki extension for one of our customers that allows for uploading and converting hundred of thousands of docx documents into wiki pages.
      • I have been thinking of releasing this as an open source extension, but it made more sense to add this feature to FlexForm.
      • FlexForm is a stand-alone MediaWiki extension that already has file upload or multiple file uploads covered, so it made sense to use these capabilities and expand them.
      • Also with Open-CSP in mind and FlexForm being one of the extensions in Open-CSP, it will help to integrate data more easily into a Wiki instalment.
   2. This demonstration is the first implementation of converting uploaded files to wikipages and is open for suggestions and needs that others might have.
   3. Some things to consider for enhancements:
      • Insert the converted document into a template, instead of just the main page
      • Support for slots
      • Custom clean-up after conversion
5. Wiki Watercooler remaining Open Mic

Chat transcript

1. Bryan: https://mwstake.org/mwstake/wiki/Event:167
2. Gergo: the links are at https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/mwstake-2023-02 as usual
3. Bryan: @Gergo, you said don't upgrade from 1.31->1.39 yet (jump to 1.35 first). Is there a plan to eventually improve that or is the intermediary hop the normal process.
4. Brian Wolff: There was an RFC about only supporting updating from last 2 LTS releases
5. Gergo: There is a fix in the REL1_39 branch, it will be included in 1.39.2 when that comes out (soon)
6. Brian Wolff: After some experience with it, i don't really like it, because installing intermediate versions can be hard, if updating from something really old. You can't just apt get install php 5 easily on a modern distro
7. Brian Wolff: I would certainly be interesting in why MS is jumping ship
8. Bryan: @Brian +1
9. Brian Wolff: Oh, that's a super interesting workflow to do it from the upload page
10. Brian Wolff: Why do they not love us anymore?? :'(
11. Brian Wolff: in general, us not using markdown seems like it is more and more a sticking point for developer types
12. Brian Wolff: What six months is not timely ;)
13. Bryan: Legacy Vector (As the best of the skins...)
14. Bryan: Maybe try to hand over to Charly in about 3 minutes. His presentation is 10 minutes and will probably have additional questions.
15. Jeffrey: https://github.com/microsoft/MediaWiki-Extensions
16. Brian Wolff: To be clear, for the thing I am trying to do, the primary target audience is people who are actively participating in MW already. Although if it helps in cases like this that'd be great too
17. Jeffrey: Bernhard, to add on to your question, we are releasing under the MIT license, so it's pretty versatile for repurposing it for your own use. But we will need to at least keep our version of the extension on GitHub.
18. Brian Wolff: FWIW, on the accessability topic, I found https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T242357 which i think thas the output of the tool in question
19. Gergo: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T323634 was the Vector 2022 AFB report
20. Mark: very nice
21. Bryan: The fact that is can handle images AT ALL is incredible. The ability to add images inline and sized appropriately is mind blowing.
22. Jeffrey: btw, I know there may be some questions about what will happen with the Microsoft version of PandocUpload. If we have time, we can go over that.
23. Jeffrey: but you could know if it's the same by doing a hash, right? MediaWiki has that functionality
24. Greg: yes