Mailing List Archive

Hoi,
I had a word with Duesentrieb, he works for the German chapter, and he told
me that the server issue is indeed a case of bad luck. He had some good news
as well, Duesentrieb and some other Tool Server developers are looking into
localisation for the tool server software. When the tool server tools are
internationalised and localised, the tool server will get more users. With
more users it becomes less acceptable that a service that has grown in
importance is available for a third of our capacity. The localisation work
will be done at Betawiki so that we keep our localisation and
internationalisation effort focused.

There has not been a satisfactory answer to the question why certain
services are not equally distributed over the services. When the
localisation and internationalisation of the tool server starts to kick in,
the priority of providing an equal support will be raised because increased
use will make these issues more visible and consequently it will not be as
acceptable as it currently seems to be.
Thanks,
GerardM


2009/2/2 Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez@gmail.com>

> On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 5:26 AM, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > Can someone please explain why this is ?
> > Thanks,
> > GerardM
> >
> >
>
> Also, some of the (to use the same language as the poster) "first
> class wikis" (top 10 on article count, on numbr of visits,
> wikipedia.org main page etc) are also on s3 and suffering the replag.
>
> So it's more a case of bad luck than a case of disdain for smaller wikis.
>
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On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 4:55 PM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen@gmail.com>wrote:

> There has not been a satisfactory answer to the question why certain
> services are not equally distributed over the services. When the
> localisation and internationalisation of the tool server starts to kick in,
> the priority of providing an equal support will be raised because increased
> use will make these issues more visible and consequently it will not be as
> acceptable as it currently seems to be.
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>

Because enwiki requires a lot more resources by itself than most other
wikis combined? That's why it gets its own cluster. Nobody is saying
that the s3 replication is acceptable. Pretty much everyone who has said
anything to the subject has agreed that yes, there is a problem. The fact
that s3 died and s1 and s2 remained up is, as you and others have
mentioned, is bad luck. If it had been s1 that died, we'd see similar
complaints about a lack of support for the biggest wiki. When it is said
that fixes are in the works and to please be patient, it serves no purpose
to continue bringing it up. The horse is dead, stop beating it senseless.

As to why the Lucene stuff hasn't been rolled out 100%, I cannot say
(although Aryeh did bring up some good points I wasn't aware of).
Perhaps there needs to be some more fine tuning before its more
widely rolled out? As with most things: bugfixes and problem solving
take precedence over new features (as well they should). Perhaps
there've been issues with other things that have pulled time away from
rolling out this new feature.

I don't know what this thread expects. From the subject alone, I'm
thinking the only acceptable answer is "Yes, there's a massive
conspiracy against smaller wikis. Now you've figured us out."
What answer would you have developers give?

-Chad

OT: Shouldn't this be on toolserver-l and/or wikitech-l? It
*hardly* involves the foundation.
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Hoi,
A conspiracy is wilful. I doubt that this is the case. If anything there is
neglect. Other languages are just not given the same priority. What you hope
for is that over time a language community will include developers that will
take care for its language issues. In the mean time the Betawiki developers
do what they can and I think they do a pretty good job.

As I said earlier, there are moves to start localising the tools of the Tool
Server. This will make a lot of difference. We learned a lot from just
starting the Commonist extension. As a localisation project it is a success,
the unresolved question is how to reliably get new "builds" that include the
latest localisation. This takes resources that we do not have.

What I hope for is that you, the developers, find this a reasonable
assessment of the situation. Either way, the aim is to provide the best
possible service and I hope you can agree that there is still much to do.
Thanks,
GerardM

2009/2/2 Chad <innocentkiller@gmail.com>

> On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 4:55 PM, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > There has not been a satisfactory answer to the question why certain
> > services are not equally distributed over the services. When the
> > localisation and internationalisation of the tool server starts to kick
> in,
> > the priority of providing an equal support will be raised because
> increased
> > use will make these issues more visible and consequently it will not be
> as
> > acceptable as it currently seems to be.
> > Thanks,
> > GerardM
> >
>
> Because enwiki requires a lot more resources by itself than most other
> wikis combined? That's why it gets its own cluster. Nobody is saying
> that the s3 replication is acceptable. Pretty much everyone who has said
> anything to the subject has agreed that yes, there is a problem. The fact
> that s3 died and s1 and s2 remained up is, as you and others have
> mentioned, is bad luck. If it had been s1 that died, we'd see similar
> complaints about a lack of support for the biggest wiki. When it is said
> that fixes are in the works and to please be patient, it serves no purpose
> to continue bringing it up. The horse is dead, stop beating it senseless.
>
> As to why the Lucene stuff hasn't been rolled out 100%, I cannot say
> (although Aryeh did bring up some good points I wasn't aware of).
> Perhaps there needs to be some more fine tuning before its more
> widely rolled out? As with most things: bugfixes and problem solving
> take precedence over new features (as well they should). Perhaps
> there've been issues with other things that have pulled time away from
> rolling out this new feature.
>
> I don't know what this thread expects. From the subject alone, I'm
> thinking the only acceptable answer is "Yes, there's a massive
> conspiracy against smaller wikis. Now you've figured us out."
> What answer would you have developers give?
>
> -Chad
>
> OT: Shouldn't this be on toolserver-l and/or wikitech-l? It
> *hardly* involves the foundation.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
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Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> A conspiracy is wilful. I doubt that this is the case. If anything there is
> neglect. Other languages are just not given the same priority.

There's no language-dependence in our priorities here, except for Robert's
initial decision, back in October, to pilot the new software on the
largest wikis. The smaller wikis haven't been neglected since then,
rather, the search engine has been neglected.

The English Wikipedia has often been left out of toolserver replication,
and it could have easily been the case this time around.

> What you hope
> for is that over time a language community will include developers that will
> take care for its language issues. In the mean time the Betawiki developers
> do what they can and I think they do a pretty good job.

The Betawiki developers, as I believe you yourself have pointed out, are
part of the community.

-- Tim Starling


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Hoi,
There are language issues that are not addressed. It is known for instance
that the Safari browser supports Lingala better then Firefox and Opera. This
is because Safari does NOT use a monospaced font in the edit screen. An
obvious but not so elegant solution would be to have these other two
browsers also not have monospaced fonts used. The problem is that an elegant
solution is outside of MediaWIki... There are more issues like this and they
need to be given a WMF priority to fix this. There are several other issues
that can be addressed when language itself is given priority.

When you state that language-dependence in the priorities, you are exactly
right. The trouble is that the "other" languages do not function properly
and this is not really considered. For English things work per default. So
if all other languages are considered as equal, you neglect the fact that
this is not true for other languages. If the search engine is broken in the
first place then it is not acceptable to use it if you state that all
languages are treated equally. Leaving them "for now" is a temporary
solution. There is however nothing as permanent as a temporary solution.

As to the Tool Server replication, I have written that this is just bad
luck. Indeed it could be the one for English. In a way, the Tool Server is
quicky, it is good that it is not as bad as the backup situation.

I will be indeed the last to say that the Betawiki developers are not part
of the community of MediaWiki developers. The point that I tried to make
here is that when the Lingala community produces its *own *developer, they
will have a better grasp of the issues with the Lingala language. There are
no Betawiki developers who know about the needs of African languages. I
know I can find such developers through people like Don Osborne and Martin
Benjamin. They are programmers that are for hire. If we want a more complete
solution, language needs to be given a priority and the many issues need to
be identified first and addressed later. It is not only about Lingala.
Thanks,
GerardM



2009/2/3 Tim Starling <tstarling@wikimedia.org>

> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > A conspiracy is wilful. I doubt that this is the case. If anything there
> is
> > neglect. Other languages are just not given the same priority.
>
> There's no language-dependence in our priorities here, except for Robert's
> initial decision, back in October, to pilot the new software on the
> largest wikis. The smaller wikis haven't been neglected since then,
> rather, the search engine has been neglected.
>
> The English Wikipedia has often been left out of toolserver replication,
> and it could have easily been the case this time around.
>
> > What you hope
> > for is that over time a language community will include developers that
> will
> > take care for its language issues. In the mean time the Betawiki
> developers
> > do what they can and I think they do a pretty good job.
>
> The Betawiki developers, as I believe you yourself have pointed out, are
> part of the community.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
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Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> I will be indeed the last to say that the Betawiki developers are not part
> of the community of MediaWiki developers. The point that I tried to make
> here is that when the Lingala community produces its *own *developer, they
> will have a better grasp of the issues with the Lingala language. There are
> no Betawiki developers who know about the needs of African languages. I
> know I can find such developers through people like Don Osborne and Martin
> Benjamin. They are programmers that are for hire. If we want a more complete
> solution, language needs to be given a priority and the many issues need to
> be identified first and addressed later. It is not only about Lingala.

There's no doubt it's useful to have programmers who speak the language.
They often come with the motivation to work on language-related problems,
an understanding of the wiki community, and familiarity with the
linguistics and data sources. Our Chinese variant feature, for instance,
has benefited greatly from work by Chinese-speaking developers.

But results can certainly be achieved if you have a bilingual community
member with no knowledge of programming, and a programmer willing to work
with them. We've even done language-related features with no help from
speakers whatsoever, just using online linguistics resources.

So I don't think the lack of a Lingala-speaking developer should be
considered a roadblock for the development of Lingala-related features.

-- Tim Starling


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