MediaWiki Stakeholders' June News Roundup

Author: Chris Koerner

It's June! Here is a round-up of notable news and events from around the MediaWiki word. Additions, corrections, and feedback welcome.

• EMWCon in review - The third EMWCon was another well-attended and successful event. Some highlights.
  • Videos of all sessions and photos from the event have been uploaded to Commons.
  • I shared some thoughts on the event and highlighted a few presentations as well.
    • Please add your own!
  • One outcome of the event is creating a working group around the idea of Asynchronous Wikis. Wikis in space and wherever the Internet doesn't reach.

• MediaWiki Stakeholders' Riot - No, not the sort of social unrest associated with "riot", but the open-source messaging platform. You can join the general discussion and other channels are listed on the MediaWiki Stakeholders page.

• James HK shares news about Semantic MediaWiki 3.0, elastic search, and more.

• There's a new MediaWiki extension by Yaron Koren called TinyMCE. You'll never guess what it does! :)

• Yaron also released Page Forms version 4.3 with TinyMCE support, WikiEditor fix, and more.

• Wikimedian 0x010C created a script to create event calendar on-wiki.

• VisualEditor users should be aware of a potential breaking change for VisualEditor installations in recent Parsoid release (v0.9.0)
• Notice a slight change in anything using OOUI? That's because OOUI 0.26 changes the default font size for WikimediaUI from 12.8px to 14px and the icons were resized and redesigned.

• Announcing the Wikimedia Foundation's Technical Engagement team. From the announcement, "The Technical Engagement team will work with other teams inside the Wikimedia Foundation as well as groups at affiliate organizations and the larger Wikimedia volunteer community to provide technical outreach services and support."

• MediaWiki core master now requires PHP 7.0 or HHVM

• There is an open request for comment on extension management in MediaWiki. If you have strong feelings you this, now is the time to participate.

• Nominations are needed for the upcoming Wikimedia Technical Conference in Portland, Oregon USA this Fall. This conference is important in helping to shape the future of the Wikimedia technical landscape - including MediaWiki. Please consider nominating someone (including yourself!)

• The mediawiki-l mailing list is now publicly indexable by search engines. This should help more folks searching for answers and potentially draw them into our community.

• TechCom is looking for new members!