IRC office hours/Office hours 2013-06-12

Time: 1700-1800 UTC
Channel: #wikimedia-office
Timestamps are in UTC.

17:02 siebrand: === Wikimedia Language Engineering Office Hour - Start ===
17:02 siebrand: Hello, Welcome to the office hour of the Wikimedia Language Engineering Team.
17:02 siebrand: My name is Siebrand Mazeland and I am Product Manager Language Engineering at the Wikimedia Foundation.
17:03 siebrand: The other members of our team present today are:
17:03 siebrand: Niklas Laxstr?m / Nikerabbit / Developer
17:03 siebrand: Pau Giner / pginer / Interaction Designer
17:03 siebrand: Kartik Mistry / kart_ / Developer
17:03 siebrand: A few team members are absent: Alolita, Amir, Runa, Santhosh
17:03 siebrand: Our last office hour was held on May 8 2013. The logs are at:
17:03 siebrand: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours/Office_hours_2013-05-08
17:03 siebrand: Today I expect we will mainly talk about the Universal Language Selector.
17:04 siebrand: We have begun making this available in all Wikimedia wikis.
17:04 siebrand: After that we would be happy to answer any questions.
17:04 siebrand: If you'd like to send in your questions before the Q&A, please send them to me as a private message.
17:04 siebrand: We would also like to know who came here because of the invitations we sent in the differnet mailing lists.
17:04 siebrand: Please say something now if you're paying attention :).
17:04 siebrand: o_O
17:04 bawolff: !
17:05 marja is watching because of a message on an IRC channel
17:05 Elfix: ?
17:05 marktraceur waits for siebrand to start
17:05 siebrand is waiting for the interrobang to test unicode support in IRC clients...
17:05 bawolff: I showed up due to siebrand's note on #mediawiki , not due to mailing list post....
17:05 siebrand: Two days ago we replaced the MediaWiki extensions Narayam and WebFonts with ULS on
17:05 marktraceur showed up because he's always in -office
17:05 siebrand: 84 wikis where either of them was available.
17:06 siebrand: Given the current feedback, it seems this has not caused much confusion.
17:06 siebrand: There are 4 rounds of deployment that will follow.
17:06 siebrand: Next Tuesday, in phase 2 ULS will be made available on Wikipedias 11-20 by size.
17:07 siebrand: 96 people in channel, ~10% active.
17:07 siebrand: Languages involved are:
17:07 siebrand: Portuguese (pt), Chinese (zh), Vietnamese (vi), Ukrainian (uk), Catalan (ca), Waray-Waray (war), Norwegian (Bokm?l) (no), Cebuano (ceb), Finnish (fi), Persian (fa)
17:07 >> _sj_ [~sj@wikipedia/sj] has quit [Quit: _sj_]
17:08 siebrand: With this second phase, we are mainly adding volume (in page views) to the deployment of ULS
17:08 siebrand: We are also adding it to wikis where no similar language tools have been made available before, to see if it causes confusion
17:08 siebrand: or if any other usability issues may surface.
17:09 siebrand: In phase 3, in two weeks, we will make ULS available in all Wikimedia wikis without language versions (Wikispecies, special purpose wikis, etc.).
17:09 siebrand: In 3 weeks (phase 4) we plan to make it avaiablel on English language Wikipedia
17:09 siebrand: The week after that, all other wikis will get ULS (phase 5)
17:09 siebrand: We have created some pages with information for users.
17:09 Nemo_bis wonders if Beria_ is the only pt user present, and qgil only ca
17:10 siebrand: Announcement: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Announcement_Universal_Language_Selector
17:10 siebrand: Feature description: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_Selector
17:10 siebrand: FAQ: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_Selector/FAQ
17:10 siebrand: The above pages can be translated on-wiki.
17:10 siebrand: It may be helpful if you translate one or more pages and point your local community to it.
17:11 siebrand: Are there any questions or experiences to be shared?
17:13 siebrand: Okay. No questions or comments can mean many things...
17:14 siebrand: Anyway, we're here for another 45 minutes, so if you're reading docs, asking your question later is fine, too.
17:14 chrismcmahonbrb: have you encountered any performance issues with ULS, for example with caching?
17:14 analphabet is also paying attention btw :P
17:14 ori-l dittos
17:14 YuviPanda dittos
17:14 kart_ : Translating Feature description and FAQs will be very helpful. Noted. Thanks!
17:14 YuviPanda: siebrand: are you using EventLogging with ULS?
17:15 YuviPanda: (or planning on, at least)
17:15 Nikerabbit: YuviPanda: yes we are planning to
17:15 siebrand: chrismcmahonbrb: ULS is all JavaScript. A feature like using accept language to set a user's UI language is not yet in use on Wikimedia wikis.
17:15 siebrand: We are looking into making that possible, but there is no timeline for it yet.
17:16 bawolff: Can't that be done in js?
17:16 Nikerabbit: nope
17:16 bawolff: As in doesn't commons have a script that does that in js?
17:16 Nikerabbit: most of the pages are still generated server side, inclusing the messages
17:16 siebrand: YuviPanda: We are planing to add event logging. IN the sprint that we are currently in (started y'day, for two weeks), we will identify the actions we want to log, and the schema that it needs.
17:16 siebrand: In the sprint after, we will implement the logging.
17:17 Nemo_bis: bawolff: yes, Commons and now Wikidata stick uselang= to every link
17:18 YuviPanda: siebrand: nice. Will ping you to see your schemas in a couple of weeks then :)
17:18 siebrand: ULS is not aware of the uselang parameter, and implements setlang, which is sticky.
17:18 Nikerabbit: YuviPanda: I can ping you too once we have something
17:18 YuviPanda: siebrand: Nikerabbit any possibility of getting some time for the issues for Android export on the Translate extension?
17:18 YuviPanda: Nikerabbit: thanks!
17:18 siebrand: (i.e. it really changes the user preference for the UI language of a logged in user).
17:19 siebrand: On WIkimedia wikis, setlang does nothing for anonymous users.
17:20 siebrand: Does that clarify things on the caching side?
17:20 bawolff: So is the issue with using accept-language, that the uls code only runs at javascript side, by that time the language for current page is already set, and in order to change it based on accept-lang it would have to reload the page?
17:21 Nikerabbit: yep
17:21 Nikerabbit: and somehow initiate a session or other way to bypass the usual cache
17:21 bawolff: It could still use accept-lang to present a "Are you sure you don't want to change to language X"?
17:22 siebrand: Wikimedia does not want to encourage anonymous users to change UI language for now.
17:22 Nikerabbit: because of caching, you know
17:23 Nikerabbit: to clarify: the accept-lang header is processed in PHP side in ULS
17:23 bawolff: but you could get it in js using ajax if you wanted
17:23 Nikerabbit: we could pass the headers to JS but it wouldn't help us at all in the current situation
17:24 siebrand: In the future, we may be more aggressive in asking logged in users to change their UI language on wikis with content in multiple languages (like Wikimedia Commons or Meta-Wiki).
17:24 siebrand: No discussions or decisions about that yet, though.
17:25 wizardist: what do you mean by "aggressive"? :)
17:25 siebrand: Eventually, *I* hope we can do something proper with Accept-Language for all users, but there are also people that disagree with me on that.
17:25 ori-l: wizardist: <blink>, <marquee>, etc.
17:25 wizardist: :)
17:25 siebrand: aggressive as in actually pointing out that UI language can be changed, instead of making it possible with an easily discoverable control.
17:25 Nemo_bis: wizardist: or like the language suggest Commons has for anons, I guess
17:26 chrismcmahonbrb: to what extent (if any) is ULS aware of the user's location? I was noticing that some of the language choices displayed involve what seems like quasi-random ordering of likely language choices
17:27 Nikerabbit: YuviPanda: re android file format support: unless you convince Siebrand to reserve more time, I can work on it during the time reserved for translatewiki.net support and misc. bug fixing or on my free time
17:27 siebrand: ULS make a geo location service call and "knows" form which country you are.
17:27 Nikerabbit: so yes, but can't give you exact dates now
17:27 siebrand: It uses that data to list languages you are likely to be proficient in.
17:27 siebrand: (together with previously used languages and your accept language(s))
17:28 chrismcmahon: siebrand: that feature made automating tests a bit tricky. tests that passed in the US failed in Croatia :-) . that is very fancy.
17:28 YuviPanda wonders if there is some way to convince siebrand to set aside some time for the android export format
17:28 siebrand: chrismcmahon: Thank you :)
17:28 bawolff: YuviPanda: Kidnapping is often effective
17:28 siebrand: YuviPanda: have you checked if you can fix it in the FFS yourself?
17:29 siebrand: YuviPanda: We encourage translatewiki.net supported product partner to get involved in the support of the FFS to lighten load of twn staff!
17:29 Nemo_bis: bawolff: I think he already tried that
17:29 YuviPanda: siebrand: I looked into it and think it'll take me at least a few days to get myself familiar enough with it to contribute
17:30 YuviPanda: which I will do if we run into more 'breaking' issues (we have so far found workarounds for most things)
17:30 ori-l: (what's 'FFS'?)
17:30 siebrand raises an eyebrow.
17:30 siebrand: ori-l: A File Format Support PHP class.
17:30 YuviPanda: siebrand: over which part of the sentence?
17:30 ori-l: ah
17:30 YuviPanda: ori-l: the android file format can be generously called... ill-designed.
17:31 Nikerabbit: +1 what Yuvi said
17:31 siebrand: YuviPanda: Over you, Indian educated bachelor, needing multiple days before being able to contribute to a simple input/output parser for an i18n file format.
17:31 YuviPanda raises eyebrows. both of them
17:31 YuviPanda: :P
17:31 siebrand grins evilly.
17:32 Nikerabbit: soon would be a good time to run
17:32 siebrand: Anyway, we seems to have progressed into the Q&A stage.
17:32 siebrand: I'm not aware of any open questions at this time.
17:33 siebrand: Any new ones related to Langauge Engineering?
17:33 YuviPanda: siebrand: part of it is also that I've not touched any PHP in a fair bit
17:33 siebrand: (including spelling correction by the LangEng product manager)
17:33 YuviPanda: siebrand: status of the translatewiki iOS app? found time to test it?
17:33 siebrand: YuviPanda: Ah, yes.
17:33 siebrand: YuviPanda: I've tested it a few weeks ago, but not the latest version.
17:34 siebrand: YuviPanda: For some reason there was more to be done than I could do, so I had to make choices.
17:34 YuviPanda: nice. is it going to be released branded as an 'official' translatewiki.net project?
17:34 YuviPanda lowers eyebrows
17:35 siebrand: YuviPanda: But I'm very happy with what Or and Tomer have accomplished.
17:35 siebrand: YuviPanda: Possibly.
17:35 YuviPanda: brion gave Or a bunch of reviews today, I think
17:35 siebrand: As you know, translatewiki.net is "just" a community. There is no formal entity behind it.
17:35 YuviPanda: siebrand: yeah, it's good
17:35 YuviPanda: heh, true.
17:35 siebrand: i have a developer account for iOS apps, but that didn't work for the app.
17:35 siebrand: Recently, Apple has added "app transfer" features.
17:36 siebrand: That may make it possible to move the app from Or's account to mine once it is stable.
17:36 YuviPanda: oh yes, very recently
17:36 YuviPanda: that'll be nice
17:36 siebrand: The nice thing about the app is that it should work with any Translate installation.
17:36 siebrand: I haven't tested that yet, though (not sure if that feature is in)
17:37 YuviPanda: oh point to any api url? nice!
17:37 siebrand: Yes, that's the idea...
17:37 YuviPanda: sweet
17:38 siebrand: My thought is that twn is the default and an advanced setting allows changing the URL to the API, which would also make it possible to translate and review for Meta-Wiki, mediawiki.org, ...
17:39 YuviPanda: nice
17:39 YuviPanda: but meta texts would be large
17:39 siebrand: yes, that's a usability issue that has yet to be explored and resolved, as far as I know.
17:39 wizardist: as for a non-iOS user, how much does mobile app user experience differ from the new Translate UI?
17:39 siebrand: A lot.
17:39 wizardist: (screens maybe?)
17:40 siebrand: Best reply to Or's email on mediawiki-i18n: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-i18n/2013-June/000706.html
17:40 YuviPanda: (there is also an android project on the way as part of GSoC, from the same dev)
17:40 Nikerabbit: does the app allow account creation or just login to existing account?
17:41 wizardist: siebrand: thx
17:41 YuviPanda: Nikerabbit: there is no account creation api in mw yet
17:41 YuviPanda: so i don't think it can
17:41 YuviPanda: Nikerabbit: there's one that brion wrote, but it's in purgatory
17:41 Nikerabbit: YuviPanda: oh right, I forgot that MediaWiki ...
17:41 siebrand: See http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Orsagi/GSoC_2013_proposal for Or Sagi's "Android app for MediaWiki translation"
17:42 YuviPanda: Nikerabbit: major contenttion point being how to handle captchas, IIRC
17:42 Nikerabbit: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Account_creation hmm
17:42 Nikerabbit: that page does not mention captcha at all
17:43 YuviPanda: Nikerabbit: so, fun part is that that got merged but it doesn't actually work
17:43 siebrand: Let's try to not get too technical in this office hours :)
17:43 YuviPanda: at lest on wikimedia wikis
17:43 siebrand: More questions?
17:43 Nikerabbit: YuviPanda: yeah and I am in the process of creating my own account creation api (sandbox) for twn
17:43 YuviPanda: yes, siebrand, we understand you are not a developer :)
17:43 siebrand smiles.
17:43 YuviPanda: Nikerabbit: oh?! you should look at the patch brion has too
17:44 Nemo_bis: Nikerabbit: there's something on talk though
17:44 Nemo_bis: (by brion, indeed)
17:45 YuviPanda: Nemo_bis: hmm, I can't find brion's patchset.
17:45 YuviPanda: Nemo_bis: he's on the way to office, will ask him when he gets here
17:46 Nemo_bis: YuviPanda: worth linking from the talk I guess
17:46 YuviPanda: yeah, will do Nemo_bis when i find it
17:47 YuviPanda: end of office hours, I guess?
17:48 ori-l: congrats to the language engineering team for ULS!
17:48 Nikerabbit: thanks
17:48 bawolff: YuviPanda: No, the fun part was it got merged, and didn't even work with wikis without a captcha if i recall :P
17:48 YuviPanda: +1
17:48 Nikerabbit: it's been a (relatively) long ride
17:48 YuviPanda: bawolff: the current account creation stuff?
17:48 YuviPanda: bawolff: yeah, it got merged but doesn't actually work.
17:49 YuviPanda: definitely doesn't work if your wiki needs captchas, unsure otherwise
17:49 YuviPanda: bawolff: brion's patch added proper support, etc. he got bored of it, IIRC
17:49 bawolff: I fixed a bunch of the really major issues
17:49 siebrand: Okay, that ends the office hours.
17:49 siebrand: Thanks everyone for your participation.
17:49 siebrand: Our next Office hour will be on July 10, 2013
17:50 siebrand: === Wikimedia Language Engineering Office Hour - End ===