Amsterdam hackathon: continuity, change, and stroopwafels

Second only to the technical track of Wikimania in terms of numbers, the Berlin Hackathon (2009–2012) provided those with an interest in the software that underpins Wikimedia wikis and supports its editors a place to gather, exchange ideas and learn new skills. This year the focus moved to Amsterdam, where Dutch chapter Wikimedia Nederland organised their first multi-day developer event (May 24-26). Other chapters supported the event by helping with participants’ travel and accommodation costs, as did the Wikimedia Foundation for its staff as well as some volunteer participants.

Though it is difficult to pin down a central theme for a conference with 140 attendees, the choice of workshops suggest consolidation: Wikidata, Lua (slides), and Wikimedia Labs (slides) are hardly new projects and were all demo'ed at last year's hackathon. Nevertheless, there was plenty to talk about, with upbeat developers leaving sessions excited at the progress the Foundation has made with each. In particular, the negativity that had previously surrounded the Wikimedia Labs project (see previous Signpost coverage) seemed peculiarly absent, the result no doubt of the dramatic improvements in the functionality and ease of use associated with the Tool Labs project.

Also on show was a first prototype of the Visual Editor's reference, image and category modules, all of which it will need if it is to be deployed on schedule in the first week of July, as well as a myriad of pet projects among the 100 or so volunteer developers attending. All workshops were recorded and will be soon be available on Commons.

Critics will point to the high cost of hosting international events, the decision not to prioritise the grant-supported invitation of Wikimedia outsiders, and the decision to implement WMF policy on having staff sleep in better accommodation than grant-funded attendees, who stayed in six-person rooms at the venue itself (a youth hostel). Perhaps because of the lack of outreach, the gender and ethnic composition of Hackathon attendees will also concern those who see such imbalances as corrosive. Nevertheless, it is clear that whatever the price-tag, those that did attend left happy.

The Signpost understands that external sponsorship worth €2,295 (US$2975) was pledged by Google in support of the event.

Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for several weeks. The author is indebted to Tech News, a Foundation-assisted attempt to create weekly tech briefings.

• Commons improves multilingual support: The Translate extension and Universal Language Selector were enabled on Wikimedia Commons on May 20. Commons users can now easily switch between different input and interfaces languages, and translate pages locally with a friendly interface.
• MediaWiki 1.21 released: The first stable release of MediaWiki 1.21 for sites outside Wikimedia was published on May 25 (wikitech-l mailing list). The release, the first since November, includes dozens of changes, all of which have previously come into effect on Wikimedia wikis. They include support for high density displays, one-click patrolling and various changes to skins. The release is primarily of interest to those running external wikis, many of which do not have the capacity to keep up with Wikimedia wikis' bi-weekly deployment schedule.
• Bye-bye HTML4: MediaWiki will stop supporting XHTML 1.0 and HTML 4, between them the dominant standards for over a decade. HTML5 will now be the markup language built into all pages created by the software. The change is not expected to affect end-users, since Wikimedia wikis do not yet rely on any major features of HTML5 which do not fail gracefully in older browsers. The move ends a nine-month period during which MediaWiki officially supported the older standard, but did not use it on Wikimedia wikis themselves.
• System architecture RFCs endorsed: During a Amsterdam Hackathon (see above), developers agreed on guidelines that seek to put RFCs at the heart of current practice when it comes to big architecture changes – that is to say, changes which greatly affect the underlying processes without being visible to the user. Previously, despite playing a significant role on major WMF wikis and at bodies such as the IETF, RFCs had remained sidelined in the decision-making process (also wikitech-l: 1 2).
• Bugfixes coming soon: A number of changes made in the last week will be coming soon to a Wikimedia wiki near you:
  • There is now a category to list pages with invalid music code (gerrit changeset #63268).
  • The Wikimedia Commons Android app will come out of the beta phase on its next release (design-l mailing list).
  • Account creation by manual log-in will now be recorded in the account creation log (bug #42434).
  • Links to file description pages will again be accessible directly from within videos (bug #43747).
  • The software behind recent changes patrolling was re-written; the change fixes issues related to patrolling new pages, among other things (changeset #41196).

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• "Other chapters supported the event by helping with participants’ travel and accommodation costs, as did the Wikimedia Foundation for its staff." Yes, and WMF also helped to sponsor several Wikimedia volunteers' travel and accommodation for the hackathon (as WMF also did last year for the Berlin event, and did to some extent in 2011 as well). Question: what does "the decision not to prioritise the grant-supported invitation of Wikimedia outsiders" refer to? Is there a specific set of people you're referring to, who currently do not contribute to Wikimedia projects but wanted grants to attend the event? Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Engineering Community Manager (talk) 03:14, 30 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • (changed re. description of WMF sponsorship). Re: other points, there was some discussion of how aggressively the event would be marketed to people outside Wikimedia circles (in the general FOSS ecosphere), e.g. OSM, Mozilla, GNOME, with the conclusion that it would not be [aggressively marketed to those groups]. In any case, I can say from personal experience that I did not meet (m)any non-Wikimedians myself. - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 10:20, 30 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Could you point to any of that discussion, please? I'm happy to respond to it, and to take it into consideration in advising on next year's event, if I can see people's requests, suggestions, etc. Yes, the yearly Wikimedia developers' meeting is traditionally a meeting of Wikimedia technical contributors -- an "inreach" event more than an "outreach" event -- and sometimes opportunities pop up for collaboration with other FLOSS communities, but yes, that hasn't been an emphasis in past years, and it wasn't an emphasis this year either. I will note that the yearly hackathon has, in recent years, expanded more to include not just MediaWiki coders but more bot and tool authors, sysadmins, template makers, testers, designers, researchers, gadget and user script maintainers, and so on.

    I think the phrase "the grant-supported invitation of Wikimedia outsiders" is kind of confusing, now that I understand what you're talking about, because publicizing the event to people who are not currently Wikimedia contributors is a different matter from specifically subsidising their travel and accommodation. Hope that helps. And thanks for the fix regarding WMF sponsorship. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Engineering Community Manager (talk) 13:33, 30 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    • • Apologies for the late reply. I accept I may have been unclear here (it's a tricky area to be precise about), but basically I just wanted to capture your inreach/outreach event divergence (specifically, I was responding to Quim's discussion page post "After discussing with Sumana we agreed that this event is more of a Wikimedia-wide gathering than a real outreach event where we put a lot effort bringing newcomers"). - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 14:23, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• It turns out the hostel does have smaller rooms available, but in order to use them you generally have to book about 6 months in advance. So next year, if the hackathon organizers use a hostel such as this one, WMF aims to offer its staffers the option of staying in those kinds of rooms at the hostel, so it's easier for everyone to mingle. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Engineering Community Manager (talk) 03:14, 30 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Interesting. Of course, the discussion (however justified) is not just about where the single rooms are, but also the decision to use single rooms at all. - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 10:20, 30 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Right; you've probably seen this travel policy ("A single room with a private bath is the standard."), and I know not all Wikimedia community members like that part of the policy. I should note that a lot of WMF people stayed in two-person rooms or other accommodation (not single rooms) to save money, at the Amsterdam event, as well as at approximately every multiday Wikimedia event I've ever attended. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Engineering Community Manager (talk) 13:33, 30 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Any stats? Like, how many doubles vs. single and most common reasons to prefer a single (are they asked a reason?). --Nemo 07:38, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • I don't have any statistics on this. Given that it's policy to offer single rooms, I am reasonably sure the travel coodinator does not ask WMF staffers "why are you acting in accordance with the policy?" :-) My personal recollection is that, at Wikimania and at Berlin or Amsterdam hackathons or for other Wikimedia travel, most WMF personnel who attend share rooms with our colleagues. I have sometimes stayed in a hotel room by myself because of a lack of other women to share a room with. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Engineering Community Manager (talk) 15:49, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • I have no problem with employees having single, en-suite rooms. That's also the Wikimedia-UK policy for staff and volunteers. Yet in Amsterdam I was sharing a hostel room, not for the first time on a WMUK sponsored trip (on others, I have had my own room). Obviously, I made the choice to accept that arrangement (and I am grateful that I had the opportunity to attend), but there does seem to be an inexplicable difference between policy and practice; and the decisions seem to be arbitrary. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:56, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • Andy, hi! Glad we got to chat in Amsterdam. I think I'm a little confused regarding the policy/practice difference that you see, since the travel policy (which I think you're referring to) is about "people required to travel on behalf of the WMF"; am I right in inferring that you think this should also apply to all volunteers choosing to travel for Wikimedia-related purposes, whether funded by WMF, chapters, or some other Wikimedia body?

        The hackathon organizing committee this year consisted of some volunteers, some WMNL staff, some WMDE staff, and some WMF staff. I will probably be on the hackathon organizing committee again next year, and I will suggest we consider changing our approach: hosting subsidised volunteers in a hotel while keeping the budget manageable by reducing the number of people the committee subsidises. However, I will have to think a lot about what approach I would personally recommend; it's a tough question. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Engineering Community Manager (talk) 15:49, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

        • While I don't really like having a double-standard for staff and volunteers, the hostel worked out great and it was a plus to share rooms with fellow Wikimedians. This was especially true because the event was at the hostel, so there was no better place to be. If I had to choose between more private rooms or more attendees, I'd pick more attendees every time. As for staff expectations/allowance for better accommodations, it's a trickier problem to justify. I think it comes down to the fact that staff are generally 'at work' during these events whereas volunteers are essentially on vacations. So volunteers come to expect that they might have less privacy and amenities, but then again, their job is not on the line to show up and be rested and ready. Case in point, I felt like working all night during the second day of the hackathon and sleeping through the morning sessions. I could do that, whereas I'm not sure that staff could. So that's one argument to justify differences. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 17:10, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]