Major news this month include:

• the network setup in our new datacenter, that opened the way to new server setup and backups;
• progress on features to encourage and facilitate participation, like the Visual editor groundwork, and the WikiLove button;
• productive community testing on our now mobile front-end and the Kiwix download manager;
• the release of MediaWiki 1.17.0;
• the first commits by our Summer of Code students;
• major progress on our code review backlog.

Note: This month, we’re trying out a slightly modified format for the report. Hover your mouse over the green question marks ([?]) to see a description of a particular project.
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Major news this month include:

• the Berlin Hackathon, where about 70 developers and engineers met to improve our technical infrastructure;
• the deployment of the Upload Wizard as default uploader on Wikimedia Commons;
• the continued development, deployment and roll-out of the Article feedback tool on the English Wikipedia;
• major progress in reducing our code review backlog. (more…)

Major news this month include:

• the completion of the editor survey, which was supported by the engineering staff;
• major progress on Article Feedback 3.0 and Upload Wizard 1.0, which will both be deployed in May;
• mobile projects taking off, with field research in India and progress on the new mobile platform;
• work on the budgeting exercise for the 2011-2012 fiscal year.

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Major news this month include:

• The publication of a Product whitepaper by the Strategic product team (and the associated update from Sue Gardner) that will guide future engineering efforts.
• The return of Brion Vibber, Wikimedia’s first employee, as Lead Architect for MediaWiki.
• The deployment of Article Feedback 2.0 to the English Wikipedia, and of Upload Wizard 1.0 to Wikimedia Commons.

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Major accomplishments this month include:

• the racking party at our new data center in Virginia
• the Data Summit that happened in early February in California
• the release of Editor Trends study data and tooling
• the painful, but ultimately successful, deployment of MediaWiki 1.17 to all Wikimedia wikis.

Note: In the past, each “monthly engineering update” has reported on what was accomplished the previous month: the previous “February update” hence reported on what we did in January. In order to avoid any ambiguity, and to be more consistent with the other Wikimedia reports, we’re now going to explicitly call them reports of the previous month. This means this “February report” is about what we did in February.
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January 2011 was a tough month for Wikimedia engineers. About 75% of us caught the “WikiPlague” (a.k.a. RSV) and were out of commission between 3 and 10 days. Also, with the end of the Fundraiser coming early, this past month has been a time of re-starting and re-setting priorities as we shift major focus away from supporting money making and on to money spending…

Major accomplishments this month include:

• the completion of equipment specs and negotiations to order all equipment for the new primary data center in Ashburn, Virginia.
• major work on getting MediaWiki 1.17 released, especially by reducing the Code Review queue to releasable levels.
• work on increasing Nagios and Watchmouse monitoring.

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Welcome to the January monthly report from WMF Engineering! As always, we’re reporting on what we’ve been working on and what’s coming up. In December, the fundraiser was in full swing, with a portion of the Engineering team (Arthur Richards, Ryan Kaldari, Nimish Gautam, and Tomasz Finc) supporting the fundraising infrastructure. Danese Cooper, Erik Möller, and Alolita Sharma were in India for most of the month, while much of the rest of the team was focused on the ramp-up to MediaWiki 1.17. More below the fold…

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Welcome to the December monthly report from WMF Engineering! As always, we’re reporting on what we’ve been working on and what’s coming up. In November, our more visible work involved launching the Fundraiser and the Upload Wizard on commons. Behind the scenes, we worked on the next iteration of Article Feedback, continued to improve our infrastructure (e.g. monitoring, media storage, backups, analytics infrastructure, credit card handling) and continued to chip away at our code review backlog. We continue to hire at a rapid pace, looking to fill many different roles. More below….

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Here is the November monthly report from Wikimedia Foundation, reporting on what we’ve been working on and what we’re planning.  This month was pulled together by Alolita, Guillaume, Mark, Tomasz, and myself, with some additions and clarifications from others.  As before, this edition of the update was drafted on mediawiki.org, where you can find the complete history of everyone who contributed.

October featured continued work on the Virginia data center migration, continued work on features such as ResourceLoader, Article Feedback and Upload Wizard, increased focus on code review, new testing infrastructure, many new job postings, and the Hack-A-Ton in Washington DC. More below…

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Below is another overview update from Wikimedia Foundation Engineering, pulled together by Alolita, Danese, Erik, Guillaume, Mark, Tomasz, Zak, and myself. This edition of the update was drafted on mediawiki.org, where you can find the complete history of everyone who contributed. We believe we’ve gotten better at characterizing our work, but there are almost certainly gaps (especially when it comes to ongoing activities versus projects that have clear begin and end dates).

As before, each area has a program manager, who is responsible for coordinating the activity in that area. More detailed updates will come from those people as they are available.

A quick summary of the major development and operations initiatives underway this month:

• Testing and deployment of the grant-funded improvements to media uploading
• Further testing of the new ResourceLoader, which landed in trunk
• Testing and deployment of the article feedback tool, which is timed to coincide with the Public Policy Initiative’s first semester
• Build-out of a new primary data center location in Virginia. The new data center eliminate our Tampa data center as a single point of failure for all Wikimedia Foundation projects;
• Ongoing development of Pending Changes
• Engineering and testing for the 2010 Fundraiser, including testing of a new analytics framework
• The Hack-A-Ton happening in Washington, DC, a combination hackathon/bugsmash

More detail below the fold…

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