MediaWiki 1.20/Communications

These communications cycles are a lot less thorough than 1.19 communications were, because we're now aiming at much more regular, semi-monthly deployments that will consist of fewer changes. This should minimize disruption and possible issues, and make it easier to identify the cause of problems, since the possibly problemaic code will be much more recent.

One-off announce about semi-monthly deployments

• Wikimedia tech blog
• mail:wikimediaannounce-l, mail:wikitech-l, mail:wikitech-ambassadors, mail:wikimedia-l
• m:Global message delivery

Wikimedia deployment checklist

Aim: spread the word that the deployments are coming and that local communities should communicate with the developers, preferably via Bugzilla, if they encounter a new problem.

A few days before deployment

1. Tell Guillaume
2. Write a short high-level summary of the changes brought by the new 1.20wmfXX release, and put it under MediaWiki 1.20/wmfXX
3. Post the summary to the Wikimedia tech blog and the following mailing lists: mail:wikimediaannounce-l, mail:wikitech-l, mail:wikitech-ambassadors, mail:wikimedia-l
4. If there is a more complete list of changes (but shorter than the release notes), put it under MediaWiki 1.20/wmfXX/overview and link to it from the summary.
5. Update the version number in the landing page of the Generic maintenance CentralNotice
6. Update the link to the summary in the landing page of the Generic maintenance CentralNotice (preserve the Special:MyLanguage part)
7. Prepare the maintenance notice banner to target the appropriate wikis. The example below targets all non-Wikipedia sites (Commons, Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikiversity, and other sites).
   • Use the Generic maintenance notice with the following parameters:
     • Start date & time: 10 min before the maintenance begins
     • End date & time: a few hours later. You'll disable the banner once the maintenance is over, so you just need to make sure that it doesn't disappear before you're done.
     • Projects: select all but Wikipedia (for this example)
     • Languages: all
   • The other settings shouldn't change from one deployment to another.
   • Don't forget to click the Submit button at the very bottom of the page to save your changes.
   • Note: This interface controls the campaign; the banner itself is managed through another special page, but you shouldn't have any good reason to edit it (so please don't).

Immediately before deployment

1. Enable the global CentralNotice, with the parameters you prepared earlier

During deployment

1. Watch the #wikimedia-tech IRC channel

After deployment

1. Disable the banner when the maintenance is over. This is done by unchecking "Enabled" and submitting the changes. Otherwise, it'll run until the End date & time you specified.
2. Watch the maintenance notice's talk page for problem reports.

Perennial tasks

• Update Generic maintenance notice and continue to update translations

CentralNotice settings

These settings shouldn't change from one deployment to another; they're listed here for reference:

• Geotargeted: leave unchecked
• Enabled: check this when you want to actually enable the banner
• Preferred: check this; it will give the banner precedence over any other non-preferred banner running at the same time (Technical maintenance takes precedence)
• Locked: leave unchecked
• Remove: Don't touch this!

MediaWiki 1.20 release

See Release checklist