Wikimedia Search Platform

Search Platform

We are responsible for maintaining and enhancing the various Search features and APIs for MediaWiki.

Group:	Technology
Team:	In teams: Engineering Erik Bernhardson, David Causse, Peter Fischer, Trey Jones, Ryan Kemper, Brian King Management Guillaume Lederrey, Engineering
Since:	December 2017

The Search Platform team (part of Wikimedia Technology) is responsible for maintaining and enhancing the various Search features and APIs for MediaWiki. This includes the CirrusSearch extension which relies on Elasticsearch, the search backend used at the Wikimedia Foundation to support Wikimedia projects and Wikidata Query Service, the SPARQL endpoint used to query Wikidata.

Current work by this team is tracked on the Discovery-Search workboard in Phabricator (backlog board).

Mission

Our mission is to help people easily discover knowledge on Wikipedia and its sister projects by providing tools and infrastructure for casual readers and expert users with precise needs, while maintaining a strong emphasis on privacy.

Overview

• We operate and maintain a disparate collection of production services related to content discovery, enabling the wiki community to find information that is not available through simply following links. We also provide a platform on which other people can create tools to support editing and other workflows.

• We provide an open-source search engine, backed by an inverted index for non-structured on-wiki data. We work to develop more sophisticated searching with machine learning and natural language processing.

• We provide a SPARQL-based query service for Wikidata, encouraging users to capitalize on this vast store of computer-readable structured data for use on-wiki and in knowledge discovery.

• We endeavor to support underserved wiki communities, and we rely on those communities to help us understand their needs and evaluate potential solutions, especially with respect to underserved languages.

• We prioritize privacy for logged-in users and anonymity for logged-out users over almost everything else, even when it slows down or complicates development or hinders our ability to collect or use data.

Goals

The Search Platform team's goals are part of the Product & Technology department's goals (e.g., P&T FY 24-25 OKRs and other Essential Work related to sustaining the platform). You can see links to the Search Platform team's current quarterly goals and some previous 2017-2021 quarterly goals. (Note that each fiscal year's Q1 is July–September.)

Other Projects

Wikidata Query Service (WDQS)

The Wikidata query service allows for searching structured data on Wikidata. It also provides an API through which tools can access Wikidata. Our current work is tracked on the Discovery-Search workboard (see also our WDQS backlog board) and weekly deployments of WDQS are documented on wikitech:Deployments. w:SPARQL

APIs

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) provide developers ways to interact with the MediaWiki software.

API:Search and discovery lists the search APIs available and in development.

The Team

See the team page on Wikitech.

Communications

Moved to wikitech:Search Platform/Contact

Process

The Search Platform team uses a Scrumban process, which is a hybrid of Scrum and Kanban. It is described here: Search Platform Process.

Conferences, gatherings, and other events

Upcoming events

• none scheduled due to COVID-19 global pandemic

Past events

• All Hands—January 2018
• Hackathon 2018—18–20 May 2018
• Wikimania 2018—July 18–22, 2018
• 17th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2018)—October 8–12, 2018
• October 22–25, 2018, Wikimedia Technical Conference (WMTechConf, formerly known as DevSummit) in Portland, Oregon
• Late January / early February 2019, All-Hands, San Francisco
• May 2019, Hackathon, Prague
• Late January / early February 2020, All-Hands, San Francisco
• May 2020, Hackathon, Tirana, Albania (virtual due to COVID-19 global pandemic)

Docs and Other Links

Moved to wikitech:Search Platform/Documentation

Deployers

Useful reference for who can deploy code. It's nice to know whom to bug if you need something:

Person	MediaWiki Deployer	Elasticsearch Deployer	Maps Deployer	Graphoid Deployer	Portals Deployer
dcausse
ebernhardsen
jan_drewniak
gehel

Code

The Search Platform team supports the following code:

Repository	Phabricator/Diffusion	GitHub mirror
CirrusSearch extension	https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/ECIR/	mediawiki-extensions-CirrusSearch
Elastica extension	https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/EELA/	mediawiki-extensions-Elastica
GeoData extension	https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/EGDA/	mediawiki-extensions-GeoData
Wikidata Query Service	https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/WDQR/	wikidata-query-rdf
Wikidata Query Service GUI	https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/WDQG/	wikidata-query-gui
WDQS deployment	https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/WDQD/	wikidata-query-deploy
WDQS GUI deployment		wikidata-query-gui-deploy
PHP textcat	https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/WTEX/	wikimedia-textcat
Relevance Forge		wikimedia-discovery-relevanceForge
Discernatron		wikimedia-discovery-discernatron
Discovery Analytics	https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/WDAN/	wikimedia-discovery-analytics
Lucene Explain Parser	https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/WLEP/	wikimedia-lucene-explain-parser