Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com
How much do we expect to be paying to Wordpress each year for this service? John Vandenberg. sent from Galaxy Note On Sep 6, 2013 8:23 AM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 11:46 AM, Leslie Carr lc...@wikimedia.org wrote: Currently the blog is in a partially maintained by Operations state. In ops, we have a few concerns - #1 is security (exemplified by our recent security incident) of having a wordpress instance in our production environment. #2 is support of the blog from a technical standpoint. We are currently all oversubscribed with trying to keep the production sites up and speedy. The blog is low priority for us compared to the wiki's, and therefore is often neglected. When we hire about 5 more ops people, it may be more sustainable, but right now, it's not - so it would actually be a net positive for the Operations team to move the blog onto a dedicated third party, and will also hopefully prevent any future security incidents. Exactly. Just because we have people who have no trouble maintaining a WordPress install doesn't mean we should. Time is always limited, and we have to prioritize. Working with a reputable third party that also drives development of the same open source software seems like a perfectly reasonable choice to me in this instance. And BTW - we do get situations where the blog gets a huge spike of traffic every once in a while, e.g. during the SOPA/PIPA protest, so hosting it ourselves is not as effortless as it may seem, without even accounting for customization requests from our communications team, etc. Erik -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com
On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 10:20 PM, Matthew Roth mr...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 12:53 PM, rupert THURNER rupert.thur...@gmail.comwrote: What should not be missed out in the discussion is the fact that blog post according to current guidelines should be written on the wiki. We started drafting blog posts on Meta to encourage transparency and make it easier to translate them. Mike Peel suggested we start doing it and it makes sense for most posts (rather than drafting them locally on your computer, or in another program). It's also easier this way for blog editors because Tilman has written a scripthttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blog/Converting_wiki_pages_to_blog_poststhat quickly converts markup to html. Drafting on wiki is more of a good process than an ideal way to publish the content, in my opinion. why? rupert. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com
On 8 September 2013 13:06, rupert THURNER rupert.thur...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 10:20 PM, Matthew Roth mr...@wikimedia.org wrote: Drafting on wiki is more of a good process than an ideal way to publish the content, in my opinion. why? Because turning MediaWiki from a terrible blogging platform into a good one (comment management and blog-style RSS at absolute minimum) would be more work than even maintaining our own WordPress installation. - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com
Once we have Flow working well, then a Media-Wiki based public blog with comments might actually be workable (and it'd be nice to have comments mesh seamlessly with WM accounts). However, that's still a year or two off - I don't think it's any reason not to transfer the blog for now, assuming we can handle the privacy issues that implies. We can always move back if we develop the mediawiki magic bullet :-) A. On 8 September 2013 14:08, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 8 September 2013 13:16, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: Because turning MediaWiki from a terrible blogging platform into a good one (comment management and blog-style RSS at absolute minimum) would be more work than even maintaining our own WordPress installation. Chatting with Rupert about this just now, he pointed out that Wikinews does RSS just fine: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GoogleNewsSitemap The URL is ugly (but that's why mod_rewrite exists): https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NewsFeedfeed=atomcategories=Publishednotcategories=No%20publish|Archived|AutoArchived|disputednamespace=0count=30hourcount=124ordermethod=categoryaddstablepages=only So that's that problem actually solved (and I thought that'd be the hard one). Comments remain a problem: LiquidThreads is unloved and largely unmaintained, and Flow is barely started. - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com
David Gerard, 06/09/2013 15:22: On 6 September 2013 14:19, MZMcBride wrote: This seems to focus on blog editors, but not blog visitors. If I visit wordpress.com, I see that my Web browser deflects Google Analytics, KissMetrics, Quantcast, and WordPress Stats. If I visit wordpress.org, I see that my browser deflects Google Analytics, Quantcast, Twitter Button, and Facebook Social Plugins. Yes. It's important that none of this happen. Speaking of which, WMF got some visitor stats for the blog just a few months ago[1] which are also publicly available in aggregate as of a few days ago[2], using EventLogging: will the same system be usable also from a third-party installation? Also, I understand that the details of the security incident mentioned earlier are kept private, but is it something that can't be solved by hosting the blog on some scalable cloud service such as heroku or whatever, as we already do for wikitech-static wiki (and did for wikitech-old wiki)? Of course I'm not adding anything WMF doesn't know already; just mentioning a couple points worth addressing in future explanations of whatever decision is made. Nemo [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikimedia_budgetdiff=prevoldid=5640956 [2] https://ganglia.wikimedia.org/latest/graph.php?r=weekz=xlargetitle=vl=x=n=hreg[]=client-sidemreg[]=Bloggtype=lineglegend=showaggregate=1embed=1_=1378369345031 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com
Hi. The recent draft privacy policy mentions that the Wikimedia blog (https://blog.wikimedia.org) will soon be hosted by WordPress.com. Was this discussed anywhere? If so, where? What is the proposed URL structure of a blog hosted by WordPress.com? I think there's a reasonable expectation that when a user visits *.wikimedia.org, we don't simply send his or her browser info to a third party without his or her consent. This has come up previously with Jobvite and iframes. It's also come up with the use of tracking tools such as Google Analytics, which not only affect one-time visitors, but aim to persist client-side. How will the blog be backed up? Relying on an external service means not being in control of the data. Will there be regular backups made to ensure that if WordPress.com goes away, we won't lose all of our posts? MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com
On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 2:57 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: This is a very good point - we must try to protect logs of visitors to the WMF blog from the inevitably prying eyes of the National Security Agency! And only by self-hosting it will this be effectively accomplished! This doesn't make any sense. If we're assuming the NSA is monitoring all Internet traffic, which is the problem everybody has been complaining about, then they don't need access to our servers to tell who is visiting the blog. *-- * *Tyler Romeo* Stevens Institute of Technology, Class of 2016 Major in Computer Science www.whizkidztech.com | tylerro...@gmail.com ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com
On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 2:51 PM, rupert THURNER rupert.thur...@gmail.com wrote: Personally i think this is a bad idea, especially with respect to all the nsa discussions. If wmf is not able to host it might be hosted by one of the chapters, or wikinews might accept a new article type blog, what you think? Rupert This is a very good point - we must try to protect logs of visitors to the WMF blog from the inevitably prying eyes of the National Security Agency! And only by self-hosting it will this be effectively accomplished! ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com
On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 10:33 AM, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote: As I understand the blog is currently a self-hosted instance of Wordpress and the idea is to move the hosting to somewhere else. (So this is not MediaWiki vs. Wordpress, but self-hosting vs. not self-hosting) Exactly! Best regards, Bence On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 7:29 PM, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 10:26 PM, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org wrote: This was definitely mentioned at Wikimania. What I understood is that it will be hosted externally for performance and reliability reasons, but that the rest should remain the same. So, A blog for one of the top 10 websites in the world is being hosted externally for performance and reliability? - That doesn't sound right. Maybe Mr. Roth friends can clarify a bit here. I can chime in as a tech operations person (in my official capacity). Currently the blog is in a partially maintained by Operations state. In ops, we have a few concerns - #1 is security (exemplified by our recent security incident) of having a wordpress instance in our production environment. #2 is support of the blog from a technical standpoint. We are currently all oversubscribed with trying to keep the production sites up and speedy. The blog is low priority for us compared to the wiki's, and therefore is often neglected. When we hire about 5 more ops people, it may be more sustainable, but right now, it's not - so it would actually be a net positive for the Operations team to move the blog onto a dedicated third party, and will also hopefully prevent any future security incidents. Leslie Blogs generally don't require a lot of resources, aside from some comment oversight. But it's not like there is a deluge of comments or moderation required in the current blog - they average about 1, maybe 2 comments and from my impression, don't particularly have a high number of regular followers. This seems like something trivial, perhaps because of familiarity with Wordpress, it is being preferred in this case. But then, why are we willingly and so easily handing the visitors to a third party? especially with so much paranoia about monitoring and privacy issues. Even for the sake of our own impression and opinions - Is there a particular role there that Mediawiki can't fill in? (I recall Erik once argued that wiki is the most versatile platform, does he believe that Wordpress is a better alternative? ) Regards Theo Anyway, I'm not an expert here, just what I understood from Matthew Roth friends Lodewijk 2013/9/5 Richard Symonds richard.symo...@wikimedia.org.uk This is being discussed on-wiki too, at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Privacy_policy#Blog_not_hosted_by_WordPress.3F . Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992 Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.* On 5 September 2013 14:00, Neil Harris n...@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote: On 05/09/13 13:37, MZMcBride wrote: Hi. The recent draft privacy policy mentions that the Wikimedia blog (https://blog.wikimedia.org) will soon be hosted by WordPress.com. Was this discussed anywhere? If so, where? What is the proposed URL structure of a blog hosted by WordPress.com? I think there's a reasonable expectation that when a user visits *.wikimedia.org, we don't simply send his or her browser info to a third party without his or her consent. This has come up previously with Jobvite and iframes. It's also come up with the use of tracking tools such as Google Analytics, which not only affect one-time visitors, but aim to persist client-side. How will the blog be backed up? Relying on an external service means not being in control of the data. Will there be regular backups made to ensure that if WordPress.com goes away, we won't lose all of our posts? MZMcBride I agree: this does seem to be a curious decision, at odds with the WMF's general policy of self-hosting as much as possible in order to maintain maximum independence from outside entities, particularly in the context of the recent concerns about privacy. I would have thought that maintaining a
[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com
On Thursday, September 5, 2013, rupert THURNER wrote: Personally i think this is a bad idea, especially with respect to all the nsa discussions. If wmf is not able to host it might be hosted by one of the chapters, or wikinews might accept a new article type blog, what you think? Cool idea, but maybe Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, meta or outreach would be a better fit mission wise? Blog hosting would violate fundamental Wikinews project guidelines regarding neutrality, style guidelines and verifiability. Thus, not a good fit for Wikinews, though I am sure if you contact the local communities, they would appreciate the suggestion. :) (Maybe Spanish Wikinews would appreciate it.) If it was a serious option, Wikinewsie.org is getting Icelandic hosting for our reporting journalism workspace to protect our reporters... I believe we already have a Wordpress install, so as a potential thematic organization, The Wikinewsie Group could be placed to assist. We chose Icelandic hosting for a variety of reasons that have been mentioned in previous security related discussions. Sincerely, Laura Hale -- mobile: 635209416 twitter: purplepopple blog: ozziesport.com ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com
Mediawiki is indeed the most versatile platform, but that just means it's okay at most things. It doesn't mean it's better than other platforms explicitly designed for a particular job ;-) I'd prefer self-hosting on general principle, but if our operations people say it's better and more stable hosted elsewhere - and presumably they have - then fair enough. Andrew. On 5 September 2013 18:29, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 10:26 PM, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.orgwrote: This was definitely mentioned at Wikimania. What I understood is that it will be hosted externally for performance and reliability reasons, but that the rest should remain the same. So, A blog for one of the top 10 websites in the world is being hosted externally for performance and reliability? - That doesn't sound right. Maybe Mr. Roth friends can clarify a bit here. Blogs generally don't require a lot of resources, aside from some comment oversight. But it's not like there is a deluge of comments or moderation required in the current blog - they average about 1, maybe 2 comments and from my impression, don't particularly have a high number of regular followers. This seems like something trivial, perhaps because of familiarity with Wordpress, it is being preferred in this case. But then, why are we willingly and so easily handing the visitors to a third party? especially with so much paranoia about monitoring and privacy issues. Even for the sake of our own impression and opinions - Is there a particular role there that Mediawiki can't fill in? (I recall Erik once argued that wiki is the most versatile platform, does he believe that Wordpress is a better alternative? ) Regards Theo Anyway, I'm not an expert here, just what I understood from Matthew Roth friends Lodewijk 2013/9/5 Richard Symonds richard.symo...@wikimedia.org.uk This is being discussed on-wiki too, at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Privacy_policy#Blog_not_hosted_by_WordPress.3F . Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992 Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.* On 5 September 2013 14:00, Neil Harris n...@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote: On 05/09/13 13:37, MZMcBride wrote: Hi. The recent draft privacy policy mentions that the Wikimedia blog (https://blog.wikimedia.org) will soon be hosted by WordPress.com. Was this discussed anywhere? If so, where? What is the proposed URL structure of a blog hosted by WordPress.com? I think there's a reasonable expectation that when a user visits *.wikimedia.org, we don't simply send his or her browser info to a third party without his or her consent. This has come up previously with Jobvite and iframes. It's also come up with the use of tracking tools such as Google Analytics, which not only affect one-time visitors, but aim to persist client-side. How will the blog be backed up? Relying on an external service means not being in control of the data. Will there be regular backups made to ensure that if WordPress.com goes away, we won't lose all of our posts? MZMcBride I agree: this does seem to be a curious decision, at odds with the WMF's general policy of self-hosting as much as possible in order to maintain maximum independence from outside entities, particularly in the context of the recent concerns about privacy. I would have thought that maintaining a WordPress installation would be well within the WMF's capabilities. Neil __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@**lists.wikimedia.org wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org ?subject=**unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com
This was definitely mentioned at Wikimania. What I understood is that it will be hosted externally for performance and reliability reasons, but that the rest should remain the same. Anyway, I'm not an expert here, just what I understood from Matthew Roth friends Lodewijk 2013/9/5 Richard Symonds richard.symo...@wikimedia.org.uk This is being discussed on-wiki too, at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Privacy_policy#Blog_not_hosted_by_WordPress.3F . Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992 Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.* On 5 September 2013 14:00, Neil Harris n...@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote: On 05/09/13 13:37, MZMcBride wrote: Hi. The recent draft privacy policy mentions that the Wikimedia blog (https://blog.wikimedia.org) will soon be hosted by WordPress.com. Was this discussed anywhere? If so, where? What is the proposed URL structure of a blog hosted by WordPress.com? I think there's a reasonable expectation that when a user visits *.wikimedia.org, we don't simply send his or her browser info to a third party without his or her consent. This has come up previously with Jobvite and iframes. It's also come up with the use of tracking tools such as Google Analytics, which not only affect one-time visitors, but aim to persist client-side. How will the blog be backed up? Relying on an external service means not being in control of the data. Will there be regular backups made to ensure that if WordPress.com goes away, we won't lose all of our posts? MZMcBride I agree: this does seem to be a curious decision, at odds with the WMF's general policy of self-hosting as much as possible in order to maintain maximum independence from outside entities, particularly in the context of the recent concerns about privacy. I would have thought that maintaining a WordPress installation would be well within the WMF's capabilities. Neil __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@**lists.wikimedia.org wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org ?subject=**unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com
Personally i think this is a bad idea, especially with respect to all the nsa discussions. If wmf is not able to host it might be hosted by one of the chapters, or wikinews might accept a new article type blog, what you think? Rupert Am 05.09.2013 19:34 schrieb Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com: As I understand the blog is currently a self-hosted instance of Wordpress and the idea is to move the hosting to somewhere else. (So this is not MediaWiki vs. Wordpress, but self-hosting vs. not self-hosting) Best regards, Bence On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 7:29 PM, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 10:26 PM, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org wrote: This was definitely mentioned at Wikimania. What I understood is that it will be hosted externally for performance and reliability reasons, but that the rest should remain the same. So, A blog for one of the top 10 websites in the world is being hosted externally for performance and reliability? - That doesn't sound right. Maybe Mr. Roth friends can clarify a bit here. Blogs generally don't require a lot of resources, aside from some comment oversight. But it's not like there is a deluge of comments or moderation required in the current blog - they average about 1, maybe 2 comments and from my impression, don't particularly have a high number of regular followers. This seems like something trivial, perhaps because of familiarity with Wordpress, it is being preferred in this case. But then, why are we willingly and so easily handing the visitors to a third party? especially with so much paranoia about monitoring and privacy issues. Even for the sake of our own impression and opinions - Is there a particular role there that Mediawiki can't fill in? (I recall Erik once argued that wiki is the most versatile platform, does he believe that Wordpress is a better alternative? ) Regards Theo Anyway, I'm not an expert here, just what I understood from Matthew Roth friends Lodewijk 2013/9/5 Richard Symonds richard.symo...@wikimedia.org.uk This is being discussed on-wiki too, at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Privacy_policy#Blog_not_hosted_by_WordPress.3F . Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992 Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.* On 5 September 2013 14:00, Neil Harris n...@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote: On 05/09/13 13:37, MZMcBride wrote: Hi. The recent draft privacy policy mentions that the Wikimedia blog (https://blog.wikimedia.org) will soon be hosted by WordPress.com. Was this discussed anywhere? If so, where? What is the proposed URL structure of a blog hosted by WordPress.com? I think there's a reasonable expectation that when a user visits *.wikimedia.org, we don't simply send his or her browser info to a third party without his or her consent. This has come up previously with Jobvite and iframes. It's also come up with the use of tracking tools such as Google Analytics, which not only affect one-time visitors, but aim to persist client-side. How will the blog be backed up? Relying on an external service means not being in control of the data. Will there be regular backups made to ensure that if WordPress.com goes away, we won't lose all of our posts? MZMcBride I agree: this does seem to be a curious decision, at odds with the WMF's general policy of self-hosting as much as possible in order to maintain maximum independence from outside entities, particularly in the context of the recent concerns about privacy. I would have thought that maintaining a WordPress installation would be well within the WMF's capabilities. Neil __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@**lists.wikimedia.org wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org ?subject=**unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com
I think this makes 100% sense from an operations perspective. Anytime you can outsource a lower priority web service - fantastic. However, from a community advocacy perspective - I am less convinced. I would be curious if anyone from that team could chime in as well. The security argument makes a great deal of sense to me - making the primary production sites vulnerable should always be avoided if at all humanly possible to do so. Here are some lingering questions I would have for Advocacy and Ops: 1. How closely are we working with WordPress.com staff on this setup? 2. Will we be paying for the service? (I know it is minimal - more curious than anything) 3. Is the Automattic (company behind WordPress) privacy policy compatible with WMF's current and proposed (as it exists now) privacy policy? 4. Will people be required to register with WordPress.com to participate in the blog? 5. I recognize we utilize a lot of corporations - but most do not handle our content (I suppose data centers and bandwidth - but I digress) - generally that has been our own or a nonprofit like Freenode (if you count IRC as content service). Additionally, they use ads - which has been a hot topic on project sites. Recognizing the blog is not really a project site that is covered as tightly under our principles - can someone speak to the compatibility of Automattic's policies and values with WM and WMF? How are we getting around the ads? 6. Are there other services on WMF servers that could be potential security threats? Are OTRS, Mailman, and Etherpad subject to these concerns as well? Is there a likely possibility that other services will be moved in the future? 7. Should all of these services be moved to a separate server? Is that feasible? I appreciate that WMF is having this dialogue before the switch actually happens. I agree it is a compelling idea. - greg aka varnent On 5 Sep, 2013, at 5:16 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 5 September 2013 22:07, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: That is a argument for changing the blogging tool/platform, Not changing to non self-hosted environment. tl;dr Wordpress is the only blog that isn't shit. And Wordpress.com is a fine place to host a blog if you don't want ever to have to think about the nuts and bolts of securing the thing. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com
On 5 September 2013 20:03, Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk wrote: Mediawiki is indeed the most versatile platform, but that just means it's okay at most things. It doesn't mean it's better than other platforms explicitly designed for a particular job ;-) Wordpress is a ridiculously better blog platform than MediaWiki will ever be. I'd prefer self-hosting on general principle, but if our operations people say it's better and more stable hosted elsewhere - and presumably they have - then fair enough. I would worry only about our privacy policies for users - will we use our own database of users? Will people need to log in with a Wordpress.com accoun to comment? Can we say precisely what data Wordpress will get? - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com
On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 6:44 PM, Dan Collins en.wp.s...@gmail.com wrote: At least OTRS and mailman belong inside our security bubble of control, where the only people with access are ops and they can be properly secured. The security risk of those applications potentially introducing and attacker to all our data is minimal compared to the much greater risk of placing our user names, passwords, email addresses, and highly private OTRS queues in the hands of a third party including all their technicians, not to mention their security practices that we have no control over. As for the other question. If the nsa sends a letter to WordPress then they can get the email address and IP of someone who posted a post or comment to our blog. Probably the password too. If we host it over SSL then there's no way for them to know even that a given user commented, and if we did SSL right (maybe in another ten years) no one would know whether an IP was anon browsing, a checkuser or oversight, or reading our highly sensitive OTRS queues. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html?hp In which it is disclosed that, unsurprisingly, SSL poses no real challenge for the NSA. In any case, I find it hard to imagine a plausible scenario in which the NSA would be interested in a commenter on the WMF blog. (My previous post in this thread was sarcastic, in case that was unclear). ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com
*.Wordpress.com blocked in China. Chinese wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/ My blog: http://shizhao.org twitter: https://twitter.com/shizhao [[zh:User:Shizhao]] 2013/9/6 Matthew Roth mr...@wikimedia.org: Hi all, I was going to socialize some of the transitions for the Wikimedia blog in the next few weeks on the Wikimedia blog spacehttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blogon Meta and on the blog itself with a blog post, but this conversation has sped up the discussion. I plan to have something on Meta by the beginning of next week and hope that we can continue the discussion there when the content is posted. As a general concept, we’re redesigning the blog to be less focused on the Wikimedia Foundation and more on the Wikimedia movement. For the past year, we have been sharing more narratives from the movement, making this important communications tool more about movement partners and not exclusively about the Wikimedia Foundation. We believe the public has little understanding of the people behind the projects and we want to share their stories (i.e. why the contribute, why they edit, why they develop). We still need the tool to communicate important updates from the WMF, but that can be accomplished in a larger ecosystem with more diversity of voices. We’ve had a significant increase in publication from authors who don’t work for the WMF, as well as increased multi-lingual posts, and we will continue to increase the amount and diversity of participation. Specifically, let me address a couple of points raised in this thread. - We are redesigning the blog. For those at Wikimania who saw my talk, we shared the working site for the new Wikimedia blog and explained the basics of our thinking. Here is the link for the site under construction. Please understand this is still under construction and there will be some changes, but this is the basic design of the new Wikimedia blog. It’s also populated with data from a db dump that is now 2 months old, so you will see significant content difference from the current Wikimedia blog. The draft version of the blog is hosted on an outside platform, WP Engine, but this is not necessarily the hosting company we may use in future: http://wikimedia.wpengine.com/ - We’re exploring the possibility of 3rd-party hosting of the blog. We had extensive discussions with members of the WMF Operations and Engineering teams about whether to continue to host the blog on our servers or move to a 3rd-party host. Ultimately we determined that 3rd party hosts made sense for the blog for a number of important reasons. I would refer you to the email in this threadhttp://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/387838#387838from Leslie Carr in our Ops team, but essentially they feel that a move to a 3rd party host would address important security and support concerns, and would therefore be preferable to continuing to host the blog ourselves. - A 3rd-party host will give us redundancy and strong backups. The blog has become the Foundation’s primary public communications tool (alongside, naturally, the host of wikis we use to converse with the community). We want to be sure this platform is hosted on a 3rd-party site in case we encounter a significant outage or cluster-wide downtime. Obviously we can’t rely on the projects to get that information out if the cluster is down, and although we will continue to use identi.ca, twitter, and facebook, we’d like to have a stable place to point traffic. - The blog needs to be able to handle a lot of traffic, quickly. We know that Wikimedia’s servers are up to this kind of task, but we’re experts at hosting wikis - not necessarily experts at hosting blogs. Specifically blogs that may need to handle very large volumes of traffic, spam, and comments in a short period of time. We had one such situation back in 2012 during the Wikipedia blackout. We sent tens of millions of readers to the Wikimedia blog and dealt with around 18K comments in a matter of hours. We could handle it, but we’d like to have capacity to handle that in an emergency situation. Not all blog hosting companies can do this, but a few that we’re looking at are expressly built to handle immediate and massive increases in traffic, and they’ve got amazing back up services. - We have not yet selected a 3rd-party host. We have screened a couple of 3rd-party hosts. While Wordpress.com is one of our top choices (not the standard consumer version, rather their ‘managed’ or white glove hosting services for high volume customers), we have not yet selected them. Right now the WMF legal team is in discussions with Wordpress.com and others. We appreciate that if we host on a 3rd party site, we need to navigate the important issue of ensuring our privacies
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com
quote name=Tyler Romeo date=2013-09-05 time=23:17:46 -0400 On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 9:57 PM, shi zhao shiz...@gmail.com wrote: *.Wordpress.com blocked in China. Welp, there goes that plan. Being pedantic: that doesn't mean that all wordpress.com hosted blogs through different domains (eg: blog.wikimedia.org can point to a wordpress.com IP, which the blog really lives) are blocked. I can't think of one off the top of my head that is in that category (they don't usually advertise that they're wordpress.com-hosted) to test/suggest. Greg -- | Greg GrossmeierGPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E | | identi.ca: @gregA18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D | ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com
On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 9:54 PM, Greg Grossmeier g...@wikimedia.org wrote: I can't think of one off the top of my head that is in that category (they don't usually advertise that they're wordpress.com-hosted) to test/suggest. Here are a few: http://wordpress.org/showcase Greg -- | Greg GrossmeierGPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E | | identi.ca: @gregA18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D | ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- Matthew Roth Global Communications Manager Wikimedia Foundation +1.415.839.6885 ext 6635 www.wikimediafoundation.org *http://blog.wikimedia.org/* ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia blog moving to WordPress.com
Also, it'd be a bit difficult to set up, because I doubt the China firewall is stupid enough to allow simple CNAME redirects, so we'd have to dynamically interact with whatever Wordpress.com's DNS environment is. -- Tyler Romeo On Sep 6, 2013 1:11 AM, Matthew Roth mr...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 9:54 PM, Greg Grossmeier g...@wikimedia.org wrote: I can't think of one off the top of my head that is in that category (they don't usually advertise that they're wordpress.com-hosted) to test/suggest. Here are a few: http://wordpress.org/showcase Greg -- | Greg GrossmeierGPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E | | identi.ca: @gregA18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D | ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- Matthew Roth Global Communications Manager Wikimedia Foundation +1.415.839.6885 ext 6635 www.wikimediafoundation.org *http://blog.wikimedia.org/* ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
