[Wikitech-l] X-Wikimedia-Debug, your new secret side-kick

[Ori Livneh]

Hey all,

I'm writing to let you know of a cool new facility for debugging MediaWiki
code on the Wikimedia production cluster -- the X-Wikimedia-Debug
 HTTP header.

By setting this header on requests to Wikimedia wikis, you can:

- Bypass the cache.
- Force Varnish to pass your request to a specific backend server.
- Profile request and log profiling data to XHGui.
- Turn on all log channels and send log messages to a special view in
Kibana / Logstash.
- Force MediaWiki to process the request in read-only mode.

And the best part: there are browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox that
provide a friendly user-interface for these features:

http://i.imgur.com/XzWUk0h.gifv

http://i.imgur.com/lJ7l6Vl.gifv
​
Cool? Cool.

Read the docs on Wikitech
 for more
information.
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[Wikitech-l] ArchCom RFC update

[Gabriel Wicke]

Hi,

this week's RFC update sees two RFCs entering the discussion, and one RFC (on
requiring mbstring ) entering
the "final comment period", after which a decision will be made.

Gabriel

RFC inbox:

T130567: WIP RFC: Hygienic transclusions for WYSIWYG, incremental parsing &
composition : High-level
companion task to T11 DOM scopes
 and T114445 Balanced templates
. Moving to “Needs shepherd”.
Tim?

T16950: Support global preferences
: "It would be nice if users and
developers could designate certain preferences to automatically apply
across all wikis. This will require A Lot of Work™.
Extension:GlobalPreferences is a rough draft of the functionality."
 Leaving in inbox, RobLa will ask Kunal.
Today's IRC session:

Open discussion about the following RFCs

   -

   T124504  Transition WikiDev
   '16 working areas into working groups
   -

   T123753  Establish
   retrospective reports for Security
    and Performance
    incidents
   -

   T119908  [RfC]: Migrate code
   review / management to Phabricator from Gerrit
   -

   T120164  RfC: Institute "last
   call" period for MediaWiki RfCs (WIP)


Much of the discussion was on T119908: [RfC]: Migrate code review /
management to Phabricator from Gerrit
, and some on T123753
 (retrospectives). RobLa has
posted a full summary of the discussion
 on phabricator.

Entering Final Comment Period:

RFCs which are reaching a decision are entering a week-long 'final comment
period', after which the ArchCom makes a final decision based on the
discussion. Express your opinions now. This week's FCPs are:

T129435 RFC: Drop support for running without mbstring
 (Gabriel): The PHP mbstring
module enables multi-lingual string handling. Given good distribution
support and significant performance benefits, most participants have
expressed support for requiring the module. If you think that we should
continue to provide fall-backs despite relatively poor performance, then
please comment now.
Under discussion:

T108655 Standardise on how to access/register JavaScript interfaces
 (Roan) Minimal version was
approved and being implemented. Waiting for drafting of second RFC for the
more contentious changes.

T122942 RFC: Support language variants in the REST API
 (Gabriel): Different options
for supporting language variant selection in the REST API. Needed for
languages like Chinese.

T39902 RFC: Implement rendering of redlinks (in a post-processor?)
 (Gabriel): Solutions for
highlighting links to non-existing pages in Parsoid HTML. Main question is
preprocessing vs. separate metadata processed on client. Parsing and
Services teams investigating performance trade-offs.

T130663 WIP RFC: Reference API requirements and options
 (Timo): Working with Gabriel
and others to better define the scope of the RFC and come up with a solid
proposal. Relates to other on-going product goals and may be delayed on
better clarification on those and gathering of other use cases /
requirements.

T18691 RFC: Section headings should have a clickable anchor
 (Timo): Working on better
understanding of the problem space and possible solutions. Volker gathered
various considerations and challenges on the RFC’s talk page at
mediawiki.org. Check them out!

T124504 Transition WikiDev '16 working areas into working groups
 (RobLa): Highlighting in E152

T66214 Use content hash based image / thumb URLs & define an official thumb
API  (Brion): No changes in the
last week.

T124792 Service Locator for MediaWiki core
 (Daniel): Discussed in E150
last week.  Daniel is interested in a possible working group; will discuss
at Hackathon.

T113034 RFC: Overhaul Interwiki map, unify with Sites and WikiMap
 (Daniel): No update since March
17.

No activity since March 16:

T122825 Service ownership and minimum maintenance requirements
 (Gabriel)

T128351 RFC: Notifications in core
 (Brion)

T118517 RFC: Use  

Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Katherine Maher]

Thanks Tim for clarifying.

On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 3:39 PM, Tim Starling 
wrote:

> On 31/03/16 02:55, Katherine Maher wrote:
> > IIRC, we included clean energy consumption as a factor in
> > evaluating in our RFC for our choice of a backup colo a few years back
>
> Since I strongly support emissions reduction, on my own initiative I
> did an analysis of expected CO2 emissions of each of the candidate
> facilities during the selection process of the backup colo. That's
> presumably what you're referring to.
>
> <
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1adt45Msw2o8Ml0s8S0USm9QLkW9ER3xCPkU9d2NJS4Y/edit#gid=0
> >
>
> My conclusion was that codfw (the winner) was one of the worst
> candidates for CO2 emissions. However, the price they were offering
> was so much lower than the other candidates that I could not make a
> rational case for removing it as an option. You could buy high-quality
> offsets for our total emissions for much less than the price difference.
>
> However, this observation does require us to actually purchase said
> offsets, if codfw is to be represented as an ethical choice, and that
> was never done.
>
> codfw would not tell us their PUE, apparently because it was a
> near-empty facility and so it would have technically been a very large
> number. I thought it would be fair to account for marginal emissions
> assuming a projected higher occupancy rate and entered 2.9 for them,
> following a publication which gave that figure as an industry average.
> It's a new facility, but it's not likely that they achieved an
> industry-leading PUE since the climate in Dallas is not suitable for
> evaporative cooling or "free" cooling.
>
> > Ops runs a tight ship, and we're a relatively small footprint in our
> colos,
> > so we don't necessarily have the ability to drive purchasing decisions
> > based on scale alone.
>
> I think it's stretching the metaphor to call ops a "tight ship". We
> could switch off spare servers in codfw for a substantial power
> saving, in exchange for a ~10 minute penalty in failover time. But it
> would probably cost a week or two of engineer time to set up suitable
> automation for failover and periodic updates.
>
> Or we could have avoided a hot spare colo altogether, with smarter
> disaster recovery plans, as I argued at the time. My idea wasn't
> popular: Leslie Carr said she would not want to work for an
> organisation that adopted the relaxed DR restoration time targets that
> I advocated. And of course DR improvements were touted many times as
> an effective use of donor funds.
>
> Certainly you have a point about scale. Server hardware has extremely
> rudimentary power management -- for example when I checked a couple of
> years ago, none of our servers supported suspend-to-RAM, and idle
> power usage hardly differed from power usage at typical load. So the
> only option for reducing power usage of temporarily unused servers is
> powering off, and powering back on via out-of-band management. WMF
> presumably has little influence with motherboard suppliers. But we
> could at least include power management and efficiency as
> consideratons when we evaluate new hardware purchases.
>
> > At the time the report came out, we started talking to Lukas about how we
> > could improve our efforts at the WMF and across the movement, but we've
> had
> > limited bandwidth to move this forward in the Foundation (and some
> > transitions in our Finance and Operations leadership, who were acting as
> > executive sponsors). However, I think it's safe to say that we'd like to
> > continue to reduce our environmental impact, and look forward to the
> > findings of this effort.
>
> We could at least offset our datacentre power usage, that would be
> cheap and effective.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
>
> ___
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>



-- 
Katherine Maher

Wikimedia Foundation
149 New Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA 94105

+1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635
+1 (415) 712 4873
kma...@wikimedia.org
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Tim Starling]

On 31/03/16 02:55, Katherine Maher wrote:
> IIRC, we included clean energy consumption as a factor in
> evaluating in our RFC for our choice of a backup colo a few years back

Since I strongly support emissions reduction, on my own initiative I
did an analysis of expected CO2 emissions of each of the candidate
facilities during the selection process of the backup colo. That's
presumably what you're referring to.



My conclusion was that codfw (the winner) was one of the worst
candidates for CO2 emissions. However, the price they were offering
was so much lower than the other candidates that I could not make a
rational case for removing it as an option. You could buy high-quality
offsets for our total emissions for much less than the price difference.

However, this observation does require us to actually purchase said
offsets, if codfw is to be represented as an ethical choice, and that
was never done.

codfw would not tell us their PUE, apparently because it was a
near-empty facility and so it would have technically been a very large
number. I thought it would be fair to account for marginal emissions
assuming a projected higher occupancy rate and entered 2.9 for them,
following a publication which gave that figure as an industry average.
It's a new facility, but it's not likely that they achieved an
industry-leading PUE since the climate in Dallas is not suitable for
evaporative cooling or "free" cooling.

> Ops runs a tight ship, and we're a relatively small footprint in our colos,
> so we don't necessarily have the ability to drive purchasing decisions
> based on scale alone.

I think it's stretching the metaphor to call ops a "tight ship". We
could switch off spare servers in codfw for a substantial power
saving, in exchange for a ~10 minute penalty in failover time. But it
would probably cost a week or two of engineer time to set up suitable
automation for failover and periodic updates.

Or we could have avoided a hot spare colo altogether, with smarter
disaster recovery plans, as I argued at the time. My idea wasn't
popular: Leslie Carr said she would not want to work for an
organisation that adopted the relaxed DR restoration time targets that
I advocated. And of course DR improvements were touted many times as
an effective use of donor funds.

Certainly you have a point about scale. Server hardware has extremely
rudimentary power management -- for example when I checked a couple of
years ago, none of our servers supported suspend-to-RAM, and idle
power usage hardly differed from power usage at typical load. So the
only option for reducing power usage of temporarily unused servers is
powering off, and powering back on via out-of-band management. WMF
presumably has little influence with motherboard suppliers. But we
could at least include power management and efficiency as
consideratons when we evaluate new hardware purchases.

> At the time the report came out, we started talking to Lukas about how we
> could improve our efforts at the WMF and across the movement, but we've had
> limited bandwidth to move this forward in the Foundation (and some
> transitions in our Finance and Operations leadership, who were acting as
> executive sponsors). However, I think it's safe to say that we'd like to
> continue to reduce our environmental impact, and look forward to the
> findings of this effort.

We could at least offset our datacentre power usage, that would be
cheap and effective.

-- Tim Starling


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[Wikitech-l] MobileFrontend schema code (EventLogging) changes

[Baha Man]

Hello,

A heads up that the Reading Web team has been updating the MobileFrontend
schema code to use mw.eventLog rather than the custom Schema class [1].
This will mean that MobileFrontend won't support logging events anymore if
sendBeacon is not supported. We used to use localStorage to support
non-sendBeacon browsers.

Baha

[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T122504
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Scott MacLeod]

Thanks for sharing this Katherine, and All,

Best regards,
Scott



On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 8:55 AM, Katherine Maher 
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Thanks Lukas for bringing this back up. Since my name was mentioned, I'll
> share some context, but I'm copying my colleague Juliet Barbara who is best
> positioned to move this forward, as she is the current holder of our
> relationship with Greenpeace.
>
> The Comms, Finance, and COO teams met with Greenpeace in 2015 to discuss
> the ways the WMF could improve our overall environmental footprint. The
> Foundation already has some positive efforts underway formally and
> informally - IIRC, we included clean energy consumption as a factor in
> evaluating in our RFC for our choice of a backup colo a few years back, we
> are transparent (if not overly proactive) in disclosure of energy
> consumption, we have sensible policies around server efficiency and
> hardware replacement, and we have pushed for clean energy alternatives for
> our SF office consumption.
>
> We are less effective in areas such as advocacy and purchasing (e.g.,
> stating this is a priority for the movement, pushing our colos to provide
> clean sources/mixes). Some of these are questions of scale and efficiency -
> Ops runs a tight ship, and we're a relatively small footprint in our colos,
> so we don't necessarily have the ability to drive purchasing decisions
> based on scale alone.
>
> At the time the report came out, we started talking to Lukas about how we
> could improve our efforts at the WMF and across the movement, but we've had
> limited bandwidth to move this forward in the Foundation (and some
> transitions in our Finance and Operations leadership, who were acting as
> executive sponsors). However, I think it's safe to say that we'd like to
> continue to reduce our environmental impact, and look forward to the
> findings of this effort.
>
> Katherine
>
> On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 8:17 AM, Lukas Mezger 
> wrote:
>
> > Dear MZMcBride and Brion,
> >
> > Thank you for your comments! Let me quickly respond to a few points.
> >
> > – I have in fact already looked at previous conversations regarding the
> > environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement, but apparently they never
> > went anywhere. From my point of view, the topic leaves no room for
> > cynicism, looking at how easy it is to improve the current situation.
> >
> > – In fact I would be grateful if you could point me to any information
> > about the WMF's energy use that I can understand.
> >
> > – It is probably true that our absolute numbers might not be very large,
> > but I think we should still set an example by having the servers run on
> > renewable energy, by asking the board to make a strong renewable energy
> > commitment, and by adopting a green investment strategy for the Wikimedia
> > endowment.
> >
> > – I have also been in a conversation with Greenpeace USA, so I can try to
> > answer any further questions regarding their report if needed. The report
> > is actually based on detailed figures that the WMF (in person of Katherin
> > Maher) shared with Greenpeace.
> >
> > Thanks again,
> >
> > Lukas / Gnom
> >
> > 2016-03-30 16:30 GMT+02:00 Brion Vibber :
> >
> > > On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 12:27 AM, Lukas Mezger  >
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > Dear readers of the Wikitech mailing list,
> > > >
> > > > I am a member of the Wikipedia community and I have started a project
> > to
> > > > reduce the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement
> > > > . The main
> idea
> > is
> > > > to
> > > > use renewable energy for running the Wikimedia servers and the main
> > > reason
> > > > for this is that by doing so, Wikipedia can set a great example for
> > > > environmental responsibility in the entire internet sector.
> > > >
> > > > My project was started after Greenpeace USA published a report
> > > >  about
> the
> > > > energy consumption of the biggest sites on the Internet in 2015 and
> in
> > > > which Wikipedia, to my astonishment, performed poorly, receiving a
> "D"
> > > > score and only passing because of the Wikimedia Foundation's openness
> > > about
> > > > its energy consumption.
> > > >
> > >
> > > I don't see *anything* about energy consumption or environmental impact
> > in
> > > their statistics there.
> > >
> > > They do measure the relative balance of various energy sources, but
> that
> > > means little... We could probably be burning big lumps of coal and
> have a
> > > positive environmental impact if our relative energy consumption is
> much
> > > lower than competing sites might have been, but that isn't measured in
> > any
> > > way.
> > >
> > > They also measure some sort of "commitment" and "championship" of
> > specific
> > > energy sources, which sounds nice but doesn't in any way measure energy
> 

[Wikitech-l] 2016-03-30 Scrum of Scrums meeting notes

[Grace Gellerman]

Process update starting next week: * If you'd like something you say to
make it into the weekly Tech News, tag it with #technews

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Scrum_of_scrums/2016-03-30

= *2016-03-30* =

== Technology ==

=== Analytics ===
* '''*Blocking'''*: none
* '''*Blocked'''*: none
* '''*Updates*'''*:*
** Unique Devices data released, pageviews data officially released,
pagecounts-raw, pagecounts-all-sites deprecated,
dumps.wikimedia.org/analytics has details
** Request Breakdown reports from Hadoop are ready, they replace the old
Wikistats squid reports, some UI improvements coming shortly

   -

=== Architecture ===
* '''*Blocking'''*:
** ???
* '''*Blocked'''*:
** ???
* '''*Updates*'''*:*
** ???

=== Performance ===
* '''*Blocking'''*:
** ???
* '''*Blocked'''*:
** ???
* '''*Updates*'''*:*
** ???

=== Release Engineering ===
* '''*Blocking'''*:
** ???
* '''*Blocked'''*:
** ???
* '''*Updates*'''*:*
** scap 3.1 will be in production on Tuesday April 5th, now with large
binary support! (via git-fat (what trebuchet used for feature parity))
** Code freeze week of April 18th (DC switchover)

=== Research ===
* '''*Blocking'''*:
** none
* '''*Blocked'''*:
** none
* '''*Updates*'''*:*
** Deployed ORES swagger & v2 paths.  Can now ask for feature lists and do
feature injection when scoring.  Announcement coming.

=== Security ===
* '''*Blocking'''*:
** ???
* '''*Blocked'''*:
** ???
* '''*Updates*'''*:*
** ???

=== Services ===
* '''*Blocking'''*:
** /
* '''*Blocked'''*:
** /
* '''*Updates*'''*:*
** RESTBase
*** Redirects for File: titles active only for the native moblie apps
*** general availability blocked on VE -
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T130757
*** bumped s-maxage for purged content to 1 week
** deployed the change-propagation service (via scap3)
** working on docs - https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation/Services

=== Technical Operations ===
* '''*Blocking'''*:
** noone
* '''*Blocked'''*:
** by noone
* '''*Updates*'''*:*
** changeprop is live, worked with Marko from Services team
** working on ORES and scap3 integration with Amir

== Product ==
=== Community Tech ===
* '''*Blocking'''*:
** ???
* '''*Blocked'''*:
** ???
* '''*Updates*'''*:*
** ???

=== Discovery ===
* '''*Blocking'''*:
** Not that we are aware of
* '''*Blocked'''*:
** Quick Surveys:Not known to be blocked on anyone in SoS, but we might ask
for help
** Existing: ops https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T127014 and security
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T127014
* '''*Updates*'''*:*
** We are experimenting publishing weekly status updates:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/Status_updates

=== Editing ===
 Collaboration 
* '''Blocking''':
** External store work
* '''Blocked''':
* '''Updates''':
** Working on support for Flow notifications being properly hidden on
moderation
** Work on the Echo special page

 Language 
* '''*Blocking'''*:
** None
* '''*Blocked'''*:
** None
* '''*Updates*'''*:*
** Work on Parallel Corpora dump (will) need some time from Ops (Ariel),
See: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T127793

 Multimedia 
* '''*Blocking'''*:
** ???
* '''*Blocked'''*:
** ???
* '''*Updates*'''*:*
** ???

 Parsing 

[ Subbu: I am feeling under the weather and will probably be napping /
resting and won't show up for this SoS .. Scott might show up if he sees
his email in time, but I've updated the etherpad in any case ]

* '''*Blocking'''*:
** None
* '''*Blocked'''*:
** None
* '''*Updates*'''*:*
** VE team and CX teams already knows about the tasks I've filed against
them for setting user-agent headers, accept headers. I've filed a ticket
against Flow as well to set user-agent header in your request. Not urgent,
but good to get it done sooner than later.
** Work ongoing to move data-mw out from an inlined attribute .. CX, VE,
Flow: please start thinking about what this means and how you will process
data-mw and html from separate api requests. The Parsoid and RESTBase side
work will be done in 2-3 weeks time (which includes performance evaluation
and impact of supporting old versions, etc.). We'll not turn this on in
production (3-4 weeks away at least) without consulting with all affected
clients, but the accept: header is your way of getting the old version till
you are ready to switch, but we prefer that the switch not be delayed
inordinately. I've already filed tickets against these projects, but this
is just a heads up.

 VisualEditor 
* '''*Blocking'''*:
** ???
* '''*Blocked'''*:
** ???
* '''*Updates*'''*:*
** ???

=== Fundraising Tech ===
* '''*Blocking'''*:
** None
* '''*Blocked'''*:
** None
* '''*Updates*'''*:*
** More DonationInterface refactoring
** Investigating ActiveMQ replacement options
** More work towards mass (reversible) contact de-duping in CiviCRM
** Scoping work to update PayPal integration


=== Reading ===

 Android 
* '''*Updates*'''*:*
** Content Service is rolling out successfully. (25% of Android production
app as of Monday evening)

 

[Wikitech-l] Reminder: CREDIT showcase Wednesday, 6-April-2016

[Adam Baso]

Hello world -

Reminder: the next CREDIT showcase will be 6-April-2016 at 1800 UTC (1100
SF).

Looking forward to your demos! Please see the following links for
information and to add your demo :)

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/CREDIT_showcase

https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/CREDIT

-Adam
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[Wikitech-l] [IEG] Sharing of my Individual Engagement Grant application, please common on it

[DJAKN]

Hello all,


I'm prepared to participate in IEG and has an idea closely linked to the 
Accuracy Review Project raised by James Salsman. Here is a brief summary of my 
proposal:
 
Out-of-date information and references are common in Wikipedia entries, 
especially in Chinese Wikipedia. Therefore, I would like to evaluate some 
existed solutions of identifying those out-of-date contents, and create a new 
bot to identify the information based on the results of testing. More detailed 
tests will be arranged after that by selected entries from Wikipedia and the 
cases that we compile.


And here is the URL of the project the proposal:


https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Searching_for_out-of-date_information_in_wikipedias#Community_notification


Because there is already relative discussion in this mailing list, please 
comment on the proposal in the discussion board of it at:


https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:IdeaLab/Searching_for_out-of-date_information_in_wikipedias


Li Linxuan
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Katherine Maher]

Hi all,

Thanks Lukas for bringing this back up. Since my name was mentioned, I'll
share some context, but I'm copying my colleague Juliet Barbara who is best
positioned to move this forward, as she is the current holder of our
relationship with Greenpeace.

The Comms, Finance, and COO teams met with Greenpeace in 2015 to discuss
the ways the WMF could improve our overall environmental footprint. The
Foundation already has some positive efforts underway formally and
informally - IIRC, we included clean energy consumption as a factor in
evaluating in our RFC for our choice of a backup colo a few years back, we
are transparent (if not overly proactive) in disclosure of energy
consumption, we have sensible policies around server efficiency and
hardware replacement, and we have pushed for clean energy alternatives for
our SF office consumption.

We are less effective in areas such as advocacy and purchasing (e.g.,
stating this is a priority for the movement, pushing our colos to provide
clean sources/mixes). Some of these are questions of scale and efficiency -
Ops runs a tight ship, and we're a relatively small footprint in our colos,
so we don't necessarily have the ability to drive purchasing decisions
based on scale alone.

At the time the report came out, we started talking to Lukas about how we
could improve our efforts at the WMF and across the movement, but we've had
limited bandwidth to move this forward in the Foundation (and some
transitions in our Finance and Operations leadership, who were acting as
executive sponsors). However, I think it's safe to say that we'd like to
continue to reduce our environmental impact, and look forward to the
findings of this effort.

Katherine

On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 8:17 AM, Lukas Mezger 
wrote:

> Dear MZMcBride and Brion,
>
> Thank you for your comments! Let me quickly respond to a few points.
>
> – I have in fact already looked at previous conversations regarding the
> environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement, but apparently they never
> went anywhere. From my point of view, the topic leaves no room for
> cynicism, looking at how easy it is to improve the current situation.
>
> – In fact I would be grateful if you could point me to any information
> about the WMF's energy use that I can understand.
>
> – It is probably true that our absolute numbers might not be very large,
> but I think we should still set an example by having the servers run on
> renewable energy, by asking the board to make a strong renewable energy
> commitment, and by adopting a green investment strategy for the Wikimedia
> endowment.
>
> – I have also been in a conversation with Greenpeace USA, so I can try to
> answer any further questions regarding their report if needed. The report
> is actually based on detailed figures that the WMF (in person of Katherin
> Maher) shared with Greenpeace.
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Lukas / Gnom
>
> 2016-03-30 16:30 GMT+02:00 Brion Vibber :
>
> > On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 12:27 AM, Lukas Mezger 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Dear readers of the Wikitech mailing list,
> > >
> > > I am a member of the Wikipedia community and I have started a project
> to
> > > reduce the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement
> > > . The main idea
> is
> > > to
> > > use renewable energy for running the Wikimedia servers and the main
> > reason
> > > for this is that by doing so, Wikipedia can set a great example for
> > > environmental responsibility in the entire internet sector.
> > >
> > > My project was started after Greenpeace USA published a report
> > >  about the
> > > energy consumption of the biggest sites on the Internet in 2015 and in
> > > which Wikipedia, to my astonishment, performed poorly, receiving a "D"
> > > score and only passing because of the Wikimedia Foundation's openness
> > about
> > > its energy consumption.
> > >
> >
> > I don't see *anything* about energy consumption or environmental impact
> in
> > their statistics there.
> >
> > They do measure the relative balance of various energy sources, but that
> > means little... We could probably be burning big lumps of coal and have a
> > positive environmental impact if our relative energy consumption is much
> > lower than competing sites might have been, but that isn't measured in
> any
> > way.
> >
> > They also measure some sort of "commitment" and "championship" of
> specific
> > energy sources, which sounds nice but doesn't in any way measure energy
> > usage or environmental impact.
> >
> >
> > >
> > > I would very much like to change that and set up a page called
> > > "Environmental
> > > impact " on
> Meta.
> > I
> > > have already discussed the issue with a few people both from the
> > Wikimedia
> > > Foundation's management and from the Wikimedia 

Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Lukas Mezger]

Dear MZMcBride and Brion,

Thank you for your comments! Let me quickly respond to a few points.

– I have in fact already looked at previous conversations regarding the
environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement, but apparently they never
went anywhere. From my point of view, the topic leaves no room for
cynicism, looking at how easy it is to improve the current situation.

– In fact I would be grateful if you could point me to any information
about the WMF's energy use that I can understand.

– It is probably true that our absolute numbers might not be very large,
but I think we should still set an example by having the servers run on
renewable energy, by asking the board to make a strong renewable energy
commitment, and by adopting a green investment strategy for the Wikimedia
endowment.

– I have also been in a conversation with Greenpeace USA, so I can try to
answer any further questions regarding their report if needed. The report
is actually based on detailed figures that the WMF (in person of Katherin
Maher) shared with Greenpeace.

Thanks again,

Lukas / Gnom

2016-03-30 16:30 GMT+02:00 Brion Vibber :

> On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 12:27 AM, Lukas Mezger 
> wrote:
>
> > Dear readers of the Wikitech mailing list,
> >
> > I am a member of the Wikipedia community and I have started a project to
> > reduce the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement
> > . The main idea is
> > to
> > use renewable energy for running the Wikimedia servers and the main
> reason
> > for this is that by doing so, Wikipedia can set a great example for
> > environmental responsibility in the entire internet sector.
> >
> > My project was started after Greenpeace USA published a report
> >  about the
> > energy consumption of the biggest sites on the Internet in 2015 and in
> > which Wikipedia, to my astonishment, performed poorly, receiving a "D"
> > score and only passing because of the Wikimedia Foundation's openness
> about
> > its energy consumption.
> >
>
> I don't see *anything* about energy consumption or environmental impact in
> their statistics there.
>
> They do measure the relative balance of various energy sources, but that
> means little... We could probably be burning big lumps of coal and have a
> positive environmental impact if our relative energy consumption is much
> lower than competing sites might have been, but that isn't measured in any
> way.
>
> They also measure some sort of "commitment" and "championship" of specific
> energy sources, which sounds nice but doesn't in any way measure energy
> usage or environmental impact.
>
>
> >
> > I would very much like to change that and set up a page called
> > "Environmental
> > impact " on Meta.
> I
> > have already discussed the issue with a few people both from the
> Wikimedia
> > Foundation's management and from the Wikimedia community and have
> received
> > positive responses.
> >
>
> Neat!
>
> -- brion
>
>
> >
> > In order to further advance the project, I would like to learn more about
> > how much energy Wikipedia's servers use. As far as I can tell, these
> > figures are not public, but I believe they could very well be.
> >
> > Also, I am interested to learn how changing a server site's energy
> sources
> > can be carried out on the operations side since the United States energy
> > sector hasn't been completely deregulated yet.
> >
> > So, thank you very much for any comments! Maybe there also is an even
> > better forum to discuss these questions?
> >
> > Finally, if you would like to support my project, please consider adding
> > your name to this list
> >  >.
> > Thank you.
> > Kind regards,
> >
> > Lukas Mezger / User:Gnom 
> > ___
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> > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Brion Vibber]

On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 12:27 AM, Lukas Mezger 
wrote:

> Dear readers of the Wikitech mailing list,
>
> I am a member of the Wikipedia community and I have started a project to
> reduce the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement
> . The main idea is
> to
> use renewable energy for running the Wikimedia servers and the main reason
> for this is that by doing so, Wikipedia can set a great example for
> environmental responsibility in the entire internet sector.
>
> My project was started after Greenpeace USA published a report
>  about the
> energy consumption of the biggest sites on the Internet in 2015 and in
> which Wikipedia, to my astonishment, performed poorly, receiving a "D"
> score and only passing because of the Wikimedia Foundation's openness about
> its energy consumption.
>

I don't see *anything* about energy consumption or environmental impact in
their statistics there.

They do measure the relative balance of various energy sources, but that
means little... We could probably be burning big lumps of coal and have a
positive environmental impact if our relative energy consumption is much
lower than competing sites might have been, but that isn't measured in any
way.

They also measure some sort of "commitment" and "championship" of specific
energy sources, which sounds nice but doesn't in any way measure energy
usage or environmental impact.


>
> I would very much like to change that and set up a page called
> "Environmental
> impact " on Meta. I
> have already discussed the issue with a few people both from the Wikimedia
> Foundation's management and from the Wikimedia community and have received
> positive responses.
>

Neat!

-- brion


>
> In order to further advance the project, I would like to learn more about
> how much energy Wikipedia's servers use. As far as I can tell, these
> figures are not public, but I believe they could very well be.
>
> Also, I am interested to learn how changing a server site's energy sources
> can be carried out on the operations side since the United States energy
> sector hasn't been completely deregulated yet.
>
> So, thank you very much for any comments! Maybe there also is an even
> better forum to discuss these questions?
>
> Finally, if you would like to support my project, please consider adding
> your name to this list
> .
> Thank you.
> Kind regards,
>
> Lukas Mezger / User:Gnom 
> ___
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[MZMcBride]

Lukas Mezger wrote:
>I am a member of the Wikipedia community and I have started a project to
>reduce the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement
>. The main idea is
>to use renewable energy for running the Wikimedia servers and the main
>reason for this is that by doing so, Wikipedia can set a great example
>for environmental responsibility in the entire internet sector.

This issue has been discussed previously. I would recommend trawling
through the mailing list archives to find older discussions.

A somewhat cynical reply from May 2009:
.
I can't find the rest of that thread off-hand, but surely it's somewhere.

>In order to further advance the project, I would like to learn more about
>how much energy Wikipedia's servers use. As far as I can tell, these
>figures are not public, but I believe they could very well be.

There's been a greater push for transparency in the past few months. I
think what you want here from the Wikimedia operations team is a full
index of the particular hardware that's in use in the various data
centers. That would allow you or others to take this list of hardware and
research its energy use. Most of the hardware is off-the-shelf from Dell
and other companies, I believe, so information about its specifications,
including energy use, is likely already public.

MZMcBride



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[Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Lukas Mezger]

Dear readers of the Wikitech mailing list,

I am a member of the Wikipedia community and I have started a project to
reduce the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement
. The main idea is to
use renewable energy for running the Wikimedia servers and the main reason
for this is that by doing so, Wikipedia can set a great example for
environmental responsibility in the entire internet sector.

My project was started after Greenpeace USA published a report
 about the
energy consumption of the biggest sites on the Internet in 2015 and in
which Wikipedia, to my astonishment, performed poorly, receiving a "D"
score and only passing because of the Wikimedia Foundation's openness about
its energy consumption.

I would very much like to change that and set up a page called "Environmental
impact " on Meta. I
have already discussed the issue with a few people both from the Wikimedia
Foundation's management and from the Wikimedia community and have received
positive responses.

In order to further advance the project, I would like to learn more about
how much energy Wikipedia's servers use. As far as I can tell, these
figures are not public, but I believe they could very well be.

Also, I am interested to learn how changing a server site's energy sources
can be carried out on the operations side since the United States energy
sector hasn't been completely deregulated yet.

So, thank you very much for any comments! Maybe there also is an even
better forum to discuss these questions?

Finally, if you would like to support my project, please consider adding
your name to this list
.
Thank you.
Kind regards,

Lukas Mezger / User:Gnom 
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