Hello everyone, The aforementioned Diff blog post can be found here: https://diff.wikimedia.org/2025/02/24/sunset-of-wikimedia-recommendation-api/
Regards, On Fri, Jan 10, 2025 at 5:53 PM Alexandros Kosiaris <akosia...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > Hi everyone, > Summary > > After a long series of consultations with various teams in the Wikimedia > Foundation, I find myself happy to inform you of the sunset of an API from > the current Wikimedia offerings. > > That would be *recommendation-api*, the one powering > *https://<project_domain>/api/rest_v1/#/Recommendation* family of > endpoints, e.g. https://commons.wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/#/ or > https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/#/Recommendation. > > The codebase of that API resides in > *https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/mediawiki/services/recommendation-api > <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/mediawiki/services/recommendation-api>*. > > The removal date will be 2025-03-31. > > There is some more information below as to why, what and how as well as an > estimation of the impact this is expected to have (minimal to zero). It is > also my intention to proceed with a diff <https://diff.wikimedia.org/> post > explaining our process in more detail. > Intro > > Recommendation-api was being used solely by the Wikipedia official Android > application. Given that recently > <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T373611>, the Android Wikipedia > Official application has moved away from using this API, the SRE team > wanted to remove this service from production to focus on more impactful > services. The problem was ensuring that we turn off this API responsibly so > that we do not have a significant impact on users who have not yet upgraded > their apps and do not waste SRE effort on supporting a service we are > moving away from, for more than we need to. A complication was that the > service wasn't anymore owned by anyone, meaning maintenance (Node.js and > Operating System upgrades) had to be carried out by people that were not > acquainted at all with the code base. > Process > > To achieve the above goals, a process was jump started by a group of > Principal Engineers in the Foundation (Jon Robson, Moriel Schottlender and > yours truly) collecting data and feedback regarding the remaining usage of > the API as well as the estimated amount of effort that would be needed to > continue maintaining the service vs sunsetting it. Since October, we spoke > to various stakeholders in the Foundation to figure out the best possible > plan, going through a variety of possible paths. We ended up recommending > that the service be sunset at 2025-03-31, a recommendation that was > accepted. > Impact > > The service is only accessed by users of the Wikipedia Android > application. Recent versions of it no longer rely on it and there will be > zero (0) impact on users of these. But users with application versions > older than 6 months by the time of removal (2025-03-31), will see reduced > functionality in the form of the *Suggested Edits* part of the > application no longer functioning. The rest of the application will > continue to function as usual. We encourage users of versions older than > *r/2.7.50504-r-2024-10-01 > <https://github.com/wikimedia/apps-android-wikipedia/releases/tag/r%2F2.7.50504-r-2024-10-01>* > to > update. > > We wanted to make sure we don't break 3rd party users without giving them > a heads up. Going through access logs and metrics, we identified no valid > 3rd party users. Furthermore, we intend to review traffic/errors to that > API 1 month past the cutoff date and evaluate the effectiveness of our > solution. > Note > > This API should not be confused with another one, also named > recommendation-api > <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/research/recommendation-api/>, > and exposed by LiftWing, under the > https://api.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lift_Wing_API/Reference/Get_content_translation_recommendation > endpoint. > The latter is powered by a different codebase and, conflicting naming > aside, has no other relation to the former or this sunsetting. > > Regards, > > -- > Alexandros Kosiaris > Principal Site Reliability Engineer > Wikimedia Foundation > -- Alexandros Kosiaris Principal Site Reliability Engineer Wikimedia Foundation
_______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/
