Hmmm. I didn't realize WMF was also running a superset instance internally. That changes my outlook. To give some background, I've spent many many years in The Real World running engineering infrastructure. So I'm very sensitive to the costs of supporting one-off functionality which doesn't get much use. That's the hat I was wearing when I wrote "I agree that if very few people are using it, continuing support is probably a poor use of limited resources"
But, putting on my "Just a volunteer trying to get some work done in support of wikipedia" hat, I do have to admit to a certain amount of frustration. I see services like grafina (and now I see that superset fits in the same bucket) which are in production use in WMF, yet are either unavailable (grafina) or unsupported and soon to be unavailable (superset) to the volunteer community. This makes me sad. Most of the cost of putting up a new service is learning how it works and keeping up with upgrades and ongoing issues. Once you've invested the resources to do that, the incremental cost of putting up another instance of the same service for other groups to use is substantially lower. I get why a particular team doesn't want to provide this service; it's not in their budget, so any effort they expend supporting it is something that factors into their year-end evaluation. BTDT. From both sides of the table. Totally get it. But it's still frustrating because it means the volunteer community either goes without or spends a lot of time duplicating services which would be more efficiently provided as a centralized facility. > On Feb 12, 2026, at 11:16 AM, Andrew Otto via Wikitech-l > <[email protected]> wrote: > > I think this is a common problem at WMF. > > WMF's Data Platform Engineering team runs an internal non-public instance of > superset > <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_Platform/Systems/Superset>. We > also run internal non-public MariaDB replicas, as well as a large data lake > <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_Platform/Data_Lake>, both of which > our superset can access. > > WMF has a lot of data engineering related expertise, but this expertise is > rarely shared between internally focused teams and Cloud Services. WMF > product managers can sometimes get a handle on what platform improvements are > needed to support WMF building product features and measuring their success. > I've not seen the same kind of data engineering platform product management > applied to community needs. > > Some engineers on the DPE team understand the value that things like Cloud > Replicas and Quarry and Superset provide, and we'd love to help, but we can't > if it isn't priortiezd. > > Recently, Wishlist - Create analytical database replicas for WMF wikis > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist/W509> was created. I > suspect that the folks interested in that would also be interested in > dashboarding tools that could make query it. (See also T215858 Plan a > replacement for wiki replicas that is better suited to typical OLAP use cases > than the MediaWiki OLTP schema <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T215858>). > > All that is to say: I don't know how to make progress on stuff like this, but > if the technical community can organize and ask hard enough (via the > Wishlist?), perhaps one day something could happen? > > :) > > - Andrew Otto > Engineer - WMF Data Platform Engineering > > > > > On Thu, Feb 12, 2026 at 10:49 AM Roy Smith via Wikitech-l > <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > wrote: >> What other services exist for people to build graphical dashboards? At one >> point I was using grafana-labs.wikimedia.org >> <http://grafana-labs.wikimedia.org/> for some performance monitoring >> dashboards, but that is no longer available. >> >> I remember trying superset when it was first released, and came to the >> conclusion that compared to quarry, it was just something new and different >> but didn't offer my any improved functionality so I just kept on using >> quarry. I guess everybody else did the same, and I agree that if very few >> people are using it, continuing support is probably a poor use of limited >> resources. Still, it would be nice to have something which made it easy to >> build simple graphing dashboards. >> >>> On Feb 12, 2026, at 10:41 AM, Jinoy Tom Jacob via Wikitech-l >>> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> >>> wrote: >>> >>> This is quite an interesting project for me, as I started using Superset >>> during its early days though not very frequently. One of the things that >>> immediately attracted me was the ability to create dashboards that was >>> something I really enjoyed exploring and experimenting with visualising >>> data. >>> >>> I noticed that some of the dashboards I had created in the early stages >>> were later removed, possibly due to updates or changes in the service but I >>> still remember it was good. >>> >>> Hope to see this idea continue in some way whether through community >>> support or future tools :) >>> >>> Best Regards, >>> Jinoy >>> [[User:Gnoeee]] >>> >>> Please don’t print this e-mail unless you really need to. >>> Every 3000 sheets consume a tree. Conserve Trees for a better tomorrow! >>> >>> >>> On Thu, 12 Feb 2026 at 20:34, Andrew Bogott via Wikitech-l >>> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> >>> wrote: >>>> Summary: >>>> >>>> The Cloud Services implementation of Superset >>>> (https://superset.wmcloud.org <https://superset.wmcloud.org/>) is >>>> currently unsupported by WMF staff. We would welcome a volunteer stepping >>>> up to maintain it, but without a new home the service will be shut down at >>>> the end of March. >>>> >>>> If you would like to take on ownership of this service, please reach out >>>> to WMCS staff or comment on the phabricator task[1]. The day-to-day >>>> maintenance load is minimal, but someone will need to keep track up >>>> updates, security concerns and a potential future of defense against AI >>>> scraping. >>>> >>>> Background: >>>> >>>> There has always been demand from researchers and volunteers to run >>>> one-off queries against Wikimedia datasets. Quarry.wmcloud.org was built >>>> and launched by the WMF more than 10 years ago. Originally a one-person >>>> skunkworks project, it quickly caught on in popularity as one of the most >>>> trafficked services run by Wikimedia Cloud Services. >>>> >>>> A few years ago, we launched superset.wmcloud.org >>>> <http://superset.wmcloud.org/>[0] as an intended Quarry replacement. We >>>> soon learned that despite being a less polished, home-made tool, Quarry >>>> provides many features that Superset does not, and most users resisted >>>> migration away from it. Superset has only a handful of active users. >>>> >>>> At this point, Superset is essentially unsupported by WMF staff. As part >>>> of ongoing efforts to improve our support for Toolforge and other more >>>> popular services we will be either shutting it off or transferring >>>> ownership of Superset in a few weeks[1]. >>>> >>>> [0] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T169452 >>>> [1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T416373 >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Wikitech-l mailing list -- [email protected] >>>> <mailto:[email protected]> >>>> To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] >>>> <mailto:[email protected]> >>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/ >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Wikitech-l mailing list -- [email protected] >>> <mailto:[email protected]> >>> To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] >>> <mailto:[email protected]> >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/ >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikitech-l mailing list -- [email protected] >> <mailto:[email protected]> >> To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] >> <mailto:[email protected]> >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/ > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/
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