Planning for Wikivoyage's migration into the WMF fold built up steam this week following a statement by WMF Deputy Director Erik Möller about what the technical side of the migration will involve. Wikivoyage, which split from sister site Wikitravel in 2006 (see previous Signpost coverage), is hoping to migrate its own not-inconsiderable user base to Wikimedia, as well as much of its content, presenting novel challenges for Wikimedia developers
Firstly, there is the physical creation of a new "wikifamily" populated with at least six language-specific wikis (one each in German, Italian, English, French, Dutch and Swedish) to consider. As long as a new logo is in place to complement the recently chosen name (Wikivoyage), that part of the migration is unlikely to cause many difficulties per se. Once the wikis are established, developers will use a process tested on a Wikimedia Labs instance to import content from Wikivoyage whilst ensuring that all legal requirements are met.
User migration is likely to be far more difficult, and yet, given the need to preserve legal attribution, just as necessary. By default, imported content retains its history, replete with links to the user pages of the editors mentioned therein. If not adjusted properly, this could lead to the contributions of two different users being merged, or the contributions of the same user being split.
Also likely to be tricky is getting Wikivoyage's full array of extensions (of which a dozen are tagged as high priority) reviewed for performance, functionality and security, and then deploying them to Wikimedia's newest wikis, a process which may go on for weeks after content and users have migrated, Möller suggested. Only then will original Wikitravel users find out if the WMF can provide them with a superior level of technical support to the for-profit they left behind earlier this year.
Interested users can track Wikivoyage-import-related bugs via a special tracking bug. The aforementioned migration of content and users is planned for the coming fortnight.
Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for several weeks.
Planning for Wikivoyage's migration into the WMF fold built up steam this week following a statement by WMF Deputy Director Erik Möller about what the technical side of the migration will involve. Wikivoyage, which split from sister site Wikitravel in 2006 (see previous Signpost coverage), is hoping to migrate its own not-inconsiderable user base to Wikimedia, as well as much of its content, presenting novel challenges for Wikimedia developers
Firstly, there is the physical creation of a new "wikifamily" populated with at least six language-specific wikis (one each in German, Italian, English, French, Dutch and Swedish) to consider. As long as a new logo is in place to complement the recently chosen name (Wikivoyage), that part of the migration is unlikely to cause many difficulties per se. Once the wikis are established, developers will use a process tested on a Wikimedia Labs instance to import content from Wikivoyage whilst ensuring that all legal requirements are met.
User migration is likely to be far more difficult, and yet, given the need to preserve legal attribution, just as necessary. By default, imported content retains its history, replete with links to the user pages of the editors mentioned therein. If not adjusted properly, this could lead to the contributions of two different users being merged, or the contributions of the same user being split.
Also likely to be tricky is getting Wikivoyage's full array of extensions (of which a dozen are tagged as high priority) reviewed for performance, functionality and security, and then deploying them to Wikimedia's newest wikis, a process which may go on for weeks after content and users have migrated, Möller suggested. Only then will original Wikitravel users find out if the WMF can provide them with a superior level of technical support to the for-profit they left behind earlier this year.
Interested users can track Wikivoyage-import-related bugs via a special tracking bug. The aforementioned migration of content and users is planned for the coming fortnight.
Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for several weeks.
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