Future of Toolserver: Difference between revisions

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Toolserver

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The future of Toolserver is currently very uncertain; as of September 2012, it's sure that the service will be discontinued in 2014 at the latest. Feedback is needed to ensure Wikimedia projects will keep having Toolserver vital services in the future; some Toolserver users added notices to their web tools to inform all wikimedians.

Overview

The situation was notified by DaB. (TS system administrator):

It is not possible for me to run the toolserver for
another year with the current hardware – you all know why. For this reason I will request a change of the budget at the general meeting at November, so there will be a vote about. If this vote should fail (and we get no money for new hardware), I am going to retire from my job as root at 30. December 2012.

Erik (WMF) clarified that it's WMF's decision, on its end, to discontinue services to Toolserver at some point:

However, for our part, we will not continue to
support the current arrangement (DB replication, hosting in our data-center, etc.) indefinitely.
The timeline we've discussed with Wikimedia Germany is roughly as follows:

Wind down new account creation on toolserver by Q2 of 2013 calendar year

Decommission toolserver by December 2013

Pavel (WMDE CEO) ensured:

Wikimedia Deutschland will make all necessary investments to keep the
Toolserver up and running, and we will use the next year to discuss together with the Toolserver users and community a way to transition into WikiLabs. And I can only urge you all to take active part in the design and development of Wikilabs, so that it will provide for your needs.

Delphine (WMDE treasurer) asked a document to explain #Why Toolserver is important and what #Toolserver needs:

Hi Andre,
> I think we should help DaB to make a case why toolserver is important. We
> should list the projects depending on toolserver and how, and all the other
> things that are important. [...]
> With a document like that we can make a stronger case for WMDE to reserve
> budget, or have them apply for a separate grant to the foundation.
Thanks for this constructive approach. I believe this would be indeed the best way to go forward on this issue and would help the General Assembly of Wikimedia Deutschland make the right decision about this.

Why Toolserver is important

List tools and services you find most important, with a short explanation. Most of them should have a page on tswiki at some point.

Usage stats (to be checked and improved)
- An average of over a thousand database queries per second, each providing crucial info to wikimedians.
- 3,4 millions hits per day.
- Unknown number of web tools users.
- An average of 40 logged in shell users in any moment.
Wiki Loves Monuments: All the tooling around this really need toolserver.
Commons: commons has a lot of toolserver tools more or less integrated in the interface, and there are supporttools running.
GLAM: a lot of glam-related work is done on toolservers
Small tools for wiki support: all the bots archiving talkpages, create administrative pages automatically etc, etc...
Steward support: there are a lot of tools (also used generally) that really make cross-wiki abuse detection and other stewardwork much easier. (SWMT support too relies on toolserver)
Research projects: use ToolServer to retrieve data (SQL queries and APIs ^[1])
Wikipedia analysis applications (e.g.: Manypedia^[2] and WikiTrip^[3])
Supporting enthusiastic users to run their own analysis queries and tasks
ScanCat is used in Spanish Offline Wikimedia project by Wikimedia Venezuela Chapter
It allowed using Proprietary Software (sometimes there is no open source software or it is suffering from lots of drawbacks)
MANY (if not all) Wikisources strongly rely on bots running from toolservers for its core activities and for statistics.
fiwiki: fiwiki has of toolserver tools more or less integrated in the interface, and there are supporttools running.
cs wikis have replacements for special pages which have been turned off.
Mapping on wikipedias when clicking on geographical co-ordinates: GeoTemplates often use GeoHack tools, because some cartographic viewers and GeoTemplates don't allow #expr such as 0.3124*{scale}
Connectivity analysis tools are used by many chapters. Several years of experience show that the tool allows improving connectivity of wikipedia articles, while interrupts in toolserver operation lead to all basic connectivity indicators becoming worse.
Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations is dependent upon Contribution Surveyor to complete its work.

Toolserver needs

See also (German) w:de:User:DaB./MV-TS-Antrag

Replacements
New hardware
- ...
- ...
Other
- WMF not switching it off?
- ...

Needs for a Toolserver replacement

Some tools already live outside Toolserver; Erik (WMF) asked Toolserver users to list on Toolserver features wanted in Tool Labs the requirements for their services to continue on the new service that he wants to replace Toolserver, known as Tool Labs (sub-project of Wikimedia Labs) and currently not designed yet.

Notes

[1] ttp://gizmodo.com/5942168/the-wikipedia-gender-divide-visualized

[2] ttp://manypedia.com

[3] ttp://sonetlab.fbk.eu/wikitrip

[1]

[2]

[3]

@@ Line 60: / Line 60: @@
 * Mapping on wikipedias when clicking on geographical co-ordinates: GeoTemplates often use GeoHack tools, because some cartographic viewers and GeoTemplates don't allow #expr such as 0.3124*{scale}
 * [http://toolserver.org/~lvova/ Connectivity analysis tools] are used by many chapters. Several years of experience show that the tool allows improving connectivity of wikipedia articles, while interrupts in toolserver operation lead to all basic connectivity indicators becoming worse.
+* [[:en:Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations|Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations]] is dependent upon [https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/Contribution_Surveyor Contribution Surveyor] to complete its work.
 ==Toolserver needs==