TL;DR: The legacy Mobile Content Service is going away in July 2023. Please switch to Parsoid or another API before then to ensure service continuity.
Hello World,
I'm writing about a service decommission we hope to complete mid-July 2023. The service to be decommissioned is the legacy Mobile Content Service ("MCS"), which is maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation's Content Transform Team. We will be marking this service as deprecated soon.
We hope that with this notice, people will have ample time to update their systems for use of other endpoints such as Parsoid [1] (n.b., MCS uses Parsoid HTML).
The MCS endpoints are the ones with the relative URL path pattern /page/mobile-sections* on the Wikipedias. For examples of the URLs see the "Mobile" section on the online Swagger (OpenAPI) specification documentation with matching URLs here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/#/Mobile
== History ==
The Mobile Content Service ("MCS") is the historical aggregate service that originally provided support for the article reading experience on the Wikipedia for Android native app, as well as some other experiences. We have noticed that there are other users of the service. We are not able to determine all of the users, as it's hard to tell with confidence from the web logs.
The Wikimedia Foundation had already transitioned the Wikipedia for Android and iOS apps to the newer Page Content Service ("PCS") several years ago. PCS has some similarities with MCS in terms of its mobility focus, but it also has different request-response signatures in practice. PCS, as with MCS, is intended to primarily satisfy Wikimedia Foundation-maintained user experiences only, and so this is classified with the "unstable" moniker.
== Looking ahead ==
Generally, as noted in the lead, we recommend that folks who use MCS (or PCS, for that matter) switch over to Parsoid for accessing Wikipedia article content programmatically for the most predictable service.
The HTML produced by Parsoid has a versioned specification [2] and because Parsoid is accessed regularly by a number of components across the globe tends to have fairly well cached responses. However, please note that Parsoid may be subject to stricter rate limits that can apply under certain traffic patterns.
At this point, I do also want to note that in order to keep up with contemporary HTML standards, particularly those favoring accessibility and machine readability enhancements, Parsoid HTML will undergo change as we further converge parsing stacks [3]. Generally, you should expect iteration on the Parsoid HTML spec, and of course as you may have come to appreciate that the shape of HTML in practice can vary nontrivially wiki-by-wiki as practices across wikis vary.
You may also want to consider Wikimedia Enterprise API options, which range from no cost to higher volume access paid options.
== Forking okay, but not recommended ==
Because MCS acts as a service aggregate and makes multiple backend API calls, caveats can apply for those subresources - possibility of API changes, deprecation, and the like. We do not recommend a plain fork of MCS code because of the subresource fetch behavior. This said, of course you are welcome to fork in a way compatible with MCS's license.
== Help spread the word ==
Although we are aware of the top two remaining consumers of MCS, we also are not sure who else is accessing MCS and anticipate that some downstream tech may break when MCS is turned off. As we are cross-posting this message, we hope most people who have come to rely upon MCS will see this message. Please feel free to forward this message to contacts if you know they are using MCS.
== Help ==
Although we intend to decommission MCS in July 2023, we would like to share resources if you need some help. We plan to hold office hours in case you would like to meet with us to discuss this or other Content Transform Team matters. We will host these events on Google Meet. We will provide notice of these office hours on the wikitech-l mailing list in the coming weeks and months.
Additionally, if you would like to discuss your MCS transition plans, please visit the Content Transform Team talk page:
Finally, some Content Transform Team members will also be at the Wikimedia Hackathon [4] if you would like some in-person support.
Thank you.
Adam Baso (he/him/his/Adam), on behalf of the Content Transform Team Director of Engineering Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Specs/HTML
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023
Hello Again World,
The Google Meets for live discussion about MCS decommissioning will be held during the upcoming week for those needing assistance. There are two sessions on Thursday, 11 May 2023, and we hope they will provide for decent timezone coverage. Please see details below and add an entry to your calendar if you would like to meet synchronously this way.
Additionally, as noted before, there will be Content Transform Team members at the Wikimedia Hackathon 19-21 May 2023. Ask around if you are there, and consider helping others who may be transitioning their components off of MCS.
If it is better for you to discuss asynchronously, please as always feel free to use https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Content_Transform_Team .
We have reached out to a handful of additionally identified MCS re-users where there were some clues in the User-Agent fields from the web request logs. If you or someone you know has a bot, gadget, user script, Scribunto Lua module, or extension* (or other component, for that matter!) using MCS, we would appreciate your help in further spreading the word and helping migrate active use.
== Google Meet Details ==
Thursday, 11-May-2023 - 1100-1200 UTC (0400 - 0500 San Francisco) Videoconference: https://meet.google.com/mcc-gdew-xit Telephone numbers in case of audio issues: https://tel.meet/mcc-gdew-xit?pin=3225094353686&hs=1
Thursday, 11-May-2023 - 1800-1900 UTC (1100 - 1200 San Francisco) Videoconference: https://meet.google.com/mcc-gdew-xit Telephone numbers in case of audio issues: https://tel.meet/mcc-gdew-xit?pin=3225094353686&hs=1
Please refer to https://support.google.com/meet/answer/7317473 for system requirements for using Google Meet.
Thank you! Adam Baso, on behalf of the Content Transform Team
* https://codesearch.wmcloud.org/search/?q=mobile-sections&files=&excl... is not suggestive of unknown things. https://global-search.toolforge.org/?q=%22mobile-sections%22&namespaces=... is not suggestive of obvious on-site user generated content / code (a regex search seems to possibly be too exhaustive as these searches are inherently slow, but in theory would not turn up anything extra anyway as a simple string search should be sufficient). It is certainly the case that there are repos discovered via https://github.com/search?q=mobile-sections&type=code , but it's a bit of a stretch to determine reliably if things are even running and where. As this message is going out, it dawns on oneself that https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/ repos could be a target for searches, but this may require enabling global search https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/search/ (will need to check with a GitLab admin if that can be done outside of an EE installation easily) or perhaps a scripted search across each individual repos...TBD.
On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 4:45 AM Adam Baso [email protected] wrote:
TL;DR: The legacy Mobile Content Service is going away in July 2023. Please switch to Parsoid or another API before then to ensure service continuity.
Hello World,
I'm writing about a service decommission we hope to complete mid-July 2023. The service to be decommissioned is the legacy Mobile Content Service ("MCS"), which is maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation's Content Transform Team. We will be marking this service as deprecated soon.
We hope that with this notice, people will have ample time to update their systems for use of other endpoints such as Parsoid [1] (n.b., MCS uses Parsoid HTML).
The MCS endpoints are the ones with the relative URL path pattern /page/mobile-sections* on the Wikipedias. For examples of the URLs see the "Mobile" section on the online Swagger (OpenAPI) specification documentation with matching URLs here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/#/Mobile
== History ==
The Mobile Content Service ("MCS") is the historical aggregate service that originally provided support for the article reading experience on the Wikipedia for Android native app, as well as some other experiences. We have noticed that there are other users of the service. We are not able to determine all of the users, as it's hard to tell with confidence from the web logs.
The Wikimedia Foundation had already transitioned the Wikipedia for Android and iOS apps to the newer Page Content Service ("PCS") several years ago. PCS has some similarities with MCS in terms of its mobility focus, but it also has different request-response signatures in practice. PCS, as with MCS, is intended to primarily satisfy Wikimedia Foundation-maintained user experiences only, and so this is classified with the "unstable" moniker.
== Looking ahead ==
Generally, as noted in the lead, we recommend that folks who use MCS (or PCS, for that matter) switch over to Parsoid for accessing Wikipedia article content programmatically for the most predictable service.
The HTML produced by Parsoid has a versioned specification [2] and because Parsoid is accessed regularly by a number of components across the globe tends to have fairly well cached responses. However, please note that Parsoid may be subject to stricter rate limits that can apply under certain traffic patterns.
At this point, I do also want to note that in order to keep up with contemporary HTML standards, particularly those favoring accessibility and machine readability enhancements, Parsoid HTML will undergo change as we further converge parsing stacks [3]. Generally, you should expect iteration on the Parsoid HTML spec, and of course as you may have come to appreciate that the shape of HTML in practice can vary nontrivially wiki-by-wiki as practices across wikis vary.
You may also want to consider Wikimedia Enterprise API options, which range from no cost to higher volume access paid options.
== Forking okay, but not recommended ==
Because MCS acts as a service aggregate and makes multiple backend API calls, caveats can apply for those subresources - possibility of API changes, deprecation, and the like. We do not recommend a plain fork of MCS code because of the subresource fetch behavior. This said, of course you are welcome to fork in a way compatible with MCS's license.
== Help spread the word ==
Although we are aware of the top two remaining consumers of MCS, we also are not sure who else is accessing MCS and anticipate that some downstream tech may break when MCS is turned off. As we are cross-posting this message, we hope most people who have come to rely upon MCS will see this message. Please feel free to forward this message to contacts if you know they are using MCS.
== Help ==
Although we intend to decommission MCS in July 2023, we would like to share resources if you need some help. We plan to hold office hours in case you would like to meet with us to discuss this or other Content Transform Team matters. We will host these events on Google Meet. We will provide notice of these office hours on the wikitech-l mailing list in the coming weeks and months.
Additionally, if you would like to discuss your MCS transition plans, please visit the Content Transform Team talk page:
Finally, some Content Transform Team members will also be at the Wikimedia Hackathon [4] if you would like some in-person support.
Thank you.
Adam Baso (he/him/his/Adam), on behalf of the Content Transform Team Director of Engineering Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Specs/HTML
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023
Just a reminder about the Meets today:
On Fri, May 5, 2023 at 8:17 AM Adam Baso [email protected] wrote:
Hello Again World,
The Google Meets for live discussion about MCS decommissioning will be held during the upcoming week for those needing assistance. There are two sessions on Thursday, 11 May 2023, and we hope they will provide for decent timezone coverage. Please see details below and add an entry to your calendar if you would like to meet synchronously this way.
Additionally, as noted before, there will be Content Transform Team members at the Wikimedia Hackathon 19-21 May 2023. Ask around if you are there, and consider helping others who may be transitioning their components off of MCS.
If it is better for you to discuss asynchronously, please as always feel free to use https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Content_Transform_Team .
We have reached out to a handful of additionally identified MCS re-users where there were some clues in the User-Agent fields from the web request logs. If you or someone you know has a bot, gadget, user script, Scribunto Lua module, or extension* (or other component, for that matter!) using MCS, we would appreciate your help in further spreading the word and helping migrate active use.
== Google Meet Details ==
Thursday, 11-May-2023 - 1100-1200 UTC (0400 - 0500 San Francisco) Videoconference: https://meet.google.com/mcc-gdew-xit Telephone numbers in case of audio issues: https://tel.meet/mcc-gdew-xit?pin=3225094353686&hs=1
Thursday, 11-May-2023 - 1800-1900 UTC (1100 - 1200 San Francisco) Videoconference: https://meet.google.com/mcc-gdew-xit Telephone numbers in case of audio issues: https://tel.meet/mcc-gdew-xit?pin=3225094353686&hs=1
Please refer to https://support.google.com/meet/answer/7317473 for system requirements for using Google Meet.
Thank you! Adam Baso, on behalf of the Content Transform Team
https://codesearch.wmcloud.org/search/?q=mobile-sections&files=&excl... is not suggestive of unknown things. https://global-search.toolforge.org/?q=%22mobile-sections%22&namespaces=... is not suggestive of obvious on-site user generated content / code (a regex search seems to possibly be too exhaustive as these searches are inherently slow, but in theory would not turn up anything extra anyway as a simple string search should be sufficient). It is certainly the case that there are repos discovered via https://github.com/search?q=mobile-sections&type=code , but it's a bit of a stretch to determine reliably if things are even running and where. As this message is going out, it dawns on oneself that https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/ repos could be a target for searches, but this may require enabling global search https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/search/ (will need to check with a GitLab admin if that can be done outside of an EE installation easily) or perhaps a scripted search across each individual repos...TBD.
On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 4:45 AM Adam Baso [email protected] wrote:
TL;DR: The legacy Mobile Content Service is going away in July 2023. Please switch to Parsoid or another API before then to ensure service continuity.
Hello World,
I'm writing about a service decommission we hope to complete mid-July 2023. The service to be decommissioned is the legacy Mobile Content Service ("MCS"), which is maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation's Content Transform Team. We will be marking this service as deprecated soon.
We hope that with this notice, people will have ample time to update their systems for use of other endpoints such as Parsoid [1] (n.b., MCS uses Parsoid HTML).
The MCS endpoints are the ones with the relative URL path pattern /page/mobile-sections* on the Wikipedias. For examples of the URLs see the "Mobile" section on the online Swagger (OpenAPI) specification documentation with matching URLs here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/#/Mobile
== History ==
The Mobile Content Service ("MCS") is the historical aggregate service that originally provided support for the article reading experience on the Wikipedia for Android native app, as well as some other experiences. We have noticed that there are other users of the service. We are not able to determine all of the users, as it's hard to tell with confidence from the web logs.
The Wikimedia Foundation had already transitioned the Wikipedia for Android and iOS apps to the newer Page Content Service ("PCS") several years ago. PCS has some similarities with MCS in terms of its mobility focus, but it also has different request-response signatures in practice. PCS, as with MCS, is intended to primarily satisfy Wikimedia Foundation-maintained user experiences only, and so this is classified with the "unstable" moniker.
== Looking ahead ==
Generally, as noted in the lead, we recommend that folks who use MCS (or PCS, for that matter) switch over to Parsoid for accessing Wikipedia article content programmatically for the most predictable service.
The HTML produced by Parsoid has a versioned specification [2] and because Parsoid is accessed regularly by a number of components across the globe tends to have fairly well cached responses. However, please note that Parsoid may be subject to stricter rate limits that can apply under certain traffic patterns.
At this point, I do also want to note that in order to keep up with contemporary HTML standards, particularly those favoring accessibility and machine readability enhancements, Parsoid HTML will undergo change as we further converge parsing stacks [3]. Generally, you should expect iteration on the Parsoid HTML spec, and of course as you may have come to appreciate that the shape of HTML in practice can vary nontrivially wiki-by-wiki as practices across wikis vary.
You may also want to consider Wikimedia Enterprise API options, which range from no cost to higher volume access paid options.
== Forking okay, but not recommended ==
Because MCS acts as a service aggregate and makes multiple backend API calls, caveats can apply for those subresources - possibility of API changes, deprecation, and the like. We do not recommend a plain fork of MCS code because of the subresource fetch behavior. This said, of course you are welcome to fork in a way compatible with MCS's license.
== Help spread the word ==
Although we are aware of the top two remaining consumers of MCS, we also are not sure who else is accessing MCS and anticipate that some downstream tech may break when MCS is turned off. As we are cross-posting this message, we hope most people who have come to rely upon MCS will see this message. Please feel free to forward this message to contacts if you know they are using MCS.
== Help ==
Although we intend to decommission MCS in July 2023, we would like to share resources if you need some help. We plan to hold office hours in case you would like to meet with us to discuss this or other Content Transform Team matters. We will host these events on Google Meet. We will provide notice of these office hours on the wikitech-l mailing list in the coming weeks and months.
Additionally, if you would like to discuss your MCS transition plans, please visit the Content Transform Team talk page:
Finally, some Content Transform Team members will also be at the Wikimedia Hackathon [4] if you would like some in-person support.
Thank you.
Adam Baso (he/him/his/Adam), on behalf of the Content Transform Team Director of Engineering Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Specs/HTML
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023
Thanks for the notification!
Is this related to the messages that are translated as part of the "Page Content Service" project? Some of them are displayed in very prominent places.
Here's a list of translatable messages: https://translatewiki.net/wiki/Special:Translate?filter=&action=page&...
And here's the source repo: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/mediawiki/services/mobileapps...
Is that the one that's being decommissioned? And if it is, will the translations still be necessary anywhere, or will they become obsolete?
Or is it something unrelated?
בתאריך יום ד׳, 22 במרץ 2023, 11:46, מאת Adam Baso [email protected]:
TL;DR: The legacy Mobile Content Service is going away in July 2023. Please switch to Parsoid or another API before then to ensure service continuity.
Hello World,
I'm writing about a service decommission we hope to complete mid-July 2023. The service to be decommissioned is the legacy Mobile Content Service ("MCS"), which is maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation's Content Transform Team. We will be marking this service as deprecated soon.
We hope that with this notice, people will have ample time to update their systems for use of other endpoints such as Parsoid [1] (n.b., MCS uses Parsoid HTML).
The MCS endpoints are the ones with the relative URL path pattern /page/mobile-sections* on the Wikipedias. For examples of the URLs see the "Mobile" section on the online Swagger (OpenAPI) specification documentation with matching URLs here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/#/Mobile
== History ==
The Mobile Content Service ("MCS") is the historical aggregate service that originally provided support for the article reading experience on the Wikipedia for Android native app, as well as some other experiences. We have noticed that there are other users of the service. We are not able to determine all of the users, as it's hard to tell with confidence from the web logs.
The Wikimedia Foundation had already transitioned the Wikipedia for Android and iOS apps to the newer Page Content Service ("PCS") several years ago. PCS has some similarities with MCS in terms of its mobility focus, but it also has different request-response signatures in practice. PCS, as with MCS, is intended to primarily satisfy Wikimedia Foundation-maintained user experiences only, and so this is classified with the "unstable" moniker.
== Looking ahead ==
Generally, as noted in the lead, we recommend that folks who use MCS (or PCS, for that matter) switch over to Parsoid for accessing Wikipedia article content programmatically for the most predictable service.
The HTML produced by Parsoid has a versioned specification [2] and because Parsoid is accessed regularly by a number of components across the globe tends to have fairly well cached responses. However, please note that Parsoid may be subject to stricter rate limits that can apply under certain traffic patterns.
At this point, I do also want to note that in order to keep up with contemporary HTML standards, particularly those favoring accessibility and machine readability enhancements, Parsoid HTML will undergo change as we further converge parsing stacks [3]. Generally, you should expect iteration on the Parsoid HTML spec, and of course as you may have come to appreciate that the shape of HTML in practice can vary nontrivially wiki-by-wiki as practices across wikis vary.
You may also want to consider Wikimedia Enterprise API options, which range from no cost to higher volume access paid options.
== Forking okay, but not recommended ==
Because MCS acts as a service aggregate and makes multiple backend API calls, caveats can apply for those subresources - possibility of API changes, deprecation, and the like. We do not recommend a plain fork of MCS code because of the subresource fetch behavior. This said, of course you are welcome to fork in a way compatible with MCS's license.
== Help spread the word ==
Although we are aware of the top two remaining consumers of MCS, we also are not sure who else is accessing MCS and anticipate that some downstream tech may break when MCS is turned off. As we are cross-posting this message, we hope most people who have come to rely upon MCS will see this message. Please feel free to forward this message to contacts if you know they are using MCS.
== Help ==
Although we intend to decommission MCS in July 2023, we would like to share resources if you need some help. We plan to hold office hours in case you would like to meet with us to discuss this or other Content Transform Team matters. We will host these events on Google Meet. We will provide notice of these office hours on the wikitech-l mailing list in the coming weeks and months.
Additionally, if you would like to discuss your MCS transition plans, please visit the Content Transform Team talk page:
Finally, some Content Transform Team members will also be at the Wikimedia Hackathon [4] if you would like some in-person support.
Thank you.
Adam Baso (he/him/his/Adam), on behalf of the Content Transform Team Director of Engineering Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Specs/HTML
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023 _______________________________________________ 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/
Hi Amir,
The Page Content Service ("PCS") is the currently supported service, it's the legacy deprecated Mobile Content Service ("MCS") that is going away in July 2023. I don't think those messages should be affected as they're part of PCS, but I'll flag for attention with folks supporting the Android app and ask for their guidance in case there's an use of shared messages between the old versions of the app and the new versions of the app, and will update the list if I'm mistaken.
Thank you! -Adam
On Fri, May 5, 2023 at 9:39 AM Amir E. Aharoni [email protected] wrote:
Thanks for the notification!
Is this related to the messages that are translated as part of the "Page Content Service" project? Some of them are displayed in very prominent places.
Here's a list of translatable messages:
And here's the source repo:
Is that the one that's being decommissioned? And if it is, will the translations still be necessary anywhere, or will they become obsolete?
Or is it something unrelated?
בתאריך יום ד׳, 22 במרץ 2023, 11:46, מאת Adam Baso [email protected]:
TL;DR: The legacy Mobile Content Service is going away in July 2023. Please switch to Parsoid or another API before then to ensure service continuity.
Hello World,
I'm writing about a service decommission we hope to complete mid-July 2023. The service to be decommissioned is the legacy Mobile Content Service ("MCS"), which is maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation's Content Transform Team. We will be marking this service as deprecated soon.
We hope that with this notice, people will have ample time to update their systems for use of other endpoints such as Parsoid [1] (n.b., MCS uses Parsoid HTML).
The MCS endpoints are the ones with the relative URL path pattern /page/mobile-sections* on the Wikipedias. For examples of the URLs see the "Mobile" section on the online Swagger (OpenAPI) specification documentation with matching URLs here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/#/Mobile
== History ==
The Mobile Content Service ("MCS") is the historical aggregate service that originally provided support for the article reading experience on the Wikipedia for Android native app, as well as some other experiences. We have noticed that there are other users of the service. We are not able to determine all of the users, as it's hard to tell with confidence from the web logs.
The Wikimedia Foundation had already transitioned the Wikipedia for Android and iOS apps to the newer Page Content Service ("PCS") several years ago. PCS has some similarities with MCS in terms of its mobility focus, but it also has different request-response signatures in practice. PCS, as with MCS, is intended to primarily satisfy Wikimedia Foundation-maintained user experiences only, and so this is classified with the "unstable" moniker.
== Looking ahead ==
Generally, as noted in the lead, we recommend that folks who use MCS (or PCS, for that matter) switch over to Parsoid for accessing Wikipedia article content programmatically for the most predictable service.
The HTML produced by Parsoid has a versioned specification [2] and because Parsoid is accessed regularly by a number of components across the globe tends to have fairly well cached responses. However, please note that Parsoid may be subject to stricter rate limits that can apply under certain traffic patterns.
At this point, I do also want to note that in order to keep up with contemporary HTML standards, particularly those favoring accessibility and machine readability enhancements, Parsoid HTML will undergo change as we further converge parsing stacks [3]. Generally, you should expect iteration on the Parsoid HTML spec, and of course as you may have come to appreciate that the shape of HTML in practice can vary nontrivially wiki-by-wiki as practices across wikis vary.
You may also want to consider Wikimedia Enterprise API options, which range from no cost to higher volume access paid options.
== Forking okay, but not recommended ==
Because MCS acts as a service aggregate and makes multiple backend API calls, caveats can apply for those subresources - possibility of API changes, deprecation, and the like. We do not recommend a plain fork of MCS code because of the subresource fetch behavior. This said, of course you are welcome to fork in a way compatible with MCS's license.
== Help spread the word ==
Although we are aware of the top two remaining consumers of MCS, we also are not sure who else is accessing MCS and anticipate that some downstream tech may break when MCS is turned off. As we are cross-posting this message, we hope most people who have come to rely upon MCS will see this message. Please feel free to forward this message to contacts if you know they are using MCS.
== Help ==
Although we intend to decommission MCS in July 2023, we would like to share resources if you need some help. We plan to hold office hours in case you would like to meet with us to discuss this or other Content Transform Team matters. We will host these events on Google Meet. We will provide notice of these office hours on the wikitech-l mailing list in the coming weeks and months.
Additionally, if you would like to discuss your MCS transition plans, please visit the Content Transform Team talk page:
Finally, some Content Transform Team members will also be at the Wikimedia Hackathon [4] if you would like some in-person support.
Thank you.
Adam Baso (he/him/his/Adam), on behalf of the Content Transform Team Director of Engineering Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Specs/HTML
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023 _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
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/
Sounds good, thanks!
בתאריך יום ו׳, 5 במאי 2023, 18:48, מאת Adam Baso [email protected]:
Hi Amir,
The Page Content Service ("PCS") is the currently supported service, it's the legacy deprecated Mobile Content Service ("MCS") that is going away in July 2023. I don't think those messages should be affected as they're part of PCS, but I'll flag for attention with folks supporting the Android app and ask for their guidance in case there's an use of shared messages between the old versions of the app and the new versions of the app, and will update the list if I'm mistaken.
Thank you! -Adam
On Fri, May 5, 2023 at 9:39 AM Amir E. Aharoni < [email protected]> wrote:
Thanks for the notification!
Is this related to the messages that are translated as part of the "Page Content Service" project? Some of them are displayed in very prominent places.
Here's a list of translatable messages:
And here's the source repo:
Is that the one that's being decommissioned? And if it is, will the translations still be necessary anywhere, or will they become obsolete?
Or is it something unrelated?
בתאריך יום ד׳, 22 במרץ 2023, 11:46, מאת Adam Baso [email protected]:
TL;DR: The legacy Mobile Content Service is going away in July 2023. Please switch to Parsoid or another API before then to ensure service continuity.
Hello World,
I'm writing about a service decommission we hope to complete mid-July 2023. The service to be decommissioned is the legacy Mobile Content Service ("MCS"), which is maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation's Content Transform Team. We will be marking this service as deprecated soon.
We hope that with this notice, people will have ample time to update their systems for use of other endpoints such as Parsoid [1] (n.b., MCS uses Parsoid HTML).
The MCS endpoints are the ones with the relative URL path pattern /page/mobile-sections* on the Wikipedias. For examples of the URLs see the "Mobile" section on the online Swagger (OpenAPI) specification documentation with matching URLs here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/#/Mobile
== History ==
The Mobile Content Service ("MCS") is the historical aggregate service that originally provided support for the article reading experience on the Wikipedia for Android native app, as well as some other experiences. We have noticed that there are other users of the service. We are not able to determine all of the users, as it's hard to tell with confidence from the web logs.
The Wikimedia Foundation had already transitioned the Wikipedia for Android and iOS apps to the newer Page Content Service ("PCS") several years ago. PCS has some similarities with MCS in terms of its mobility focus, but it also has different request-response signatures in practice. PCS, as with MCS, is intended to primarily satisfy Wikimedia Foundation-maintained user experiences only, and so this is classified with the "unstable" moniker.
== Looking ahead ==
Generally, as noted in the lead, we recommend that folks who use MCS (or PCS, for that matter) switch over to Parsoid for accessing Wikipedia article content programmatically for the most predictable service.
The HTML produced by Parsoid has a versioned specification [2] and because Parsoid is accessed regularly by a number of components across the globe tends to have fairly well cached responses. However, please note that Parsoid may be subject to stricter rate limits that can apply under certain traffic patterns.
At this point, I do also want to note that in order to keep up with contemporary HTML standards, particularly those favoring accessibility and machine readability enhancements, Parsoid HTML will undergo change as we further converge parsing stacks [3]. Generally, you should expect iteration on the Parsoid HTML spec, and of course as you may have come to appreciate that the shape of HTML in practice can vary nontrivially wiki-by-wiki as practices across wikis vary.
You may also want to consider Wikimedia Enterprise API options, which range from no cost to higher volume access paid options.
== Forking okay, but not recommended ==
Because MCS acts as a service aggregate and makes multiple backend API calls, caveats can apply for those subresources - possibility of API changes, deprecation, and the like. We do not recommend a plain fork of MCS code because of the subresource fetch behavior. This said, of course you are welcome to fork in a way compatible with MCS's license.
== Help spread the word ==
Although we are aware of the top two remaining consumers of MCS, we also are not sure who else is accessing MCS and anticipate that some downstream tech may break when MCS is turned off. As we are cross-posting this message, we hope most people who have come to rely upon MCS will see this message. Please feel free to forward this message to contacts if you know they are using MCS.
== Help ==
Although we intend to decommission MCS in July 2023, we would like to share resources if you need some help. We plan to hold office hours in case you would like to meet with us to discuss this or other Content Transform Team matters. We will host these events on Google Meet. We will provide notice of these office hours on the wikitech-l mailing list in the coming weeks and months.
Additionally, if you would like to discuss your MCS transition plans, please visit the Content Transform Team talk page:
Finally, some Content Transform Team members will also be at the Wikimedia Hackathon [4] if you would like some in-person support.
Thank you.
Adam Baso (he/him/his/Adam), on behalf of the Content Transform Team Director of Engineering Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Specs/HTML
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023 _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
Wikitech-l mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
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/
Following up here, we don't see a risk with those PCS messages.
On Fri, May 5, 2023 at 10:47 AM Adam Baso [email protected] wrote:
Hi Amir,
The Page Content Service ("PCS") is the currently supported service, it's the legacy deprecated Mobile Content Service ("MCS") that is going away in July 2023. I don't think those messages should be affected as they're part of PCS, but I'll flag for attention with folks supporting the Android app and ask for their guidance in case there's an use of shared messages between the old versions of the app and the new versions of the app, and will update the list if I'm mistaken.
Thank you! -Adam
On Fri, May 5, 2023 at 9:39 AM Amir E. Aharoni < [email protected]> wrote:
Thanks for the notification!
Is this related to the messages that are translated as part of the "Page Content Service" project? Some of them are displayed in very prominent places.
Here's a list of translatable messages:
And here's the source repo:
Is that the one that's being decommissioned? And if it is, will the translations still be necessary anywhere, or will they become obsolete?
Or is it something unrelated?
בתאריך יום ד׳, 22 במרץ 2023, 11:46, מאת Adam Baso [email protected]:
TL;DR: The legacy Mobile Content Service is going away in July 2023. Please switch to Parsoid or another API before then to ensure service continuity.
Hello World,
I'm writing about a service decommission we hope to complete mid-July 2023. The service to be decommissioned is the legacy Mobile Content Service ("MCS"), which is maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation's Content Transform Team. We will be marking this service as deprecated soon.
We hope that with this notice, people will have ample time to update their systems for use of other endpoints such as Parsoid [1] (n.b., MCS uses Parsoid HTML).
The MCS endpoints are the ones with the relative URL path pattern /page/mobile-sections* on the Wikipedias. For examples of the URLs see the "Mobile" section on the online Swagger (OpenAPI) specification documentation with matching URLs here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/#/Mobile
== History ==
The Mobile Content Service ("MCS") is the historical aggregate service that originally provided support for the article reading experience on the Wikipedia for Android native app, as well as some other experiences. We have noticed that there are other users of the service. We are not able to determine all of the users, as it's hard to tell with confidence from the web logs.
The Wikimedia Foundation had already transitioned the Wikipedia for Android and iOS apps to the newer Page Content Service ("PCS") several years ago. PCS has some similarities with MCS in terms of its mobility focus, but it also has different request-response signatures in practice. PCS, as with MCS, is intended to primarily satisfy Wikimedia Foundation-maintained user experiences only, and so this is classified with the "unstable" moniker.
== Looking ahead ==
Generally, as noted in the lead, we recommend that folks who use MCS (or PCS, for that matter) switch over to Parsoid for accessing Wikipedia article content programmatically for the most predictable service.
The HTML produced by Parsoid has a versioned specification [2] and because Parsoid is accessed regularly by a number of components across the globe tends to have fairly well cached responses. However, please note that Parsoid may be subject to stricter rate limits that can apply under certain traffic patterns.
At this point, I do also want to note that in order to keep up with contemporary HTML standards, particularly those favoring accessibility and machine readability enhancements, Parsoid HTML will undergo change as we further converge parsing stacks [3]. Generally, you should expect iteration on the Parsoid HTML spec, and of course as you may have come to appreciate that the shape of HTML in practice can vary nontrivially wiki-by-wiki as practices across wikis vary.
You may also want to consider Wikimedia Enterprise API options, which range from no cost to higher volume access paid options.
== Forking okay, but not recommended ==
Because MCS acts as a service aggregate and makes multiple backend API calls, caveats can apply for those subresources - possibility of API changes, deprecation, and the like. We do not recommend a plain fork of MCS code because of the subresource fetch behavior. This said, of course you are welcome to fork in a way compatible with MCS's license.
== Help spread the word ==
Although we are aware of the top two remaining consumers of MCS, we also are not sure who else is accessing MCS and anticipate that some downstream tech may break when MCS is turned off. As we are cross-posting this message, we hope most people who have come to rely upon MCS will see this message. Please feel free to forward this message to contacts if you know they are using MCS.
== Help ==
Although we intend to decommission MCS in July 2023, we would like to share resources if you need some help. We plan to hold office hours in case you would like to meet with us to discuss this or other Content Transform Team matters. We will host these events on Google Meet. We will provide notice of these office hours on the wikitech-l mailing list in the coming weeks and months.
Additionally, if you would like to discuss your MCS transition plans, please visit the Content Transform Team talk page:
Finally, some Content Transform Team members will also be at the Wikimedia Hackathon [4] if you would like some in-person support.
Thank you.
Adam Baso (he/him/his/Adam), on behalf of the Content Transform Team Director of Engineering Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Specs/HTML
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023 _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
Wikitech-l mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
Hello Everyone,
Today marks the date we mentioned in our previous emails. Effective immediately, the legacy Mobile Content Service (MCS) is deprecated. This is in line with our plan to transition towards more modern and efficient systems like Parsoid or other APIs. We hope you have managed to update your systems and are ready to embrace the change.
We understand that this is a significant change and it may pose some challenges. If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to get in touch with us through e-mail, Phabricator or at the Content Transform Team talk page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Content_Transform_Team
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation during this transition. We look forward to supporting you and continuing to improve your Wikipedia experience.
Best Regards,
Mateus Santos, on behalf of the Content Transform Team Senior Software Engineer Wikimedia Foundation
On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 10:46 AM Adam Baso [email protected] wrote:
TL;DR: The legacy Mobile Content Service is going away in July 2023. Please switch to Parsoid or another API before then to ensure service continuity.
Hello World,
I'm writing about a service decommission we hope to complete mid-July 2023. The service to be decommissioned is the legacy Mobile Content Service ("MCS"), which is maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation's Content Transform Team. We will be marking this service as deprecated soon.
We hope that with this notice, people will have ample time to update their systems for use of other endpoints such as Parsoid [1] (n.b., MCS uses Parsoid HTML).
The MCS endpoints are the ones with the relative URL path pattern /page/mobile-sections* on the Wikipedias. For examples of the URLs see the "Mobile" section on the online Swagger (OpenAPI) specification documentation with matching URLs here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/#/Mobile
== History ==
The Mobile Content Service ("MCS") is the historical aggregate service that originally provided support for the article reading experience on the Wikipedia for Android native app, as well as some other experiences. We have noticed that there are other users of the service. We are not able to determine all of the users, as it's hard to tell with confidence from the web logs.
The Wikimedia Foundation had already transitioned the Wikipedia for Android and iOS apps to the newer Page Content Service ("PCS") several years ago. PCS has some similarities with MCS in terms of its mobility focus, but it also has different request-response signatures in practice. PCS, as with MCS, is intended to primarily satisfy Wikimedia Foundation-maintained user experiences only, and so this is classified with the "unstable" moniker.
== Looking ahead ==
Generally, as noted in the lead, we recommend that folks who use MCS (or PCS, for that matter) switch over to Parsoid for accessing Wikipedia article content programmatically for the most predictable service.
The HTML produced by Parsoid has a versioned specification [2] and because Parsoid is accessed regularly by a number of components across the globe tends to have fairly well cached responses. However, please note that Parsoid may be subject to stricter rate limits that can apply under certain traffic patterns.
At this point, I do also want to note that in order to keep up with contemporary HTML standards, particularly those favoring accessibility and machine readability enhancements, Parsoid HTML will undergo change as we further converge parsing stacks [3]. Generally, you should expect iteration on the Parsoid HTML spec, and of course as you may have come to appreciate that the shape of HTML in practice can vary nontrivially wiki-by-wiki as practices across wikis vary.
You may also want to consider Wikimedia Enterprise API options, which range from no cost to higher volume access paid options.
== Forking okay, but not recommended ==
Because MCS acts as a service aggregate and makes multiple backend API calls, caveats can apply for those subresources - possibility of API changes, deprecation, and the like. We do not recommend a plain fork of MCS code because of the subresource fetch behavior. This said, of course you are welcome to fork in a way compatible with MCS's license.
== Help spread the word ==
Although we are aware of the top two remaining consumers of MCS, we also are not sure who else is accessing MCS and anticipate that some downstream tech may break when MCS is turned off. As we are cross-posting this message, we hope most people who have come to rely upon MCS will see this message. Please feel free to forward this message to contacts if you know they are using MCS.
== Help ==
Although we intend to decommission MCS in July 2023, we would like to share resources if you need some help. We plan to hold office hours in case you would like to meet with us to discuss this or other Content Transform Team matters. We will host these events on Google Meet. We will provide notice of these office hours on the wikitech-l mailing list in the coming weeks and months.
Additionally, if you would like to discuss your MCS transition plans, please visit the Content Transform Team talk page:
Finally, some Content Transform Team members will also be at the Wikimedia Hackathon [4] if you would like some in-person support.
Thank you.
Adam Baso (he/him/his/Adam), on behalf of the Content Transform Team Director of Engineering Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Specs/HTML
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023 _______________________________________________ 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/