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The Wikimedia Toolserver[1] was a cluster of servers that ran all the Wikipedia Toolserver tools; it was operated by Wikimedia Deutschland e. V.[2]
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Wikimedia Toolserver was fairly accessible over the Internet, and served out many useful tools written for the Wikimedia projects. The Wikipedia Toolserver provided access to a database of all Wikimedia's projects. Interested programmers could get a shell account to update and care for their scripts.
Operations
editThe Toolserver started operations in 2005 after Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE) received servers donated by Sun Microsystems. The Toolserver was funded and operated by WMDE, but also received additional funding from the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), Wikimedia UK (WMUK) and others.
The servers hosted software-based tools written by volunteers of the WMF projects. The majority of the tools performed maintenance on WMF projects and allow their smooth operation. Anybody could request an account on the Toolserver to provide tools that help WMF based projects.
Operational status
editThe Toolserver occasionally had glitches that affected its operation and sometimes caused downtime of the system. There were several places to find the status of the Toolserver's operations.
- The toolserver's status page at status.toolserver.org
- The Toolserver-l maillist archives at mail:toolserver-l
- The Toolserver-announce maillist archives at mail:Toolserver-announce
- The Toolserver's maintenance log at jira:MNT
- Replication lag
- munin.toolserver.org
Contacts
editContact information could be found at tswiki:Contact and at meta:Toolserver#Contact.
Decommissioning and replacement
editBecause of the importance of toolserver tools and the difficulty in maintaining the toolserver infrastructure, it was decided that a move to a larger organization would be good, decommissioning the current toolserver. WMDE has committed to funding and maintaining the toolserver until all users have had a sufficient chance to move to the new system. (see also WMDE comments at VPT)
Wikimedia Labs (a.k.a. Tool Labs, WMFLabs, etc.) was the Wikimedia Foundation's replacement for the Toolserver and was located at wikitech:Main Page. It was intended to handle most of the tools set up on the toolserver, but requires the tool authors to release their code under a free license. It was also available for running bots.
Migration from Toolserver to Wikimedia Labs
editIn February 2013, the Wikimedia Foundation contracted Marc-André Pelletier to provide assistance to tool/bot authors in migrating their tools and bots to the Wikimedia Labs' servers. A help page for migrating has been setup at wikitech:User:Magnus Manske/Migrating from toolserver with helpful advice. General information may be found at mw:Wikimedia Labs/Migration of Toolserver tools.
Though some users migrated their tools to WMFLabs early, the full-scale migration process began in June 2013 and expected to be complete by December 2013 with everything completed by June 2014 when items on the toolserver will be deleted. Final decommissioning of the toolserver was tentatively scheduled to be complete by December 2014.
The infrastructure for Tool Labs was still in the process of being set up with database replication the last major issue. Status updates may be found at wikitech:Tool Labs/Database plan and also at mw:Wikimedia Labs/Tool Labs/TODO.
- See also
Shutdown
editOn July 1, 2014, the Toolserver was shut down. Some users set up redirects to tool labs, which continue to function.
Projects
editToolserver reports
editJira was the issue tracker for Toolserver and provides database reports for WMF projects.
As the Toolserver constantly replicated the databases that hold details about Wikipedia and the pages between them, Wikipedians with access to the toolserver were ideally placed to query the server and derive customised reports for other Wikipedians on request. The relationships easiest to query were between:
- pages
- the categories they are in
- the external links they have
- the images or other media they link to.
Current Wikipedia projects that relied on the Toolserver
editPlease add any projects here
- WP:CHU, WP:CHU/U and WP:CHU/SUL – the change username pages
- Category:Living people
- Wikipedia:Untagged images
- Wikipedia:Proposed deletion
- Category:Orphaned non-free use Wikipedia files (especially finding orphaned fair use images is hard without it)
- Wikipedia:Requests for adminship edit counter
- Wikipedia:WikiProject edit counters
- WP:1000 This cannot be updated without toolserver access to enwiki
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting involves much searching on (recursive) category intersections, currently only possible with Cat Scan
- WikiDashboard[3] relies on toolserver to serve up most up-to-date statistics for each article and editor.
- Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations
- Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links
- Wikipedia:Request an account
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Red Link Recovery
- Many bots are based on the toolserver
- The Account creation interface used by account creators for users who request an account
- The Unblock Ticket Request System interface used by administrators for users requesting to be unblocked.
- Unofficial tools/projects
See also
edit- Toolserver replacements, a table of replacements for popular English Wikipedia and Commons tools
- m:Toolserver A more detailed description of the toolservers on Meta.
- tswiki: The toolserver wiki itself.
- Wikipedia:Database reports
- {{User wikipedia/toolserver}}, a userbox to denote Toolserver access