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Changes for old Wikimedia Blog when new Wikimedia Foundation website launches
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Description

In a change from original plans, when the new Wikimedia Foundation Website launches, the blog will be integrated into the site. At that time, the current blog will become inactive and we will begin archiving it. To support that happening, Communications proposes:

  1. Redirecting blog.wikimedia.org to the new URL for the blog within the new website (wikimediafoundation.org/news)
  2. Archive old blog (so posts remain at blog.wikimedia.org but site is static vs. dynamic)

Event Timeline

Varnent created this task.May 4 2018, 10:20 PM
Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptMay 4 2018, 10:20 PM
Varnent renamed this task from Change URL for Wikimedia Blog to Change URL for Wikimedia Blog when new Wikimedia Foundation website launches.May 4 2018, 10:21 PM

Setting up the existing blog at an archive URL such as blogarchives.wikimedia.org

A good url shouldn't die (again…)

@Peachey88 To clarify, are you looking for redirects from old blog posts to blogarchives.wikimedia.org? Ie https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/05/03/why-i-women-wikipedia/ would redirect to https://blogarchives.wikimedia.org/2018/05/03/why-i-women-wikipedia/?

I'd support that, if it's technically possible.

Why not simply leave the existing post URLs (like https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/05/03/why-i-women-wikipedia/ ) intact and just redirect the blog's main page https://blog.wikimedia.org/ to https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/ ? That might save quite a bit of work and help avoid unforeseen technical complications. What is the rationale for creating and maintaining a new domain like blogarchives.wikimedia.org ?

jrbs added a subscriber: jrbs.EditedMay 6 2018, 10:30 PM

Why not simply leave the existing post URLs (like https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/05/03/why-i-women-wikipedia/ ) intact and just redirect the blog's main page https://blog.wikimedia.org/ to https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/ ? That might save quite a bit of work and help avoid unforeseen technical complications. What is the rationale for creating and maintaining a new domain like blogarchives.wikimedia.org ?

I would agree with this approach. I think what @Peachey88 is trying to say is that the URL shouldn't be moving around so much (correct me if I'm wrong of course). Not to speak for @Varnent but I imagine the initial thinking was that having "archives" in the URL made it extra clear for readers that this is not an actively maintained website.

@Tbayer's solution also has the added bonus of being really, really easy.

I defer to the digital media team. Based on what I have heard, both seem logical to me (making navigation to old links easier vs. making it clear in the URL that the site is dormant).

For communicating the dormancy, I think one might want to add a little note to the theme in either case (a bit like what WMDE does on their old website, see the orange note on top of https://wikimedia.de/wiki/Hauptseite ); and on the other hand, all blog posts carry their publication date in the URL anyway.

@Varnent Mel and I chatted quick—we're fine with either approach as long as it works on a technical level. I'm personally a little worried about the link to the home page from the logo in the top left, but that could be disabled in the current blog's code as part of this process. @Tbayer do you have an idea of the amount of work that would be required to add a banner like WMDE's?

@Varnent Mel and I chatted quick—we're fine with either approach as long as it works on a technical level. I'm personally a little worried about the link to the home page from the logo in the top left, but that could be disabled in the current blog's code as part of this process.

Or we directly change it from the old URL to the new one ( https://blog.wikimedia.org/ to https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/ )

@Tbayer do you have an idea of the amount of work that would be required to add a banner like WMDE's?

I imagine this is a fairly harmless change to the theme, but @Volker_E should be able to provide more of an expert answer. And IMHO we should do this anyway (i.e. even if the existing blog is moved to a newly created "archive" domain, which, as mentioned above, I would recommend against).

It is, indeed. Will it be an English-only note, I guess…?

We can add it as text to be translated for the new website. Will work with @Varnent on copy.

My “I guess” was a (somewhat hidden) hint at we don't provide translations on the blog currently and there's no technical feature set up for it. We won't implement such for the archiving message.

Ah, I see — we do provide translations on the blog, though — and are happy to work with you on a design that could work with more than one language, if it's feasible.

EdErhart-WMF added a comment.EditedMay 10 2018, 9:22 PM

@Volker_E I think we could survive without it being translated, especially if doing so would require using up a large amount of staff (read: your!) time. It's not ideal, of course, but almost all of the content on the blog is English-only, and even WMDE's banner is only in German.

Heather added a subscriber: Heather.Jun 5 2018, 3:34 PM
EdErhart-WMF added a comment.EditedJun 6 2018, 4:30 PM

Hi @Micru,

Hello again! For anyone else reading this thread, I'm Ed from the Foundation’s blog team. First, please let me reassure you that the blog’s move to wikimediafoundation.org does not mean we are changing the existing editorial strategy. We are not planning to change or reduce the number of community-focused or authored posts that are published on the Wikimedia blog. Publishing community-authored and related blog posts is a key part of our editorial guidelines, which is why we have extensive Meta-Wiki documentation on how to submit a post.[1]

In the last two full quarters, we've published 28 blog posts from members of our community.[2] In the same timeframe, we've published nearly 50 additional blog posts about the community, ranging from profiles of individual people to international awards being handed out to affiliates, international photo contests, and more.[3] The posts about the winners of Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Earth have received over 550,000 page views. In recent weeks, we have also started the process of reaching out individually to affiliates, reiterating that we want to see more community voices on the blog—and asking that they share that news with their individual communities. Our movement is global, and we strongly believe that our blog should reflect that as well.

That said, the blog is and has always been the Foundation's official blog and the responsibility of the Wikimedia Foundation. This has been the case since it began in 2008, and it had the Wikimedia Foundation's logo in the top left corner of every page until 2014. The transition to the new site allows us to modernize the blog, giving both the public and community easier ways of learning more about the work that both the movement and Foundation are doing. That includes our extensive archive, which contains hundreds of community-written posts, many of which are simply waiting to be resurfaced.

I'm more than happy to discuss this in depth with you. Let me know!


  1. See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blog/Guidelines. We're planning to update it in the near future to make the submission process more transparent, which is why it's marked as outdated. (The overall editorial strategy will not materially change.) I'd be happy to send the new ones, which are are not finalized, to you via email if you'd like to have a look and comment on them.
  2. See, for examples:

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/01/29/from-the-life-of-wikidata/
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/02/05/wikimania-cape-town-ubuntu/
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/04/03/advocating-legal-framework-free-knowledge/

  1. These include:

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/06/04/ted-yoo-profile/
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/12/08/first-world-war-memories-romania/
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/12/14/wiki-loves-monuments-international-winners/
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/12/11/wiki-loves-earth-international-winners/

EdErhart-WMF added a comment.EditedJun 8 2018, 2:37 AM

Hi @Micru,

Thanks for the reply. I'm also a long-time community member—my volunteer username is The ed17, and it turns out that we've corresponded at least once before, albeit years ago. :-)

I'd like to hear more about your specific concerns with these plans. The new Foundation site is built on the WordPress platform, just like the existing Wikimedia Blog. In addition to the benefits of additional traffic (thereby bringing people into the movement via community-oriented blog posts) and having consistent design between both sites, integration also simplifies our maintenance requirements.

Planning for the new site and blog is complete, with only some design milestones yet to be reached, and we are not anticipating any changes to the current deployment schedule. We're not currently seeing any blockers to the deployment and blog integration, keeping in mind the points made in the paragraph below, but I'd be more than happy to show you the new draft guidelines, and listen to your feedback on how we could improve both them and the blog.

On the Wikimedia blog being the Foundation's official blog, this has been established since the blog was created in 2008.[1] The wording on Meta-Wiki was, until 2016, "the Wikimedia Foundation's official blog." I copyedited that language in May 2016, but those edits should not be construed as a change from prior practice, and I apologize if they have caused any confusion here.

It's my understanding that Planet Wikimedia has been the traditional community-driven communications channel, alongside affiliate blogs, outlets like the Signpost (which I used to run!) and Kurier, and others.

Thanks for raising these questions, Micru. Being from the community myself, I'm especially sensitive about this sort of thing. I'm looking forward to hearing back.


[1] See, for examples, https://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/04/11/welcome/ and https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2008-April/087847.html.

greg added a subscriber: greg.Jun 10 2018, 11:06 AM
Vvjjkkii renamed this task from Change URL for Wikimedia Blog when new Wikimedia Foundation website launches to vkdaaaaaaa.Jul 1 2018, 1:12 AM
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CommunityTechBot renamed this task from vkdaaaaaaa to Change URL for Wikimedia Blog when new Wikimedia Foundation website launches.Jul 2 2018, 4:27 PM
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Varnent renamed this task from Change URL for Wikimedia Blog when new Wikimedia Foundation website launches to Changes for old Wikimedia Blog when new Wikimedia Foundation website launches.Aug 7 2018, 4:30 PM
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Varnent added a subscriber: BBlack.Aug 7 2018, 4:32 PM

@BBlack - Any thoughts on archiving the old blog? Is an HTML dump of the old blog something we could host?

Varnent updated the task description. (Show Details)Aug 7 2018, 4:32 PM
Varnent moved this task from Backlog to Doing on the WMF-Communications board.Aug 9 2018, 1:23 AM
Varnent updated the task description. (Show Details)Sep 5 2018, 7:28 PM

Unless they are necessary for site functionality, we should also consider removing some scripts when site is made static (per T201203).
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193912
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https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193912
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