Wikimedia Discovery/Checkin meeting minutes/2015-08-24

Topics from last week

 * Survey outcomes
 * They were already presented
 * Common complaint was from people entering query sentences rather than keywords
 * Should we look more into throwing away filler words in searches (e.g. “the”)?
 * Moiz would like to do more mobile surveys
 * Wes proposes putting a survey for the portal
 * Update on Q2 Goals
 * Not much email conversation happened while Dan was out
 * We should increase publicity about search (discovery) mailing list
 * We are officially becoming the “Discovery” department

Announcements, Information, Questions

 * How did Stas’s presentation go?
 * Went well. People asked questions, both on WD and WDQS
 * Didn’t widely distribute “production” URL since it is not yet ready for full public use
 * Will work on getting slides up (linked from the Discovery team page)
 * Posted our ops job req on Friday. If you know someone, let them know.
 * Initial results from slop test
 * Going from 0 to 1 increases zero results, and going to 2 increases even more
 * This is a “Theoretically impossible result”
 * Russia is starting to block wikipedia
 * Yuri implemented static maps, which can easily be embedded in wiki articles
 * “Social” event this afternoon in SF.
 * Intended to encourage cross-team communication.

Quick Quarterly Goals/KPI Update
(How are we doing; any current or imminent work to improve them)
 * “Phrase slop” test status
 * Initial results above
 * Are we ready for the next test?
 * No. We don’t expect to have a test Thursday that is likely to greatly improve the ZRR
 * With just over a month left in the quarter, how are we looking for
 * Reducing Zero results
 * “Yellow” status, indicating we might not hit this quarterly goal
 * We will continue our tests; keep trying to hit the goal
 * We should start having conversations about shifting or framing the goal (what we learned)
 * Defining Satisfaction metric
 * First version didn’t work out. New version is in the works.
 * Measuring API usage
 * Completed.

Scrum of Scrums

 * Are we blocked?
 * No
 * Are we blocking? https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/blocked-on-search/
 * VE Bug caused by search results. (was: Patch pending, waiting for Brad’s return)
 * Anything from SoS that we should be aware of?

FYI

 * Next Discovery retrospective: Sept 14
 * Next Discovery showcase: Sept 21
 * Gerrit cleanup day (Wed Sept 23)
 * Offsite Sept 30 (details TBA)