User:Sharihareswara (WMF)/archivedectmeetings Apr2013

Misc reminders

 * Reminder of Wikimedia technical search tool http://hexm.de/mw-search
 * There's a way to enable this in your preferences as search in mediawiki.org
 * today's skins triage https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bug_management/Triage/20130402
 * https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2013/March

Mentorship

 * Still can make it as GSOC/OPW project idea:
 * http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs/Possible_projects#Improve_the_mediawiki-bugzilla_extension_to_a_deployable_level (Mozilla + Andre?)
 * I am happy to provide support but I don't see myself suddenly as a coder or reviewer. :) -- andre
 * Still can make it as OPW specific project ideas:
 * http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs/Possible_projects#Browser_Test_Automation (Željko)
 * http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs/Possible_projects#A_proper_catalog_of_extensions (Yuri Katkov)
 * http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs/Possible_projects#Multilingual.2C_usable_and_effective_captchas (research only?)
 * http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs/Possible_projects#System_documentation_integrated_in_source_code (does Platform want research on this? mentor?)
 * Also thinking of revamping http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_hub and main related pages. Mentor: could be Quim.
 * https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_developer_hub

Amsterdam hackathon prep

 * Anything to do?
 * Outreach for more signups by 20 April?
 * WMF sprints/trainings?
 * Quim & Sumana to think about performance & Lua stuff with Rachel

High-priority escalations?
There are 3 that Andre has considered important in the last few days. https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?bug_id=46428,46401,46612 this weekend, we had 3 outages, and we need to improve communication around outages, Andre says. 2 of 3 were jobqueue-related.
 * bug 46428 - memcache split, blocks several other items
 * 46401, patch awaiting review
 * the http 500 error bugs
 * Rob to check out these escalations
 * where were they documented?
 * Etherpad for TechOps meeting yesterday, and short ops mailing list thread
 * * Recent Outages
 * ** 2013-03-28, Thursday - 19:40-19:43 GMT
 * ** 2013-03-29, Friday 05:00 GMT
 * ** 2013-03-31, Sunday - 21.20 GMT
 * *** LVS - fix kernel leak / upgrade kernel ?


 * Asher put in a jobqueue limit queue


 * RobLa to ask Greg to follow up

Vacations/holidays
me Andre: Texas Linux Fest: deadline April 1st - http://2013.texaslinuxfest.org/, Valerie! Željko: Chris:
 * Sumana part of tomorrow + part of Thursday
 * Guillaume out this week
 * a few days around Amsterdam (May 24th)
 * maybe Open Source Bridge Conference, Portland, June 18–21, 2013
 * maybe https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_contribute/Presentation ?
 * https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Events/FOSDEM/2013_-_Lightning_-_Qgil
 * May 24-26, Wikimedia Hackathon, Amsterdam, Netherlands
 * June 10-12, Selenium Conference, Boston, MA, USA
 * Submitted talks/workshops for a couple of local open source conferences, waiting for reply (May 15-17, September 06-07)
 * Apr 22-25 (Google Test Automation Conference, NYC)
 * May 2-5 (Telerik Test Summit Peer Conference, Austin TX)
 * May 13-17 relocating, details TBD
 * May 24-26, Wikimedia Hackathon, Amsterdam, Netherlands
 * Aug 4-10 Agile2013 (not certain but likely)

Monthly report summary
Where else should we be publicizing this? https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2013/March/summary
 * send it to wikitech-ambassadors
 * it's already in the WMF-wide report

High-priority escalations

 * RobLa, were you able to ask Greg to follow up re outage incident reports?
 * Greg will not have it as a high urgent priority, but in the long run it is important. RobLa to talk to Greg.
 * Andre, anything new?
 * Nothing really urgent
 * some thumbnail cache purging issues again: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46976 (pinged on IRC, email to ops@)
 * https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?bug_id=46836,46834 not urgent but waiting for attention / assignee (FlaggedRevs, ResLoader)
 * Localisation update problem may still be an issue right now

Best practices for community events

 * using #wikimedia-office - preferred to #wikimedia-dev, less noisy
 * greeting every person who shows up (check hostmask for possible regulars versus newbies)
 * what kinds of promotion have been effective? ambassadors list? emailing specific interested people?
 * can we let people subscribe to something so we can send a notification back?
 * Ask Alex Monk/Krenair re Echo
 * BZ - ping reporters. We have a magic URL for "YOUR reports"
 * specific steps & tasks

Followups

 * Filling in Platform & Ops in QA amenability spreadsheet
 * https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Agte_lJNpi-OdGpJSHdMZV83UjdTdHc5UFVrdXBwaWc#gid=0
 * The way we handle unit testing in Platform is different enough from other bits that priority will not be very useful for that - it's up to dev teams to do the bulk of the work on unit testing; Antoine provides generalized infrastructure. In Platform, we should focus activities on the first 3 columns.
 * Chris to publish QA work-in-progress and/or roadmap to PMs (etc.) based on this doc. (Greg does a similar thing, speaking with him about ways&means)
 * Chris to publish "when to bring in QA" guide/best practice/outline. (See FYI below?)
 * Bugzilla admin rights
 * have some been removed? what's the policy re NDA?
 * Andre has removed some (24 -> 18), still on it, been on the backburner. Policy: Not started yet.

Wikimania
April 30th is the submission deadline; What shall we submit?
 * https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions
 * Quim & Andre each to submit a standalone thing? Maybe merge them into 1 ECT "state of the union"?  Single session is nicer to the organizers

FYI
Quim wants to organize a couple of surveys:
 * Quantitative and mostly "external": best timings and channels for QA activities.
 * Qualitative and mostly WMF: best ways for QA activities to contribute to development efforts.
 * Qualtrics

Vacations/holidays
me Andre: Željko: Chris:
 * Sumana offline of today + morning Wednesday + part of Thursday
 * Guillaume out for probably a few days this week
 * a few days around Amsterdam (May 24th)
 * maybe Open Source Bridge Conference, Portland, June 18–21, 2013
 * May 24-26, Wikimedia Hackathon, Amsterdam, Netherlands
 * June 10-12, Selenium Conference, Boston, MA, USA
 * Submitted talks/workshops for a couple of local open source conferences, waiting for reply (May 15-17, September 06-07)
 * maybe August 14-18, JRubyConf (August 14-15) + European Ruby Camp (August 16-18), both in Berlin, Germany
 * Apr 22-25 (Google Test Automation Conference, NYC)
 * May 2-5 (Telerik Test Summit Peer Conference, Austin TX)
 * May 13-17 relocating, details TBD
 * May 24-26, Wikimedia Hackathon, Amsterdam, Netherlands
 * Aug 4-10 Agile2013 (not certain but likely)

GSoC/OPW
Signal-to-noise is good. We're pushing new people to useful pages right away and there are mentors around and students are getting mentors' respect. GSoC looks good. OPW - we have requests, mostly overlapping with GSoC. Greg to consider mentoring a release manager intern
 * Aayush251 would like to submit browser test automation project for GSOC; Quim will reply
 * rachel99 is interested in browser test automation project for OPW

High-priority escalations
seems stable Andre/Greg Monday meetings help

Weekly Bugzilla report
Guillaume: any weekly tech summary ought to link to weekly BZ summary. Don't include all of it, but definitely link & perhaps decide on 1 or 2 most-relevant metrics to include
 * can Quim and/or Andre add the numbers that Quim sent to wikitech to the script?
 * Is that about total number of tickets excl. enh && lowest? It's on andre's todo list, but if anybody feels like hacking PHP and SQL: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/gitweb?p=operations/puppet.git;a=blob;f=templates/misc/bugzilla_report.php;hb=HEAD
 * Yes
 * Andre on listing the most urgent tickets - hard to exclude the closed ones! works when Andre tests it locally. Andre's posted a BZ ticket with link to the problematic changesets
 * I am not sure if I did "update new version of this file" correctly for http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bugzilla_Weekly_Report

MariaDB rollout

 * Communcations: Look out for a blog post from Asher this week
 * errors for Andre to watch out for: replag. If there are big big problems Ops will catch it.

LevelUp working/not working
on whether people get the time they need to do this stuff. We need to make it not feel like a distraction, like it's hyper-auxiliary. More integrated into our overall set of goals. Better alignment of mentoring activities with overall goals we're trying to achieve as an eng org. Plus managers impressing importance of this.
 * graph - data -might be useful

Wikimania & Amsterdam hackathon
Wikimania: April 30th is the submission deadline; What shall we submit? Amsterdam
 * https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions
 * Sumana - respond today to Quim
 * Andre - would like to team up for a proposal. QA/community outreach, Andre could have 5 min re bug reporting?
 * Sumana needs to help wrangle tutorials for Amsterdam hackathon prep

Misc

 * Is anyone waiting on an urgent response from Guillaume? (finishing to catch up, but if you need something to be moved to the top of the list, please say so)
 * Testing activities: We need to assure more participation before getting events where we get 3-5 participants.

Vacations, conferences, etc.
Sumana: Andre: Željko: Chris:
 * June is weird
 * a few days around Amsterdam (likely May 20 - May 26)
 * Open Source Bridge Conference, Portland, (June 18–21), likely SF before or after
 * May 18-23 Amsterdam with my family
 * May 23-27, Wikimedia Hackathon, Amsterdam, Netherlands
 * June 10-12, Selenium Conference, Boston, MA, USA
 * Submitted talks/workshops for a couple of local open source conferences, waiting for reply (May 15-17, September 06-07)
 * maybe August 14-18, JRubyConf (August 14-15) + European Ruby Camp (August 16-18), both in Berlin, Germany
 * Apr 22-25 (Google Test Automation Conference, NYC)
 * May 2-5 (Telerik Test Summit Peer Conference, Austin TX)
 * May 13-17 relocating, details TBD
 * May 24-26, Wikimedia Hackathon, Amsterdam, Netherlands
 * Aug 4-10 Agile2013 - "radically open software testing"

GSoC/OPW
looks good so far

Product development microtasks
Guillaume reached out by e-mail last month to get people to add product tasks for projects listed at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Product_development#Active_tasks ; almost no response so far, and almost no microtasks added. Advice on how to follow up would be welcome. Current ideas include: Quim suggests: bugzilla triage as a good intro task for everyone, focusing on enhancement requests. Rob agrees.
 * re-sending e-mails, offering to have a 1:1 session with the person to help them define tasks (e.g. on IRC)
 * Pros: better chances of getting (good) microtasks. Cons: takes time
 * Cunningham's law: post information and if it's wrong it'll get corrected
 * Pros: we have microtasks. Cons: guesswork isn't as good as input (and engagement) from the project experts. Also, for it to get corrected, people need to care. Also, it means volunteers may start doing unwanted things.
 * Other?
 * Guillaume to follow up on that

Score extension - example of something people have gotten excited about, there is probably a volunteer among the excited people who could do PM stuff Quim: what about adding the active tasks at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Product_development to http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs/Possible_projects. Possible project has become a reference, the resource to look at for non-small project opportunities. We've built a lot of infrastructure and now it is time to concentrate more on the recruiting, opportunistic, people side Question: how to plan for opportunistic actions / how to schedule people? Quim & Sumana & Guillaume to continue talking about the recruiting side

Joint talk proposal for Wikimania Hongkong?
Wikimedia users & developers collaborating Not all Wikipedia readers are developers, but all developers are Wikipedia readers. Wikipedia has all the popularity yet their heavy users have no clue that they can contribute their technical skills. In the meantime mediawiki.org struggles to get the attention. It is the interest of all Wikimedia projects to help channeling their users to our technical efforts. Currently we are doing pretty bad, kind of stuck in an old editors vs developers paradigm where miscommunication and misunderstanding is almost expected. Free knowledge editors and free software contributors share the same DNA and there are plenty of activities where they can collaborate. Let's explore what we are doing so far and how can we improve. More: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project_talk:New_contributors#English_Wikipedia_first_26213
 * 1) group ECT proposal, led by Sumana, including Quim, & Guillaume & Andre, in tech track
 * 2) a proposal by Andre, NOT for the tech track, on bug creation & the process
 * 3) possible Lua talk by RobLa (consult Robert Rohde, vvv)
 * 4) possible "wtf does this mean" talk by Sumana
 * https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions
 * Deadline: April 30th
 * Type of submission: "Presentation"?
 * Length: 25min (default)
 * Track: "Technology and Infrastructure"?
 * Talk Summary
 * "Wikimedia users & developers collaborating" -- Quim
 * "Improving MediaWiki quality: How everybody can help with testing and bugtriage" (or something like that? Might go broader, depending on who joins the talk) -- Andre
 * Detailed proposal (please add your parts):
 * Andre Klapper will present how Wikimedia's bug management works and how everybody can easily help bringing software bug reports in Wikimedia Bugzilla into good shape by joining the Bugsquad.

Misc

 * Highest prio tickets: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47457 needs attention (but rkaldari commented on it, and greg is aware of it). Unclear if https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47607 (mw.jQuery is not defined because document.write is used after page load finished) is related/the same. -- Andre
 * Etherpad 1.1 on wm.org vs. Etherpad lite on labs: Summary in https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46539 - do we want *one* instance (and if yes, whose territory is this? ops?), or is this situation okay? Who could consolidate? (Andre was told "maybe mark holmquist, mostly an ops thing. just a missing puppet manifest." -- Andre
 * No default CC for "Score" component - ask GrafZahl, or is there anybody on the WMF side? https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47563 -- Andre
 * Jan Gerber!
 * Monthly report: please add your status updates: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2013/April

Vacations, conferences, etc.
Željko:
 * Guillaume afk the afternoon of Friday, May 3rd
 * Andre: Public holidays in CZ on May Wed01, May Wed08
 * Andre might visit WMDE@Berlin on May 2/3.
 * Andre: Holidays (BE/NL) May Mon20-Thu23 -- any replacement available? Quim maybe? I'll be here--Quim
 * Sumana - a little vacation before & after Amsterdam
 * Quim vaguely thinking on some holidays in July. Specific dates coming soon.


 * May 1, holiday in Croatia
 * May 15-17, DORS/CLUC 2013, Zagreb, Croatia (maybe, waiting for reply if my talk is accepted)
 * May 18-23, vacation, Amsterdam, Netherlands
 * May 24-26, Wikimedia Hackathon, Amsterdam, Netherlands
 * June 10-12, Selenium Conference, Boston, MA, USA
 * September 6-7, BalCCon, Novi Sad, Serbia (maybe, waiting for reply if my talk is accepted)

Browser testing by dev teams. What is the status and how to focus volunteer efforts?
The Summer of Code mentors say that automated browser tests are not eligible for GSoC. Prejudice against it because people think it is "janitorial". Ongoing debate regarding whether it is "creative" enough, and some people argue it should simply be PART of development tasks but we shouldn't allow projects that are JUST abou writing automated browser tests. Rob: we should pursue this conversation in a larger venue (wikitech-l?) but also pursue our current strategy with vigor Chris: Sumana:
 * But are our teams creating their own automated browser tests?
 * Chris M: Ori & Chris Steipp working with QA to write user stories, tests for global login. Similar conversations with E3 & Features, UW  ....  but we need scenarios.
 * But shouldn't this just be part of the dev process?
 * What if a lot of people in the community we are trying to recruit also see this as a janitorial thing and thus don't want to do it because devs should?
 * In our codebase, we have ~10 years of functionality that we do not have a dev team to turn to in order to document with tests
 * Even for new stuff, a lot is written by volunteers. If those volunteers don't feel inclined to write browser tests, we gotta find other vols to write them
 * One appeal of our current framework: Ruby-based! For devs who don't want to learn PHP but want to contribute, espec if they know some Ruby, this is great opportunity!
 * We don't have a standard dev practice at WMF
 * Because of past failures we have resistance, so Chris wants to show value to get appreciation
 * Emphasis should be on PM/features/scenarios/stories right now
 * Automated browser testing is a discipline unto itself with its own design principles, often handled in Enterprise shops by dedicated SDET types (Software Development Engineer in Test) not by line programmers. Line programmers handle unit tests.
 * Quim will work on the OPW side this week
 * OPW intern(s) will help focus & make infrastructure for this (as Valerie & Mariya's internships did)
 * check in more next week

GSoC/OPW
All in all, ok; we could have gotten more noncoding projects next time - talk to more movement bodies, departments to get marketing, documentation, art, etc. ideas/mentors?

Quarterly goals
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/2012-13_Goals#Wikimedia_technical_community
 * Continuing responsibilities, including more online events for the QA community as appropriate - done. We did bug triages.
 * Three online or in-person QA trainings for the community -- we did some one-on-one trainings, and the first group testing activity was a training. So, done.
 * Summer mentorship outreach, planning, and rampup - done
 * Spring semester mentorship (Outreach Program for Women) administration - done
 * Code review trainings - morphed into security training. We did 1. - partly done -- following up on implications
 * Possibly strong presence at FOSDEM, incl. dev room - done.
 * Regular BugSquad meetings and activities fall into a rhythm - done. we have them every other week, have some volunteers, want more. We have a bugsquad but people are reluctant to ID themselves because it leads to expectations.  Let's not worry too much about labels.  We can just look at weekly stats.  Good to have a page but we don't need to put people in uniforms with numbers.  On Wikipedia you see some people love putting up userboxen, some don't, that's okay
 * Formalize community testing across WMF mobile projects - done. We collaborated on 1 activity, they did 1 themselves.
 * Next week: look at this quarter's goals in depth.


 * TODO - Re code review trainings -- if we're concentrating on this to help WMF engineering, then we should get help from HR? Sumana to send note to Erik
 * TODO - work with mobile team to see why and how they have been successful, document, replicate

Movement-wide awareness
Deryck Chan's resignation email: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-April/125498.html One response from a community member in Norway: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-April/125557.html So what should we do, as ECT? Some options:
 * A reminder to us that most Wikimedia volunteers have little experience in  organizational admin and we should be flexible and lenient in what we  ask of them
 * Genuinely partnering with other movement bodies is not just nice for outreach, it's also useful for morale. But we cannot scale to have  personal relationships with 40+ chapters/thematic orgs/user groups.
 * 1) Take a moment to look over https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Thematic_Organizations , and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_User_Groups every once in a while to keep apprised of who's forming associations. Sumana explains: How do we reach out to them and make use of these user groups to help us reach our goals; We should a least know about who they are
 * 2) Guillaume & Quim to look at them, potentially pick a few (3?) movement bodies to try to liaise with towards ECT's goals. (example: Journalism?)
 * 3) * Quim's take is still: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project_talk:New_contributors#English_Wikipedia_first_26213 which focuses in collaboration with established organizations.
 * 4) Be willing to coach a few? (?)

Misc

 * Sumana finishing https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Transparency_and_collaboration_in_Wikimedia_engineering today
 * Andre proposed https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Improving_MediaWiki_quality:_How_everybody_can_help_with_bug_report_triaging
 * Andre: Canned responses (stock answers) script on VPs: http://imagebin.org/255935 in gerrit: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/gitweb?p=wikimedia/bugzilla/triagescripts.git;a=blob;f=wikimedia-villagepump-stock-answers.user.js;hb=HEAD for Village Pumps
 * Finish monthly status updates
 * Analytics is blank; perhaps Rob can gently prod the team today?
 * in ~15 min: Toolserver meeting on IRC

Vacations, conferences, etc.
Schedule Amsterdam, OSBridge, Wikimania travel soon! For Amsterdam: Talk with Doreen & cc Sumana
 * Guillaume afk the afternoon of this Friday (May 3rd); possibly a couple days off in early July
 * Andre:
 * Public holidays in CZ on May Wed01, May Wed08
 * will visit WMDE@Berlin on May 2/3.
 * Holidays (BE/NL) May Mon20-Thu23 -- any replacement available? Quim maybe? I'll be here--Quim
 * Sumana
 * a little vacation before & after Amsterdam
 * Wed & Fri May 15 & 17 off
 * Quim vaguely thinking on some holidays in July. Specific dates coming soon.
 * Željko:
 * May 1, holiday in Croatia
 * May 15-17, DORS/CLUC 2013, Zagreb, Croatia (talk accepted!)
 * May 18-23, vacation, Amsterdam, Netherlands
 * May 24-26, Wikimedia Hackathon, Amsterdam, Netherlands
 * June 10-12, Selenium Conference, Boston, MA, USA
 * August 16-18, eurucamp, Berlin, Germany (maybe, waiting for reply if my talk is accepted)
 * September 6-7, BalCCon, Novi Sad, Serbia (maybe, waiting for reply if my talk is accepted)
 * Chris:
 * May 2-5 (Telerik Test Summit Peer Conference, Austin TX)
 * May 13-17 relocating, details TBD
 * May 24-26, Wikimedia Hackathon, Amsterdam, Netherlands
 * Aug 4-10 Agile2013 - "radically open software testing"