Wikimedia Discovery/Team/Onboarding

Team page: Discovery

Note that if you are seeing this in a page who's URL ends in /YourName then you should feel free to strike through the steps are you finish them. If you find an error in the instructions then go fix them on the template.

= Things to do on your own =

First day

 * IRC
 * Get an IRC client. I like Quassel. weechat and irssi are good if you like text interfaces.
 * Connect to Freenode and register your user name.
 * Join #wikimedia-search.
 * James (earldouglas on IRC) will be in there and we'll use this room to keep up with you.
 * Skim the "People to meet/First day" section below and keep some of the irc names in mind. Chat with them when we get bored of the tasks below and need a break.
 * If you get stuck on anything just shout in #wikimedia-search.
 * Have a quick glance at the section of this page title "Who to ask if stuff doesn't work". You should refer to it if stuff doesn't work.
 * NOTE: Some of these tasks can be found by reading the new hire information but I'm making an effort to grab the important bits.
 * Read the Systems Guide for New Hires.
 * Google Mail/Calendar
 * Follow the systems guide above to get access to gmail and your calendar.
 * (Optional) In Gmail, enable Settings -> Labs -> Undo Send and press Save Changes. Go back to settings and change the timeout to 30 seconds.
 * Add these calendars to your calendar calendars: "WMF Staff Calendar", "WMF Sick/Vacation Tracking Calendar", and "WMF Fun & Learning".
 * The WMF Fun & Learning calendar isn't super useful for remote employees.
 * In Calendar go to Settings and tick "Speedy Meetings" and set work hours.
 * IRC (part two!)
 * Join #wikimedia-search, #wikimedia, #mediawiki, #wikimedia-operations, #wikimedia-office, #wikimedia-dev.
 * Learn about cloaks and request one.
 * It can take a few days for the cloak stuff to be resolved.
 * Verify WMF access to Wikitech (LDAP), Office (SUL), Wikipedia (SUL), and Wikimedia Foundation (SUL)
 * The instructions for these are in the systems guide above.
 * Schedule staff photo (just list your name here)
 * Or you can list yourself as not wanting to have your photo up by adding your name under the cloak of invisibility list.
 * Add yourself to the team page
 * Subscribe to some mailing lists
 * The public search list
 * The private search list
 * Wikitech-l the Paper of record for changes to MediaWiki.
 * Introduce yourself on wikimedia-search.

First few days

 * git
 * Read the tutorial on our git/gerrit workflow.
 * Install git.
 * Install git-review.
 * Add yourself to some Gerrit review group(s).
 * Skip down to the section on MediaWiki-Vagrant and start on that. When you run  for the first time it'll take a long, long while. So come back and continue from here while you wait for that.
 * Read How to become a MediaWiki hacker.
 * Install MediaWiki-Vagrant
 * After you verify that you can create pages and such add the  role, run   and try searching
 * Work on something small!
 * You can ask anyone for an issue to work on but officially your point of contact for this is manybubbles.
 * Just submit the patch using  and add manybubbles as a reviewer.
 * Try to pick something that seems small so that you get used to the code review process quickly but don't worry if you can't finish it in a day or a week.
 * Its likely that you won't get a response immediately when you push a patch for review. That's normal. You can continue other things in this document or grab another bug, whatever feels right to you.
 * Ask for help if you need it!
 * IRC
 * Once you have a cloak you can join/get invited to #wikimedia-staff and #mediawiki_security <--- note the underscore. It has a history.
 * Phabricator
 * Presumably by now you already have a Phabricator account.
 * Now you need to get yourself added to the wmf-nda project. This will allow you to view certain tasks which are hidden to people who haven't signed a WMF NDA. Employees had to sign an NDA, so assuming you are an employee, this should go smoothly.
 * In your phabricator profile, make sure your phabricator account is associated with your MediaWiki user account.
 * Create a task titled "Add (your phab username) to #wmf-nda", and add the wmf-nda-requests project. Mention in the description that you are an employee. It's OK to leave the "Assigned To" field empty since project members will see the request.

= People to meet and things to do with them = You'll want to meet these people soon, some on the first day! You should probably introduce yourself over IRC and ask to schedule a Google hangout with them.

The goal of this section is to meet some of your team mates and learn how the team fits together. Hopefully you'll talk to everyone on the team one on one for about thirty minutes over the first week or two and a few key people on your first day.

First day

 * Tomasz aka tomasz, our manager. He is also on US West Coast time.
 * Tell him everything is going great and that the instructions are easy to follow but you are still overwhelmed by the reading you have to do.
 * Tell him that you found some errors in the instruction and fixed the template.
 * I'm just kidding.
 * Ask him to give you an overview of how the foundation is organized, teams and such.
 * Also ask about how the SaD team is organized internally.
 * He'll want to talk to you one on one a few times in the first week.
 * Introduce yourself to Kevin aka meeple27, our team practices coach. He is on US West Coast time.
 * Ask him to add you to the appropriate meetings.
 * Ask him to explain how we communicate and track our work.
 * Ask him how he fits in with the rest of the team.

First week or two

 * Wes aka wes@wikimedia.org, the Vice President of Search and Discovery. He is on US *East* Coast time.
 * Ask him for a general team overview.
 * Dan aka Deskana, our lead product owner. He is on US West Coast time.
 * Ask him about how product works at the Foundation and with in the SaD team.
 * Testing overview - in house and Specialists Guild
 * Wikimedia project overview - what are our projects and who uses them
 * Moiz aka moizsyed, our lead designer. He is also on US West Coast time.
 * Ask about how UX/Design works with the rest of the SaD team.
 * James (earldouglas on IRC). He is on US *West* Coast time.
 * Ask him for an issue to work on
 * Erik aka ebernhardson, one of our multi-talented software engineers. He is on US West Coast time.
 * Ask him about vagrant ask him to show you how to run the browser tests. He does it in a different way than manybubbles and we're not sure which is the one true way.
 * Ask him what he's working on now.
 * Oliver aka ironholds, our analyst. He is on US *East* Coast time.
 * Ask him about dashboarding and what kinds of data we collect and are trying to collect.
 * Ask how we know if users think our results are good.
 * Stas aka SMalyshev, our wikidata expert. He is on US West Coast time.
 * Ask him about what Wikidata is and what the Wikidata Query Service is.
 * Have him give you access to a public beta instance of it and walk you through running some queries.
 * Max aka MaxSem, one of the two developers working on maps. He is on US West Coast time. And/or
 * Ask him to show you his work on maps and explain how it works and why its so cool.

= Who to ask if stuff doesn't work =