Wikimedia Discovery/Meetings/Checkin/2017-07-20

= Topics from the past =
 * Preparing for Wikimania (Aug 8 - 14)
 * Add in any info for us to share:
 * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T168748
 * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/view/2805/
 * According to travel: “We recommend all staff from the the US and Europe and any other country that only requires an Electronic visa to carry [a staff] letter.”
 * This letter can be found on the travel page for Wikimania, just fill in the blanks and print it out (but beware of verbiage, you might encounter some bad grammar)

= Announcements, Information, Questions =
 * Remoting weeks last two weeks of the month
 * Quarterly Reviews delivered
 * RfC for sister search, maybe move wikibooks to the top? Still need a definitive answer from the community.
 * Spark projects coming up, what will you work on?

= Scrum of Scrums = Are we blocked? Are we blocking? Other dependencies (in either direction) which don’t need to be called out as “blocked” (e.g. are progressing smoothly, have no urgency, etc.)
 * WDQS abuse problem blocked by Ops, there is no solution for how a client can bring the service down and ops doesn’t want to accept the one solution proposed.
 * None
 * Had a block on Thunderforest relief map layer data that now require API keys, so that was corrected by Deb, Legal and Max

= Discovery News =
 * See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/Status_updates

= Quick Quarterly Goals/KPI Update (if needed) = Discovery Roadmap FY 2017/18: https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/presentation/d/1N41eNrz0vFHJamLkhQjSFCOSiDg-bKr5H3ROchqwVJU/edit?usp=sharing

FY 2017-18 Q1 (Jul-Sep) goals: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Discovery#Projects

This status was last updated 2017-07-11 Completed/dropped goals are not shown.

Tech:Search Platform
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Technology/Goals/2017-18_Q1#Search_platform

Backend Search:

1. Implement advanced methodologies such as “learning to rank” machine learning techniques and signals to improve search result relevance across language Wikipedias. 2. Improve support for multiple languages by researching and deploying new language analyzers as they make sense to individual language wikis. WDQS: Wikidata Query Service goal for this quarter will be working on expanding category search in the query service, while also collecting SPARQL statistics; it will be maintained by Stas and Guillaume to support the continued growth and use of the service; the Analysis team will help with statistics.
 * Perform load tests and A/B tests on new models to make sure they can be safely deployed to production
 * When ready, deploy newly automated models which match (at a minimum) current performance of manually-configured search result relevance
 * Perform research spikes to find new analyzers for different languages
 * Test new analyzers to see if they are improvements (Japanese and Vietnamese)
 * Deploy new / updated analyzers
 * Deploy analyzers in progress from last quarter (Hebrew)

Audiences:Readers:Discovery
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Audiences/2017-18_Q1_Goals#Readers

Frontend Search: Portal: Wikipedia.org Portal team will not have any dedicated goals this quarter other than continuing to maintain the page by fixing critical bugs and performing regular statistics and translations updates.
 * Finish up testing of the Explore Similar feature on search results page
 * Analyze data and gather community feedback
 * Request internationalization strings
 * Deploy feature

Maps: The Maps goal for this quarter is to finalize and deploy the new map style, as well as monitoring the service for critical bugs and increasing the frequency of OSM replication.

Analysis: The team will continue to work closely with the Search teams to analyze A/B tests and other assorted data; they will also prototype automated A/B test reports and investigate addition of Continuous Integration to their R codebases.

FYI

 * July 20: Quarterly check-in for Search Frontend
 * July 24 - August 4: all WMF staff encouraged to work remotely
 * Also Sep 18 - 29 are all remote weeks when the SF office move happens
 * Aug 15: WMF holiday
 * Sep 4: US holiday
 * OOO
 * Guillaume on vacation from July 10 - 21st
 * Paul off July 16 - 23 (vacation/camp)
 * Erika off 7/31 - 8/4
 * David (August: wikimania + vacation 2 weeks after the event, back on Aug 29)
 * Deb Aug 8 - 14 Wikimania and Hackathon
 * Stas Aug 10 - 17 Wikimania + Structured data offsite
 * Trey out Aug 7-15 (vacation + Wikimania + holiday)
 * Trey out Aug 21-22 (vacation)
 * Paul off August 18 - 20 + travel (State of the Map)
 * Erika out 9/25-26 for Wikilead
 * Erika out 10/3-10/4 for Agile Open NorCal conference
 * Erika out 10/13 for Transformative Technology Conference
 * Paul off October 19 - 22 + travel (State of the Map US)
 * Deb off October 19 - 20 for State of the Map US