Engineering Community Team/Meetings/2013-03-26

On communicating changes (volunteers)

 * Do we know what caused Niklas' thread "Who is responsible for communicating changes in MediaWiki to WMF sites?"
 * Quim: It's difficult to offer a good solution when the problem that triggers a complaint is unknown.
 * btw expect a follow up from me (guillaume) about this general topic later today (started independently)

Security training
Security for developers/Training - what were the outcomes? http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Security_for_developers/Training http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2013-March/067756.html


 * Mix of people - newcomers & seasoned developers. 14 active participants speaking. ~15 people seemed to join to lurk
 * Some hadn't watched video ahead of time - need more reminders?
 * People helped each other

Since Chris didn't have to prepare AT ALL, this had great ROI.

Is this a good model to copy for QA, performance, or other topics where we have existing slides/video/tutorial docs?
 * we have a narrated slideshow & some other videos from QA
 * Lua
 * Git/Gerrit

Need videos for the future
Chris wants there to be a test coverage thing someday https://integration.wikimedia.org/cover/mediawiki-core/master/php/ but there's no video yet

We ought to have some videos about performance

QA priorities, measuring success

 * Check out https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Agte_lJNpi-OdGpJSHdMZV83UjdTdHc5UFVrdXBwaWc#gid=0 -- ensuring we test a variety of features and balance testability,  urgency, movement goals, etc.? (Including exploratory testing & test  automation)
 * Based on the spreadsheet, Quim has proposed to have the next browser automation goal about ACUX, following its release and manual testing week. Waiting for confirmation from Zeljko / Chris / Steven. (Meeting later today to discuss the Apr6 ET exercise, we'll discuss this as well)
 * Existing browser tests for GuidedTour have found two regression issues so far, so this is a high value project.


 * Check Measuring success of QA activities: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/QA/Strategy#Measuring_success
 * Check/join the ongoing discussion to apply this to Bug Days (Bug Weeks?): https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:QA/Strategy
 * Let's all get this finished this week.

Followup from quarterly review

 * Sumana still needs to send brief summary to wikitech-l
 * Work with OpenStack to see what metrics they're using - did Quim look into this?
 * Discussed with Ryan Lane, who proposed this idea. They are working on user dashboards showing basically their gerrit stats. Not related to MediaWiki so far. We decided to focus first on improving user profiles via https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil/Contributors#People Not particularly applicable to us; ok to let this go.
 * About Metrics, Quim plans to subcontract the development of automated stats, but first we need to answer the question: what questions do we want to answer with metrics? what type of decisions do we want to make using metrics? Otherwise we risk to do just a collection of factoids not influencing our planning. But I need to have hands (a bit more) free to plan this.

Using statuses better
Pull this kind of fresh activity to the mediawiki.org homepage?
 * Some of the statuses are incomprehensible -- maybe exposing them and ensuring they are used (someplace public and constant, like a feed) would cause people to write better updates?
 * Possible risk: teams won't use them as much? fewer but more PR-y updates, less frequent, thus maybe less useful internally

Possible Lua hobby project to actually pull the statuses someplace

New category: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Project_status

RSS feed: https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Project_status&feed=rss&target=Category%3AProject_status

Discussion: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Current_issues#Categorize_.22.2Fstatus.22_subpages_24401

BTW, Guillaume & Quim to transclude project calendar onto home page (obsolete stuff there right now)
 * The functionality itself was added a month ago: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Template_talk:New_opportunities/Content

RobLa on high-priority escalation

 * https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/46401
 * Big JavaScript regression. Need Krinkle's help
 * Hard to reproduce.
 * First report on the 20th, bug murmurs on Commons over 23rd/24th weekend, then got more input & more useful data (actual error message from JS console)
 * Probably need to revert some of Timo's code
 * May need to send a note to wikitech-ambassadors (heads-up Guillaume)

GSOC mentors

 * Quim expected more responses from WMF teams (combined with LevelUp), but I'm impressed by the initiative of some WMF individuals. Maybe they will respond if/when students' proposals show up in their area?
 * https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2013
 * http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Mentorship_programs/Possible_projects#GSOC_2013_candidates_missing_one_thing_or_two_25493

Vacations & conferences
Andre:


 * Easter Holidays from Fri March29 - Mon April01 (that's public holidays here)
 * maybe Open Source Bridge Conference, Portland, June 18–21, 2013

Texas Linux Fest: deadline April 1st - http://2013.texaslinuxfest.org/, Valerie!
 * maybe https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_contribute/Presentation ?
 * https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Events/FOSDEM/2013_-_Lightning_-_Qgil

Željko: Chris:
 * 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 24-26, Wikimedia Hackathon, Amsterdam, Netherlands
 * Aug 4-10 Agile2013 (not certain but likely)

Sumana:
 * Offline Thursday (train)