Community Tech/Retrospectives/2015-10-15

Action items from last time

These items were from the previous-previous retro

Working with community legacy code: super frustrating and hard to keep momentum going
- Ongoing concern; no specific action right now
Specific engineering maneger/support when Ryan was gone would have been useful
- Arranged for Bryan to fill in on a tech basis next time Ryan is out
Could use more review/feedback
More interaction with the community would have been better for fixing the database reports
Have follow-up conversations:
- Most of our work is English Wikipedia specific so far +1, some very specific!+1|++ 2
  - No conversation yet. Should have email convo about most work being in English so far.
- We will need to add more items to the backlog soon, but from where?++ 2
  - Had some conversations; still a concern; keep talking; Danny should help
- NK: I feel like we need a meeting to discuss the tasks from the last sprint and share lessons, from a technical point of view. Especially our Investigation tasks (which we squeeze into our sprint planning right now). +1|++ 2 - Mailing list material? - Possibly! Take some time to write up mini-retrospectives on individual tasks?
  - Discussed on list; no firm conclusion. Maybe could be a standard practice to circulate a couple paragraphs about each to see if that triggers discussion?
GitHub workflows: we can do this on mailing list
Sort of did this, but should probably end up with a more formal process; Frances will move the github workflows email thread forward
How to handle delayed/nonexistent feedback especially when not possible to ping relevant people in real-time
- Email! Email is ok, especially a heads-up re: an existing discussion elsewhere that needs input.
Brainstorm/discuss CoC handling with Kaldari/Quim/??
- Some happened
Post retrospective notes: Ryan
- Done

What has gone well?

Niharika (with Kaldari) put together a quick prototype for a complicated feature, it works & we're ready to show it to users +1
Working with Heather to make a nifty graphic for the Wishlist Survey
NK: Learnt a lot of new stuff while developing the browser testing script with a good deal of help from Ryan, that was fun
NK: RevisionSlider prototype is coming along nicely
Tech support survey is ready to send out today. Yay! (worked with translators)
Good work on Citation Bot, have a reasonable grasp of how it goes together (Frances thinks so at least)
We have a PM! *\o/*
Interaction with community on citation bot continues to go really well

What could have gone better?

Haven't gotten feedback from TCB team in a while (tried to reschedule)
Difficulty getting feedback from AlexZ (a maintainer) regarding Popular pages report
Danny - still learning the current tickets & work
(Slow) Making progress on Wishlist Survey
- Document more in phab; less inside head

-- Kaldari + Danny need to work together on wishlist survey

Fixing HotCat - harder than expected
Getting travel approval seemed to take awhile/some effort (wikisource)
- More communication about why attending might have helped
Template:Cite doi RfC is not closed yet, but probably can't do anything about that +
- Getting it closed is a blocker for some citation bot work
- Involve Johan in getting Template:Cite doi RfC closed
Feel code momentum flagging (FH), want to get right back into that
Need to figure out the connection/distinction with Community Engagement++++

What else is on your mind?

Gadgets 2.0 +
- Some discussions have happened; need to avoid code quagmire; team could choose to own it
- MVP would be helpful
- Danny will set up a meeting with team and Kunal (and others?) about Gadgets 2.0
FH would like to review more but doesn't necessarily feel like they have the context
Eternal question: refactoring old bot code, y/n
Should we have a standard story grooming meeting, mid-sprint? +++
Should we have a central place for people to report broken gadgets/templates etc.? Not allowed on Phabricator right now. Perhaps a page on Meta? Or a dedicated Phab board.+++
- There may be hundreds of broken gadgets, so any system needs to account for lots of reports
- Could also be a recruiting tool for onwiki devs
  - Danny proposes Meta space; FH would like to have expectations set from the beginning, possibly https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Friendly_space_expectations (just change "grants" stuff to "technical" or similar)

Deeper discussions

Need to figure out the connection/distinction with Community Engagement++++
- Should there be one big shared backlog?

Question of scope: not all bugs/tasks/projects that affect "power users" are going to be good entry points for volunteer devs (for a number of reasons)

- Is there a meeting scheduled with Luis/Toby about this?

There is, for next week -- Danny, Kaldari, Quim, Luis, Rachel -- I don't want to add more people to it, but we'll definitely talk with the team right after Makes sense.

Action Items (pulled out after the meeting ended)

Should have email convo about most work being in English so far. (Frances, email sent)
Maybe could be a standard practice to circulate a couple paragraphs about each completed investigation task to see if that triggers discussion? (Kaldari)
Frances will move the github workflows email thread forward (done)
Danny: Should we have a standard story grooming meeting, mid-sprint? +++
NK: Should we have a central place for people to report broken gadgets/templates etc.? Not allowed on Phabricator right now. Perhaps a page on Meta? Or a dedicated Phab board.+++ (Niharika already sent an email on this, others should respond) - That's a different thing. (ah, sorry) I'll send out an email about this too.:) -- Email sent
Kaldari + Danny need to work together on wishlist survey
Kaldari will involve Johan in getting Template:Cite doi RfC closed
Danny will set up a meeting with team and Kunal (and others?) about Gadgets 2.0 -- Done

Retro of retro

less rushed, much better
NK: Bad connectivity for me today. :( :(
extra time was useful +
lots of good action items
Good catch from Kevin on getting too deep into one area, moved us along
Thanks Niharika for catching that Kevin had grabbed the wrong past action items
still appreciate the facilitation very much!