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!