Engineering Community Team/Meetings/2013-02-05

Attendance: Sumana, Andre, Chris, Guillaume, Quim, Željko Sadly absent: RobLa Agenda: (reviewed) https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Platform_Engineering

Wikimedia QA IRC channel or mail list or open other direct channels?

Sumana: Should we have a separate Wikimedia QA IRC channel? (especially for bug days) Chris: #mediawiki is noisy. #wikimedia-dev is more useful. No other channels are really appropriate. Chris: VE community test announcement went to wikitech-l, wikitech-ambassadors, mediawiki-i18n. Are those appropriate or did we spam them? (Guillaume: these are *exactly* the right channels for that event) Chris: We got ZERO response from any of them. Guillaume: Were you trying to start a discussion (and therefore expecting responses), or were you trying to get the word out (and therefore the e-mails were just aimed at encouraging people to join IRC or so)? Chris: I was trying to get bug reports for VE :-). But we didn't even get any email response, nor IRC discussion, nor Bugzilla tickets. We did add a tester to Features, Phil Kirkham, who also blogged us for Software Testing Club and will blog it for Atomic Object, but Phil came in via my blog/twitter. Guillaume: I'm personally of the opinion that we already have *way* too many IRC channels / mailing lists, and fragmenting discussions weakens them Andre says: in #wikimedia-dev, there might be people who came in and wanted to join the BugDay but were shy because there was so much other discussion happening Guillaume: Perhaps a good compromise would be a dedicated channel for events, or better yet one for non-coding activities, but not specifically QA? Like -office? (Quim) -office is more for IRC office hours, I'm not sure I say we try it - it's full of people who are interested in participating & giving their feedback on Wikimedia stuff Maybe consider a channel for non-coders? Like, testers & product managers? feeling tentative We might try again, do as Sumana say, and actually raise the topic during the QA activity to see what others idling in that channel think, plus the ones coming for the QA activity. (Quim) Next steps:

For the next bug day, probably try #wikimedia-office
Go ahead and greet every person who shows up even if it feels a little foolish
Ask the residents of the channels what they think

mw:Project:Calendar

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Calendar Guillaume: Are you using it? Do you have issues? Is it useful to you? Željko: Should this be added to the calendar? http://www.meetup.com/Wikipedia-Engineering-Meetup/events/100444752/ Guillaume: Yes, absolutely :)

Other topics

Chris: Opportunity to support E2 via community testing messaging, Echo on mediawiki.org (next week) and AFTv5 trial period to French and German wikipedias (March) Can we frame the Echo & AfT trial periods as testing exercises & make a big improvement in E2 marketing/messaging? Chris is talking about being in position to handle feedback quickly and well, especially negative feedback. It'd be nice if we could test both Echo & AFT to make sure that the features are serving the users, rather than being surprising or unwelcome. Goal: let's see what the actual quality is, and whether the functionality works Larger issue: what are the levels of scrutiny and attention we give to various components & features?

Bottom level: "testing in production" (default) - Andre looks at incoming BZ tickets & nearly always puts them in the right product/component, and tries to prioritize them
Middle level: Look actively on village pump-style fora, post to wikitech-ambassadors, maybe post to social media & ask Andre to be more forceful in cc'ing relevant people on bugs
Top level: full force scrutiny! Writing automated tests, looking hard on village pump-style fora for bug reports, hosting test days and bug days, assigning community liaisons to gather feedback more actively, maybe even hiring contractors.

See QA/Features_testing/levels

Sumana & Chris to talk about connection to Ops

Quim asks Chris to write down his goals for the Echo & AfT stuff Can we ameliorate misfeatures by testing? Chris is concerned with the impedance mismatch between developers & users .... we might not be serving their needs. Let's be more proactive. Chris is looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Article_feedback Let's be more iterative.... We should be working with the product team on getting more feedback to them, yes! On outreach for VE testing day -- it'd be more effective to do personal outreach, send personal emails to the people who would be interested Chris: Can we move testing Groups out of "Proposal" status? What does that look like?

  (I miss more people and more diverse in each group. But it is ultimately the presentation of the proposal to the AffCom and the acceptance what decides when a group is not a proposal anymore - Quim)

Resolved

Quim: I want to take the chance to walk you in 1-2 minutes through the Wikimedia DE offices so you see the Wikidata team and surroundings. Quim: by now I have been pitching https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_contribute/Presentation a dozen times or more, combined with the creation of groups and the message seems to be convincing. Let's see if it does bring groups but at least it opens the eyes of people thinking that all we do is PHP development on a wiki engine.

   Quim will spread the word about this ready-to-reuse presentation! (it would help if presentation notes were added, for presenters who need help to elaborate on the slides)