SDeckelmann-WMF

We need your feedback on a tool from the Wikimedia Summit

Reminder: the guide to using Baserow, presented during the Wikimedia Summit.

Hi! I'm contacting you as one of the participants in the Wikimedia Summit 2022, to kindly ask for your feedback through a 5-10 minute survey to evaluate 'Baserow' (note: the survey is on a Google form).

Baserow was a tool through which participants in the Summit co-created a database of Movement Strategy activities. We hope to learn from you how useful it may be to keep using it in the future to help document and connect on Movement Strategy work.

You are welcome and encouraged to fill out the survey in any language. Your feedback would be very appreciated --Abbad (WMF) (talk) 15:37, 16 February 2023 (UTC).

Some thoughts about metrics

Hi Selena. I was reading your message in the Wikimedia mailing list and I was thinking maybe you like to see this page I created some months ago with some thoughts about evaluation of many different topics in Wikimedia Movement. I also think the metrics are very important, they can show us where we are, where we are going to and, maybe the most important, what work and what not. It is not easy to find good metric in the Wikimedia Movement, and I have not seen many people minding about it. I am glad you see the importance of having good metrics. Danilo.mac talk 03:41, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Suggestions for WMF Mastodon account

(Messaging you since you are the only person followed by the account so I presume you have access even if it's meant to be run by Communications)

Hi, You should change to 'Domain field' to https://www.wikimediafoundation.org/ so it's a clickable link.

You also might also want to add the following HTML to the top of WikimediaFoundation.org so the URL gets 'verified' (see https://joinmastodon.org/verification)

<link rel="me" href="https://wikimedia.social/@wikimediafoundation">

Also you might want credit the banner image (I can't seem to find it) and change 'Wikipedia' in the bio to a hashtag to people can come across while searching for '#wikipedia'

Thanks --Nintendofan885 (talk) 19:00, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Ah! Thanks for the tips. I'll pass along. SDeckelmann-WMF (talk) 22:42, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Code stewardship reviews

Hi Selena,

I want to make sure you are aware of phab:project/profile/3144 which refers to you in an abstract and interesting way. I am telling you this because w:Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 205#Preventing future issues could be seen as blaming a lack of communication to you on these issues as contributing to the missed security issues with the Graphs extension which had to be disabled causing no dynamic graphs on any Wikimedia wikis since April.

While I really don't know whether or not that's reasonably true, I have my doubts that re-instituting the Code Stewardship Review process at your earliest opportunity would have likely caught the show-stopping problems with the Graph extension, but this loss of Graphs has resulted in what may be the most substantial and long-running deterioration of Wikipedia content ever.

Looking through phab:T334940 a couple possibilities for workarounds (e.g., freezing the Graphs JavaScript code in a templates namespace or pages editable only by interface editors, while allowing anyone to continue editing the data for those templates) have been alluded to without any mention of effort planned behind them or support from management. I suggest that both would be prudent at this juncture. Thank you for reading this. I would have raised this situation with a lower level of management had your name not been mentioned by others. Sandizer (talk) 00:18, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Sandizer - thank you for sending me a note. I will have a look at the ticket. Peter has been digging into the extension, which revealed several issues different teams were required to have a look into. This work had an update on August 11.

Because what prompted you to reach out was the code stewardship question — I wanted to share a little about this issue specifically as it relates to extensions. We lack some particular kinds of agreed upon, usable and enforceable policies, such as deployment criteria (that is met!) and automated security advisory monitoring, which would enable a team to feel confident when they take on a code base that some level of care was applied before deploying or handing the software over. Both of those issues affected the Graphs extension. I asked for those issues to be explored back when the Graph extension was taken offline, and an initial effort has been put into those ideas to make them part of our regular operations. That is just one aspect to the complexity, however. There are over 500 extensions, all with different purposes and capabilities. And I’m sure there are many other issues that I personally haven’t yet explored or fully understand.

Thanks again for reaching out and I’ll follow up later today either here or on phab. SDeckelmann-WMF (talk) 13:36, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Just a quick update -- I've reviewed the ticket, and the product manager will be responding to SJ's latest comment on phab soon (today or Monday). SDeckelmann-WMF (talk) 21:44, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

How volunteer developer support could be improved in Wikimedia

Hello Selena,

They told me you, as a WMF employee, might be interested in that.

As a volunteer developer, contributing to the technical side of Wikimedia projects and occasionally MediaWiki, I realized that a thing I'm missing in the Wikimedia ecosystem is a questions and answers platform like they have on GitHub (example page).

My need is to have a place where I can just discuss a technical component with its developers, ask questions, and receive answers. I don't consider the current means outlined at mw:Communication, including IRC, mailing lists and Discord servers, sufficient and/or convenient. Such talks are occasionally held on Phabricator, but currently Phabricator is not intended for that.

There was a platform mw:Discourse for that purpose. It didn't take off and was eventually closed. I have always felt something not right about it. Probably, the fact that it's a separate website, and discussions there were not part of the overall WMF development infrastructure. IIRC, you couldn't subscribe to components you want, couldn't contact the person whose feedback you seek, etc. In other words, it was not integrated into the overall infrastructure.

I found out that there is a Q&A feature developed on Phabricator's community fork, Phorge, called Ponder. By the looks of it, it eliminates the defeciencies I mentioned. I wonder if it can be made available on Phabricator also.

You might not be the right person to discuss this with, but anyway I wanted to share this with you, and maybe you'll have some thoughts or ideas on that and/or want to discuss this inside WMF. Thanks for attention. Jack who built the house (talk) 22:00, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Hey @JWBTH, I'm @JWheeler-WMF, Lead Community Tech Manager on Community Tech, responsible for the Technical Wishlist. Thanks for opening this discussion and articulating the need for a stronger developer community and discussion about technical needs.

This is a unique challenge for Wikimedia; there are so many places in our ecosystem to conduct a discussion, it's hard for engineers to find signal vs noise. You could drop a comment on a talk page and not hear anything, and your comment could be lost in Discord. From my understanding, Discourse can be a great platform, but many technical volunteers aren't interested in discussions off-platform. Ponder is intriguing; have they seen a lot of traction to spur technical conversations?

I'd love to continue this conversation, either on-wiki or through a video call, to learn more about your needs. The movement will benefit from a strong, connected developer community, and I'd like to hear your ideas and painpoints to better support you in the future.

GitHub is clearly an example of a thriving developer community. Are you part of any other technical communities where there's a lively, supportive culture? jack (talk) 01:08, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

My experience is limited here; I just learned about Ponder in Discord. I'll address the person who told me about it, ask them, and @mention you.

I only had enough time to notice that Q&A on Ponder is similar to tasks, with subscribers, tags, ability to mention, etc. which is a benefit in my opinion since this would allow the participation to emerge seamlessly and organically.

many technical volunteers aren't interested in discussions off-platform
Volunteers is one half of the story; the other is WMF developers. The good thing is – both are already on Phabricator, and in numbers. On the other hand, if there is no integration with the rest of the infrastructure, e.g. ability to track components you wrote, devs would have to spend time idly on the website (e.g. Discourse), fishing for something that might be relevant to them. This is definitely not good UX.

UI/UX is a top criteria for me (and in this sense I may be biased). I was concerned in a similar fashion about the experience of the contributors to Wikimedia projects when they use talk pages, which led to me writing the Convenient Discussions script which I now use to reply to you (and which influenced WMF when they came up with DiscussionTools). Jack who built the house (talk) 08:13, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Hi all! Here I will mark and support the idea of ​​asking questions on the Phabricator/Phorge through their new functionality.

There are often questions that you want to ask about MediaWiki, about the ecosystem as a whole, and get a plus or minus prompt answer, but you don’t know where to go. Moreover, you cannot find the answer, even if someone has already asked such a question.

All other platforms are not suitable:

• MediaWiki - has terrible search, no tags, too many disparate pages that no one follows
• Discord - few of the developers are there, there is no official server
• Discourse - was outside the ecosystem and was not integrated into it in any way

Working with a Phabricator/Phorge at the moment is the best decision that can be made quickly and efficiently, without any serious labor costs. Iniquity (talk) 23:46, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

I'd like to point to previous conversations in phab:T31923 or phab:T155678 and their unwritten Lessons Learned by past WMF teams. In general, I consider https://xkcd.com/927/ the big issue: Finding social consensus which venues to switch off because increasing fragmentation is no improvement; cf "It didn't take off" by the original poster here. I'd also say if Discourse did not feel right for you then Phabricator's Ponder definitely will not feel right for you either - "you" may just be a different person. Disclaimer: All of this is my personal opinion. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 11:45, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

What other platforms for asking questions exist besides those mentioned above? :) Iniquity (talk) 17:58, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Can you help find the right WMF contact for Earwig?

Hi Selena. This is sort of related to the #How volunteer developer support could be improved in Wikimedia thread directly above. One of the most essential everyday tools on enwiki (Earwig's copyvio detector) is having problems because it is running out of quota for the Google API it depends on. There's a long thread at en: WP:VPWMF#Copyright tool but the gist is that our arrangement with Google was negotiated by a WMF employee who is no longer here and nobody knows who in WMF is responsible for this now. If you could steer us to somebody in WMF who can stand up and say, "I'll be your point of contact" and is empowered to resolve the issue, that would be wonderful. RoySmith (talk) 13:15, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

I'll look into this, Roy. Thanks. SDeckelmann-WMF (talk) 15:01, 11 September 2024 (UTC)