Wikimedia Foundation Report, October-December 2015
You are more than welcome to edit this wiki version of the report for the purposes of usefulness, presentation, etc. |
Foreword
editWe are pleased to bring you the Wikimedia Foundation’s Quarterly Report for Q2 of the 2015/16 fiscal year, a comprehensive summary of how we did on the objectives defined earlier in our quarterly goal setting process. We have continued to optimize the report’s format and the organization’s quarterly review process based on the feedback that we have received.
Teams have highlighted key performance indicator (KPI) - with ongoing efforts to identify the best possible metrics - and to estimate how much time fell into each of the three categories from the 2015 Call to Action (strengthen, focus and experiment). We have organized the content of team reports to present all the information that is related to a particular objective in one place (description of the goal, measures of success, how we did on achieving the objective, and what we learned from working on it).
As before, we are including an overview slide summarizing successes and misses across all teams. In a mature 90-day goal setting process, the “sweet spot” is for about 75% of goals to be a success. Organizations that are meeting 100% of their goals are not typically setting aggressive goals.
Wikimedia Foundation Leadership Team
Quarterly metrics scorecard (beta)
editParticipation | ||
Active editors (5+ edits/month) |
75.5k/mo | +0.6% from Q1 (July-Sept) +0% y-o-y |
New editor activation (not directly comparable to active editors) |
22,531/mo | -3.7% from Q1 (July-Sept) -10.2% y-o-y |
Edits via mobile (on WP, percentage of total) |
3.9% | Q1: 3.0% Q2 2014-15: 2.2% |
Site reliability | ||
Read uptime | 99.979% | +0.037% from Q1 (July-Sept) y-o-y: N/A |
Write uptime | 99.974% | +0.039% from Q1 (July-Sept) y-o-y: N/A |
Read latency Median first paint time |
865ms | Q1: 642ms |
Write latency Median page save time |
1056ms | Q1: 1042ms |
Readership | ||
Page Views Crawlers excluded |
15.6B/mo | +1.3% from Q1 (July-Sept) approx. -8.8% y-o-y |
Content | ||
New articles | 16.7k/day | +119% from Q1 (July-Sept) +126% y-o-y |
Edits (in Wikipedia articles) | 10.52M/mo | -4.2% from Q1 (July-Sept) +9.1% y-o-y |
Fundraising | ||
Amount raised | $46.9M (exceeded $34M target) |
+$2.9M y-o-y |
On mobile
(Dec. 2015 only) |
20% | Q1: 12%Dec. 2014: 20.8% |
Q2 2015/16: Successes/misses by team
editQ2 2015/16 objectives overall
edit142 objectives
34 teams
- 92 successes (65%)
- 50 misses (35%)
Misses include anything not delivered as planned, including “yellow” goals and those that were intentionally revised or abandoned due to changing priorities.
Q2 - 2015/16
SLA for Trust & Safety correspondence: Resolving 95% of emergency@ within three hours | 100% | +/- 0 change from Q1 (100%) | +/- 0 change YTD (100%) |
SLA for public correspondence: Resolving 95% of answers@ and business@ within two business days | 100% | +3.5% change from Q1 (97%) | +3.5% change YTD (97%) |
Q2 - Community Advocacy
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Innovate improved community health through creation of a community-informed harassment strategy.
Team members involved: 6
|
|
Survey released on schedule, with 3,845 responses from 14 projects. Consultation launched on schedule and generated many suggestions for next steps on addressing harassment issues.
|
Notes: Survey went smoothly given scale with some wrinkles. Many volunteers helped make it and the consultation happen, with pre-release feedback and translations. The consultation was kept open beyond 30 days to permit more time for feedback.
Learnings: Launching surveys in the modern movement is complex, and understanding the requirements and reaching out to stakeholders was more time-consuming than expected. Future surveys will build in more time for procedural complexity. We also learned that we need better advanced coordination with other teams, like Community Resources, on how to pipeline community-promoted initiatives generated by such consultations.
Q2 - Community Advocacy
Objective: Refining T&S processes
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Improve execution of trust & safety by refining and clarifying processes.
Team members involved: 2
|
|
The updated child safety (images) policy is underway and much research was put into it, including with the assistance of legal, but the policy update is not complete.
|
Notes: Other focuses at the Foundation particularly around strategy limited staff capacity, and the refinement of this process - given that we do have a functional policy - was deprioritized to allow us to complete other projects.
Learnings: The complexities of laws regarding processing inappropriate images of minors internationally makes establishing an international team for this workflow unlikely.
Q2 - Community Advocacy
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Focus on community health by supporting and facilitating improved collaboration of key functionary groups.
Team members involved: 4
|
|
The conference took place in October, with 15 attendees out of 37 invited. All stewards - not just those in attendance - were polled about how we can better assist, and a report completed on 25 November. CA is coordinating with other departments and teams to meet steward needs. |
Notes: The Stewards in attendance voiced strong opinions that the meetings were useful for them to connect on better ways to conduct their work and better ways to coordinate with the Wikimedia Foundation on supporting the movement through their role. As a cost-saving mechanism, it would be worth exploring whether we could in future add special functionary days to broader movement meetings, like Wikimania, with funding provided for the extra day of attendance or as part of the scholarship work.
Q2 - Community Advocacy
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Devise and implement an experimental plan for a central community hub that will allow community predictable and reliable access to WMF staff.
Team members involved: 6
|
|
The design of the experimental hub was completed and approved. However, implementation was put on hold in order to maintain capacity for CA to more fully engage with the WMF strategy process. |
Notes: The design was completed on schedule and cleared the review period, but put on hold to keep capacity for strategy. If capacity permits, it will be launched in Q3, but is not on Q3 Quarterly Goals due to need to retain availability for strategy consultation. It may be combined with hub pages serving communications and programs/affiliates into one hub.
Learnings: Remain flexible on release dates, but try not to release heavy engagement projects around major holidays.
Q2 - Community Advocacy
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Maintain the core.
Team members involved: 7
|
|
CA met KPIs related to defined inquiry paths and maintained core workflows in spite of staffing transitions. |
Learnings: While CA grew in new ways this quarter with the addition to our team of senior strategist Haitham Shammaa to help guide us in new directions, core work continues to consume the bulk of our time and attention. Through consultation with Terry, Luis and Lila, CA learned that we need to protect the focus on our core even though that will mean committing to fewer additional projects. Our focus now is on using our added capacities to ensure that additional projects are properly focused to nurture global community health.
Individual contributors with 2+ edits in product pages | Q2/O - 915
Q2/N - 920
Q2/D - 929
|
+3.17% from Q1 | N/A YoY |
Page Views | Q2/O - 24,812
Q2/N - 22,891
Q2/D - 20,775
|
-7.31% from Q1 | N/A ToY |
Q2 - Community Liaisons
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Goal 1 - STRENGTHEN
Improve community understanding of and input to product development
Team members involved: 2
|
|
|
Q2 - Community Liaisons
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Goal 2 - FOCUS
Focus on VisualEditor’s progress at enwiki
Team members involved: 4
|
|
|
Erica was instrumental in supporting conversations around VisualEditor at es.wp, resulting in VE being turned on per request, as well as reactivating discussion about launching VisualEditor at nl.wp
Q2 - Community Liaisons
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Goal 3 - STRENGTHEN - Future planning
Team members involved: 3
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|
|
Q2 - Community Liaisons
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Goal 4 - CORE
Maintain current workflows
Team members involved: 7
|
|
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Key performance indicator (NOTE: we are going to change KPIs)
Users of Wikimedia Web APIs | N/A (T102079) | N/A from Q4 | N/A YoY |
Q1 - Developer Relations
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Goal 1: STRENGTHEN
Successful organization of the Wikimedia Developer Summit 2016 Team members involved: 2
|
Logistics of a 3 day event in 2 locations are all solved.
The schedule reflects WMF Engineering priorities.
Scheduled sessions are preceded by online discussions involving their stakeholders.
25% of registration are volunteers or third party developers.
|
Successful logistics 2+1 days.
Successful program organized in 5 areas, with pre-scheduled sessions and unconference.
Successful prior discussions and note-taking.
BUT only 15% volunteers / 3rd parties (25 total, last year was 15 - 10%).
|
Q1 - Developer Relations
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Goal 2: STRENGTHEN
Define potential actions to reduce code review queues and waiting times.
Team members involved: 1
|
Proposal to address the code review queue of changesets submitted by volunteers, presented to WMF Product, Technology and Team Practices, and to our developer community.
|
Extensive research was made, and a draft identifying problems exists.
However, we still haven't presented a proposal yet.
This was a prominent topic at the Developer Summit, and we are integrating the outcome. |
Q1 - Developer Relations
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Goal 3: FOCUS
Map current use of Wikimedia APIs
Team members involved: 1
|
List of known users of Wikimedia web APIs specifying main uses.
Metrics of quantitative use of these APIs
|
We ended up without resources for this goal.
Strategic Partnerships worked on a survey, but that is not enough to have the list of known users.
Quantitative metrics are still missing. We depend on Reading Infrastructure.
|
Q1 - Developer Relations
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Goal 4: FOCUS
Binding code of conduct for all Wikimedia technical spaces
Team members involved: 1
|
Code of Conduct for technical spaces approved
Committee created
|
The Code of Conduct is still being drafted. The main part has been reviewed. We are defining processes with support from specialists.
The approval process is not defined yet.
The creation of a committee has not started.
|
Q1 - Developer Relations
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Goal 5: EXPERIMENT
Organize the start of Outreachy round 11
Team members involved: 2
|
Organization driven by volunteers.
5 featured project ideas.
Selection process completed and documented.
|
Tony Thomas is the main org admin. He is a volunteer, former mentor and intern.
We had 9 featured project ideas.
The selection was completed, refreshing the related documentation in the process.
|
Program Capacity & Learning
editKey performance indicators:
TWL Unique recipients | 2598 | + 8.98% from Q1 | + 23% YoY |
Education program leaders served | 229 (85 countries) | + 22% (+ 39%) from Q1 | YoY n/a |
Community leaders engaged - learning and evaluation | 96 | - 49% from Q1 | YoY n/a |
Q2 - Program Capacity & Learning
Objective | Measure of success (direct project hours) | Status |
Focus |
|
Complete.
|
Strengthen |
| |
Experiment |
|
The Global Metrics API (appreciatively referred to as the Magic Button) takes the pain out of data collection for staff and volunteers identified in the most recent grants consultation. A collaborative partnership effort Amanda Bittaker (PC & L) Dan Andreescu Analytics) and Madhu Viswanathan (coding).
Q2 - Program Capacity & Learning
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Focus |
|
Complete |
Strengthen |
|
Complete |
Experiment |
|
Incomplete |
Mature Wikimedia programs demonstrating scalability and impact require infrastructure and support for
Q2 - Program Capacity & Learning
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Strengthen |
|
Incomplete |
- We were able to launch the staff supported model for AffCom including 92 affiliates reviewed for Wikimedia Conference eligibility status, 28 affiliates renewed through reporting updates. Special appreciation to Jaime Anstee who has taken on a leadership role collaborating with Greg Varnum and Community Resources in this transition.
- Full Affiliate project scoping delayed due to roadmap work and transition to AffCom staff model.
People supported
Global metrics from reports by resourced initiatives this Q
|
59,428
total individuals involved
|
2,324 new editors
(4% of total)
|
945 active editors
(2% of total)
|
Grants to
Global South
approved this Q
|
27 grants | $527,291 | 48%
of total #
|
12%
of total $
|
-72%
# from Q1
|
+61%
$ from Q1
|
+93%
# YoY
|
+17%
$ YoY
|
Q2 - Community Resources
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Team members involved: 1
|
|
|
Learning: Applicants need hands on support from staff and committee members to improve their applications throughout the review period; but with that support, results are great!
People: Winifred Olliff, 8 volunteers on the Simple APG Committee, the people behind our 5 amazing applicant organizations, and our volunteer and staff advisors, are making this pilot happen :)
Q2 - Community Resources
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Pilot Community Capacity Development support with 2 emerging communities
Team members involved: 1
|
Q2: 2 pilot projects launched, each focused on developing 1 capacity with 1 emerging community.
|
Behind schedule: 3 communities on board, projects are still being designed until end of Jan, haven't launched yet. |
Q3/4: Pilot communities meet planned measures of success, demonstrate a move from NO/LOW capacity to SOME capacity in the target area | On track |
Success: three emerging communities (Ukrainian [Ukraine], Portuguese [Brazil], Tamil [India]) engaged, toward building three different capacities, will allow us to maximize learning from first round of pilots
Miss: Planning phase took longer than expected; WMF turmoil and natural disaster (floods in Chennai) contributed to delay. Compressing community conversations to catch-up isn’t an option for building successful pilots, however.
Q2 - Community Resources
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Build a sustainable strategy for supporting Wikimania 2017-2021
Team members involved: 4
|
|
Montreal confirmed as host for Wikimania 2017
|
|
|
Miss: Q1 communications regarding selection process for Montreal were not clear. Revamped Wikimania planning process to come from consultation is aimed at avoiding repeat of this scenario for future years.
Learning: A dedicated Program Officer is needed to own events strategy overall, including integration between global and regional events. Much director (and other staff) time is spent filling in gaps.
Q2 - Community Resources
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Annual Plan (APG),
Project and Event (PEG),
Individual Engagement (IEG) grant program workflows
Team members involved: 7 (CR)
|
|
|
Success: ½ of new IEGs are focused on tool-building, with partnership with CE-Software team and easing of IEG eligibility restrictions. Thanks to Marti Johnson, Quim Gil, and the IEG committee!
Learning: More engineering support is needed for reviewing APG and IEG grant proposals, given increasing technical focus of some grant requests.
Finance
editQ2 - Finance
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Implement purchase order system to be utilized by departments and teams to make purchases.
Team members involved: 3
|
100% of all purchases are processed via the purchase order system.
|
Project was not started due to the departure of both the CFA and COO. Also, this is put on hold until we hire a Purchasing Specialist and finalize a purchase order workflow/process. |
Q2 - Finance
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Create a master calendar for the Annual Plan process.
Team members involved: 2
|
A standard and sustainable calendar that can be used for the current annual plan as well as future years.
|
For the FY 16-17 Annual Plan, a calendar was created to accommodate the FDC and community review and was approved by the C-Level team. Since this is our first year following the FDC timeline, we don’t know whether this can used as a master calendar going forward. However, we will incorporate all lessons learned from this year’s process and iterate as necessary.
|
Q2 - Finance
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
To optimize Concur for our monthly credit card reconciliations
Team members involved: 4
|
All credit card reconciliations are being completed by the 8th of each month.
|
A majority of the reconciliations are actually submitted by the 4th business day of the month which is earlier that the 8th. At times, there are late submissions due to unforeseen events (e.g. lost supporting documents or difficulty in obtaining supporting documents from vendors). |
Objective: Baseline Integration Process with HRIS and Payroll
Q2 - Finance
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
To create a baseline integration process between HRIS/Payroll and Intacct.
Team members involved: 2
|
Completion of integration process.
|
We currently have a manual integration process between ADP Payroll and intacct. Since we have not implemented a new HRIS/Payroll platform, we did not commence the work on creating a baseline integration process. |
Talent & Culture
editQuarterly review
Q2 - Talent & Culture - Boryana
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Boryana onboarding - Culture discovery process
Team members involved: 3
Staff involved: numerous
|
Document, share & seek calibration & final confirmation of cultural pillars | Completed and posted summary on personal page for feedback and comments |
T&C team strategy
Team members involved: 2
Staff involved: numerous
|
Defined & documented strategy for T&C team, gain leader consensus | Strategy completed and shared with stakeholders. Strategy will get refined and project priority order may change depending on org needs. |
Board Recruiting
Team members involved: 2
Other involved: staff, community, board, BGC, advisory board, etc.
|
2 trustees appointed by board
|
2 trustees appointed by board |
Q2 - Talent & Culture - Boryana
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Boryana onboarding - Culture discovery process
Team members involved: 3
Staff involved: numerous
|
Document, share & seek calibration & final confirmation of cultural pillars | Completed and posted summary on personal page for feedback and comments |
T&C team strategy
Team members involved: 2
Staff involved: numerous
|
Defined & documented strategy for T&C team, gain leader consensus | Strategy completed and shared with stakeholders. Strategy will get refined and project priority order may change depending on org needs. |
Board Recruiting
Team members involved: 2
Other involved: staff, community, board, BGC, advisory board, etc.
|
2 trustees appointed by board
|
2 trustees appointed by board |
Q2 - OD & Recruiting - Amy & Boryana
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
OD Team Hiring
Team members involved: 5
Staff involved: numerous
|
Hire Learning & Development Manager | PENDING - Finalists selected. Working through final logistics |
Engineering Hiring Event - phase 1
Team members involved: 3
Staff involved: 3
|
Number of attendees
|
PENDING - Wikimedia Tech Talk scheduled for February 24 2016: 2 speakers (Moriel, Aaron H) |
Agency vendor streamline
Team members involved: 3
|
Bring all existing agency relationships into Recruiting
Create process for Recruiting to be the only point of entry for agencies
Create a preferred and approved agency list that will have standard terms and conditions
|
POSTPONED - This goal became less of a priority, thus postponed, as all recruiting needs were able to be handled in-house. |
Q2 - Recruiting - Amy & Joady
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
JD project
Team members involved: 6
|
JDs reviewed, streamlined & leveled (for Engineering - other depts to follow)
|
Recruiting created template level JDs with HR for Product for each band.
Draft Product level chart created in FQ1 by HR, to coordinate with Radford data.
|
Learning: Blanket JDs for all Product will not work considering the variations required for each team, but general levels can be detailed. Closer coordination with Radford formats will provide the best matching to compensation and experience.
Q2 - HR Ops - Joady
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Successful Open Enrollment
Team members involved: 3
|
Benefit budget increase kept under 13.6% (the budgeted amount for FY15-16)
Open enrollment completed on time by December 12/11/16
|
Increase reduced by 5.7%, to 7.9% (95k annual savings)
Open enrollment completed on schedule, with only 2 staff members requesting extensions due to their schedules.
|
Learning: Staff continue to value high contact with HR during open enrollment. Our brokers at Johnson & Dugan continue to represent WMF well to reduce carrier rates. PlanSource had some back end glitches due to a recent upgrade on their part, but staff did not experience it.
Q2 - HR Ops - Joady
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Run an updated engagement survey for req number staff, with high participation.
Team members involved: 3
|
Run 2015 engagement survey for req# staff with 75%+ participation
|
Exceeded participation by 18% with 93% (2013 was 58%)
Results shared on time
Expanded goal: Added contractor survey completed with 84% participation
|
Learning: Next time conduct a simultaneous contractor survey, with questions limited to those that pertain to them. Include input from a broader group (than HR, Comms & Legal) in the planning process for the survey timing and sharing of results.
Q2 - HR Ops - Joady
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Req# onboarding & offboarding streamline - phase 1
Team members involved: 4 (plus 8+ non T&C staff)
|
HR, OIT & Administration has a fully documented process that integrates into a master process list.
|
Process maps for on & off boarding for HR, OIT, Admin, Finance & Tech Ops created on time and approved by respective teams. |
Learning: Cross team collaboration can be challenging, with each team having different agendas and a different level of preferred detail.
Q2 - OD - Joady
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Implement Training Resources and System
Team members involved: 2 (and Legal)
|
Roll-out Mindflash for training access and tracking
|
Mindflash rolled out on time, with 5 T&C modules and 1 Legal module |
Learning: More coordination will be needed for linking what staff want to have on Office Wiki and what is in Mindflash.
Positively impacting value delivered by supported teams | 4.13 out of 5 (Likert scale) | baseline metric |
Positively impacting sustainability of supported teams | 4.47 out of 5 (Likert scale) | baseline metric |
Q2 - Team Practices Group
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Improved metrics for product project forecasting
Team members involved: 3
|
|
|
Q2 - Team Practices Group
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Team Practices Group achieves consensus on the team’s strategy.
Team members involved: 7
|
Defined and documented strategy for the Team Practices Group |
Miss this quarter due to change in strategic focus in light of a number of organizational changes and divided focus across TPG slowing the strategy process. |
Q2 - Team Practices Group
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Determine whether or not we can drive changes to Phabricator to enhance its usability as a project management tool in an environment with diverse workflows and data-driven needs. (multi-quarter)
Team members involved: 3
|
Five high-priority project management-related Phabricator feature requests upstreamed
|
3 feature requests have been successfully upstreamed; 2 became obsolete. Intensive coordination is required to upstream, and we should continue to assess whether the impact is worth the effort. |
Administration
editQ2 - Administration
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Refine and revise onboarding and offboarding with HR.
Team members directly involved: 3
|
Develop and produce collaborative workflow and documentation of all service teams supporting the initial onboarding of req# numbers. | Detailed work flow has been developed by OIT, HR, TechOps, Front office and Facilities to show all tasks and dependencies of onboarding and offboarding a req# |
Q2 - Administration
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Create unique method of reporting transactional volume of centralized travel expenses (range of 200 - 500 transactions)
|
Travel expenses meet deadline of fifth business day each month during the quarter enabling earlier monthly close deadline needed in accounting.
|
Travel developed successful workflow within the current s/w and manual process to provide reporting necessary for early monthly close. |
Q2 - Administration
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Outline high level Disaster Recovery plan that complements Safety team work and documentation.
|
Team assigned, outline of process and office wiki page outlined, perform critical services inventory with each department.
|
Office wiki page outlined, team assigned, completed department interviews documenting critical services inventory done. |
Q2 - Administration
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Outline process and launch team to determine critical needs for WMF work space; current lease terms September 2017
|
Real Estate broker and design team together with WMF will have outlined process, stakeholders and data needed to learn the critical priorities of our next working space. | Six Leadership interviews complete, space utilization data analysed, staff engagement exercise set up on site, Office wiki page set up to inform and gather additional information. |
Editing
editKey performance indicator; * – N.B. data for Q2 is for the first two months only
Monthly active editors on all wikis | 76.3k average in Q2* | +1.5% from Q1 (75.1k) | +1.0% YoY (75.5k) |
Collaboration Team
editQ2 - Collaboration Team
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Focus: Improve awareness of activity by providing a cross-wiki notifications feature
Team members involved: 7
|
Echo can deliver notifications between many wikis, allowing users to access their notifications from any content wiki on any other content wiki | Done. Roll-out is a Q3 goal. |
Q2 - Collaboration Team
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Strengthen: Increase access to Flow by deploying and supporting an opt-in system for it
Team members involved: 6
|
Users have the ability enable Flow on their talk page | Beta Feature was deployed to Wikidata and to Chinese, Urdu, Bosnian and Catalan Wikipedias. |
● Rough percentages for scale only, expressed as a proportion of ‘active editors’ on each wiki.
Q2 - Collaboration Team
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Experiment: Increase engagement with notifications by prototyping and researching improvements to the notifications page
Team members involved: 2
|
We have an informed plan for the next steps for improving the notifications page | Delayed. |
Language Team
editQ2 - Language Team
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Focus: Improve user retention by adding additional 'suggestion' features such as customised lists and adding additional relevant notifications | Increase in the number of translations per user | Personalized suggestions integrated. Many enhancements for suggestions in Content Translation dashboard |
- New users have increased; percentage of returning users has also increased
- Translators can create ‘Favorite list’ and discard suggestions
- A campaign can be created using scripts
- Suggestions are based on the previous translations
- Teams involved: Language, Research
- Tool is still a beta feature.
- Blog post
Q2 - Language Team
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Strengthen: Improve reliability by complying with WMF infrastructure requirements as defined by Services, Tech Ops and Security teams | Content Translation complies with WMF infrastructure requirements | cxserver successfully migrated to service-runner. Uses uniform service architecture to make the maintenance, logging, monitoring, analytics easy. |
● API documented at https://cxserver.wikimedia.org/v1?doc
Q2 - Language Team
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Strengthen: Improve reliability by fixing high-priority bugs that affect basic functionality | Users can use Content Translation without interruption | High priority bugs fixed for saving and publishing errors. AbuseFilter related errors are displayed nicely so that users can fix and retry publishing. |
- AbuseFilter-related errors are displayed nicely so that users can fix and retry publishing.
- Comprehensive logging of errors and daily analysis
- The reliability of auto save and translation restore improved - compressed data and restore algorithm improvements
Q2 - Language Team
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Experiment: Increase visibility for third parties by collecting and sharing parallel corpora of translation modifications | API will be able to access the parallel corpora | Development completed, pending deployment |
- Published translations API improved. Now lists revision ids, published date and unique id.
- Parallel corpora (source-translation pair) API developed.
- Deployment set to happen in late January 2016 on account of DBA scheduling.
- Infrastructure also makes saving translations more reliable in long run.
- Team involved: Language, Ops
Multimedia Team
editQ2 - Multimedia Team
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Focus: Increase media contribution by integrating media upload into VisualEditor's media dialog and drag-and-drop system
Team members involved: 4
|
Users can upload media files directly within VisualEditor by browsing or dragging-and-dropping | Done. |
Q2 - Multimedia Team
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Strengthen: Improve reliability by resolving UploadWizard bugs that cause users to start over
Team members involved: 2
|
Users can use UploadWizard to mass-upload without interruption. | Done. Further improvements to come. |
Q2 - Multimedia Team
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Experiment: Improve multimedia editing workflow by prototyping non-destructive image editing
Team members involved: 2
|
Users can make basic changes to images such as crop, rotation, etc. directly on the wiki. | Done. Additional work forthcoming. |
Q2 - Multimedia Team
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Experiment: Improve value of content by researching the learnability of content to inform future prioritisation of feature development
Team members involved: 0
|
We have an informed plan for next steps for multimedia contribution features. | Delayed. |
Parsing Team
editQ2 - Parsing Team
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Focus: Improve editing experience and draw closer to Parsoid HTML for read views by implementing support for native Parsoid extensions
Team members involved: 2
|
Parsoid has an extension registration mechanism and native support for galleries | Native extension registration mechanism in place.
Support for <translate>, <tvar>, and other tags used in testing.
<gallery> deferred to next quarter (but have a prototype implementation from Wikia).
|
Q2 - Parsing Team
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Strengthen: Modernise parsing infrastructure to use modern Web standards by replacing Tidy with a HTML5 parser in MW core
Team members involved: 2
|
MediaWiki has an HTML5-compliant parser for fixing PHP parser output | HTML5 parser in place. Reliance on Tidy bugs/features means incremental fixes. Last step will replace Tidy. Working on visual diff testing to enable this rollout. |
Parsing changes (Tim has been working on a lot of this with input from rest of the team):●
Done: EmptyQ2 - Parsing Team
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Experiment: Improve editing experience and take advantage of perf. opt. opportunities by prototyping some form of opt-in / opt-out system for balanced template output
Team members involved: 3
|
MediaWiki has a mechanism for templates to specify their output as balanced or not. | Implementation sketch and RFC in place (T114445)
Prototyping not yet begun.
Proposal needs to go through the RFC process.
|
Q2 - Parsing Team
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Strengthen: Improve mobile reading experience and draw closer to Parsoid HTML for read views by improving multimedia support in Parsoid
Team members involved: 0
|
Parsoid's HTML5 DOM spec and HTML generation have been updated for audio and video | No progress beyond some discussions. |
VisualEditor Team
edit
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Focus: Increase use of the visual editor by releasing it to more accounts and anonymous users on English Wikipedia
Team members involved: 6 |
More editors use the visual editor. | Goal changed after quarter start.
In-edit switching work complete.
Single edit tab development work still on-going, expected early Q3.
|
● Overall uptake is roughly the same as the previous quarter at around 16% (now ~10.5k edits/day).
● Gradually increasing on the English Wikipedia; now at ~4.5%, up from ~3.9% last quarter.
Proportion numbers reflect edits using the visual editor out of all article edits made by accounts & IPs, excluding registered bots, in the last week of December. Other tools (e.g. rollback, AWB) not excluded.
Q2 - VisualEditor Team
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Strengthen: Improve support for math editing by improving the UX of the Math extension and researching its usability
Team members involved: 3 |
It's easier to create and edit formulæ from within the visual editor. | Done. Deployed in pieces through over the quarter. |
Q2 - VisualEditor Team
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Strengthen: Improve support for chart editing by improving the UX of the Graph extension and researching its usability
Team members involved: 2 |
It's possible to create and easier to edit charts from within the visual editor. | Done. Deployed in pieces through over the quarter. |
Q2 - VisualEditor Team
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Experiment: Increase value of contributions by prototyping and researching integrating edit recommendations
Team members involved: 1 |
We have an informed plan for next steps for integrating edit recommendations. | Development work done but late; deployment not yet undertaken, and so results not yet supplied. |
● Lesson learnt: It was unclear who was leading this initiative, and so the drive to undertake the work was confused. Clarity on cross-team leadership should be established at the start of the work.
Q2 - VisualEditor Team
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Experiment: Improve the visual editor on mobile devices by prototyping and researching using visual editor on mobile devices
Team members involved: 0 |
We have an informed plan for next steps for using the visual editor on mobile devices. | Some product market research done, but the bulk of product and design research work was delayed due to more pressing other issues. |
Global Pageviews (provisional*) | 15.6 B / mo | +1.3% from Q1 | -8.8% YOY (estimate, ±2pp) |
Q2 - Reading
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Strengthen: Drive engagement by launching Link Preview on mobile web beta | Engagement (5% increase in links clicked) in beta or on non-EN Wikis | Put on hold |
- Android link engagement stats promising
- Not strong enough engagement to push to mobile web Q2
- However, we need to reconsider metric
Q2 - Reading
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Strengthen: Drive engagement by launching Read More on web beta | Engagement (5% increase in links clicked) in beta or on non-EN Wikis | Mobile web beta:
January 1-14: 19% engagement when panel seen.
Internally referred pageviews as a percentage of total pageviews in mobile web beta climbed from around 52% (Th, Nov 19) to around 67% (Th, Jan 14), whereas stable channel internally referred pageview rates were roughly unchanged (approx. 25%).
|
- Scalability
- Co-design
- Difficulties of bolt-on designing in desktop
Q2 - Reading
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Experiment: Prototype services based architecture for web and apps | Working web app with feature parity of current mobile web stable reading experience (not scalability, quality). | Done. The specific single page app approach used for the prototype will not be used, based on discussion at the summit (full preso). An alternative, iterative approach will be used. |
- Image loading should be optimized
- Reference sections should be loaded smarter
- Hidden navbox HTML should likely be disabled completely
- A lot of mobile users don’t actually expand sections, although this begs additional questions
Q2 - Reading
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Experiment: Drive app retention via feeds and modern UX (notifications Q3) | iOS App overhaul released
7 day 15% of users retained (up from 10% in Sept ‘15) (Feeds T104415, Modernization T104510) |
Missed. However, the app was released to beta during the quarter. Currently in public beta and gathering user feedback. |
- Over 1,100 beta testers, with >30 responses on our form or via email
- Very positive feedback on some changes (visual design, feed concept) as well as thoughtful concerns about some elements (navigation flow).
- After project definition became clearer, pushed timelines by a few weeks to prioritize quality over schedule.
Q2 - Reading
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Drive engagement by integrating more types of content and media into the app (see appendix). | General elevation of UX and usability to strengthen user engagement and retention. | Done: Integrated Maps in Nearby, integrated with RESTBase, lookup of highlighted words from Wiktionary, playback of audio pronunciations, and full support for Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) design guidelines. |
- Led to the app being featured in the “Best of 2015” collection on Google Play, and resulted in a surge of new users.
- Caused an appreciable increase in Maps traffic (see appendix), and improved engagement with the Nearby feature.
Q2 - Reading
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Focus: Measure MediaWiki API usage, and data dump loads. | Availability of usage metrics on Hadoop warehouse for analysis. (T102079) | Missed. Progress has been made towards building the metric pipeline but tooling challenges blocked final implementation in November when there was time to implement. Work will continue in Q3. |
- Data pipeline from MediaWiki to Hadoop via Kafka is brand new tech at WMF
- Discovery and Analytics have been working out best practices
- Reading thought Discovery pilot project was done in Q1 but technical challenges extended through most of Q2
- Still some discussion about "best" encoding to use for data being pushed through the pipeline
Q2 - Reading
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Strengthen: Investigate migrating API traffic to OAuth. | Decision on if migration is desirable; then measurable impact based on existing usage (currently unknown) | Done. Decision was that encouraging mass migration is not advisable at this time. |
- OAuth cannot be used by all API consumers as it needs "shared secret" protections. This means that consumers such as native applications cannot securely process an OAuth handshake.
- OAuth is currently recommended for API consumers who need special permissions when interacting with the Action API (e.g. making edits, reading protected content)
- Requiring OAuth for all Action API access is undesirable
- Cacheable API requests will necessitate more anonymous API usage, not less and will be important for scaling the Action API just as it is important for scaling web request processing
Q2 - Reading
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Strengthen: Release Auth Manager: MediaWiki plug-in security architecture | Usage (# of services using new architecture) (T89459) | Missed. Lengthy fundraising code freeze and security review backlog contributed, but ultimately the work was more than 1.5 FTEs could accomplish in the quarter. |
- Single user OAuth (useful for bots) in 1.27.0-wmf.10
- SessionManager component in 1.27.0-wmf.11
- "bot passwords" feature for bots that cannot use OAuth in 1.27.0-wmf.11
- Created php-session-serializer library for use by MediaWiki and other FLOSS projects
- AuthManager progressing. Current estimate for full deployment is late February with uncertainty narrowing.
- Security interested in collaborating on follow on 2factor auth project in Q3
Q2 - Community Tech
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Strengthen: Establish baseline for measuring community satisfaction with WMF tech support | Complete Tech Support satisfaction poll across multiple Wikimedia projects and languages | Poll completed Oct 22, with 467 participants from 10 wikis. Results posted on Meta Nov 4. [1] |
Focus: Include Wikimedia communities in goal development and prioritization | Complete cross-project Community Wishlist survey, with community members voting on priority | Community Wishlist survey completed Dec 14, with 634 community members participating. Results announced Dec 16. [2] |
Focus: Address current high-priority community technical requests | Complete 3 mid-to-large sized requests from existing community wishlists | 3 requests: Fix HotCat on 100+ wikis (Nov), Fix and improve Citation bot (Dec), Compile gadget usage statistics per-wiki and cross-wiki (Dec). |
1: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Tech_support_satisfaction_poll 2: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2015_Community_Wishlist_Survey
User satisfaction | Start Q2: 15% | End Q2: 28% (implementation change) | -- YoY |
Zero Results Rate | Start Q2: 33% | End Q2: 26% (normal variance) | -- YoY |
Q2 - Discovery
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Improve language support for search.
Team members involved: 6
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Run A/B test for a feature that detects language of user’s search query and adjusts results to match that language
Determine from A/B test whether the feature is fit to push to production with aim to improve search satisfaction by 10% and reduce zero results rate for human searches by 10%
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A/B test was run
An A/B test report was produced The test did not show that the feature had the desired impact
|
After the A/B test showed disappointing results, the team re-focussed and implemented the completion suggester as a beta feature on all wikis (except Wikidata), which reduces zero results rate by ~10%. The beta feature was then rolled out. Thousands of users are now using the beta feature. User feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. The feature is in early stages; more work remains to be done before a production rollout. We’re targeting Q3 for a more full rollout.
Q2 - Discovery
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Make www.wikipedia.org a portal for exploring open content on Wikimedia sites.
Team members involved: 4
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Measure usage of existing portal
Perform A/B tests to improve portal
Decrease time each user spends searching by Y ms (exact number pending logging implementation)
|
Portal was migrated to more standard setup (git/gerrit); this took longer than expected
Logging added to measure use
Portal dashboard created First A/B test launched, but abandoned due to logging issues
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Migration of portal to git/gerrit setup is complete but took significantly longer than expected; see “Other successes and misses” section for more details.
Q2 - Discovery
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Improve understanding of user satisfaction for search by iterating and improving on the search satisfaction metric.
Team members involved: 3
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Design QuickSurvey to qualitatively assess user satisfaction with search
Tie qualitative QuickSurvey results back to quantitative search satisfaction data
Validate/invalidate current approach for measuring satisfaction
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Our QuickSurvey was designed
Deployment of QuickSurvey extension (owned by Reading) was delayed due to technical obstacles with EventLogging and the extension
Deployment freeze and annual fundraiser reduced time available to run survey
Our survey was deferred to Q3
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Q2 - Discovery
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Support ongoing evaluation of usage of Wikidata Query Service and Maps services to decide on what’s next for these services.
Team members involved: 2
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Continue maintenance of Wikidata Query Service and Maps dashboards
Review user feedback on services
Make decision on continued level of support for WDQS and maps service
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Maintained WDQS and Maps dashboards
User feedback broadly positive
Decided on modest continued investment in both services
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Q2 - Discovery
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Create recurring performance indicator on referrer traffic from the primary search engines and determine what features may have largest impact on referrer metric.
Team members involved: 2
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Create dashboard which displays traffic to our sites broken down by major referrers.
Based on the dashboard data, make a list of recommendations for features which could be implemented to increase traffic from prominent referrers.
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Referrer data analysed
Dashboard created List of feature recommendations not completed due to analyst support being required for annual fundraiser, and lack of clarity around intended output
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Advancement and Fundraising Tech
editQuarterly review
Funds raised | $46.9m raised in Q2 | $54.9m raised Fiscal Year-to-Date | $13.4m needed to reach annual goal |
Q2 - Advancement
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
FOCUS- Raise $32 million in Online and Email campaigns in the US, Canada, U.K. Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Italy, and France |
Amount raised
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$43 million raised (preliminary number). We exceeded the quarterly goal to put us on target to reach the annual $68.2 million budget goal. |
FOCUS - Raise $2 million through Foundations and Major Gifts | Amount raised
|
$4 million raised (preliminary number). |
STRENGTHEN - Complete the Endowment Plan and messaging; Prepare to launch Endowment Campaign in January | Buy in from the board and key donors | Board approved endowment plan. External announcement in conjunction with Wikipedia 15. Conversations with key donors to begin end of January. |
Q2 - Strategic Partnerships
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Goal 1 - FOCUS
Create pipeline of strategic partnerships
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Identify and tap potential partners with substantial impact around: reach, revenue, community, content, and/or other benefits | List of key potential partners identified and in various stages of outreach |
Goal 2 - FOCUS
Secure 10 new Zero deals
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Successful launches | Launched 14 partners - 10 in Caribbean, and other countries included Serbia, Angola, Tunisia and Algeria. Total reach added in Q2 estimated at 28M subs |
Goal 3 - STRENGTHEN
Identify app and mobile web needs for Global South and coordinate with Reading team on feature roadmap
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Deliver multiple feature descriptions for mobile web and app planning for Global South | Roadmap features with Reading team established. Features for Q3 include: better preload tracking, App support for new zero features, improved web page performance and more. |
Goal 4 - EXPERIMENT
Refine syndication strategy, potential customer assessment, and business case
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Research | Work still in progress.# Launched discussions with two largest syndicators - Google and Apple
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Q2 - Major Gifts, Foundations and Endowment
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
FOCUS:Raise $2 million | Amount raised | $3.94 million raised (preliminary number as of Jan 12). |
STRENGTHEN:Hold successful fundraising event | Host 200 people, Raise $200k, Strengthen relationships | Goals achieved, except revenue target - event raised $120k |
STRENGTHEN:CRM discovery | Decision on best CRM options | Plan to make improvement to Civi in FY16-17. |
FOCUS:
Finalize endowment terms and prepare for launch.
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Public launch of endowment. Ready to begin conversations with key donors. | Announcement at Wikipedia 15. |
Q2 - FR Tech
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
FOCUS: Support the Big English fundraiser | Fundraising creative reaches their donation goals in December | Done - 3.46 Million separate online donations in Q2 2015 |
STRENGTHEN: Get France campaign tech-ready | Fundraising creative reaches donation goals in October (in France) | Done |
EXPERIMENT: Support Banner History rollout | Fundraising creative is able to see patterns and problems with banner consumption, before December | Done |
EXPERIMENT: Start investigating SmashPig as its own code project | Rough estimate of the work involved to create the open source project -OR- a decision not to move forward with independent payment libraries | Didn’t Start. This evaluation was only going to proceed in Q2 if it didn’t interfere with mission-critical goals, and the preliminary conversations turned out to be extremely disruptive for all parties. Decision to halt progress on this goal until a less complicated time, was made early in the quarter (mid-October). |
Q2 - Online Fundraising
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
FOCUS: Run and publicly post a reader survey on best banners of 2015 | Survey posted in November with launch announcement for English campaign | Survey is posted:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Wikimedia_Reader_Survey_November_2015.pdf |
STRENGTHEN: Test & run campaigns with new World Pay and Amazon integrations |
|
Done |
STRENGTHEN: Add a backup credit card processor | Have backup tested during Big EN | Done |
EXPERIMENT: Increase sales at the Wikistore | Increase sales by adding the store link to the Thank You page | Done. More info in the slides to follow |
Communications
editQ2 - Communications
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Message Platform
Produce clear message and proof points in support of organizational strategy.
|
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Postponed to Q3 based on strategy process timelines |
Q2 - Communications
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Brand Strategy
Complete brand discovery process. Present synthesis of findings and recommended course of action.
|
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Complete with all measures of success met. |
- Reviewed stakeholder statements, known challenges, comparable case studies, and external vendor services for problems
- Brand brief including: Organizational philosophy; Vision & mission; Being effective; A reason to unite, Measures of success; How much change; Options of approach; Moving forward; Timeline draft
- Finalized deck for Board presentation
Q2 - Communications
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Wikipedia’s 15th birthday
Create strategic messaging opportunity to engage new Wikimedia stakeholders and audiences.
|
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Complete with all measures of success met. |
Q2 - Communications
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Timely, professional, first-rate support on core and reactive communications workflows.
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Complete with all measures of success met. |
Quarterly review
Q2 - 2015/16
Q2 - Legal
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Public policy strategy: address and support as appropriate key issues that could threaten or compromise mission and projects
Team members involved: 4
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1 persuasive opposition to intermediary reform in EU; quality comments on mass digitization; develop baselines through censorship study for future measurement. All to ED/GC/community satisfaction.
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Q2 - Legal
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Training: address and support as appropriate key issues that could threaten or compromise mission and projects
Team members involved: 2
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Selection and implementation of training software that permits flexible presentations on multiple legal topics. Q2 all staff legal presentation to 275+ employees.
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Q2 - Legal
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Experiment:
Team members involved: 3
|
|
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Q2 - Legal
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Core:
Top notch, quick legal advice and support on wide host of issues constituting our 34 legal workflows.
Categories include:
Team members involved: 11
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KPIs
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Research and Data
editQ2 - Research and Data
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
FOCUS
Streamline ownership of data and research
Team members involved: 1
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Publish a map for internal use of who is responsible for specific requests around research and analytics. (T112317) | completed |
- Worked with individual teams on mentoring / backfilling / hiring of data analysts
- Published research/data ownership draft
- Socialized division of labor with Audience and Technology teams, Legal, Comms, C-team
https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_fingerpost
Q2 - Research and Data
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
STRENGTHEN
Revscoring integration
Team members involved: 1
Collaborators: 9
|
Bring revscoring to fruition to our users as a Beta Feature (score integration into RC feed) (T112856) | missed
Reason
|
- we weren’t able to complete the design and deployment of this beta feature, due to limited resourcing and dependency on volunteers
- revscores integration into edit histories / RecentChanges feed pushed to Q3
- focus shifted on other priorities (massive deployments, impact analysis) see other accomplishments below
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Revision_scoring_as_a_service
Q2 - Research and Data
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
STRENGTHEN
Productize article and link recommender systems
Team members involved: 2
Collaborators: 3
|
Article creation (T112321) and link (T112322) recommendations productized as services so they can be integrated with products and community tools. | completed
|
- APIs available on Labs
- architecture and service implementation blessed by Ops
- First 3rd party tools adopting the service (example)
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Increasing_article_coverage
Q2 - Research and Data
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
EXPERIMENT
Value added research
Team members involved: 1
|
Deliver research on historical data to quantify who adds value to English Wikipedia
|
missed
Reason
|
- Finished historical analysis of productive edits by anons vs registered users(presented at January 2016 Research Showcase)
- Partnership with external Hadoop as a service provider (Altiscale) ended in Q3 due to limited funding (currently exploring potential pro bono extension of services)
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Measuring_value-added
Q2 - Research and Data
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
EXPERIMENT
Reader segmentation research STRETCH
Team members involved: 3
Collaborators: 1
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Deliver research on reader segments and behavioral patterns (T112326) | completed
|
- completed 3 contextual surveys and identified robust categorization scheme for reader motivation and information needs
- presented results to Reading team in preparation for Part 2 (Q3)
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Characterizing_Wikipedia_Reader_Behaviour
Design Research
editQ2 - Design Research
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
STRENGTHEN
Design Research workshop to build collaboration capacity with product teams.
Team members involved: 4 (plus 3 non team members and IT / Admin support)
|
Workshop happens, and product teams learn more about collaboration with Design Research and vice versa. | Workshop completed:
40 participants attended
(details on next page)
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Q2 - Design Research
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
STRENGTHENMentor people to do quality design research (those not on DR team) | One person outside the design research team does a complete design research project to DR team standards, expanding the number of people who do design research well. | Ongoing:
Conceived of the prototype lab end of December.
We initiated the first sessions on January 15. They will be ongoing every other week.
Sherah has been participating in Design Research activities including being the lead in creating a methods menu for DR Workshop.
|
Prototype labs is bi-weekly design research series. It is being implemented to enable consistent evaluative research in a regular cadence for the Reading team to iterate concepts and get to know users.
Q2 - Design Research
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
STRENGTHEN
Improve participant recruitment process
|
Implement changes to reduce steps in recruitment (of design research participants) process to make recruiting more efficient. | Completed:
(see next page for details)
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Q2 - Design Research
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
FOCUS
Collaborate with product teams to implement design research projects.
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Design Research completes design research projects in collaboration with product teams to inform human centered product development. | 11 research projects completed |
Q2 - Design Research
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
EXPERIMENT
Persona interviews
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12 persona interviews completed
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5 interviews completed
We noticed some patterns in Readers learning online, and what paths they take to learn.
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Analytics
editKey performance indicator: Velocity
Quarter: 911 (~906 last quarter) | October: 426 (>10% MoM) | November: 227 (<53% MoM)) | December: 258 (>13% MoM) |
Q2 - Analytics
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Launch Pageview API
Alpha API is operationalized and ready to be queried by outside world A blog post is published on Wikimedia’s blog
Team members involved: 3
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Usage of new API (next slide)
Community feedback (not so SMART but very relevant)
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The API was successfully launched
Python, JavaScript and R clients written by community members
Blog post published here |
Learning: It is great to work in projects that have very positive community feedback.
Q2 - Analytics
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Use Hadoop infrastructure to replace computation of wikistats on http://stats.wikimedia.org (wikistats)
Team members involved: All, at some point
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Replace 5 of wikistats most popular pageview reports defined here |
Reports updated:
Monthly pageview reports for all wikis and projects, normalized/raw, mobile/desktop/combined.
Available here |
We consolidated pageview definitions: we have only 1 pageview definition for pageview data since May 2015
Learning: New definition has less variability (good) and is better at detecting internal traffic and robots
Q2 - Analytics
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Deploy to wikimetrics an easier way to collect program global metrics for Learning and Evaluation of our grants programs
Team members involved: 2
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800 human hours saved by automation
Feature adoption
|
Missed
Code complete but not deployed.
Reason: Wikimetrics is deployed on labs and we need to refactor our puppet code to do away with the self hosted puppet master setup, in order to reliably deploy and keep the service running |
Currently deployed at: https://metrics.wmflabs.org/reports/program-metrics/create/
Q2 - Analytics
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Build infrastructure Scalable Event Bus
Team members involved:2
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EventBus service up and running in production using shared schema repository and new Kafka cluster.
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Done.
Documentation: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/EventBus
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Performance
edit
Time to first paint | 819ms | % from Q4 | ~52.37 YoY |
Q2 - Performance
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Availability
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Make MediaWiki code ready for concurrent deployment across multiple data centers. | Done with all high-level changes we anticipated for MediaWiki, but unknown add’l work remains. |
Q2 - Performance
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Solve all (5-6) thumbnailing problems on a VM. | Move image manipulation (thumbnail rendering) out of MediaWiki by designing and implementing a standalone, horizontally-scalable imaging service based on Thumbor. | Done. Vetted by TechOps; on the roadmap for initial deployment in Q3. |
- Thumbnails of all sizes are stored forever, until the original gets deleted. Unused and rarely used thumbnails are never cleaned up.
- Lots and lots of purge messages may be needed to clean up the thumbnails for a given media delete, to the point that the end-user request may timeout.
Architecture
edit
? - we may choose RFC flow, but no metrics gathered yet |
Q2 - Architecture
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Focus: Prepare WikiDev '16
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Demonstrate that we can develop a modern system in an inclusive, consensus-oriented, open manner. Large number of diverse RfCs, with ample discussion prior to WikiDev '16
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Preparation happened, summit resulted :-) |
Learning: Sharpened collective thinking on good meetings and how to build consensus
Q2 - Architecture
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Strengthen: Improve ArchCom utility
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Set up Architecture Committee to succeed. Maintain one public IRC meeting per week
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10 IRC RFC review meetings, plus 3 “Agenda bashing” meetings for WikiDev ‘16. Most were at the usual time (14:00 PT)
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Learning: Quote: ”[With] archcom being effective now (Which is great btw, so don't get me wrong) - I have noticed a trend where decisions are made in irc meetings, with little to no public discussion on the mailing list”. -- Brian Wolff on T118932, November 30
Q2 - Architecture
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Experiment: ArchCom naming | Think through our loaded naming scheme, possibly renaming bits (e.g. “Architecture Committee” and “RfC”) | I didn’t get around to proposing anything on this front. |
Learning: it’s ok that this one fell off. “ArchCom” and “RFC” seem to work well enough for now.
Operations
edit
Availability | 99.979% | +0.037% from Q1 |
Q2 - Technical Operations
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Focus: Encrypt PII on cross-data center links
Team members involved: 5
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Encrypt cross-data center traffic for MySQL/MariaDB, Kafka, Cassandra, (Varnish) HTTP
Decommission udp2log (in favor of Kafka)
|
Cross data center traffic for MariaDB, Kafka, Cassandra and between Varnish cache tiers is now encrypted.
Legacy (and unencrypted) logging solution udp2log has been decommissioned.
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Learning: It has been confirmed by recent security vulnerability announcements (Juniper and Fortinet VPN backdoors) that we should not rely on transport link encryption by (proprietary) network hardware, as we have been hesitant to do since the start. We will continue to rely on FOSS implementations (TLS, IPsec) for encryption of PII data.
Q2 - Technical Operations
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Strengthen: Security: Strengthen infrastructure user authentication
Team members involved: 3
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Establish org-wide workflow for creation and deactivation of user accounts in Production
Implement (but don't enforce) two-factor authentication on SSH bastion hosts
Migrate unmaintained OpenDJ LDAP to OpenLDAP
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Organization-wide on/offboarding process has been implemented.
Two-factor authentication is implemented and under experiment by all root users (using Yubikeys).
OpenDJ has been replaced with OpenLDAP.
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Learning: First results of using Yubikeys for ssh authentication are promising, however some usability and reliability issues remain. Further experimentation with the OTP setup will continue into the next quarter.
Q2 - Technical Operations
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Strengthen: Incident monitoring infrastructure
Team members involved: 2
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Upgrade incident monitoring and expand it to codfw
Reduce monitoring check execution lag to 0
Create new abstractions for incident monitoring in Puppet
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Software options were evaluated and we decided on a migration to Shinken (distributed monitoring). This migration has been prepared but didn’t complete in time.
New monitoring abstractions have been created in puppet, work is still ongoing.
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Learning: FQ2 is a challenging quarter every year with reduced time available due to the holiday periods, relatively high amount of staff taking unused vacation days, and deployment freezes. We should take this into account for our goal planning for this quarter.
Q2 - Technical Operations
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Experiment: Support bare-metal servers in Labs
Team members involved: 2
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Allow provisioning of physical servers within the Labs network, governed by Labs Puppetmaster and LDAP user accounts | Labs infrastructure and Puppet manifests now support bare metal servers in the Labs context. One bare metal server has been provisioned. |
Learning: A separate small new test cluster was built for testing infrastructure changes to Labs itself, which proved very helpful for this goal and many projects in the future. OpenStack Ironic was also evaluated for this goal, but our current reliance on Nova-Network would imply a significant effort and create more technical debt until our migration to OpenStack Neutron completes.
Release Engineering
editQ2 - 2015/16
Time to merge in MW Core | ~6 mins | -45% from Q4 | (still analyzing/making sense) |
Q2 - Release Engineering
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
STRENGTHEN
Reduce CI wait time
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Nodepool is up and working.
However, the majority of CI jobs are not yet migrated (waiting on a solution for caching dependencies).
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Q2 - Release Engineering
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
FOCUS
Reduce number of deploy tools from 3 to 2
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Not completed. We are behind schedule in migration of services.
The Dev Summit discussion, however, was very fruitful.
Migrated some services on Beta Cluster to scap3 pre Holidays.
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Q2 - Release Engineering
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
FOCUS
Retire Gerrit and Gitblit in favor of Phabricator
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Not completed.
Gitblit is still live.
Differential Migration RFC is published, has been discussed, and feedback being addressed (mostly from the Dev Summit).
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Q2 - Release Engineering
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
FOCUS
Release MediaWiki 1.26
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Released. |
Services
edit
REST API usage | 248 req/s mean | 15% up from Q4 | ∞% YoY |
REST API HTML uptime (catchpoint) | 99.97% | 99.82% | ∞% YoY |
Q2 - Services
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Strengthen: Build out the REST API
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Provide cached & purged REST API entry points for at least two high-traffic API use cases, and work with users to speed up page loads.
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New entry points: page summary, wiktionary definition, math SVG & MathML renders.
Math used in production web; apps and hovercards (web) in process of switching over to summary & definition end points.
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Q2 - Services
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Focus: Set up an event bus and change propagation solution
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Key change events like edits, renames, deletes available in a publish-subscribe event bus. Basic change propagation / pre-generation functionality for REST services operational.
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EventBus operational, MediaWiki event production just deployed.
Change propagation service deployment delayed by dependency on event bus.
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Q2 - Services
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Experiment: Prototype an API-driven web front-end
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Gather information to inform our longer-term front-end architecture by prototyping a service-worker / node.js based front-end.
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Prototyped a service-worker front-end and established performance characteristics.
Worked with Reading team & held a productive session on the topic at the dev summit.
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Security
edit
Critical and High Priority Security Bugs | REDACTED | REDACTED from Q4 | n/a |
Q2 - Security
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Automated security static analysis of MediaWiki
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Automatically scan core and one extension weekly.
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Security team chose Veracode for scanning, and are submitting core and two extensions for each deployment branch. |
Q2 - Security
Objective | Measure of success | Status |
Expand developer training
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Present secure SDL training for community and staff.
(stretch) Develop and present security training materials for DevOps and Mobile
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The team documented the optimal process for other teams to integrate security into their development process, but training has not been given. |