Wikimedia monthly activities meetings/Quarterly reviews/Collaboration/January 2015

The following are notes from the Quarterly Review meeting with the Wikimedia Foundation's Collaboration (formerly: Core features) team, January 29, 2015, 10:00 - 10:30 PST.

Please keep in mind that these minutes are mostly a rough transcript of what was said at the meeting, rather than a source of authoritative information. Consider referring to the presentation slides, blog posts, press releases and other official material

Present: Danny Horn, Pau Giner, Matt Flaschen, Erik Bernhardson, Matthias Mullie, Abbey Ripstra, Nick Wilson, Tilman Bayer (taking minutes), Howie Fung, Toby Negrin, Damon Sicore, Erik Moeller, Daisy Chen, Rob Lanphier

Participating remotely: none

Agenda:
Team intro
What we said we would do
What we did
What we learned
Metrics
What’s next
Asks

Welcome, team intro

Danny: Welcome
team intro
MattF, ErikB, Pau, Matthias, Danny

What we said we would do

slide 4

[slide 4]

ErikM: (explains) these objectives are all about Flow
Danny: Co-op project on enWP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Co-op/Mentorship_Match
MattF: TOC:
page itself uses infinite scroll
so TOC does too (can show more entries)
ErikM: this is a first minimal implementation
excited that we have some first activity
Danny: French WP has been concurrently running two versions, basically French version of Teahouse https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Forum_des_nouveaux/Flow
ErikM: so we have direct comparison
ErikM: Office wiki first to convert entirely from LiquidThreads to Flow
so this demonstrates what a wiki looks like when getting rid of old Talk: namespace
Beginning to discuss converting LiquidThreads to Flow at Translatewiki
Danny: started doing design research / user testing, aimed at 1-2 weekly rhythm

What we did

slide 6

[slide 6]

ErikM, ErikB: keep in mind staff departures meant slowdown
ErikB: contentmodel came from Wikidata
we then used it to distinguish between Flow/old standard talk pages
(description of how we deal with requests to change content model:)
when carrying out requests, need be aware of community concerns about converting pages to Flow
Danny: this q, another community requested to try Flow (facilitated by Quim): Cawiki https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viquip%C3%A8dia:La_taverna/Tecnicismes
Danny: did user research, also about regular talk page
Damon: that was this quarter? yes
Abbey: just a few people so far, but we are recruiting, are prepared
Danny: test how people respond to new TOC; improve search
Damon: what is involved in deployments?
ErikB: on technical side, just flipping some switches
ErikM: keep in mind though we are talking about very selected spaces with not very high traffic
still have no search
longer term, perhaps larger scale ones like all Wikidata talk pages
that would need more community consultation
Matthias: re search: we are using Elasticsearch
still need to build entire frontend though

What we learned

slide 8

[slide 8]

Danny: on frWP there was a concern Flow would make it easier to post bad stuff
but good/bad proportion is the same, and on the Flow version, questions get more replies
ErikM: keep in mind though that the Flow version might be linked a bit more than the old one
Danny: it's also linked in welcome messages now

slide 9

[slide 9]

shift in strategy
Danny: Until this quarter, the team's strategy has been to focus on building features, in the hope that we'll have enough for enwiki to love Flow.
We want to put the focus on working with real communities that are enthusiastic about Flow (mostly smaller language WPs), and prioritize the features that those communities need in order to unlock the next deployment stage. The product will improve as we work with more communities, and we'll be able to provide real value for users right now.
Damon: enwiki community is not going to like Flow until they see it in successful use elsewhere
Toby: this strategy shift is a great realization by the Flow team we should consider in other teams too

slide 10

[slide 10]

Danny: deployment stages

slide 11

[slide 11]

where we are right now

slide 12

[slide 12]

on cawiki, users want to see indentation/reply improved
Danny, ErikB: right now, UX is confusing
MattF: also, have depth limit that can be confusing
ErikM: I want to revisit the fixed-width limit
the "right rail" (which was a reason for that) might never come
Danny: interestingly, the feature requests that we're getting from the other language wikis would not be at the top of the list according to feedback from enwiki/mediawiki.

Metrics

slide 14

[slide 14]

ErikB: http://flow-reportcard.wmflabs.org/

What's next

slide 20

[slide 20]

Toby: great approach to focus on users/customers rather than features

Asks

ErikM: I support that engineering request if we keep workflows
but need to figure out bigger, long term picture with Editing team, etc.