Wikimedia Engineering/2014-15 Goals/Q2

Q1

Wikimedia Engineering Top Priorities, FY2014-15, Q2

Q3

Objective	Beneficiary→Measure of success for Q2	Project Lead	Dependencies	ETA	Status
Understand new mobile web micro-contributions and mobile app readership	Conservative measures of success: Readers→ [Wikipedia App] Improved searching/quick content browsing. Additional search features (in-page search, Wikidata descriptors in search) Improved top-of-page experience (lead image presentation, infoboxes, disambiguation & cleanup templates, etc.) Consistency of article lead appearance Success measured by usability testing and other qualitative user research. New/Casual Editors→ [Mobile Web] Understand what factors produce better engagement and quality for WikiGrok, the first mobile micro-contribution feature, before testing in production. Test (quantitatively and qualitatively) WikiGrok in beta on the following dimensions: target audience (logged in vs. logged out), number of articles, types of statements (at least 3 different statement types), UI (two different interaction types), point of entry (in-article or sidebar) – to see how these impact, usability, engagement and quality Establish preliminary baseline for number of submissions per article to aim for in testing in stable next quarter and decide which other factors we need to manipulate (audience, number of articles, types of statements) for the test Experiment with aggregating multiple submissions before pushing to Wikidata Stretch measures of success: [Mobile Web] A/B test of WikiGrok in stable to more accurately assess which UI produces best engagement-to-quality ratio. We are blocked on unstable backend infrastructure (Tool Labs/Wikidata) for releasing WikiGrok more widely. [Mobile Web] Launch prototype of second mobile micro-contribution feature in alpha/beta. We may be able to pilot a second Wikidata game project due to increased engineering resources on the mobile web team. [Wikipedia App] Show measurable increase in reader engagement via at least one new reader-facing feature. We are blocked on apps readership data, lack of iOS developers, and not getting adequate design resources until one month into Q2.	Maryana Pinchuk	Product, UX, Engineering, Analytics	End of Q2. Longer-term plan (Q3-4) here.	Done Stretch goals mostly missed, exception: WikiGrok was tested in stable with logged in users.
Make editing faster (for Q2: focus on instrumentation)	Conservative measures of success: Developers→Instrumented edit funnels on desktop/mobile/app, wikitext/VE Stretch measures of success: Editors→# 50th/99th percentile load/save perf. Editors→% activation/retention	Ori Livneh	Engineering, Analytics, Operations	Likely 'til end of Q3	Partially done Optimistic saving was implemented for the wikitext editor, reducing median save time (across the board) by 300ms. Shared schema for logging performance metrics was created. Instrumentation code for this was added to VisualEditor. A custom backend for processing these metrics and routing them to Graphite was written and deployed.
Standardize and modernize front-end libraries	Conservative measures of success: (by end-Q2) Developers→Elimination of dependencies on Mantle templates (MediaWiki core feature) and JS Object utilities (OOjs) Developers→Integration of OOjs UI in JS/PHP into MediaWiki core, with at least one key interface converted as an example Developers→Improved documentation of OOjs UI with examples, tutorials and reference information Stretch measures of success: (by end-Q2) Developers→Several key MediaWiki core interfaces converted as examples Developers→Use OOUI components in the creation with Design of a Human Interface Guidelines document	Trevor Parscal	Engineering, UX, Product	Likely 'til end of Q3	Done Stretch goals missed, though the OOjs UI based living style guide is in active development.
Componentize MediaWiki core libraries	Developers→Move logging to composer managed library Developers→Extract one library from existing MediaWiki codebase, publish as a stand alone library and re-import to MediaWiki via Composer Developers→Complete documentation and implementation of Composer managed libraries for use on WMF cluster RFC Developers→Create list of future candidates for library extraction projects Developers→Investigate implementing a library management system for JavaScript libraries used by MediaWiki Deferred in consultation with frontend standards group	Bryan Davis	Engineering	End of Q2	Done
Phabricator as Wikimedia software project management tool	Developers→The majority of WMF developer teams and sprints have moved to Phabricator Developers→Common project management guidelines to be followed by teams and individual contributors are published	Quim Gil	Engineering, Operations	End of Q2	Done

Executive Focus Areas

• Product & Strategy:
  • Document product development methodology and process, including criteria for deployment/rollout of functionality, policy for site-wide technical changes, and inclusion of community requirements and needs
  • Support first phase of strategy development process: community consultation, finalization of framework