Wikimedia Engineering/2016-17 Q1 Goals
Purpose of this document: Goals for the Wikimedia Technology and Product departments, for the first quarter of fiscal year 2016–17 (July 2016 –September 2016). The goal setting process owner in each section is the person responsible for coordinating completion of the section, in partnership with the team and relevant stakeholders. Guidance and planning are in accordance with our Annual Plan and are subject to change based on feedback, testing and analysis.
Status fields can use the following templates: 
In progress, 
To do, 
Postponed, 
Done or 
Partially done
ETA fields may use the initialism EOQ (End of Quarter).
We build the anonymous path of discovery to a trusted and relevant source of knowledge.
Our focus will be on building on-top of our anonymous and trusted search stack to improve relevancy, expose additional content and leverage locally relevant knowledge.
Goal setting process owner: Dan Garry
| Team | Objective | Key result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search | Improve search result relevance and enable fixes for multiple relevance issues by switching from tf–idf to BM25 |
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September 2016 | Partially done
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| Evaluate and devise plan for using cross-project indices, which would allow users to search across all projects in any given language |
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August 2016 | Done
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| Maps & Geo
Goal setting process owner: Yuri Astrakhan All tracked in: #maps - More details at Wikimedia Interactive Team/Goals/201617Q1 |
Make <maplink> tag available for all wiki projects, and <mapframe> available everywhere except Wikipedia
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EOQ | In progress
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| Offer community a way to migrate away from GeoHack |
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EOQ | In progress
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| Wikipedia.org Portal | Make the www.wikipedia.org portal a jumping off point to explore open content on Wikimedia sites. |
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July – September 2016 | Done
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Goal setting process owner: User:Trevor Parscal (WMF)
The Editing Department build collaborative, inclusive tools for creating and editing free knowledge. Each team is working toward the department's annual goals which are currently being finalized.
| Annual Goal | Team | Objective | Outputs | Outcomes | Dependencies | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1: Maintain and incrementally improve current content creation and curation interfaces | VE | All our editing tools are pleasing and simple to use, being clear, consistent, and coherent between platforms and technologies | A new wikitext editor, designed like the visual editor, integrated into its workflow, and with all its tools, is available as a Beta Feature on desktop | Users can have a unified, consistent editing interface between mobile and desktop Web, and between visual and wikitext editors, if they opt-in. | None required; validation of experience from Design Research would be appreciated, but is not a blocker. | EOQ | Partially done — New tool still undergoing testing, production release in Q2.
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| 2: Improve editing experience by reducing technical and product debt | MM | Begin support for the structured meta data work for Commons with the image annotations gadget. | Migration of the well-loved Commons image annotations gadget into its own extension, with initial work on prototyping storing structured metadata in a well-formed way based on the forthcoming multi-content revision system. | Users on Commons will continue to see image annotations as before, and pages will load slightly faster; in future, tools will be able to use annotations more readily and in more contexts. | None of which we know. | EOQ | Partially done — New tool still undergoing testing, production release in Q2.
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| P | Begin support of wikis with multiple writing systems in Parsoid | Initial goal: Parse LanguageConverter markup and represent as Parsoid DOM. The output will not (yet) be postprocessed into a single variant; that’s the next phase of the work. It will just be a faithful representation of the syntax for those pages without “ugly markup” | At the end of this phase of the work, the goal is to parse most -- not all -- markup on zhwiki. We will quantify the number of pages with problematic markup. | None that we know of yet. | EOQ | Partially done — Feature nearing completion, not yet ready for release.
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| D | Make the styleguide a pleasant resource | Overhauled, up-to-date online documentation in one place, addressing designers' & developers' needs. Accompanies technical documentation, not a replacement. | Users have one place to go for guidelines on UI fundamentals (fonts, color palette, widget essentials, code examples). Welcoming place for contributors. | Design Research, WMF designers, OOUI devs & consumers, TPG | EOQ | Partially done — Documentation enhanced, new accessibility for colours and design in place.
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| 3: Invest in new types of content creation, and new forms of curation and collaboration tools | C | Provide an edit-review process suited to the needs of new contributors, who, research shows, are particularly vulnerable to rejection, especially by powerful edit-review programs. | To make a beginning towards this goal, we will create a process that enables edit-reviewers to identify the edits of good-faith new users, so that these edits can be reviewed separately. | Our immediate goal is for edit reviewers to be able to identify good-faith new users whose edits need help. (Our ultimate goal, toward which this is a first step, is to provide a better new-user review experience on the theory that this will have an effect on new editor retention.) | Support with using ORES from the Research and Data team; ORES deployment from the Ops team (ongoing); data analysis assistance from Editing Product | EOQ | Done — Extensive tool & process design done with rounds of user testing, engineering now ready to commence.
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| l10n | Stabilize Content Translation for going out of beta | High priority blocker bugs further stabilizing the publishing process and content enrichment (like template adaptation) are resolved | Content Translation is more stable in terms of article publishing, requiring less maintenance work from patrolers, and more ready to be enabled by default for all users. | The Parsing team. | EOQ | Done — Lots of stability bugs fixed. Improvements to block and inline template adaptation also mostly complete.
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Goal setting process owner: User:Khorn_(WMF)
Technical work supporting the Wikimedia Foundation's fundraising efforts.
| Objective | Key Result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
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| Replace ActiveMQ |
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none | New Queue solution on production by August 1st | Donenew service is live. currently fixing bugs
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| Better Emergency messaging |
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none | EOQ | Postponed
de-prioritized due to queue work |
| Central Notice Banner sequence test | https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T135398 | none | EOQ | In progress de-prioritized due to queue work
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Note: the new Queue was not deployed by August 1st. However it was live by EOQ and we are fixing bugs. We would have wanted it to be more stable by now. This delay pushed out all other work.
| Objective | Key result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
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| Web: Refine and move language switching improvements from beta to stable on most wikis (T137932) | Easier language switching for our users is expected to lead to an increase in language switching |
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EOQ | Done
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| Android: Navigation overhaul | Increase engagement by centralizing more of the app's features into a single interface, and surfacing interrelated features more prominently. |
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EOQ | Done
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| iOS: Notifications pilot | Continue to improve medium-term retention by piloting content based notifications or other push mechanisms. This pilot might consist of a beta test, a/b test or other small scale roll-out. |
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Done
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Goal setting process owner: Danny Horn
Team focused on meeting the needs of active Wikimedia contributors for improved, expert-focused curation and moderation tools.
| Objective | Key result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
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| Increase core contributors' productivity | Define a technical implementation plan for Cross-wiki watchlist (#4 on wishlist), in collaboration with core tech stakeholders |
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EOQ | Done
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| Improve contributors' ability to identify and fix copy violation problems on EN.WP | Launch a CopyPatrol tool (#9 on wishlist), building on existing tools by Eran and Earwig | EOQ | Done
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| Increase WikiProjects' productivity | Release PageAssessments extension, to enable bot and gadget creators to build tools for WikiProjects | EOQ | Done
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| Increase Community Tech investment in supporting broader range of programs and communities | Define a prioritized wishlist for community-facing features and fixes identified in collaboration with the Program Capacity and Resources teams, for a shared backlog of Community Tech and Technical Collaboration |
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EOQ | Done
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| Improve volunteer developers' productivity, and encourage them to publish source code | Launch Striker, a tool that connects developers' LDAP account with their Wikimedia user account, and allows them to easily create git repositories associated with tool accounts. |
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EOQ | Done
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| Reduce barriers for new volunteer developers | Extend Striker to help new developers create an LDAP account |
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EOQ | In progress
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| Encourage community maintenance of important tools | Lead a community discussion to define a new policy for how users can take over abandoned tools |
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EOQ | Done
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Goal setting process owner: Kristen Lans
The Team Practices Group (TPG) supports the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) teams in their continual improvement.
Mission: TPG believes that healthy teams reliably deliver customer value and innovative products. Through dedicated resourcing, coaching, and workshops at the Wikimedia Foundation, we facilitate the use of practices that support team health, with a strong emphasis on creating conditions of clarity, trust, and continuous improvement.
The Team Practices Group (TPG) was dissolved in 2017.
 | This page is obsolete. It is being retained for archival purposes. It may document extensions or features that are obsolete and/or no longer supported. Do not rely on the information here being up-to-date. |
FY2017-18 First Quarter (Jul to Sep 2016)
[edit]| Foundation Strategic Direction | Annual Goal | Quarterly Goal | Output | Dependencies | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Annual Plan Program | Annual Plan Goal | Annual Plan Objective | |||
| Reach, Community, Knowledge | Facilitate the use of practices and processes that support WMF teams | Support teams needing embedded TPG support.
Support teams needing lightweight coaching or workshops. Tracking: Ongoing TPG Work |
Service levels of support are maintained:
Maintain net promoter score of at least 40 for embedded support. |
- Design Research | Teams are equipped with appropriate practices and processes to support their work. |
| Reach, Community, Knowledge | Facilitate the use of practices and processes that support WMF teams | Identify initiatives that could benefit from TPG support:
Support Annual Planning retrospective activities Tracking: T138241 |
Service levels of support are maintained:
Key improvements to Annual Planning are identified and documented. |
- Finance
- Budget Owners |
Teams are equipped with appropriate practices and processes to support their work:
The organization is positioned to improve how it conducts Annual Planning. |
| Reach, Community, Knowledge | Iterative and incremental support improvements | Identify areas of greatest strength and improvement for TPG:
Identify a common pain point across teams we interact with, and implement potential solutions. Tracking: T139630 |
TPG understands areas for improving its services:
Document the problem(s) we identified, the solution(s) we tried, what we learned, and how effective our efforts were. |
- TPG-supported teams
- Design Research |
TPG engages in continual improvement:
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| Reach, Community, Knowledge | Iterative and incremental support improvements | Identify areas of greatest strength and improvement for TPG:
Plan: Light engagement survey Tracking: T139549 |
TPG understands areas for improving its services:
Experiment with collectiong metrics for light engagements |
- Light Engagement customers
- Design Research |
TPG engages in continual improvement:
We start to understand how satisfied our light engagement customers are, and how we can achieve a high impact with low effort. |
Technology
[edit]Goal setting process owner: Nuria Ruiz
These goals are preliminary until the end of June 2016, goals are in priority order.
Feedback can be sent to analytics@lists.wikimedia.org (public e-mail list)
| Objective | Key result | Dependency | Outcome/Rationale/Value Proposition | Status |
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| Operational Excellence |
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Set of tasks needed to keep lights up and update/upgrade existing systems to maintain and improve current level of service | Done
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| Wikistats 2.0 (ongoing goal) .Ticket: task T130256. |
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Enables Easy consumption of edit data. At this time consuming edit data from database or dumps is cumbersome | Done
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| Public Event Stream (ongoing goal). Task: task T130651. Details: here | POC for a public Event Stream Note: carry-on goal from last quarter | Done
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| Productionize Druid Pageview Pipeline and UI (pivot) on Druid task T138261 | Easy access for WMF-internal users to Druid query UI. Users can get to pageview data without having to write SQL | Security, Operations | Carry on for next quarter (q2) | To do
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Goal-setting process owner: Rob Lanphier
| Objective | Key result | Dependencies | ETA | Status |
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| Focused support for Wikimedia Security, assisting with hiring and implementing experiments such as assembling a security-focused working group (T123606) and creating a workable framework for security postmortems (T123753) | Scaling our security expertise | Emergent leadership and wide participation | EOQ | Done
Much of the work was done by Darian Patrick, who stepped up after Chris Steipp's departure. I helped Wikimedia Security with bug triage meetings where I could. |
| Implement Fellowships program | Clear guidance from our most senior engineers, while giving them the autonomy to be effective for the movement | Editing | EOQ | Postponed - I intend to regroup and discuss this with our future Wikimedia Foundation CTO
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Goal-setting process owner: Ori Livneh
Speed is Wikipedia's killer feature. ("Wiki" means "quick" in Hawaiian.) As the Wikimedia Foundation’s Performance team, we want to create value for readers and editors by making it possible to retrieve and render content at the speed of thought, from anywhere in the world, on the broadest range of devices and connection profiles.
The following is a summary of the Performance Team Goals.
| Objective | Key result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
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| Deploy PerformanceInspector |
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EOQ | In progress
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| Deploy Thumbor |
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Ops | EOQ | In progress
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| Front-end performance |
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In progress
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| Multi-DC | On-going work - task T88445
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In progress
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| ResourceLoader | Improve documentation, make code easier to debug, improve error-detection. |
Goal setting process owner: Greg Grossmeier
All tracked in: #releng-201617-q1 - More details at Wikimedia Release Engineering Team/Goals/201617Q1
| Objective | Key result | Dependency | Team members | ETA | Status | KPI (if applicable) |
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| Phase out Ubuntu Precise |
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EOQ | Partially done
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Three fewer production Ubuntu Precise production machines (and two fewer Beta Cluster hosts). |
| Reduce Technical Debt |
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EOQ | Done
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By the end of Q1 WMF Release Engineering will have a prioritized list of technical debt work that should be done. This will allow us to prioritize this work accordingly alongside our other user-requested work in the future. |
| Streamline deployments | Stretch goal
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EOQ | Not done
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By the end of Q1 deployments will be made from long-lived branches versus week-specific ones. |
In Wikimedia Research we use qualitative and quantitative methods to provide strategic insights and technological solutions to the movement and the Foundation, to foster innovation and to inform the development of new products.
Research & Data
[edit]Goal setting process owner: Dario Taraborelli [ Wikimedia Research goals overview ]
| Objective | Key result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
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| FOCUS
Revscoring in production |
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EOQ | Done
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| EXPERIMENT
Open Notebooks Infrastructure (T140430) |
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EOQ | In progress
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| FOCUS
Discussion modeling |
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EOQ | In progress
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| FOCUS
Productize the article recommendation API |
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EOQ | In progress
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| STRENGTHEN
Research landing page (stretch) |
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EOQ | In progress
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Design Research
[edit]Goal setting process owner: Abbey Ripstra [ Wikimedia Research goals overview ]
| Objective | Key result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
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| FOCUS
Product Research |
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end of Q1 | Done
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| FOCUS
Generative Research |
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mid Q1 | Done
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| STRENGTHEN
Research capacity building |
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end of Q1 | Done
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| EXPERIMENT
Research data mapping (stretch) |
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end of Q1 | Done
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Goal setting process owner: Darian Patrick
More details at Wikimedia Security Team/Goals 2016-2017#Q1_.28July-Sept_2016.29
| Objective | Key result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Improve two-factor authentication usability | Removal of impediments to adoption and use | Results of usability survey, conducted with input from Design Research and Legal | EOQ | Postponed
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| Draft and release job descriptions for new Security Team staff and begin hiring process | Increase team capacity | Input from Tech. Mgt. and other key stakeholders | EOQ | Done
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| Draft Security Team onboarding documents/handbook | New hire and on-demand resources for day-to-day operations | EOQ | Partially done
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Goal setting process owner: Gabriel Wicke
| Objective | Key result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
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| Protect sensitive user information |
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Security, Operations | EOQ | Partly successful. Prototyped, full implementation pending storage backend discussion & security hiring. |
| EventBus & change propagation |
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Operations | EOQ | Driver / Kafka upgrade took longer than anticipated. Finished RESTBase update migration & enabled other use cases like ORES. Work with collaboration & reading teams on new use cases is ongoing & will continue in Q2. Discussed CDN purge options & contributed patches, but do not yet have comprehensive scaling strategy in place. |
Other progress:
- Productize PDF render service
- On track for deployment towards early Q2.
- Content composition: Create a Demo frontend running on client & server; initiate a working group to chart the way forward.
- In progress: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T106099
| Objective | Key Result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Move remaining Wikimedia Labs operations functionality from Wikitech to Horizon |
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EOQ | Done
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| Modernize Puppet configuration management infrastructure |
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EOQ | Done
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| Build a Varnish xkey vmod and purging schema that works for our needs |
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EOQ | Done
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| Progress Varnish 4 migration |
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EOQ | Done
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| Experimental Prometheus metrics monitoring |
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EOQ | Done
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| Stretch: Experiment with Kubernetes for services in production |
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EOQ | Done
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