Wikimedia Discovery/Meetings/Checkin/2016-08-02

Topics from the past

• Recap of State of the Map US in Seattle
  • Max: This year was less representative because there was also the international one. We asked Mapbox to make it possible to style our vector tiles with their new online studio. No outcome yet. Learned how to fix a longstanding bug in our code. Lots of discussions, good talks. Many technical discussions with people doing similar back-end work.
  • Julien: First time for in that community, which was helpful. (Going to worldwide in Sept). Saw many, many types of maps. Good inspiration. Interesting that they considered our communities as good examples. Many mentions of wikidata...feels magical. Hard to explain SPARQL details.
  • Deb: Maybe not less representative, but a sub-section of the full community, so has a different feel. Seeing things tried 5-6 years ago being tried again now. Looking hopeful again, but different from 2009 because the map is pretty full, it is becoming a more mature project..
  • Katie: Getting familiar with OSM community in broad strokes. Very interesting (and surprising) to see them mention wikimedia so frequently, especially in community-building.
  • Dan: Echo Katie’s remarks. “Wikipedia for maps”. Almost all talks mentioned us. I wished there were more introductory talks (e.g. “here’s what we’re trying to do”).
  • Link to Katherine’s talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywGuz1586M0
  • Link to Discovery maps talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kscsp0YS7nw

Announcements, Information, Questions

• “CE Insights is a set of surveys that will help your team gather data about communities on an annual basis.”
  • Hard to understand exactly what it is
  • Seems to be trying to address survey fatigue, which would be good
• For those who traveled recently: Do your expense reports promptly!
• Hiring:
  • Eng mgr position got posted
  • UX position is still being developed
  • Hopefully new data analyst can start “soon”-ish - Dan 80% sure of mid-August start
• Draft of community discussion on Interwiki search is on meta. Feedback welcome.
• See email thread about whether everyone in Discovery should read the weekly scrum-of-scrum notes
  • Consensus so far seems to be: Raise awareness, but don't strongly encourage

Scrum of Scrums

Are we blocked?

• None

Are we blocking? (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/blocked-on-search/)

• None

Other dependencies (in either direction) which don’t need to be called out as “blocked” (e.g. are progressing smoothly, have no urgency, etc.)

• “Should HTML formatting/DOM manip (presentation, responsiveness) be done in JS (frontend) or in PHP (backend)”
  • https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T136458
• T139378 - implement nearby keyword search - working on this for the Reading Department
  • First iteration done and deployed
  • Will wait for feedback and see if any more changes are required
• Strong dependency on ops for map servers this quarter (Guillaume is coordinating)
  • Ops are OK with enabling Kartographer on small wikis

Discovery News

• See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/Status_updates

Quick Quarterly Goals/KPI Update (if needed)

(Postponed to next week due to time constraints)

FYI

• Next Discovery team retrospectives: Scheduled starting this coming Monday
  • Switched to (generally) one team per week, instead of all in the same week
• Next Showcase (“CREDIT”): Scheduled August 3
  • Signup: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/CREDIT
• Next All-Discovery retro TBD (mid-October)