Wikimedia Engineering/2016-17 Q3 Goals
Purpose of this document: Goals for the Wikimedia Technology and Product Development department, for the second quarter of fiscal year 2016–17 (January 2017 – March 2017). 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.
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).
The Product department, alongside the community, builds, improves and maintains the user facing features on all the Wikimedia projects. The software, interfaces, apps, and other systems and applications the team supports are essential means by which contributors and readers connect with our sites. The work of the team’s three “audience” groupings – Discovery, Editing, and Reading – is interrelated and enables a channel for progressive engagement with the users of the Wikimedia projects.
Our mission is to make the wealth of knowledge and content in the Wikimedia projects easily discoverable.
Goal setting process owner: Dan Garry
| Team | Objective | Key result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search | Add real-time index updates to completion suggester and improve overall stability and performance of search by upgrading to ElasticSearch 5 |
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EOQ | Partially done - upgrade completed, real time updates in progress
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| Improve support for different languages by researching and deploying new language analyzers |
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EOQ | In progress
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| Prototype and test overhaul UI of search page to add cross-wiki searching |
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EOQ | Done
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| Interactive | Stabilize maps and graphs code base |
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TBD | In progress
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Wikidata Query Service does not have any dedicated goals this quarter. The service will continue to be maintained by Stas and Guillaume, and Stas will work on user feature requests as time permits. Additionally, the dedicated hardware for the service will be upgraded to support the continued growth and use of the service.
The Analysis team (Mikhail and Chelsy) is in the final stage of adopting Analytics' ReportUpdater infrastructure. As part of that migration, they are starting to forecast usage of Discovery's services and products to detect when services and products might be significantly under- or over-utilized (relative to the usage our models predicted).
Wikipedia.org Portal team will not have any dedicated goals this quarter other than continuing to maintain the page by fixing critical bugs and performing regular statistics and translations updates. No other work on the page is planned in Q3.
Goal setting process owner: User:Trevor Parscal (WMF)
The Editing Department build collaborative, inclusive tools for creating and editing free knowledge.
Also see the more detailed progress on these goals which are based on Program 4 of the Annual Plan
| Annual Goal | Team | Objective | Output (deliverable) | Outcome | Dependencies | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1: Maintain and incrementally improve current content creation and curation interfaces | VisualEditor | Visual diffs for the visual editor | Provide visual diffs for all users inside the visual editor. | Editors can see the changes they and others have made without needing to know the intricacies of wikitext. |
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EOQ | Done, with more features to come
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| 2: Improve editing experience by reducing technical and product debt | Parsing | Address technical debt in wiki content | Parsoid has a linter that can identify errors in wikitext. We are going to deploy a Linter extension to the Wikimedia cluster that collects these errors and surfaces them to editors. | Editors will be able to identify markup errors and use their existing processes to fix them. But, the Linter extension itself has client-side JS to highlight the section of wikitext with the error to make it easier for editors to fix. |
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EOQ | Partially done, deployed on small wikis
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| Multimedia | 3D model file support | Pick up the work on 3D file support by getting the 3d2png service and 3D extension into production, and working with Reading on MediaViewer integration. | Editors can upload and transclude 3D files on articles, which readers can view statically on-page or interactively in MediaViewer/etc.. |
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EOQ | Partially done, work carried over
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| 3: Invest in new types of content creation, and new forms of curation and collaboration tools | Collaboration | Provide an edit-review process suited to the needs of new contributors—while improving efficiency for edit reviewers in general. | Add ORES tests, optimized ORES data display, a new filtering UI and a “New User” filter to the recent changes page (as a beta). Release the ReviewStream machine-readable feed incorporating ORES and other useful edit-review data. | More powerful edit filtering generally and, in particular, the ability to identify damaging but good-faith edits by new users. Faster performance for downstream review tools and the ability to more easily incorporate newcomer-friendly features. |
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EOQ | Partially done, deployed on some wikis
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| Language | Stabilize ContentTranslation for going out of Beta | Replace the contenteditable editing component of Content Translation to VisualEditor and preserve the current CX functionalities. | Content Translation is more stable in terms of article publishing, requiring less maintenance work from patrollers, and more ready to be enabled by default for all users. |
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EOQ | Partially done, work carried over
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Goal setting process owner: User:Khorn_(WMF)
| Objective | Key result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paypal Express Checkout integration | possibly campaign ready | Paypal | EOQ | Partially done, work carried over
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| Start Ingenico reintegration | Begin dev work | ingenico | EOQ | Done
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| Central Notice Banner Sequence feature | ship some version of this | To be added | EOQ | Partially done, work carried over
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| Team | Objective | Key result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reading Infrastructure | Empower editors to create mobile-friendly templates by allowing <style> tags to be attached to templates.
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The TemplateStyles extension is deployed in production and there are no unaddressed major community concerns. | Security, Editing, Community Liaisons, Performance, Traffic | EOQ | To do
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| Reading Infrastructure | Determine next steps for the ORES platform technology and its support. | A report (or reports) assessing the software architecture and software quality of the ORES platform (service, extension, and so forth), with recommendations covering areas such as code, configuration management, hosting, data persistence, security & privacy, testability, and a plan for viable human and automated support of the platform and its future intended use. | Research & Data, probably Editing | EOQ | To do
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| Reading Web | Provide optimal printed content | Update print styles for mobile and desktop web and deploy on all projects in preparation for using browser-based pdf rendering | New Readers (for mobile only), community liasons | EOQ | To do
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| Assess the possibility of providing an offline-capable app and unifying content through various services |
Create a written report planning the technical and tactical implementation of building and releasing an offline-capable app that unifies content consumption under reading services |
Services | EOQ | To do
| |
| iOS App | Improve the relevancy and engagement with top read and notifications features | Integrate and evaluate trending edits API for notifications and Explore feed | Services | EOQ | To do
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| Android app | Improve user confidence and set a solid stage for future feature development. | Make significant improvements to offline functionality (reading lists) and offline navigation. | None | EOQ | To do
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| New Readers | Hand off online to offline prototypes to the web team for moving to production. | A report which summarizes research (remote and on the ground) and community feedback.
Requirements defined and documented in partnership with Web team. |
Design research (inc. vendor), Reading web | EOQ | To do
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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Partner with community on identifying and prioritizing needed improvements |
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EOQ | Done
| |
| Improve core contributors' productivity | Build a prototype of the cross-wiki watchlist feature |
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EOQ | Not done
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| Improve core contributors' productivity | Complete development and ship features and fixes related to two wishes in the Wishlist Survey top 10 | EOQ | To do
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| Improve workflows for Tool Labs developers | Extend Striker to allow developers to create a shared tools account and collect data to be used for right to fork policy and tool discovery. | EOQ | Postponed
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| Improve workflows for Tool Labs developers | Define evaluation criteria for evaluating Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions (carried over from Q2) |
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EOQ | Postponed
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| Encourage community maintenance of important tools | Help community bootstrap committee to enforce right to fork and abandoned tool policies. |
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EOQ | Done
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| Improve community culture and reduce incidence of harassment | Hire and onboard new staff for the anti-harassment project | EOQ | To do
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The Team Practices Group 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.
Goal setting process owner: Kristen Lans
| Workflow | Working with | Deliverables/Impact |
|---|---|---|
Wikidata
[edit]Goal Setting and process owner is Lydia Pintscher.
Wikidata is Wikimedia's structured data project and knowledge base. Our goal is to support all the other Wikimedia projects with structured data and provide a top-notch knowledge base to everyone who needs structured data about the world.
Wikidata adapt their programms for WMDE’s new annual plan in 2017. These goals are:
- Goal 1: Continue to assure the technical and social sustainability of Wikidata (software and community) as the central, structured knowledge data base for the Wikimedia movement and beyond. (Sustainability of Wikidata)
- Goal 2: Continue to increase the reach of Wikidata into the Wikimedia projects. (Wikidata for Commons, Wiktionary, Wikipedia)
Here you can find all objectives for next quarter.
| Objective | Key result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sustainability of Wikidata
Improve the usability of Wikidata. |
Research migration to OOUI framework to be more in line with the rest of the Wikimedia projects and at the same time improve our input widgets. Improve the keyboard navigability of the user interface. Create new datatype for linking to geoshape and data pages on Wikimedia Commons. |
EOQ | In progress | |
| Sustainability of Wikidata
Improve the documentation around Wikidata. |
Organize an event to support the community in order to improve documentation and help pages for regular users. |
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EOQ | In progress |
| Sustainability of Wikidata
Keep the community involved, happy and connected. |
Start organizing WikidataCon, an event build for and by the Wikidata community for Wikidata’s 5th birthday. |
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EOQ | In progress |
| Wikidata for Commons
Provide structured data support for multimedia files to Wikimedia Commons. |
Publish Federation prototype in order to let the community try it out and work more towards Multi-Content-Revisions together with WMF. |
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EOQ | In progress |
| Wikidata for Wiktionary
Support for storing lexicographical data in order to support Wiktionary. |
Publish the Lexeme prototype in order to let the community try it out. Roll out the support for automated sitelinks to Wiktionary. Publish the technical data model specification. |
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EOQ | In progress |
| Wikidata for Wikipedia
Allow editing of Wikidata’s data directly from Wikipedia. |
Publish next version of click-dummy to get a new round of feedback from the community. |
EOQ | In progress | |
| Wikidata for Wikipedia
Make ArticlePlaceholder pages discoverable by search engines in order to help small Wikipedias grow their reach. |
Trial run on at least one Wikipedia to test the impact. |
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EOQ | In progress |
| Wikidata for Wikipedia
Make using Wikidata data on the other Wikimedia wikis easier. |
Allow automatically adding authority control templates to articles via an empty system message at the end of content pages that editors can overwrite. Improve the statement parser function further (if there is time). |
EOQ | In progress | |
| Wikidata for Wikipedia
Automated creation/update of list articles based on queries to Wikidata. |
Experimenting with different ways to make it easier to write and edit queries (if there is time). |
EOQ | In progress |
Technology
[edit]Goal setting process owner: Nuria Ruiz
| Objective | Key result | Tech Goal | Dependency | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Improve tools for data display for the Foundation and community. Better tools to access data. Wikistats 2.0 | Creation of Visual language for replacement of http://stats.wikimedia.org task T152033 . Mocks and Wireframes for UI and Information Architecture of new site when it comes to edit data. | A. Org Level Priority. B. Serving our Audiences. | Design - Community Liaisons, in order to engage with community and be able to provide early feedback. | Done Visuals can be seen here: task T157827
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| Improve tools for data display for the Foundation and community. Better tools to access data. Wikistats 2.0 | Productionize mediawiki edit reconstruction pipeline to enable calculation of edit metrics for community and WMF for all wikis since the start of the projects task T152035 | A. Org Level Priority. B. Serving our Audiences. | Done
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| Improve data computing and release. Real Time. PublicEventStreams Launch task T13065 | Start of deprecation of RCStream with the result of less code and less resources used to publish an edit updates feed for the community | B. Serving our Audiences. | Ops | Done
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| Improve data computing and release. A/B testing framework design | Design Document for a more solid AB testing infrastructure. Carry along from last quarter task T135762 | B. Serving our Audiences. | Ops, Research | Done Design document available in meta
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| Operational Excellence | Set of tasks needed to keep lights up and update/upgrade existing systems to maintain and improve current level of service. In order of priority.
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C and D. Tech Debt and improve our own feature set | To do
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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 | Quadrant |
|---|---|---|
| Outreach | B: Customer goal | |
| Monitoring |
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C: Feature |
| Improvement | D: Tech debt | |
| Knowledge |
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C: Feature |
Goal setting process owner: Greg Grossmeier
All tracked in: #releng-201617-q3 - More details at Wikimedia Release Engineering Team/Goals/201617Q3
See also Wikimedia Release Engineering Team/Project/Planning for more items that are not quarterly goals.
| Objective | Key result | Dependency | Team members | ETA | Status | Tech Goal Quad. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Train 2.0 |
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EOQ | Done
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C: Tech feature
A: Annual goal |
| Continuous Integration Infrastructure modernization (i.e., Deployment Pipeline) |
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EOQ | Not done
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B: Customer goal
C: Tech feature |
| Phabricator Improvements | Re-evaluate and improve search functionality in Phabricator - task T146843 |
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EOQ | Done
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D: Tech Debt |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FOCUS |
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EOQ | In progress
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| FOCUS
Stub recommendations |
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EOQ | In progress
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| EXPERIMENT
Recommender system evaluation |
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EOQ | In progress
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| STRENGTHEN
Annual workshops and outreach |
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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FOCUS
Generative research |
New Readers next steps
Audience project
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EOQ | Done
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| STRENGTHEN
Participant outreach |
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EOQ | In progress
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| FOCUS
Understanding editing culture |
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EOQ | In progress
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| EXPERIMENT
Recommender Evaluation |
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EOQ | In progress
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Goal setting process owner: Darian Patrick
| Objective | Key result | Dependency | Team members | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Improve wiki account authentication |
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EOQ | To do
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Goal setting process owner: Gabriel Wicke
| Objective | Key result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| REST API 1.0 (B/D) | Graduate the REST API 1.0 from beta to stable production. Stabilize individual end points, improve documentation, and write a blog post announcement. | EOQ | Done | |
| Container infrastructure (B/C) | Establish requirements for a container-based development, continuous integration, production, and third party install infrastructure. Identify issues, and investigate potential solutions. | Operations, Release Engineering | EOQ | Done |
We also plan to spend significant time on:
- Change propagation and EventBus infrastructure expansion.
- RESTBase storage scaling.
| Team | Objective | Key result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core Ops |
Data center switchover (prep) |
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EOQ | Done
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Security: Enhance and unify system user account handling |
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EOQ | Done
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Stretch: Kubernetes |
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EOQ | Done
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Migrate all production systems away from Precise |
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April 24th 2017 (Precise End Of Support) | Done
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| Labs |
Deprecate Precise |
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EOQ | Done
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| Investigate Neutron migration path |
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EOQ | In progress
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Traffic |
Site selection for Asia Cache DC |
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EOQ | Done
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