Tech Community Building

FY 2021/22 Organization Efficacy & Resilience OKR for Wikimedia Technology Department

OKR Overview

Our technical community is thriving and has a clear, consistent means to discover, build, and deploy applications that support community workflows, invent new forms of content creation and consumption, and leverage Wikimedia's APIs and data beyond the core wiki experience.

Key Result 1
A single entry point into our technical documentation, combined with accurate landing pages, enables technologists of all levels to discover Wikimedia’s technical areas and engage in communities of practice (acceptance criteria for accuracy defined by Q1, 100% of landing pages meet criteria by end of Q3, launch of developer portal by Q4)

Key Result 2
At least 10 underserved wiki communities have a set of technical skills and capabilities enabled through globally localized partnerships and curated pathways for learning and contribution, in support of scaling the ecosystem of tool developers (10%)

Key Result 3
Users can assess the reliability of tools for adoption, contribution or research based on a system of quality signals (co-maintainers, docs, recent editing usage, published source code, endorsements, etc) within Toolhub (research by Q2, code by Q3, adoption by Q4).

Key Result 1: Discoverable Docs (paths to entry)

A single entry point into our technical documentation, combined with accurate landing pages, enables technologists of all levels to discover Wikimedia’s technical areas and engage in communities of practice (acceptance criteria for accuracy defined by Q1, 100% of landing pages meet criteria by end of Q3, launch of developer portal by Q4)

Audience: Technologists of all levels
Pathway to entry and engage

Narrative
"Upon arriving on the MediaWiki and Wikitech home pages, I was instantly lost." -- Ashwin Bhumbla

In FY 2020/21, WMF started to work on long standing issues in the field of technical documentation. Focus of the first year was to better understand challenges and opportunities, identify key technical documents and use cases we’re serving and prototype the structure of a single entry point (“Developer Portal”) to lower the barriers to find relevant information. This work continues in FY 2021/22. Our goal is to move step-by-step towards a future where Wikimedia’s technical documentation is discoverable, cohesive, accurate, standardized, and continuously updated.

In terms of organizational maturity, Wikimedia’s technical documentation is somewhere between ad hoc (no standards, ad hoc efforts), and rudimentary (first practices established). Over the course of FY 2021/22, we aim to move more towards organized and repeatable processes, and create the basis to build out a model and practice for technical documentation at WMF.

In FY 2021/22, this encompasses:

Setting up the organizational basis to address Wikimedia’s needs in the field of technical documentation
Designing, implementing, and communicating a single entry point into our technical documentation (“Developer Portal”)
Defining requirements for technical documentation, with an initial focus on acceptance criteria for accuracy
Reviewing and improving high-level technical documents to meet predefined accuracy standards (“landing pages” into different technical areas)
Evolving and introducing a base set of best practices and standards

Related initiative (also led by Technical Engagement):

Improving Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) documentation with a focus on end user documents (target group: engineering teams and individual technical contributors) and documentation for Site Reliability Engineers (Q3-Q4)

Metrics
KR-Metrics:

100% of landing pages linked from the Developer Portal meet predefined criteria for accuracy
Developer Portal is launched

Additional data & user research to inform next steps

Data on usefulness/clarity of technical documentation from the annual Developer Satisfaction Survey and annual WMCS user survey
Feedback-Gadget enabled on landing pages to inform the next round of improvements
Audience definitions to foster user-centered thinking within technical documentation communities of practice

Roadmap

Define criteria for accuracy of landing pages (Q1)
Develop content strategy, design and technical implementation plan for the Developer Portal (by Q1/2)
Review and improve key technical documents/landing pages (Q2-Q3)
Implement 80% of Developer Portal (Q2)
Finalize implementation and launch of Developer Portal (Q4)
Evolve and introduce a base set of best practices and standards (Q1-Q4)
Gather and review feedback through surveys and feedback gadget to inform next steps and future focus areas (Q2-Q4)

Roles and Responsibilities

High-level strategy and organizational basis: Technical Engagement
Developer Portal: Multi-functional project group across the fields of Developer Advocacy, Engineering, Technical Writing, Design, User Research
Key technical documents, best practices and standards: Technical Writers cohort, other contributors to technical documentation

Material

Key Result 2: Curated Pathways (sustainable communities)

At least 10 underserved wiki communities have a set of technical skills and capabilities enabled through globally localized partnerships and curated pathways for learning and contribution, in support of scaling the ecosystem of tool developers (10%)

Audience: Technical contributors (in underserved wiki communities), beginner to intermediate skill level
Pathway to learn, contribute, and grow

Narrative
Wiki communities need technical contributors to be sustainable, and to grow the Wikimedia projects at scale. Smaller wikis often lack people with technical skills or contacts into the global technical community and ecosystem. We classify these wikis as underserved communities - underserved in terms of people with technical skills, and not enough tooling in place to curate and grow content at scale. The tooling ecosystem is a main driver for content growth and curation. About ⅓ of all edits come from tools and bots. In addition, there are a variety of other technical tasks that are handled by local wiki communities themselves - importing templates, translating software messages, handling site configurations, developing gadgets to bridge workflow gaps and more.

Curated pathways will help us to define technical tasks as a user journey from a brand new technically-minded user to a fully mature developer, and enable us to address needs for skills and capabilities step by step. In FY 2021/22, our focus lies on skill development and further evolving capabilities for beginner and intermediate skill levels. While our focus is on underserved communities, investing in capabilities will benefit all users, and help us to strengthen and grow our global technical capacity and community.

Metrics

Increase of tool maintainers (10%)
At least 10 underserved communities have set of technical skills and capabilities enabled

Projects/Initiatives

1. Capabilities (Quarry/PAWS/Toolforge)

Pathway for beginners: Quarry improvements
Pathway for beginners/intermediate skills: PAWS improvements
Pathway for intermediate skills: Toolforge improvements

2. Skills

Need-based technical skill share workshops, defined modules for specific skills and topics (i.e. working with Lua modules, bot development, using Phabricator, querying with pywikibot)

3. Local-global network and community building

Expanding the Small Wiki Toolkits partnerships with local/regional groups
Network and community building through smaller/larger events (regional workshops/conferences, Coolest Tool Award, Hackathon), and in collaboration with others

Roadmap
Q1

Capabilities: Quarry, PAWS, Toolforge
- Quarry improvements
- Toolforge build service
- Enable/disable/delete tools from Toolforge
Skills: Continue Small Wiki Toolkits workshops
Local-global network and community building
- Wikimania/Hackathon
- Initiate contacts with local/regional communities to help grow technical capacity

Q2

Capabilities: Quarry, PAWS, Toolforge (focus will be defined at the beginning of the quarter)
Skills: Continue SWT workshops
Local-global network and community building: Organize Coolest Tool Award; work with (new) regional partners as part of the Small Wiki Toolkits initiative

Q3

Capabilities: Quarry, PAWS, Toolforge (focus will be defined at the beginning of the quarter)
Skills: Continue SWT workshops
Local-global network and community building: work with (new) regional partners as part of the Small Wiki Toolkits initiative

Q4

Capabilities: Quarry, PAWS, Toolforge (focus will be defined at the beginning of the quarter)
Skills: Continue SWT workshops
Local-global network and community building: WM Hackathon; work with (new) regional partners as part of the Small Wiki Toolkits initiative

Roles and Responsibilities

Capabilities: WMCS (lead), Developer Advocacy, Release Engineering
Skills: Developer Advocacy (lead), mentors from other teams and communities
Local-global network and community building: Developer Advocacy, local/regional partners and individuals across the movement

Material

Key Result 3: Informed User Decisions (Toolhub)

Users can assess the reliability of tools for adoption, contribution or research based on a system of quality signals (co-maintainers, docs, recent editing usage, published source code, endorsements, etc) within Toolhub (research by Q2, code by Q3, adoption by Q4).

Audience: Users and Developers of tools
Pathway to make informed decisions

Narrative
Today users only have word-of-mouth to rely on as to the "quality" of a tool. It is very difficult to determine the level of support and maintenance a tool has. Will it keep up with changes that happen on-wiki (policies, standards)? Will it keep up with infrastructure changes (API updates, hosting platform changes, wiki hosting changes)? Does it even have active maintainers? Is there a "best" way to get help? The work on Toolhub in FY 2021/22 will provide more insights in these questions, and increasingly help users assess the quality of tools on multiple levels. Toolhub is planned to be released in October ‘21 (delayed from July ‘21). The new “quality signals” will be implemented in Q3.

Metrics
KR-Metrics:

Delivery dates
Adoption

Additional data to inform next steps:

User feedback, i.e. via talkpage, sessions, or survey

Projects/Initiatives

Toolhub MVP Deployment
Research to define quality signals
Toolhub 2.0 feature development
Driving adoption

Roadmap
Q1

Continue work on MVP, prepare deployment
Research: Quality signals

Q2

Launch
Define user stories and design for the quality signals feature set
Technical implementation plan

Q3

Technical implementation of quality signals

Q4

Gather user feedback to inform next steps

Roles and Responsibilities

Toolhub project team: Product Management, Engineering, Developer Advocacy
Advisory council: SRE, Security, Community Relations, volunteers

Material