[Wikitech-l] Re: Reflecting on my listening tour

[bawolff]

Thank you for this email. I appreciate your effort to tackle difficult
problems head on and in recognizing our problems are socio-technical, not
just technical. This email is probably one of the most reassuring things I
have read from someone in WMF management in a very long time. There were
some parts I wanted to give my 2 cents on.

> "I think there are lots of promising opportunities to incentivise people
to pay off technical debt and make our existing stack more sustainable.
Right now there are no incentives for engineers in this regard."

Interesting. Personally to me, it can sometimes feel like we never stop
talking about technical debt. While I think paying off technical debt is
important, at times I feel like we've swung in the opposite direction where
we are essentially rewriting things for the sake of rewriting things.

> "I strongly believe that Wikipedia will be obsolete by 2030 if we don’t
fix MediaWiki now."

A bold statement. And I appreciate that these headers are meant to trigger
thoughts and not be a firm arguments. However, I would certainly be curious
though as to the "why" of that statement, in your view.

> What is our strategy for MediaWiki support? Today there is a tug of war
about whether we should support MediaWiki for third-party users, even
though their use cases have diverged significantly from those of Wikimedia
projects. I’m planning a MediaWiki convening in late 2023 to begin tackling
this issue.

I would disagree that third party use cases have diverged at all from
Wikimedia projects, let alone significantly. (Speaking generally. Of course
the wide internet includes people doing crazy things). Perhaps this is not
the time to discuss this, but I would certainly be curious to know what
people in WMF think the third party use case is that doesn't match with
Wikimedia's.

> What will it take to have impact at scale?

Aren't we already at scale? (With perhaps the exception of WDQS, which does
have significant scaling issues on the horizion). Our exponential growth
phase is long over and we have largely come out on the other side. Unless
you mean scaling our social decision making structures, in which case I
would agree that we have failed to scale that effectively in the past.

> how can we think even bigger, and question elephants in the room, which
in part would be to examine the long-standing and seemingly unquestioned
assumption that MediaWiki is the best software to solve all problems we face

I disagree that it is unquestioned. People have talked about this in the
past. However usually it goes nowhere because (imho) the people who in the
past have brought it up often don't fully understand how MediaWiki's is
actually used and suggested solutions that don't really fit our needs. So
perhaps you're right that it hasn't been seriously brought up. However,
replacing software is much like rewriting it. There's a lot of hidden
gotchas.

>Some of the product senior leadership in the recent past have specifically
avoided talking directly with people on English Wikipedia, and this
approach will no longer be applied. Engaging human to human is the best way
I know to help resolve some of the mystery, fear and anger that are present.

This is excellent. The hiding behind an anonoymous corporate fascade is a
major contibuting factor to so many problems (not all of them of course).

> However, that will absolutely not fix what’s wrong here. We need systemic
solutions. Today, there’s no way to make lasting and mutually binding
agreements with volunteers, and that isn’t a sustainable way to create and
maintain infrastructure software.

There can't be any agreement without consent, and there can't be any
consent when WMF ignores answers when they are inconvinent. Good luck with
this, it will be hard. Fixing the relationship with the community is
probably the most effective thing you could hope to accomplish. I think its
possible, but we got to the place we are now over many years and decades of
broken trust, which will take time to rebuild.

I think an underappreciated factor here, is there are cultural differences
between WMF staff and communities. How they talk. How they solve disputes.
What motivates them. What sounds inauthentic. What statements sound
insulting. etc. Some problems really do just start as miscommunication
between people of different cultural backgrounds failing to communicate.
Its been a long time since I worked at the foundation, so perhaps things
have changed, but from what i remember, there was very little to prepare
staff that don't have a community background how to "fit in" to the
community. After all, how could you trust someone to redesign Wikipedia who
doesn't even seem to know the basics of how Wikipedia works? Even simple
things like failing to sign a talk page post rapidly signals that the
person is an outsider who knows nothing of what it is like to edit the
site. Anyways, one thing I'd like to see is more cultural (for lack of a
better word) training to 

[Wikitech-l] Reflecting on my listening tour

[Selena Deckelmann]

[also posted to wikimedia-l]


Hi everyone,

I joined the Wikimedia Foundation on August 1 of last year in a newly
created role as the Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO). (For the
first few weeks, some of the staff called me C3PO as they got used to the
new title :) The role was created to bring both the Product and Technology
departments back under a single accountable leader for the first time since
about 2015. Like Maryana
,
I decided to spend the first few months of my time at Wikimedia listening
and learning. Although I come from the open source technology field, and
have worked with volunteers and communities in prior jobs, it felt
important to start here with curiosity and openness about what’s working
well and what needs to change.

Since then, I have met one on one and in small groups with more than 360
people, who spoke with me from 38 different countries. I also attended 22
large and small convenings and events which included about 3,150 people.
This includes members of the Foundation’s product and technology teams,
other Foundation staff, editors, functionaries, affiliates, movement
organizers and open internet partners. I tried to approach every
conversation with curiosity, openness, and eagerness, letting go of any
preconceptions I may have had (intentionally embracing beginner’s mind
) about the Foundation, the
Wikimedia projects, and communities worldwide that contribute to creating
and sharing free knowledge. I can confirm that I quickly found myself awash
in details, experiencing a firehose of information from all sides! My
husband and two young children have also learned a lot more about this
movement in the last six months than you might expect.

To provide myself with some structure, I asked everyone the same kind of
questions about: (1) the impact our product and technology organizations
have had on the movement and/or the world in the last five years, and what
people were most proud of; (2) the current vision and strategy and if they
will take us where we need to go; and (3) the most promising opportunities
that people see in our work, and what is needed to realize that potential.

I want to thank everyone who took the time to share with me, and I’ve
included some direct, anonymized quotes in this letter from the
conversations I had. And I want to confirm that the listening continues — I
will create more spaces in the year ahead for dedicated conversations about
some of the important topics I have highlighted below. I will also be
posting this letter to Meta.

Pulling in the same direction: More visible and shared metrics

On a page of the first notebook I had for my onboarding, I quoted a person
who said they just wanted "meaningful common goals." This was a theme
repeated over and over — a clear desire from everyone to do work together
that was linked by common purpose, and with all the volunteers that have
created all Wikimedia projects. I got to hear so many different voices, and
I heard the details from every side — what’s working, what hasn’t been
working for a long time — some of the problems we face are over ten years
old. People shared what’s missing, what’s extra, who’s fighting to be heard
and who’s feeling lost at sea.

"I think there are lots of promising opportunities to incentivise people to
pay off technical debt and make our existing stack more sustainable. Right
now there are no incentives for engineers in this regard."

"Are we really having impact?"

How can we unite behind meaningful common goals? And which metrics matter
the most? We have so much data, but we really need lodestar
 (or some refer to this as north
star) metrics across the whole Foundation, a system for reviewing and
reflecting on what we learn from them, and then a way to connect those
metrics with the day to day work everyone is doing.

To get at that, we’re doing two main things — one is deepening our
understanding of volunteer activities and the health of the volunteer
communities. This will be through working closely with volunteers using
existing processes and sharing what we’re learning, as well as qualitative
and quantitative research workstreams, including reviewing existing
research of volunteer activities and typical work profiles. The other is
working to establish a set of Foundation-wide lodestar metrics. Shared
metrics help everyone understand how we’re measuring success across the
Foundation, and we’re sharing these publicly as part of our Annual Plan.
Over time, we plan to bring our measures of success for important
initiatives to communities for conversations and debate to help everyone
align what success might look like. Shared metrics and data will empower us
to make more effective and better decisions, along with collaboration with
those who are working on changes and those who may 

[Wikitech-l] Help with sanitized css and templatestyles

[Martin Domdey]

css (commented out):
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Doc_Taxon/TestA/styles.css
page: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Doc_Taxon/TestA

Hi, I want to style the page body content with light blue background and
double border like given in linked css (commented out). This style should
be for the whole page body content of
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Doc_Taxon/TestA , but I don't want
to use a div container for this.

What is the id name or class name for the whole page body content to set
the page style like given in linked css?

Thanks for any help.

Martin
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[Wikitech-l] Technical Community Newsletter: April 2023 Edition

[Andre Klapper]

Hi everyone,

The April 2023 edition of the Technical Community Newsletter is
available:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_Community_Newsletter/2023/April

The newsletter is compiled by the Wikimedia Developer Advocacy Team.
It aims to share highlights, news, and information of interest from and
about the Wikimedia technical community.

The Wikimedia Technical Community is large and diverse - it's hard to
capture everything. We would love to hear your ideas for future
newsletters. Got something you would like to see or something you want
to highlight in the next quarterly newsletter?
Please add your suggestion to the talk page: 
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Technical_Community_Newsletter

If you'd like to keep up with updates and information, subscribe to the
Technical Community Newsletter:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Newsletter:Technical_Community_Newsletter

Thanks,
andre

-- 
Andre Klapper (he/him) | Bugwrangler / Developer Advocate
https://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/
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[Wikitech-l] Training materials for Small wiki toolkits Pywikibot workshops

[Kamil Bach]

Hello everyone,

*Summary*
The Developer Advocacy team is excited to share with you a new set of
educational materials you can use to learn and teach others about Pywikibot
[1]. These new materials are based on content originally presented as part
of the Small wiki toolkits initiative [2]. Please read and share these
materials, give feedback in Phabricator [3] or on Talk pages, or edit the
pages directly if you find errors. This will help improve the materials for
these workshops as well as workshops planned for the future.

*Long version*
Last year, the Small wiki toolkits initiative held monthly technical
workshops about using, building, and hosting bots [4].

In response to feedback received from participants [5], this year the
Developer Advocacy team launched an initiative (Phabricator task: [6]) to
develop on-wiki learning and training materials based on the previous
workshops. The goal of these materials is to make it easier for you to
learn about Pywikibot and teach others in your community about it. Drafts
for two workshops [7] are now ready for your review:
- How to run basic scripts using Pywikibot
- How to host a bot on Toolforge

Materials for each workshop come in two formats:
1. Self-study guide
- explains how to learn a given subject on your own
- links to different resources on wikis and other sites without duplicating
them.
2. Workshop organizer's handbook
- teaches you how to teach the subject to others
- explains how to prepare a workshop that you can run during a hackathon or
a conference. If you've ever wanted to give a talk about Pywikibot but
didn't have the time to design it, the handbook should help.

*How to get involved*
Please read the linked materials and provide feedback in Phabricator or on
talk pages. Is this the right format for learners and trainers? Did we miss
anything? Are there sections that are difficult to follow or make no sense?
Please let us know. Your input will help inform the next steps for the
development of the remaining materials.

If you want to contribute any changes or corrections, you can do so either
directly on the pages, or by leaving comments on talk pages or in
Phabricator. Thank you for your help!

On behalf of the Developer Advocacy team,
Kamil Bach

[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Pywikibot/Workshop_Materials
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Small_wiki_toolkits/Workshops
[3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T327282
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Small_wiki_toolkits/Workshops
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Small_wiki_toolkits/Workshops/Report
[6] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T327282
[7] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Pywikibot/Workshop_Materials

-- 
Kamil Bach (they/them)
Technical Writer
Wikimedia Foundation
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[Wikitech-l] Re: Technical Decision Making Retro

[Kunal Mehta]

Hi Tajh,

On 3/30/23 09:18, Tajh Taylor wrote:
For quite some time now, we have experienced issues with the Technical 
Decision Making Process (TDMP). Volunteer contributors and staff have 
asked if we are still operating the Technical Decision Forum (TDF, the 
member body that participates in the TDMP). Communication about it from 
the Foundation has been inconsistent, and interest from the volunteer 
community in joining has been low. Some of our most senior engineers on 
Foundation staff have expressed that the process is flawed, doesn’t 
create room for discussion about the technical issues surrounding a 
decision, and doesn’t ensure participation by all stakeholders who may 
be affected by the decision. Suffice it to say, the current state of 
affairs leaves many participants wanting more.


I'm glad to see this stated in the open, I think your summary is a 
decent starting point of why the TDF never worked. I do think a retro or 
post-mortem of the TDF from this perspective is needed.


From the talk page:
> The intention of the retrospective is to understand the pain points 
and the areas to improve the current process.


What from the TDF is worth salvaging to the point that it makes sense to 
iterate on top of? More importantly, what is the value in putting in 
this work when we already have a pending Movement Strategy 
recommendation to establish a Technology Council[1]? Surely that's a 
better base to start from?


As much as I respect the people listed on the "Core team", I'm pretty 
concerned that they're all WMF staff, given that we're talking about 
performing a retro on a body that explicitly excluded volunteers for 
most of its lifetime and as you said, weren't interested in joining once 
that option was given to them.


[1] 



Thanks,
-- Kunal / Legoktm
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