[Wikitech-l] Talk to the Search Platform / Query Service Team—March 1st, 2023

[Guillaume Lederrey]

Hello all!

The Search Platform Team usually holds an open meeting on the first
Wednesday of each month. Come talk to us about anything related to
Wikimedia search, Wikidata Query Service (WDQS), Wikimedia Commons Query
Service (WCQS), etc.!

Feel free to add your items to the Etherpad Agenda for the next meeting.

Details for our next meeting:
Date: Wednesday, March 1st, 2023
Time: 16:00-17:00 UTC / 08:00 PST / 11:00 EST / 17:00 CET
Etherpad: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Search_Platform_Office_Hours
Google Meet link: https://meet.google.com/vgj-bbeb-uyi
Join by phone: https://tel.meet/vgj-bbeb-uyi?pin=8118110806927

Have fun and see you soon!

Guillaume

-- 
*Guillaume Lederrey* (he/him)
Engineering Manager
Wikimedia Foundation 
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[Wikitech-l] Re: [Proposal] Disable setting the "Lowest" Priority value in Phabricator

[Brian Wolff]

On Friday, February 24, 2023, Dan Garry (Deskana)  wrote:

> On Fri, 24 Feb 2023 at 11:20, Andre Klapper 
> wrote:
>
>>  * Personally I also assume Lowest priority is sometimes used instead
>>of honestly declining a task (means: "this is not a good idea"[5]).
>>But of course that is rather hard to prove.
>>
>
> This is anecodal, but when I was a product manager at the WMF, I did this
> sometimes. As is true in any company or project, there will always be
> tickets that contain valid bugs or requests, but the reward per unit effort
> makes them not worth fixing. I often tried to close these as declined to
> reflect that reality, but not infrequently someone outside the team would
> reopen the ticket. The path of least resistance to stop team workboards
> being filled with tickets that would never be actioned was to mark them as
> lowest priority, and then use a filter to remove those tickets from our
> views of the board.
>
> I don't particularly have a view one way or the other on removal of the
> "lowest" priority. The workflow I described above wouldn't really change;
> "low" could just become the new "lowest", but people wouldn't find it
> demoralising, I suppose?
>
> Dan
>

I feel this is a problem with phabricator being used as both a project
management tool for teams and as a bug tracker, when those are different
things. Certainly its reasonable for teams to have bugs they dont think is
worth fixing and a way for them to ignore said bugs, but declining them
hinders people who are trying to track what the known bugs are resulting in
duplicated effort. Not to mention external contributors may want to fix
these bugs and declining them hinders this. I personally think the best
solution is to have separate work boards for team management vs mediawiki
component.

My personal definition of lowest vs declined:
Declined: if you wrote a patch for this it would be rejected. Fixing this
is a bad idea.
Lowest: nobody cares and nobody is going to work on it. However if you
care, feel free to write a patch and it will get reviewed.

Generally i find the priority field an endless source of drama. The way
priority/severity gets conflated is problematic, the way it is global
instead of per work board is problematic. The way non-devs think it is
prescriptive instead of descriptive is very problematic. Sometimes i wonder
if it should be removed entirely, although maybe that is too far.

If i could change the priority field i would probably change it to be only:
* unbreak now
* work on next (or "urgent")
* normal
* no intention to fix (aka lowest)

I think that's the only useful statuses. I would prefer statuses to be more
descriptive. Nobody knows what "high" means. Everyone knows what unbreak
now means. I would also suggest being really blunt with the names too. It's
much more demotivating to give people false hope.

--
Bawolff
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[Wikitech-l] Re: [Proposal] Disable setting the "Lowest" Priority value in Phabricator

[Dan Garry (Deskana)]

On Fri, 24 Feb 2023 at 11:20, Andre Klapper  wrote:

>  * Personally I also assume Lowest priority is sometimes used instead
>of honestly declining a task (means: "this is not a good idea"[5]).
>But of course that is rather hard to prove.
>

This is anecodal, but when I was a product manager at the WMF, I did this
sometimes. As is true in any company or project, there will always be
tickets that contain valid bugs or requests, but the reward per unit effort
makes them not worth fixing. I often tried to close these as declined to
reflect that reality, but not infrequently someone outside the team would
reopen the ticket. The path of least resistance to stop team workboards
being filled with tickets that would never be actioned was to mark them as
lowest priority, and then use a filter to remove those tickets from our
views of the board.

I don't particularly have a view one way or the other on removal of the
"lowest" priority. The workflow I described above wouldn't really change;
"low" could just become the new "lowest", but people wouldn't find it
demoralising, I suppose?

Dan
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[Wikitech-l] Re: Call for projects and mentors for Google Summer of Code 2023 and Outreachy Round 26 is ongoing!

[Zoran Dori]

You're welcome. It makes sense then, thank you for informing me. :)

Best regards,
Zoran

пет, 24. феб 2023. у 13:43 Adam Wight  је
написао/ла:

> Thank you for the note—I hadn't realized that Outreachy participation
> details can't be published until the contribution period begins on March
> 6th.
>
> Please watch this page for more information about the research project
> generally:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Content_Translation_language_imbalances
>
> -Adam
> On 2/24/23 13:12, Zoran Dori wrote:
>
> Hello,
> the linked Phabricator task is "restricted" for me, I'm unable to see it.
>
> Best regards,
> Zoran
>
> пет, 24. феб 2023. у 12:49 Adam Wight  је
> написао/ла:
>
>> Research into translation imbalances
>>
>> =
>>
>> A short round of initial investigation by Jan Dittrich and myself has
>> revealed a strong pattern in how Content Translation is used: comparing the
>> number of articles being translated from Wikipedia languages with more
>> editors and articles into languages with fewer articles, we’ve found an
>> imbalance as large as 100:1 in favor of translations from the larger to the
>> smaller language.
>>
>> There is much to be done to understand the source of this imbalance,
>> whether it’s desirable, and whether we can design an intervention which
>> leads to a more balanced exchange between languages.
>>
>> We kindly invite Outreachy applicants to consider helping us with this
>> project, and we will co-create a flexible mentoring opportunity in
>> whichever of these fields is most interesting to you:
>>
>>-
>>
>>User experience research
>>-
>>
>>Programming
>>-
>>
>>Data analysis
>>
>>
>> Please see the longer version of this proposal for more details and to
>> find “microtasks” for getting started,
>>
>> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T328597 - Research into translation
>> imbalances
>>
>> Kind regards,
>>
>> [[mw:Adamw ]] and [[
>> meta:Simulo ]]
>> ___
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>
>
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[Wikitech-l] Re: Call for projects and mentors for Google Summer of Code 2023 and Outreachy Round 26 is ongoing!

[Adam Wight]

Thank you for the note—I hadn't realized that Outreachy participation 
details can't be published until the contribution period begins on March 
6th.


Please watch this page for more information about the research project 
generally: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Content_Translation_language_imbalances


-Adam

On 2/24/23 13:12, Zoran Dori wrote:

Hello,
the linked Phabricator task is "restricted" for me, I'm unable to see it.

Best regards,
Zoran

пет, 24. феб 2023. у 12:49 Adam Wight  је 
написао/ла:


Research into translation imbalances

=


A short round of initial investigation by Jan Dittrich and myself
has revealed a strong pattern in how Content Translation is used:
comparing the number of articles being translated from Wikipedia
languages with more editors and articles into languages with fewer
articles, we’ve found an imbalance as large as 100:1 in favor of
translations from the larger to the smaller language.


There is much to be done to understand the source of this
imbalance, whether it’s desirable, and whether we can design an
intervention which leads to a more balanced exchange between
languages.


We kindly invite Outreachy applicants to consider helping us with
this project, and we will co-create a flexible mentoring
opportunity in whichever of these fields is most interesting to you:

 *

User experience research

 *

Programming

 *

Data analysis


Please see the longer version of this proposal for more details
and to find “microtasks” for getting started,


https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T328597
- Research into
translation imbalances


Kind regards,

[[mw:Adamw ]] and
[[meta:Simulo ]]

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[Wikitech-l] Re: Call for projects and mentors for Google Summer of Code 2023 and Outreachy Round 26 is ongoing!

[Zoran Dori]

Hello,
the linked Phabricator task is "restricted" for me, I'm unable to see it.

Best regards,
Zoran

пет, 24. феб 2023. у 12:49 Adam Wight  је
написао/ла:

> Research into translation imbalances
>
> =
>
> A short round of initial investigation by Jan Dittrich and myself has
> revealed a strong pattern in how Content Translation is used: comparing the
> number of articles being translated from Wikipedia languages with more
> editors and articles into languages with fewer articles, we’ve found an
> imbalance as large as 100:1 in favor of translations from the larger to the
> smaller language.
>
> There is much to be done to understand the source of this imbalance,
> whether it’s desirable, and whether we can design an intervention which
> leads to a more balanced exchange between languages.
>
> We kindly invite Outreachy applicants to consider helping us with this
> project, and we will co-create a flexible mentoring opportunity in
> whichever of these fields is most interesting to you:
>
>-
>
>User experience research
>-
>
>Programming
>-
>
>Data analysis
>
>
> Please see the longer version of this proposal for more details and to
> find “microtasks” for getting started,
>
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T328597 - Research into translation
> imbalances
>
> Kind regards,
>
> [[mw:Adamw ]] and [[meta:Simulo
> ]]
> ___
> Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org
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[Wikitech-l] Re: Call for projects and mentors for Google Summer of Code 2023 and Outreachy Round 26 is ongoing!

[Adam Wight]

Research into translation imbalances

=

A short round of initial investigation by Jan Dittrich and myself has
revealed a strong pattern in how Content Translation is used: comparing the
number of articles being translated from Wikipedia languages with more
editors and articles into languages with fewer articles, we’ve found an
imbalance as large as 100:1 in favor of translations from the larger to the
smaller language.

There is much to be done to understand the source of this imbalance,
whether it’s desirable, and whether we can design an intervention which
leads to a more balanced exchange between languages.

We kindly invite Outreachy applicants to consider helping us with this
project, and we will co-create a flexible mentoring opportunity in
whichever of these fields is most interesting to you:

   -

   User experience research
   -

   Programming
   -

   Data analysis


Please see the longer version of this proposal for more details and to find
“microtasks” for getting started,

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T328597 - Research into translation
imbalances

Kind regards,

[[mw:Adamw ]] and [[meta:Simulo
]]
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[Wikitech-l] [Proposal] Disable setting the "Lowest" Priority value in Phabricator

[Andre Klapper]

Wikimedia Phabricator tasks have a "Priority" dropdown field (which is
not consistently used) with several discrete values, among them
"Lowest". See [1] for the full list of Priority field values.
Since [2], "Low" and "Lowest" priority share the same definition.

I propose to disable setting the "Lowest" Priority value in Phab tasks.

"Lowest priority" can sound demotivating / disrespectful ("there is
nothing that could be even less important"). However, bikeshedding
about changing the name of the value would ignore further observations:

 * About half of the people who are most active in setting initial
   Priority values do not ever set Priority to "Lowest"[3].
 * There is no significant difference between median age of open tasks
   with Low and with Lowest priority[4], thus nothing seems to get
   realistically differentiated here.
 * Personally I also assume Lowest priority is sometimes used instead
   of honestly declining a task (means: "this is not a good idea"[5]).
   But of course that is rather hard to prove.

If you have opinions and/or ideas how to interpret data differently,
please add them to https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T228759 to keep
them in a single place - either as a text comment, or via "Award Token"
to express support or disagreement without adding words.

Thanks,
andre

[1] 
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Project_management#Priority_levels
[2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T317533
[3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T228759#6988320
[4] 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/XJAK2EEGXANOGI7LMQDYEZWS7WJ5JRMF/
[5] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bug_management/Bug_report_life_cycle

-- 
Andre Klapper (he/him) | Bugwrangler / Developer Advocate
https://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/
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