The on-wiki version of this newsletter can be found here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2022-07-20
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Today we are happy to announce new people joining the Abstract Wikipedia / Wikifunctions team.
*Rebecca Wambua* is joining us as Senior Product Manager on the team. Her first goal is to to accompany the launch and further development of Wikifunctions. We are very excited to benefit from Rebecca’s energy and enthusiasm! In Rebecca's own words:
Hey everyone!
My name is Rebecca.
I’m Kenyan by heritage and I live in Nairobi, Kenya.
I’m a product manager by profession and have most recently worked in Microsoft as a product manager for Windows Admin Center and Windows Containers & Bridge tooling. I am now working on Abstract Wikimedia. I’m super excited to get working on Wikifunctions.
I love the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation to make knowledge available to the whole world. I think it's noble and worthwhile to improve the lives of other people and see the amazing things that knowledge-empowered people can achieve.
Aside from work, I’m a happy dog mom. My dog is called Lilly and she’s 4 months old now and very playful. I spend most of my free time taking her for walks and events. I also watch a ton of movies and listen to music as well.
I’m an extrovert and so I love meeting new people and hearing people’s experiences. This is definitely an amazing environment to be in and I look forward to meeting and interacting with you all!
*Elena Tonkovidova* is Senior Quality and Testing Engineer with the Wikimedia Foundation. We are hiring a team-specific QTE role https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/4321901?gh_src=0dcd8f191us, and we are very thankful to have Elena join us to help assess our needs and eventually help integrate the new hire. She will help ensure a smooth launch of Wikifunctions and a more consistent development of the project. And in Elena's own words:
I've been with Wikimedia Foundation for almost eight years (saying 'hi' to people on the team who know me already), working as a QA engineer with different teams and on different projects. Each project I worked on - VisualEditor, the Wikipedia Apps, Echo Notifications, Maps/Kartographer, Structured data on commons, MediaSearch, ContentTranslation and GrowthExperiments - has added a lot to my learning of the incredibly complex picture of knowledge sharing challenges and to my understanding of what our communities expectations are.
After graduating with a MS in Physics, I worked for many years as a system engineer, also pursuing my life-long interest in education by teaching from time to time high school and college level Math and Physics classes. Fast forward - after moving to the US (moving then to Canada and back again) I started to work as a QA engineer and, to my surprise, I found that my new work ties together my two big passions - technology and teaching.
Reading other introductions of the team I found many things that resonated with me, e.g. I was super impressed reading about critical pedagogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_pedagogy, especially since I'm currently taking the Coursera uncommon sense teaching https://www.coursera.org/learn/uncommon-sense-teaching course.
I will be happy to work on the Abstract Wikipedia project - the project that makes free knowledge more accessible and more reliable.
We are also very happy to announce a second set of Google.org fellows https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2022-04-12 joining us for six months, starting in July and going until December 2022. The three fellows are:
*Sandy Woodruff*, UX Designer Fellow. Sandy (she/her) is a Bay Area-based interaction designer with 9+ years of experience who strives to create experiences that are both ethical and impactful. She has been at Google for 4.5 years on the Cloud AI & Industry Solutions UX team designing products that make AI accessible to users with limited machine learning experience. Outside of Google, Sandy loves helping others break into the field of UX through career coaching. Before that, she designed at Etsy, Rent the Runway, and Fab; advised for Cornell Tech’s incubator and launched a startup that helped New York City residents develop better recycling habits.
*Dani de Waal*, Software Engineer Fellow. Dani (she/her) has been working at Google for the past three years on the Ad Manager team. Prior to diving into the world of code, she could be found singing for her supper as a professional actor/musician. She is thrilled by the opportunity to take part in the Google.org fellowship, working on the Abstract Wikipedia project. Dani is located in New York.
*Edmund Wright*, Software Engineer Fellow. Edmund (he/him) has been a Software Engineer at Google for six years. He started in New York, working on the Google Ad Manager frontend, and since 2019 has worked in London on the Android Google app, with some part time work as a Privacy Advocate. Before Google, Edmund was pursuing (but did not complete!) a PhD in Economics. He lives in London with his partner and two daughters.
Sandy, Dani, and Edmund will work in the challenging space of figuring out the user experience of Wikifunctions and Abstract Wikipedia, a crucial aspect to make sure that the project really is accessible to many people with heterogeneous backgrounds. We are extremely grateful for Google.org for their trust and continued support, and with their new fellows we are hoping to continue making steadier progress toward achieving our ambitious goals of making Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions available to everyone.
*Workstream updates* as of July 8, 2022
Performance:
- Worked with SRE on adding uptime monitoring using Prometheus in Beta cluster - Completed migration of the tester pipeline from orchestrator into MW - Updated Beta Cluster to complete migration to Benjamin arrays
NLG:
- Semi-Formal specification of the proposed template language - Examined the possibility of integrating template parsing into the CLI tool
Meta-data:
- Finished refining & testing metadata dialog
Experience:
- Completed full-stack testing to find typed list-related issues - Mobile fixes on function page: Adapt sidebar, edit button - Fixed and merged bug on labels in fallback language not showing and Codex issue with CdxLookup component - [DESIGN] Editing typed lists handoff