The on-wiki version of this newsletter can be found here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2022-11-17
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Code of Conduct for Wikifunctions
An important non-technical goal for Wikifunctions is to have a friendly and
welcoming environment for newcomers, both for people from the existing
Wikimedia communities and from beyond, right from the start.
A way to ensure that this will happen is to establish a code of behavioral
policies, to which all the community members must adhere. As of now, we
have several (non-exclusive) possibilities.
As a Wikimedia project, the Universal Code of Conduct
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct> will apply to
Wikifunctions automatically. That is a great starting point.
The first question is: whether we should also adopt the Technical Code of
Conduct <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct>, which in some
places is more specific than the Universal Code of Conduct. Since
Wikifunctions is a technical project it seems to make a lot of sense.
The second question is: whether we should have some additional
behavioral/conduct policies in place, which are either more specific or
cover additional ground compared to the Universal and the Technical Codes
of Conduct. Inspiration can be taken from the lists of existing
behavioral/conduct policies
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_community_code_of_conduct>. Also
in the case that we do not want to adopt the Technical Code of Conduct, we
should write our own version of it.
I would like to see suggestions for policies around giving newcomers a bit
of extra protection, particular given the complexity of our project. I'd
also like to hear thoughts on policies regarding the multilinguality of
Wikifunctions, which can hopefully learn from the best examples on
Wikimedia Commons or Wikidata, the large multilingual projects we already
have. Similarly, a policy that limits any discussion about “vim vs emacs”
to no more than two posts per month per contributor could be needed, and
some of you may have a few thoughts on how to avoid edit wars around code
style.
As with the previous recommendation
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2022-09-27> for
starting to draft a new policy before Wikifunction launches, we encourage
everyone to discuss options, and perhaps draft content. Let’s centralize
the discussion in this update's talkpage, and link to draft policies from
there.
We will put a space where folks can state their agreement and disagreement
with adopting the Technical Code of Conduct (as well as state their
indifference, so we can estimate engagement). Besides that, the page is
open for suggestions for further behavioral policies, and even drafts for
these.
We are aware that we will not start with a perfect set of policies, and
this is not the goal. The goal is to at least try to have the most
important pieces in place from day one, so that we don’t start with an
entirely blank slate. This is similar to the initial staff editing policy
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Staff_editing> that was
recently drafted. And just as with that policy, it is clear that the
results are not written in stone, but will be amenable to change and will
evolve as the actual community of Wikifunctions starts forming. But it is a
good idea to have the first few guidelines at hand right from the
beginning, and not to scramble reactively too much.
As it is always the case with such policies, a strong turnout would show a
strong commitment to these policies. I hope that our nascent
proto-community that is forming around Wikifunctions will show up and
demonstrate our commitment to a set of policies that will lead to an
inclusive and civil community in the future. Please take the time to let us
know your thoughts.
WikiConference North America
Last Saturday, we were presenting Wikifunctions virtually at the
WikiConference North America / OpenStreetMaps USA. The session was
recorded, but at the very end Denny’s Internet connection failed which took
away that opportunity from the community to ask questions live. However, we
still collected the questions and answered them on the wiki of the
conference
<https://wikiconference.org/wiki/Submissions:2022/Wikifunctions_-_a_new_Wikimedia_project#Questions>.
Thanks to all attendees, and thanks for these great questions!
Development updates
Experience & Performance
- Fixed more FE bugs
- Enabled websockets in the evaluator, allowing two-way communication
with orchestrator (T318359 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T318359>)
- Implemented versioning of Avro schema (T321752
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T321752>)
- Submitted fixes and test coverage improvements for current
perform_test flow (T321495 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T321495>,
T321492 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T321492>, T312290
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T312290>)
- Made function view page implementation and test tables mobile-friendly
(T310162 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T310162>)
- Implemented FE integration test for connecting implementations and
testers to functions (T318426 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T318426>
)
Meta-data
- Revised version finished: Record which implementation gets selected (
T320457 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T320457>)
- Further work on caching tester results in MediaWiki DB (T297707
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297707>)
- Drop back-compat. code in orchestrator & evaluator (T291136
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T291136>)