[Engineering] Tech News – reminder & feedback

[Johan Jönsson]

Hey everyone,

This is an email about Tech News. Partly to introduce or explain what
it is to those who might be unfamiliar with it, or have seen it but
don't know it well. Partly to ask if there's anything we could do
better. If you know all there’s to know, there’s a request for
feedback towards the bottom of this email.

ABOUT TECH NEWS

a) What is Tech News?

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News

Tech News is a newsletter for reaching out with technical updates to
the general Wikimedia editor communities, to make sure they can keep
track of what's happening. It's typically distributed in 15–20
languages, reaching roughly 90 community pages (Village Pumps etc) and
some 600 individual subscribers, in addition to those who read it on
Meta, see it included in the Signpost or get it in their email inbox.

b) How is Tech News written?

Simplification is key. Technical news for non-technical readers.
Should be easy to translate as well as be written with en-1 and en-2
readers in mind. A couple of sentence per item, then a link to a Phab
task, wiki page or email if they need more information. Too long and
we put an unreasonable burden on the translators.

c) I've done something technical. The communities should know. How do I add it?

* There's a "user-notice" tag in Phabricator. Add it to the task
together with a simple 1–3 sentence explanation of what this is and
how it affects editors. Don't worry about polish, we'll take care of
that.

* You can add it yourself!
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/Next will take you to the
relevant issue. Remember to link to a relevant Phab task, wiki page or
email.

* You can always write on https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tech/News

d) When is it distributed?

Weekly, each Monday afternoon/evening UTC. The deadlines for additions
are several days prior to that to give the translators time to do
their work.

See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/For_contributors#When_is_the_work_done.3F
for when to add things to have them included in the next newsletter.

e) What is Tech News not?

* A general Wikimedia newsletter. Everything in the Wikimedia world is
at most one step removed from being technical. This doesn't mean Tech
News is the best place. Typical items are new or upcoming features or
potential breaking changes.

* The way to reach the Wikimedia technical community. If you want to
reach Wikimedia developers, an email to wikitech-l is usually better
than an item in Tech News. Tech News is a way to keep Wikimedia
contributors up-to-date with technical changes.

* A way to talk about all the important things that happen in the
background. They're often awesome and we should talk more about them,
but if they don't affect how contributors interact with the sites,
then this is not the place.

* A place for updates about one wiki. If it's just relevant for
English or German Wikipedia, you should update English or German
Wikipedia, not the entire Wikimedia community. Exceptions to this rule
are Commons and Wikidata, because they're used by so many other
Wikimedia wikis.

More:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/For_contributors#What_is_typically_not_included

HOW CAN WE MAKE TECH NEWS BETTER?

Are there ways we could make Tech News better at spreading information
about technical updates that are relevant for Wikimedia contributors?
Something we do that's unnecessary? Things we're often missing? Things
we fail to explain? Anything we're particularly good at and should
keep doing? Tell us – on the list, on
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tech/News, or privately (:

And, specifically – are there other places (wiki pages etc) where this
information should be available? Anything we could do to make this
easier for you?

//Johan Jönsson
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