[QA] Introductions

[Quim Gil]

Hi there,

I work as technical contributor coordinator at the Wikimedia Foundation, 
with a focus on ramping up community testing activities by organizing 
them and helping others becoming organizers.

I'm based in San Francisco and my short term goal is to co-organize an 
automated browser testing activity in June somewhere in the Bay Area - 
with an option for online participants. Judy, let's talk! There is also 
Carol Sanders (CCed) happy to help. Chris, all the better if you could 
drive up here that day. Rachel and Zeljko, we count on you online - and 
with the rest of people joining this list as well!

In a more strategic sense, I'm working with two ideas about testing in mind:

* It is a good entry point for new contributors with a technical 
interest, regardless of their specific skills and experience. You can 
offer small pieces of simple work and from there you can offer a 
rewarding progression path that has no end.

* Professional / advanced software testers are surely using Wikipedia 
regularly. A % of them would contribute happily their QA skills and 
would have fun learning and helping here - if they would just know. How 
to reach to that % effectively and how to get them involved?


Another interesting aspect is how to find the right relationship with 
the developers (a typical QA/dev topic) and how to find the right 
relationship specifically with the Wikimedia Foundation teams and with 
the individual / small hobbyist / small professional teams out there (a 
Wikimedia / MediaWiki specific topic).

You don't want to have QA too separate from development, and in fact 
many tasks should be done by the developers as part of their process. 
But on the other hand you don't want to bring more work to busy 
developers, and feedback they are not asking for (yet). Finding the 
right balance and working efficiently isn't simple but this is the main 
point of community testing.

... and I also enjoy writing (too much, perhaps), so I'll stop here.  ;)

-- 
Quim Gil
Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil