[QA] How to start testing

[Chris McMahon]

Since several people have asked, here is a quick guide to getting started
testing:

First, you should understand our shared public test environments.  Those
are:

http://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/
http://test2.wikipedia.org

You should also be aware of

http://commons.wikimedia.beta.wmflabs.org and how to upload images and
other media files.

Make yourself an account on these wikis.  Visit your Preferences,
understand what you can do on these wikis.

The beta labs wikis are running code that is automatically updated to the
latest version of the master branch for both Mediawiki itself and all the
extensions on the wiki.  Beta labs is our main test environment, and most
activity is centered there.

The test2 wiki is running the latest deployment branch.  The code there is
at most one week away from being deployed to production wikis.  Use this
environment both for pre-deploy testing and also for testing that requires
the most realistic environment: test2wiki is a node on the production
cluster, a peer wiki to English Wikipedia and all the other wikis.

You should understand our deployment schedule:
https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployment

Second, you should become familiar with where we keep all of our
documentation about software, process, etc.:

https://www.mediawiki.org

Do some searching on mw.o.  Look at the recent changes.  Get a feel for how
things are done.

Third, you should get on IRC.  See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Irc

As you become familiar with these resources, feel free to ask questions on
this mail list and on the IRC channel #wikimedia-qa.

Once people are a bit more familiar with where to go and how things are
arranged, we can talk in more detail about today's testing activities and
about the testing we'll be doing in the near future.
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