IRC office hours/Office hours 2016-06-30

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Log[edit]

Chat on WMF Metrics Meeting
30 June 2016
18:00 - 19:00 UTC

[18:01:07] <guillom> Hello, my name is Guillaume and I'll be your JamesF^W^W^W^W^W^W IRC moderator today.
[18:01:45] <lyzzy> Hi James, nice to meet you
[18:02:42] <marktraceur> All right, we have a stream
[18:02:47] <SindyM3> Yeah we have stream
[18:03:33] <foks> Thanks, brendan_campbell (or whomever got it working ;) )
[18:03:46] <guillom> Hello lyzzy :)
[18:03:52] <marktraceur> Yay ostriches!!
[18:04:49] <foks> Weird, the figure from Iolanda was 1,300+
[18:05:01] <foks> Though I hear a new figure every time :D
[18:05:25] <marktraceur> Wikimania's attendance was over 9,000
[18:07:36] <guillom> Link to demo on Wikivoyage: https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Moscow/Central
[18:08:20] <guillom> Link to wikipedia.org portal: https://www.wikipedia.org/
[18:08:24] <guillom> (with new footer)
[18:08:31] * Pine applauds maps
[18:09:05] <foks> So are the descriptions solely in English?
[18:09:33] <foks> Oh. :D
[18:10:09] <foks> guillom, does this AcceptHeader thingy apply to the descroptions as well?
[18:10:18] <foks> Um. descriptions. :)
[18:10:20] <guillom> foks: Queued!
[18:10:32] <foks> Nice. Just with the context of "is this just in English"
[18:10:51] <guillom> foks: the descriptions of the sister projects, right?
[18:10:55] <foks> Yes
[18:10:56] <foks>  :)
[18:11:04] <guillom> ok, will ask!
[18:11:11] <foks> merci!
[18:12:00] <kristenlans> Did the ED update already happen?
[18:12:13] <Pine> kristenlans: that's coming up
[18:12:14] <jrenteria> No the ED update will happen at the end
[18:12:34] <guillom> Link to research page for Jonathan's presentation: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Student_use_of_free_online_information_resources
[18:12:36] <kristenlans> ah OK. thx Pine and jrenteria
[18:12:48] <guillom> And full findings: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Student_use_of_free_online_information_resources/Results
[18:13:31] <foks> Thanks guillom!
[18:14:10] <Pine> James_F: are we allowed to queue questions for the end of the meeting?
[18:14:40] <guillom> Pine: yes, queue them with me. I'm James today.
[18:15:31] <guillom> foks: To answer your question, I just tested and when my browser's language is French, the sister project descriptions are still in English. Dunno if that's because the descriptions in French are not available or not supported, so I'll still ask.
[18:15:33] <greg-g> there's a bit of echo from the office (if it hasn't been said yet)
[18:15:53] <Pine> guillom: thank you. :) My question, if it doesn't get answered elsewhere in the meeting (and I don't see it explicitly on the agenda, although Katherine might address it), is "Can we get an update on the selection on the selection of the VP-Tech"?
[18:16:05] <foks> guillom, cool.
[18:16:16] <guillom> Pine: Queued!
[18:16:32] <foks> I don't doubt that it's difficult but it'd be awesome to have translated descriptions.
[18:17:55] <guillom> Pine: I'll rephrase VP-Tech to CTO since that's the actual job opening.
[18:19:27] <foks> I think CTO hiring is pretty much number one now that the annual plan is final
[18:19:39] <foks> but still would be good to hear for sure
[18:20:53] <Pine> guillom: OK. Also, a separate question for Discovery: when making the language portal changes, if I understand this correctly, the changes to highlighted languages may have decreased the emphasis on English and other large language wikis that are more comprehensive. So if, for example, a user is interested in reading about a topic that isn't covered in the smaller language wiki that they...
[18:20:55] <Pine> ...search, do we have a way to highlight that the content may exist on another language wiki like English or German?
[18:21:26] <Pine> (That would likely require some automated translation... I'm just thinking that there may be some downsides to this transition.)
[18:21:34] <guillom> Pine: Queued.
[18:21:43] <foks> I think something like that was beta-tested on small wikis by WMDE's WikiData team recently, right?
[18:23:36] <guillom> More information about the revision slider, with screenshots (but no live demo): https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:RevisionSlider
[18:23:43] <Pine> (A similar issue is that article length varies from wiki to wiki, although that might be something that should be addressed through edits to the language sidebar rather than through the portal. Again, I'm thinking about the risks/downsides of the language portal switch, and how to mitigate those.)
[18:24:16] <foks> oh wow, this is cool
[18:24:51] <Deskana> Those of you in the office: unfortunately the projector has washed the colours out of the presentation
[18:24:59] <Deskana> It looks totally fine on the stream
[18:25:24] <brendan_campbell> should be slightly better now
[18:26:04] <brendan_campbell> i will increase the contrast of the projectors after this
[18:27:38] <guillom> Kittens!
[18:31:41] <Deskana> Uhhh
[18:31:43] <Deskana> Hangouts error
[18:31:50] <Deskana> We're fixing it :-)
[18:31:59] <foks> Possibly Google bugs again
[18:32:06] <greg-g> haha
[18:32:28] <Deskana> Google Bugs. Worst team ever.
[18:32:38] <foks> :D
[18:32:42] <marktraceur> I don't see any slides?
[18:32:46] <marktraceur> Am I the only one?
[18:32:48] <alantz> same marktraceur
[18:32:49] <Pine> I see the WMF logo.
[18:32:50] <foks> No, I don't either
[18:32:51] <marktraceur> Aha
[18:32:51] <gilles> yep. no slides, just a logo
[18:32:53] <Deskana> marktraceur: Should be fixed now.
[18:32:56] <Pine> There we go, Star Apartments
[18:32:57] <foks> I like the logo though.
[18:32:58] <gilles> ah, it's back
[18:32:59] <ori> Pine: that's the new format
[18:33:12] <guillom> WMF logos all the way down!
[18:33:19] <ori> an hour of worship of the WMF idol
[18:33:26] <foks> I have no idea what "Skid Row" is, but it doesn't sound like somewhere I'd go on holiday
[18:33:48] <Pine> foks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skid_row
[18:34:30] <guillom> Our new Board Chair: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Week-end_strat%C3%A9gie_Wikim%C3%A9dia_France_2015_31.jpg
[18:34:33] <foks> Wikipedia? What's this?
[18:34:38] <guillom> WITH FIREWORKS.
[18:34:45] <foks> Looking BADASS
[18:35:17] <marktraceur> Checking Yahoo! Answers about Wikipedia
[18:36:05] <guillom> "Turtle of inclusivity"?
[18:36:42] <gilles> 🐢
[18:37:01] <marktraceur> I like turtles.
[18:37:42] <guillom> Well, now my "all the way down" reference looks prophetic.
[18:38:28] <foks> :D
[18:38:30] <marktraceur> Learnings!
[18:39:44] * halfak is tired
[18:40:05] <guillom> marktraceur: Drink up!
[18:40:25] <guillom> TBF this meeting is relatively jargon-free.
[18:43:09] <marktraceur> I almost missed it, but stakeholders https://lut.im/iP7IvqGWQz/GThA06k9AKojOlSY.jpg
[18:44:02] <brion> :D
[18:44:13] <halfak> lol @ Wikimania cold. Seems everyone has it.
[18:44:27] <guillom> marktraceur: Stakeholders makes me think of http://www.shoestring.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/buffy-s1-stake-400x590.jpg
[18:44:54] <brion> guillom: ++
[18:45:18] <foks> I don't have a cold!
[18:45:20] * foks preens.
[18:46:02] <heatherw> I do!
[18:46:22] * brion stays isolated to maximize germ safety
[18:46:28] <brion> well to maximize safety *from* germs
[18:47:42] <foks> thanks guillom
[18:49:44] <Deskana> Pine: Hopefully that answers your question. :-)
[18:50:01] <Deskana> Pine: It's a very good point, and it's a very tricky problem.
[18:50:24] <Deskana> Pine: Fortunately, we're working on it!
[18:50:42] <Deskana> Pine: See the top goal here, that I mentioned: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/2015-16_Q4_Goals#Search
[18:50:43] <Pine> Deskana: I recognize it's a thorny problem. I might loop back with you at some point for further discussion. Perhaps one idea in the short term is to look at search result satisfaction from users after the language portal switch.
[18:50:46] <foks> Deskana, thanks for answering mine also :)
[18:51:02] <ori> what makes it tricky?
[18:51:13] <ori> very tricky, even
[18:51:50] <Deskana> ori: It's hard to come up with good solutions that don't make things worse for as many people as it makes things better for.
[18:52:14] <Pine> Deskana: the idea behind looking at user satisfaction is to see if users are more satisfied with the results from the other language wikis that were highlighted previously, vs. the new wikis.
[18:52:35] <Deskana> ori: So we need to run lots of tests, analyse lots of data. I guess perhaps I should've said "slow going" rather than "very tricky".
[18:52:38] <Pine> And also we can look at readership traffic, of course. But now I'm going down the rabbit hole. :)
[18:53:11] <ebernhardson> ori: part of what makes it tricky is the implementation of search as it was done, currently there are ~2k indices in our elasticsearch cluster, 2 for every wiki
[18:53:32] <Deskana> Pine: True. The referrals from the portal are probably a drop in the ocean for searches on those wikis though; the noise of the normal fluctuation will likely be louder than the signal from the referrals. We'd need to tag the traffic somehow. Doable, but, again, more work! :-)
[18:53:33] <ebernhardson> ori: so instead of running one query against all the data, it would have to run 2,000 queries against all the data (in parallel from java, but still)
[18:54:10] <ebernhardson> ori: over the next two quarters we will be trying to squash that down to 2 indices per language, instead of 2 per project
[18:54:15] <victorgrigas> Video of the 2011 strategic plan : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Strategic_Plan.ogv
[18:55:07] <ebernhardson> ori: another, quasi-related problem is that we have no reasonable way to track users across domains for the purposes of running tests
[18:55:07] <Pine> Good enough for now. Thanks
[18:55:25] <ori> right
[18:57:24] <brion> victorgrigas: memories :D
[18:57:28] <foks> Deskana, :DDD
[18:57:36] <Deskana> foks: ;-)
[18:57:41] <foks> Wow, Jeff looks super swish today.
[18:57:50] <CaitVirtue> lol Dan
[18:58:09] <jlohr> For WikiLove - a shout out to Doreen and Karen - for all their work, caring & support for those who went to Wikimania. And for helping staff with travel emergencies en route!
[18:58:25] * brion wanders off to errands
[18:58:26] <foks> Yes! Yesterday was awful. :(
[18:59:09] <guillom> jlohr: Relayed!
[18:59:42] <guillom> Meeting is over. Thank you all!