Talk:Tech/News/Recently resolved community tasks
Add topicJust wanted to say this is such a good idea — thank you for the hard work in maintaining it! — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 12:56, 4 October 2024 (UTC) Reply
- Thanks! Positive feedback is both rare and appreciated! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:17, 4 October 2024 (UTC) Reply
- folks who are with WMF, WMDE, or contractors Is there a separate list of issues resolved by open source development volunteers? I think considering that would be a good idea. Maybe there could also be charts based on the storypoints (difficulty/time-requirement).
- Not much development is going on – for such a large project, not much is still not little and not so easy to keep track of. Being able to see what has been achieved may also be motivating for volunteers, especially if one could aggregate by user (with a column sortable by eg total storypoints). Prototyperspective (talk) 16:23, 26 January 2025 (UTC) Reply
I second TheresNoTime in saying what a great idea this is. However, I think it would be possible to be a little more selective about what is included.
Perhaps I am thinking wrongly, but when I am invited to "View all N community-submitted tasks were resolved last week", I expect to see bugs being fixed, feature requests being implemented, community requests (e.g. configuration changes) being fulfilled, and the like.
I don't really expect to see things like mundane, routine requests concerning Wikimedia technical infrastructure, for instance, Cloud VPS project creation and config changes, GitLab account activations, archiving of Phabricator projects, library update requests, ... Even if these technically are community-submitted tasks resolved by WMF staff, all the staff member had to do was click a couple of buttons as part of the routine duties of the job they were hired to do. While it's great that WMF employs staff to carry out these tasks, I don't see the fulfilment of these requests as valuable enough to celebrate as part of this list. The bot-created tasks, in particular, stretch the definition just a little too far imho.
Perhaps the scope of the list could be narrowed somewhat:
"This page is intended to list Phabricator tasks that were reported by people (not bots) who are not with WMF, WMDE, or contractors, and were resolved in the last week by folks who are with WMF, WMDE, or contractors. Routine requests relating to Wikimedia technical infrastructure (e.g. account creations on GitLab, project creations on Cloud VPS) are not included in this list."
(I'm also a bit confused by phab:T378437, as I don't believe Kunal has worked at WMF for some time. Moreover, his bot, LibUp-bot, is considered a non-WMF user. Perhaps a slip?) This, that and the other (talk) 02:11, 13 November 2024 (UTC) (edited 04:16, 19 November 2024 (UTC))Reply
- Ping @UOzurumba (WMF) and Quiddity (WMF): This, that and the other (talk) 04:16, 19 November 2024 (UTC) Reply
- Thank you @This, that and the other, for calling our attention to the phabricator tasks added to the "View all N community-submitted tasks were resolved last week" entry. We will take more time in the future to review the weekly resolved Phabricator tasks thoroughly to ensure they are not included. UOzurumba (WMF) (talk) 22:44, 19 November 2024 (UTC) Reply
- Hey TTO! Thanks for this comment, and yes, we do try to remove the inapplicable or irrelevant entries. For context, the list is just generated via a simple script, and from there it relies on us Tech News editors being familiar with the edge-cases (alternate names, esoteric jargon, etc!) or reading extensively to try to learn the contexts (when we have time), hence there are likely to be imperfections every few weeks. But we are trying! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:23, 21 November 2024 (UTC) Reply
- Thanks for that context, @Quiddity (WMF)! I've added a short paragraph to the lead section describing this process. Maybe giving more visibility to the script source code can give people some ideas regarding how the filtering process could be optimized to reduce the manual labor (e.g. expanding the query with a blocklist of bot users or tags that typically indicate such routine tasks), or perhaps the emphasis on manual curation can inspire others to volunteer to help out in that work. Cheers, Waldyrious (talk) 15:46, 4 February 2025 (UTC) Reply
- Great addition, thank you! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:15, 4 February 2025 (UTC) Reply
- Thanks for that context, @Quiddity (WMF)! I've added a short paragraph to the lead section describing this process. Maybe giving more visibility to the script source code can give people some ideas regarding how the filtering process could be optimized to reduce the manual labor (e.g. expanding the query with a blocklist of bot users or tags that typically indicate such routine tasks), or perhaps the emphasis on manual curation can inspire others to volunteer to help out in that work. Cheers, Waldyrious (talk) 15:46, 4 February 2025 (UTC) Reply