• Updated slides a bit in the morning (see task desc here)
• 9 attendees (excluding myself).
• Good questions afterwards
• Session was video recorded, will share the link here and on https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SWT_Indic_Workshop_Series_2020/Workshops once available

Etherpad notes

copied from https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/SWT_India_Introduction_to_Phabricator

Links

• Slides: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Introduction-to-Phabricator-WikiCon-2016.pdf
• A project (Indic-TechCom) and workboard example: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/3748/
• Phabricator test instance, do whatever you want!: https://phab.wmflabs.org/
  • (Accounts are separate here as it is a test instance only: Click "Log in", then click "Register New Account", then enter username and password and real email address, then receive a verification email, then click that link in that email)
• Phabricator test instance project and workboard, do whatever you want: https://phab.wmflabs.org/tag/swt-indic-testing-2020/
• For any later questions: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Phabricator/Help

• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

Attendees

• Andre: Technical Engagement team, spends a lot of time on Phabricator. Budg wrangler, see incoming tickets and organise better, and be of help to volunteer, staff developers, and community members.
• Satdeep: Punjabi Wikipedia and Wikisource; also with WMF
• Krishna: from Delhi, India. Have used it for few outreach events, but didn't work so well - looking to learn more.
• Urvashi: did bachelors in CS, contributed to Wiki Education Dashboard, generally uses GitHub bug tracker
• Nirajan: from Nepali, have used it for bug reporting few times
• Jay: Wikipedian from 2015, Indic TechCom, uses phabricator for tech work
• Jinoy: ml Wikipedia, haven't used much, few times for bug reporting
• Durga Soren - Santali Wikipedian
• Rajeeb-Bengali Wikipedian, eager to learn Phabricator
• AdityaK

Notes

• Basically a project management tool; used for software development and also to manage projects such as conferences.
• Tasks; bug reports, small to-dos in a project, for example, a session in a conference.
• People can interact, change, add comments etc
• Generally, technically interested people generally use. There are a wide variety of roles.
  • Designers use it for mockups
  • Triagers help to improve tasks and make it better
• People can post request to lift IP limit, when organizing events. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mass_account_creation
• Site configuration changes; pre-filled to make it easier; https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requesting_wiki_configuration_changes
• For broken scripts; better be asked to the maintainer itself; https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Locating_broken_scripts
• A task can have several projects associated with it.
• Teams; WMDE-Design, Indic TecCom etc. are generally groups who want to work together
• Projects and teams have workboards - which has all the to-dos consolidated together, into various columns. Tasks are shown as cards
• Priorities; unbreak now (super important, needs to be worked on, right now! everything else later), lowest (not urgent), needs triage (priority yet to be decided)
• Phabricator has a different user profile than that of general Wikimedia projects. A log is also shown.
• Tasks are public, security issues are not made public until fixed
• Creating a task;
  • a good title; 10 words - more specific the better.
  • assigned to field is generally empty; unless you have spokent to somebody and they agreed to do it.
  • description;
    • should have steps to reproduce, include links, and be clear - more information the better.
    • If there is not enough information, people will ask.
    • You can also upload screenshots.
    • MediaWiki markup doesn't work here.
    • Preview is available before publishing
• Creating projects;
  • not everybody can create projects, there is a special group of people who can do it - like a user right
  • You may request one at; https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Creating_and_renaming_projects
  • If you repeatedly create projects, you may be given rights to do so.
  • there can be non-public projects as well
• Workboards;
  • Consolidation of all the tasks, to-dos
  • can be organised and sorted according to different projects
• you can also mark for notifications; web/email; even though you don't work on the project. Also, can watch the projects as a whole
• sub-tasks can be created for dependencies
• More at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_report_a_bug

Discussion

• Krishna - Examples of non-technical usages of Phabricator
  • Wikimedia Sweden uses it, for example, Wikimedia Hackathon
• Krishna - How to make a task non-public
  • Trusted users can do that
  • Jay is in the trusted users group but doesn't have the option to restrict visibility
    • Talk to Andre. Creation of restricted spaces is possible.
• Nirajan - What types of tasks require Community Consensus?
  • Site configurations changes; requests that affect the site/ a wiki at-large, needs consensus from the community
  • https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requesting_wiki_configuration_changes
• Satdeep: How do we bring technical contributors to work on a particular task? - basically avoid being left there forever
  • Right project tags can be helpful, as interested folks would be notified. However, there are a lot, and finding the right one is tough. That is what triaging is all about.
  • https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bug_management/Development_prioritization