User:ABaso (WMF)/Mark S Onboarding

Welcome, Mark S, and thank you for joining us as a part of the Structured Data initiatives in Wikimedia Foundation's Product Engineering unit! We're glad you're here.

If you are stuck at any point, you can try the following for various questions.

Ask your onboarding buddy, Simone.
Slack, in #structured-data
For some things you can ask IT Services (ITS). Ask Mark H in case you need help with such a request.

How to use this document

When something is finished, paste in {{Done}} via the wikitext editor, or use Insert > Template if using the VisualEditor WYSIWYG editor. This will render as Done when saved. Need help with wikitext? Check out: w:Help:Cheatsheet

Primer

Read the following for a primer on some of the work from the teams.

Structured Data on Commons ("SDC")

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data

The team was originally funded in part by a generous grant for the Structured Data on Commons project. You should watch the video and read that webpage for a basic understanding of things. Also, read the original grant paperwork - things evolved over time, but it's really good background on how things were framed:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f0/Public_Copy_-_Structured_Data_on_Commons_Proposal.pdf

Structured Data Across Wikimedia ("SDAW")

Later on, the grant funding was renewed, but this time on the more ambitiously scoped Structured Data Across Wikimedia (or "SDAW", pronounced "ess-dah") project. SDAW is the current workstream.

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Structured_Data_Across_Wikimedia

Likewise, things evolve over the time, but also read the original grant application for this workstream, too:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/2020_Structured_Data_Across_Wikimedia_proposal.pdf

The Structured Data team supports a number of MediaWiki extensions and backing services and frontend components for Wikimedia Commons, and that maintenance and bugfixing will continue to be needed.

Getting started with Structured Data

Setting up important accounts
When	What	Status
Team work accounts
Day 1/2	Create a user account on https://meta.wikimedia.org/ (this will create a production-wiki wide "Single User Login", or "SUL" for short, account) and then edit your User: page at https://meta.wikimedia.org.org/wiki/User:username. Be sure on your User: page to note your affiliation with This Dot as a consultant performing work for the Wikimedia Foundation.	Done
Day 1/2	Create your Wikitech LDAP account. You will provide a user name and a shell UID. The latter will be the same shell UID you're using on Wikimedia production servers and your UID in LDAP, while the former will be more publicly visible, e.g. as your username in Gerrit code review. Then turn on 2FA in your preferences there; be sure to stash backup material (a picture of the QR code and any presented backup codes) in case you need to enable 2FA on a new device. (Wikitech is the public repository of operational information about Wikimedia's technology. Common uses include the Deployments calendar, Incident documentation, and general documentation such as MediaWiki at WMF.)	Done
Day 1/2	Create your account in Wikimedia Phabricator and link it to your SUL wiki account. Turn on Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) for Phabricator (instructions below); be sure to stash backup material (a picture of the QR code stored securely is useful) in case you need to enable 2FA on a new device. Update your Phabricator profile to reflect your current work.	Done
Day 1/2	Read about Gerrit, and create your account by logging in using your Wikitech username and password. Read the short-form or long-form docs for how to use Gerrit. The full documentation about Gerrit (just not the Server Administration section which is long and not so applicable) at https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/Documentation/index.html is very educational.	Done
Communication accounts
Day 1/2	You should be on the #structured-data and #sdaw-project-team Slack channels after your Guest access is authorized by ITS. Ask Mark H to add you to #front-end.	Done
Day 1/2	Ask the Wikimedia program manager, Carly Bogen, to add you to any pertinent Google Groups.

First Week
When	What	Status
1st week	Talk with your onboarding buddy about the Wikimedia content wikis and the difference between personal and work wiki accounts, and a few community wikis that are of particular interest.	Done
1st week	Draft some "welcome" text for yourself that we can use on some communication channels to introduce you. Please email Mark H and he will copyedit and do the introductions. It's okay and good to reference your affiliation with your consulting firm, but language promoting the firm and its services should not be used. What we're looking for is your bio, what brought you here, any interests you may want to share, and what you're excited about.	Done
1st week	Read about our projects and what they do.	Done
1st week	Read about our Values and Guiding Principles.	Done
1st week	Read the Foundation's Code of Conduct policy.	Done
1st week	Join the following public mailing lists at https://lists.wikimedia.org/. wikitech-l - Default list for tech discussions on Wikimedia and MediaWiki software. mediawiki-api and mediawiki-api-announce - Lists about internet facing APIs. analytics and analytics-announce - Lists about analytics. wiki-research-l - A place where wiki research topics are surfaced. cloud-announce - Wikimedia Cloud Services (WCS) announcements, useful as you’re bound to use access to WCS or will need to be aware of service maintenance. mobile-l - This is a low traffic list now, but is for mobile-related topics, often associated with consumer facing web experiences. There is also the Wikidata mailing list and you should subscribe. As this list is quite active, you probably want to set a GMail filter as follows in order to keep mailing list traffic manageable: Matches: to:(wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org) -{"weekly summary"} Do this: Skip Inbox	Done

First Month
When	What	Status
1st month	Read the Movement Strategy PDF. There's supplementary detail on Meta-wiki, but just use the PDF to keep it simple.	Done
1st month	Read the Medium Term Plan.	Done
1st month	Understand the Wikimedia Engineering Architecture Principles.	Done
1st month	Read Debugging Teams: Better Productivity through Collaboration (Brian W. Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman). You can use Wikipedia's ISBN search to find a copy in a library or bookstore, or order locally. Consider tackling this by reading one hour per workday.
1st month	Read Wikipedia @ 20. Consider tackling this by reading one chapter per day. This is free online. Individual chapters can also be downloaded in many formats.
1st month	Work with the onboarding buddy (Simone), engineering manager (Mark H), and tech lead (Cormac) to figure out suitable first tasks for implementation. Changesets usually require iteration, and that's a good thing.
1st month	Attend a deployment training session. Even if you will never deploy directly to production, it's important to understand what happens as code and configuration moves from lower environments to full blown production.

Team member onboarding support

Who	What	Status
Program Management - Carly	With admin as needed, add to relevant team calendar and recurring meetings. Ensure that team member's calendar free/busy availability and working hours are viewable by the team. Ensure the team member is added to the team calendar with suitable access ("Make changes to events" is usually sufficient).	Done
Program Management - Carly	Add to relevant team page(s) on MediaWiki.org or Meta or both and email team member with links.	Done
Program Management - Carly	Add to team/project/initiative Slack channel(s).	Done
Program Management - Carly	Explain team development cycle, project management tools, Phabricator workflow, and meeting scheduling customs.	Done
Product Management - Shari and Alexandra	Product overview
Product Engineering Director - Adam	Notify team members who have action items in this list to take action. Ensure onboarding buddy is ready. Email the new hire with the copy of this checklist (convention is to create a subpage with page name of `Firstname_Lastname`).	Done
Product Engineering Management - Mark H	Set up on team internal mailing list(s). Add to Slack channels: #front-end - people interested in frontend web development, especially components and design systems #services - people interested in middleware, web APIs, microservices, and message based architectures #wmf-wmde - for people likely to interact with WMDE
Product Engineering Management - Mark H	Discuss initial meetings and weekly 1:1s. Arrange for attendance at any other regular engineer-y group meetings (e.g., fireside chats, enclaves, etc.).
Design - Sneha	UX / Design overview.
Tech Lead - Cormac	Discuss software development lifecycle approach for product feature / platform capability development.
Onboarding buddy - Simone	Explore Gerrit workflow approaches and deployment approaches.	Done
Onboarding buddy - Simone	Suggest appropriate Gerrit review group(s).	Done
Onboarding Buddy - Simone	Review internet facing APIs.
Onboarding Buddy - Simone	Guide through setup of Docker / Vagrant / macOS with homebrew.
Product Engineering Director - Adam	Discuss: Open lines of communication Personal managerial style Managerial style of Product Engineering management manager Birds-of-a-feather type groups Privacy/security principles and techniques Email/chat/calendar productivity tips Working with the Movement, not just for it.

Phabricator 2FA

Sign in to Phabricator account.
Once signed in, go to your account's settings page from the top menu and select "Multi-factor Auth" from the "Authentication" section in the panel on the left side of the screen. Direct link: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/settings/panel/multifactor/
If you see "Mobile App (TOTP) already listed there and the ability to "remove" it, you are ahead of the game as it means that you already have already set up your 2FA. You can always add another type/app but you don't have to.
If you don't see "Mobile App (TOTP) already listed there, click "Add Auth Factor".
There is only one option available (Mobile App (TOTP)) so press continue. (If you don't have a 2FA app you use yet (though you likely do already if you use 2FA on other platforms and accounts) you should get one. Authy is a good option as it has an easy interface and it lets you make an encrypted backup but there are a number of options, including the old standard google authenticator. FreeOTP is an open source option as well.)
You will be presented a large QR code, depending on your app you will want to add a new site and you can either scan this or type in the "key" that is presented.
It will then ask you to type in one of the codes you generate to verify that it's all working correctly.
Press continue and you're set!