General meeting notes

Thanks to all the Generals who attended today's general meeting! Here's a
re-cap:

WPW update - status?

   - Have coordinators verified the status of each page in their purview?
   - We need to consolidate the tables into a final master list of
   properties to be worked on, and we want to include only those properties
   still being worked.

>> Eliot to send an e-mail to each coordinator asking them to review the
articles in their purview and to update the status of the article as needed.
>> Scott to create a new master table of those properties remaining to be
worked on.

WPW reinvigoration - what do we need to do to put some life back into this?

   - We've dropped to 50 active users/month.
   - Are site performance problems a contributing factor?

Site performance may be a factor, but the more salient problem is the
MediaWiki editing environment and usability. Also, site architecture and
other points raised by Richard (last name?) at W3C.

>> Doug to summarize Richards points and communicate to the public list.

State of WPD for the birthday - what have we accomplished?

>> Scott to start a thread listing this years accomplishments.

Also, given an understanding of the site's problems, our comms for the
birthday should include a plan for improvements in the coming year. One of
those improvements should be a formal plan to replace MediaWiki.

>> Doug and Renoir to develop a plan that can be communicated in birthday
comms.

Birthday comms, generally, need a plan. What are we going to say? When?
Where?

>> Eliot to ask Milo to lead birthday comms effort.

Who's in for Amsterdam?

So far, Scott and Julee. Doug is a maybe.

Doc Sprint New York?

Patrick D'Souza is still planning this for the first week in December.
Working with Peter Lubbers and Nabil (last name?).

Reminder: Doc Sprint in a Box, Oct. 2

Jay Meisner is heading this up. Please send an e-mail to the list if you
want to be involved.

We're out: print up some new t-shirts?

We will need funding from all stewards for another batch of t-shirts. Peter
proposes that we limit production to just the number we need for an
up-coming event like a Doc Sprint, and do production runs as we need them.
Then we can have the shirts shipped to event locations from the
manufacturer. This will work better than what we have done: producing a
huge batch, storing them, and then having to ship them ourselves when we
need to use them.

>> Scott to work with Peter to print up some new t-shirts.
>> Stewards to help fund.

JavaScript import status?

Architecture passed review Doug conducted with JavaScript experts. Max is
ready to start. Communication needs to be sensitive about distracting from
the CSS properties effort.

>> Doug to meet with Max to start the import.

Compatibility automation status?

Mostly ready to go. Will use MDN and caniuse.com. Doug is in discussions
with PPK/Quirksmode.

>> Doug to send progress report to public list.

Analytics & reporting?

Piwik is back on line with improvements like e-mail reporting and better
speed. Dashboard effort to resume with Julee and Eliot.

>> Eliot to create issue for exposing the dashboard, determining metrics;
others to contribute to the issue.

Other content areas we need to work on?

SVG gaining in use and interest. We have an opportunity to provide docs;
there is currently very little.

>> Doug to develop a proposal (http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/WPD:Projects
)

DOM APIs/HTML Elements/Attributes. We need to encode associations between
all three.

>> Scott to develop a proposal (
http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/WPD:Projects)

Raw meeting notes/minutes (courtesy of Alex):

9:05 AM <jkomoros> scribenick: jkomoros
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9:06 AM <jkomoros> scottrowe_: Focusing today on status more than long
discussions in this meeting
9:06 AM <patrickdsouza> on irc
9:07 AM — jswisher is present
9:07 AM <jkomoros> ... want to discuss birthday stuff and status
9:07 AM <patrickdsouza> present on irc
9:08 AM <jkomoros> ... julee gets back from vacation in 5 days. next week's
meeting will be more action-oriented
9:08 AM <jkomoros> ... in the meantime want to get started on this
9:08 AM <jkomoros> topic: Web Platform Wednesday
9:09 AM <jkomoros> scottrowe_: We want to make sure that we have all of hte
CSS properties in one consolidated table
9:09 AM <jkomoros> ... want to make sure all the coordinators have checked
their work items to make sure their status is accurate
9:09 AM <jkomoros> ... then I can go through and move all of those line
items into a master table
9:09 AM <jkomoros> ... there may be mitigating circumstances that prevent
me from doing that--for example, the site makes it hard to do large tables
9:10 AM <jkomoros> renoirb: I'm not aware of any major obstacles to editing
wiki content
9:10 AM <jkomoros> ... I suggested that we talk with Ryan to see what can
be done, but on my side I don't see anything that would impact reliablity
9:11 AM <jkomoros> ACTION: renoirb to follow up with Ryan on edit stability
on the wiki
9:11 AM <jkomoros> scottrowe_: Dave Gash is working on the CSS properties
stuff. Right now focusing on grid properties
9:11 AM <jkomoros> ... he e-mailed me a few times last week when he ran
into intermittent 503 errors
9:11 AM <jkomoros> ... I would conclude we don't have a site performance
blocker, so we can proceed with cleaning up the WPW tables
9:12 AM <jkomoros> eliot: Scott, you should send e-mails to coordinators
directly (cc the list) and say update your tables
9:12 AM <jkomoros> ACTION: scottrowe to send e-mails directly to
coordinators to tell them to make sure their rows in the table are up to
date with status
9:12 AM <jkomoros> topic: Momentum
9:13 AM <jkomoros> scottrowe_: We had 99 active users at one point; we're
down to 50 now
9:13 AM <jkomoros> ... maybe summer slump. At one point wanted to
investigate site performance issues.
9:13 AM <jkomoros> ... need to think about ways to reengage teh community
9:13 AM <jkomoros> ... especially now that we're getting in our second year
9:13 AM <jkomoros> ... anyone have any ideas?
9:14 AM <jkomoros> eliot: There are some concerns about this. Speaks to a
need for ongoing and ardent community development
9:14 AM <jkomoros> ... but in the spirit of this meeting, I think it's most
important just to note it
9:15 AM <jkomoros> shepazu: One of my colleagues at W3C went through and
listed things he didn't like about our site architecture
9:15 AM <clayball> maybe social media buzz would help.. at least to keep it
on people's radar.. is there a webplatform twitter account?
9:15 AM <jkomoros> ... some of them were impressions that could be
explained away, but I think we need a top-down relook at how everything is
organized
9:16 AM <jkomoros> ... someone should go through and say "I have a
problem", see if the workflow makes sense
9:16 AM <jkomoros> ... another thing: the compatibility tables need to be
in place before the launch
9:16 AM <jkomoros> ... another main concern: I'm frustrated with mediawiki
and I think I'm not alone
9:17 AM <jkomoros> ... it's turned into we're fighting this tool that we
don't even know how to control it anymore
9:17 AM <jkomoros> ... people who know how to handle the templates aren't
engaged anymore
9:17 AM <jkomoros> [sorry][
9:18 AM <jkomoros> ... and on twitter, someone was just reporting that in
their browser and intermittently, the names of the arguments in
setAttribute, setAttributeNS...
9:18 AM <jkomoros> scottrowe_: I investigated, here's what happened: the
person found one method and was looking at setAttributeNS, getAttributeNS,
hasAttributeNS. In the getAttributeNS, the order of methods was reversed
9:19 AM <jkomoros> ... what happened is he conflated all three. I
straightened out the templates
9:19 AM <jkomoros> ... so what looked like was a backend problem was
actually a ...
9:19 AM <jkomoros> shepazu: It looked like it was a aproblem with how data
was being rendered, but it wasn't
9:20 AM <jkomoros> ... getting back to the topic, I feel like we're
fighting against the tool and htat's causing frustrations
9:21 AM <jkomoros> ... i hear a lot of people very interested in this
conference. I jsut got added to Oreilly's fluent advisory board largely on
the grounds of Web Platform Docs. They're very interested. They want to
have a docsprint at Fluent
9:21 AM <jkomoros> ... about.com wants to have a docsprint
9:21 AM <jkomoros> ... we have a lot of interest in this
9:21 AM <jkomoros> ... but the site makes it easy for folks to get burned
out.
9:21 AM <jkomoros> ... we need to finish up CSS. Just the other day, we had
someone e-mail the list and say "hey is this thing over? i wanted to help
out"
9:22 AM <jkomoros> ... after CSS we have javascript to work on
9:22 AM → PhistucK joined (546fb85d@gateway/web/freenode/ip.84.111.184.93)
9:22 AM <jkomoros> ... we have another opportunity to do a JS docsprint if
people are actually engaged
9:22 AM <jkomoros> ... I've been slacking on WPW, and I imagine other
people are feeling the same way
9:22 AM <jkomoros> ... each of the coordinators has to be out their
hustling to get others engaged
9:22 AM <jkomoros> ... part of it may be that students just got back to
school and are distracted with start of semester
9:24 AM <jkomoros> ... thanks to renoirb for heroic efforts to stabalize
system, but it has pulled him off tasks we wanted him to help with (like
copmpat tables)
9:24 AM <jkomoros> ... I owe an e-mail about what the plan is for compat
tables
9:25 AM <jkomoros> ACTION: scottrowe to launch an effort around plans for
2014 to improve the infrastructure
9:25 AM <jkomoros> scottrowe_: we'll make it a point for status at our
birthday
9:26 AM <jkomoros> eliot: I don't disagree, one main point to address.
Quite early on we realized a mistake in using mediawiki to describe HTML
9:26 AM <jkomoros> ... we had talked about using some authoring system that
used html to describe html
9:26 AM <jkomoros> ... one of the points of frustration is learning
mediawiki to write about HTML
9:27 AM <jkomoros> jswisher: People largely like using Kuma for MDN. THere
are always people who want to work a different way than others work.
9:27 AM <jkomoros> ... like some people want to work offline, or use
different markup
9:27 AM <jkomoros> ... generally it's working for us to use HTML as our
markup language
9:28 AM <jkomoros> ... one effort that is currently underway is (and I'm
not sure if this is Kuma or MDN specific), but enable documentation to be
displaye dhtat LOOKS like it's part of MDN But not actually in the wiki,
but stored elsewhere like github
9:28 AM <jkomoros> ... that will be on a project by project basis,
especially for things in very early stages
9:29 AM <jkomoros> ... templating in kuma is not something I've done a lot
of, but KumaScript is basically JS (uses node.js), has constructs for
manipulating kuma objects. It's as easy (or hard) as writing JS
9:30 AM <jkomoros> scottrowe_: so we should look at Kuma at some point.
Want to come back to agenda.
9:30 AM <jkomoros> topic: Birthday coming up
9:30 AM <jkomoros> scottrowe_: Despite problems, we have accomplished quite
a lot.
9:30 AM <jkomoros> ... I'm very enthusiastic about things that we've done
9:30 AM <jkomoros> ... we need to enumerate these
9:31 AM <jkomoros> ... I'd like someone to be a point person on this. To
gather things we've done, maybe write a blog post or two about this, or at
least start tarcking them on a wiki
9:32 AM <jkomoros> jkomoros: I'd imagine that the improvements will likely
be a sup-piece of a larger birthday communication plan
9:33 AM <jkomoros> ... I'd love to help but I'm busy right now with two
conferences and performance review season
9:33 AM <jkomoros> shepazu: What about Millo for a birthday announcement?
9:33 AM <jkomoros> eliot: i can't promise he can, but I will reach out
9:34 AM <jkomoros> ACTION: eliot to reach out to Milo to see if he can help
coordinate the birthday communications
9:34 AM <jkomoros> scottrowe_: Does everyone agree that we'd like to do
this the week we're in amsterdam
9:35 AM <jkomoros> jkomoros: I imagine it depends on the communication
strategy
9:35 AM <jkomoros> .. for example, we might delay the announcement a week
or tow to coincide with a content milestone
9:35 AM <jkomoros> topic: Amsterdam
9:36 AM <jkomoros> scottrowe_: I'm going, so is Julee, but unfortunately a
lot of people can't
9:36 AM <jkomoros> renoirb: I won't go probably, although I'd like to in a
perfect world
9:36 AM <jkomoros> scottrowe_: We have another sprint in NYC
9:37 AM <scottrowe_> patrickdsouza: are you still interested in doing a doc
sprint in NY next quarter?
9:38 AM <jkomoros> scottrowe_: Ideally we can use a NYC docsprint to
further enhance our communication strategy adn ride that wave into the
holidays
9:38 AM <patrickdsouza> yeah i believe shepazu and peter had a call with
Nabil
9:38 AM <patrickdsouza> so yes we are still interested
9:38 AM <jkomoros> shepazu: Peter and I had a good call with Nabil
9:38 AM <jkomoros> ... we want to put the doc-in-a-box together. We think
the first week in decdember is a good time
9:39 AM <jkomoros> ... he wanted to know if we could have a package for
them to have a theme for hte docsprint and a set of content that is known
to be needed
9:39 AM <jkomoros> .. i think it will time very well with the JS push
9:39 AM <jkomoros> ... and there are a lot of JS people in nyc
9:39 AM <patrickdsouza> we do need that doc-in-a-box thing that we had
talked about a month and Peter was supposed to put it together.
9:39 AM ⇐ clayball quit (~clayball@blknt.cceb.upenn.edu) Remote host closed
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9:39 AM <jkomoros> ... so we determined we'll put the sprint-in-abox thing
together in the next few weeks
9:39 AM ⇐ chrismills_ quit (~chrismill@87.115.43.217) Quit: Off to find
beer and rock and roll...
9:39 AM <jkomoros> ...and step up the engagement on js documentation
9:40 AM <jkomoros> ... will have a WPW-like thing focused on JS as opposed
to CSS
9:40 AM <jkomoros> ... early december seemed like a good time
9:40 AM <patrickdsouza> yes early december works for us
9:41 AM <jkomoros> scottrowe_: We have a rolling meeting scheduled on 10/2,
rolling from europe, then EST, to PST
9:41 AM <jkomoros> ... each wave will work on some aspect of this. Jay
Meisner (sp?) is leading this up
9:41 AM <jkomoros> ... please send an e-mail to the list if you want to be
involved
9:42 AM <jkomoros> ... we expect to finish up docsprint in a box in time
for NYC and amsterdam
9:42 AM <jkomoros> ... we probably need some new t-shirts for the sprints
9:42 AM <jkomoros> ... would stewards be amenable to making new shirts?
9:43 AM <jkomoros> ACTION: scottrowe to talk with peterlubbers about
getting new swag for WPD
9:43 AM <jkomoros> topic: JS project
9:43 AM <jkomoros> scottrowe_: HOw is that going?
9:44 AM <jkomoros> shepazu: I talked to Max, he's interested in getting
started
9:44 AM <jkomoros> ... we tried to meet up a few weekends ago but timing
didn't work out. Trying to talk to him on Monday
9:44 AM <jkomoros> ... he's interested to go whenever he's ready.
9:44 AM <jkomoros> ... I got some feedback from JS experts about
architecture improvemetns; overall they thought it was good but had some
suggestions
9:45 AM <jkomoros> ... but I don't want people to get distracted from CSS
focus
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9:45 AM <jkomoros> scottrowe_: davegash is focusing on CSS
9:46 AM <jkomoros> jkomoros: I'd prefer to keep JS on the backburner (but
on the list is fine)
9:46 AM <jkomoros> topic: Compat automation status
9:47 AM <jkomoros> ACTION: shepazu to send e-mail to list about current
plan for compat table automation
9:47 AM <jkomoros> shepazu: Basically the plan is, MDN has a lot of
content, but not vetted by test--but lots of great content
9:48 AM <jkomoros> ... we have permission to import that data. also
permission from caniuse and quirksmode (his stuff is all static HTML, no
data dump to get)
9:48 AM <jkomoros> ... I will be talking abou tthat with PPK in amsterdam
9:48 AM <jkomoros> ... (I tentatively plan to be in amsterdam, pending some
passport stuff)
9:49 AM <jkomoros> ... focusing on MDN stuff first since it's low-hanging
fruit, and supplement the MDN style tables with those
9:49 AM <jkomoros> ... caniuse data is good but not discrete--lots of stuff
lumped together. But we're going to sort that through
9:50 AM <jkomoros> ... one of the things Renoirb was going to work on is to
change how compat tables are implemented in WPD; it would hurt the
performance to have all of the pages up to date all the time... (details
aren't important rightnow, will be in email)
9:50 AM <jkomoros> topic: Analytics and reporting
9:51 AM <jkomoros> renoirb: memcache is not working for mediawiki
9:51 AM <jkomoros> ... there was a collection of things that in the setup
that don't help us
9:52 AM <jkomoros> ... piwik is back up again, hopefully i a better way
9:52 AM <jkomoros> ... with more features than before. upgraded, more
features to use
9:52 AM <jkomoros> ... things like e-mail reporting
9:52 AM <jkomoros> ... the speed has also improved
9:53 AM <jkomoros> shepazu: One of the ideas was to do a dashboard to
report to our users and us
9:55 AM <jkomoros> renoirb: dashboard effort is stalled a little bit; julee
and eliot are point people on that
9:56 AM <jkomoros> ACTION: eliot to start an issue on
project.webplatform.org about features we want on the dashboard
9:58 AM <jkomoros> scottrowe: Having a dashbaord in time for anniversary
would be nice
9:58 AM <jkomoros> topic: Additional content types
9:58 AM <jkomoros> shepazu: SVG is getting more attention nowadays
9:58 AM <jkomoros> ... but there's no GOOD documentation anywhere
9:59 AM <jkomoros> ... I think it would be good to allow peopel to have
bylines
9:59 AM <jkomoros> ... other sites have success getting famous people to
write articles that are byline-d
9:59 AM <jkomoros> ... that can drive traffic
9:59 AM <renoirb> The analytics and reporting project wiki page I started
is here: http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/WPD:Requirements/Analytics
10:00 AM <renoirb> Suggested requirement gathering namespace:
http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/WPD:Requirements
10:00 AM <jkomoros> scottrowe_: we need a more comprehensive look at the
DOM, not just which interface it has, but which attributes, etc
10:01 AM <jkomoros> ... I've been poking around how we might do that
10:01 AM <jkomoros> ... one of the projects we might consider is developing
templates that help us make those associatiosn
10:01 AM <jkomoros> ... I'm working on that, but it's dependent on
organizing the DOM API and getting that structure cleaned up
10:04 AM <patrickdsouza> i need to pull away. lunch time.