Compatibility/Meetings/2021-05-25

• Web Compatibility Meeting Meeting - 2021-05-25
• Minutes: Previous 2021-05-11

Minutes

Scribed by Karl

Diagnosis, Schedule and rotation (Dennis)

Should we find a better organization on the way we do things.

• Dennis: I have been looking at the backlog of old issues. Some of them are really old. I realized that some old issues are very complicated. And sometimes in the desire to look at them later, we forget them. Maybe the diagnosis rotation as done today is not necessary the best. There is a temptation to fix a lot of easy ones and not the old ones. Proposal: We could have a script automatically assigning the issues to us in rotation. Every issues will be assigned to someone.
• Thomas: I like it. It would just formalize what I already do.
• Dennis: There is still the possibility of trading the issues.
• Ksenia: What is the algorithm for assignation.
• Dennis: We can experiment. Probably the simplest algorithm is a simple one by one rotation.
• Thomas: If we are worried about fairness, we can assign them during the two days.
• Dennis: I don't think we should work by days, but by assignment.
• Karl: If we assign each new issue in the diagnosis pile evenly across the team, there would be no issue with fairness, because all issues are assigned one-by-one. What might happen is that somone might by random chance get assigned harder issues. But we can always work together and trade issues. One question: If you assign everyone to issues, you don't have to do the fixed days. Everyone just has to work on their pile of issues, and everyone is free to plan their own time. The risk of that is that if you're not careful, you'll miss the work.
• Dennis: I would prefer the pile over the fixed days of rotation. Some days can be very bad for being able to dedicate your time on diagnosis.
• Ksenia: some issues require immediate attention.
• James: currently you are time boxing your diagnosis. Do you feel you have to diagnose many issues? Might lead to spending more time on diagnosis or still ignoring hard issues.
• Karl: https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues?q=is%3Aissue+milestone%3Aneedsdiagnosis+label%3Aengine-gecko+sort%3Acomments-asc+created%3A%3E2020-01-01+ http://webcompat-dashboard.herokuapp.com/needsdiagnosis
• Dennis: Maybe there's a different psychological aspect to it, because *you* are repsonsible for issues, and you're not working on an abstract pile of issues that *everyone* is responsible for.
• Thomas: We will need to figure out what would be fair.
• Dennis: Ignoring issues for two years because they are complicated is not really acceptable.
• Karl: currently, that would be 50 issues per person if we'd split up the pile.
• Ksenia: OK for trying
• THomas: OK
• Dennis: OK
• Karl: OK
• [TODO] Dennis to create a bot that will assign someone on moving to needsdiagnosis. before 2021-06-??

FYI: Triage (softvision team)

There is a flood of issues. The volume of issues doesn't scale with Softvision team. We need to be better at helping. Probably the work done by Ksenia on Bugbug will help. There is a patch being finished for it. https://github.com/webcompat/webcompat.com/pull/3573 Once this is done we need to find a way to help the moderation so that a lot of the work can be done automatically.

• Raul: The volume of issues has multiplied in the past weeks. And we are creating a plan to tackle this. The bot is better identifying the issues more exactly (Safari, Firefox). We need more automation so we can focus on a better triage. The addon for scanning the websites is super helpful.
• Ksenia: Is the ML bot do a good job for priority labeling?
• Oana: I wonder if the bot is able to identify issues with auth.
• Ksenia: Right it creates an analysis of the validity of the issues. Based on the structure of good reports, the bot will search for features which are similar.
• Dennis: Do we know where the majority of issues are coming from?
• Oana: Firefox on iOS. We do not have an ipad, so Ksenia is testing a fair share of them.
• Ksenia: A lot of them are junk.
• Karl: Performance-issues and Firefox for iOS-issues are probably very low on our priority list. We have no control over WebKit, and we're not really responsible for performance issues. It would be cool if Apple engineers would be looking at those issues.
• Oana: we could close them and add label "webkit-performance"
• karl: users can report at https://bugs.webkit.org/enter_bug.cgi
• Dennis: I agree we should close them as can't be addressed here. Even Firefox issues for Fenix. We can leave a link to https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/performance/reporting_a_performance_problem.html in the "closed" message.

Site Interventions Test Suite Status (Thomas)

One of the goals of Thomas this quarter is to define a test suite for site interventions. Some updates on the progress.

• Thomas: I have been investigating on how to automate this test suite for site interventions. I have chatted with pallardo(?). They have also plans for the mobile platform for testing site issues. It should be ok for us to create a tool we run once a quarter.
• Karl: Two aspects: Don't be afraid for the first version to be very simple, something we can run once a release or something. We're not trying to build the perfect solution, we're trying to remove a bit of pressure from Oana and Raul. If the test suite is easy to run and covers most of the cases, we gain a lot of time.
• Thomas: I'm working on the prototype. It will be also for ETP Shims too.
• James: Once it will be done as a make command, you could add it to a CI process.
• Karl: can it work on a release tag?
• James: not impossible but don't worry too much about the infrastructure. Do the easiest thing possible.
• Thomas: only webcompat addon?
• James: The simplest is you start with running everywhere, and then you refine to limit.
• Thomas: My worry is to generate false positives.
• James: They should be run as Tier3 first. They could become tier2, but tier1 would probably not make sense.

FYI: Making Progress on Firefox iOS (karl? ksenia)

There will be a debug menu for changing the UA on Firefox iOS. If you need to currently activate the debug menu, you just need to type 5 times on the version information in the preferences. The process for dealing with site interventions is progressing. https://jira.mozilla.com/browse/FXIOS-1838 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-ios/issues/8515 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o5uvGxHRMPHHvjI4hd3zwQsdQfAJmbo7QDJQGyUnSYc/edit#

• Karl: I will send an email

FYI: Working with devtools team (karl)

The devtools team will be sprinting on this at the beginning of 2021H2.

wpt Usage at Mozilla (jgraham)

I've looked at how we're authoring/using wpt at Mozilla and written the start of a report. Currently asking some platform engineers for feedback. Please take a look: https://docs.google.com/document/d/149EccFbc_rWr1w5Q2bDn-98_mpfSeIInbVlkv12kf4A/edit

Peer systems for webcompat projects (karl)

Should we have a peer system for our projects. Where there is one owner and a peer. Why? Three objectives. 1. Making it possible to have someone being responsible in case of holidays, long sickness, departures, … 2. Remove the pressure for the owner to have to maintain for "all their life". 3. Make sure the documentation is understandable, usable by a third party If you are the owner of a project, start listing modules here, with your name. * wptsync - jgraham * web-platform-tests harness - jgraham * webcompat.com devops - karl / ksenia * webcompat.com python - karl / ksenia * webcompat-metrics-server - kate / karl * webcompat-metrics-client - guillaume * triage - oana / raul (karl) * diagnosis * firefox ios * site interventions * tom and dennis co-own, ksenia is peer! * report site issue gofaster addons * tom and dennis co-own, ksenia is peer! * uafreezing-reduction - karl

FYI: Working on checking version Firefox/100.0 (karl)

I started to code a checker. I have tested HTTP response and didn't any huge outliers. Next step will be to test a full DOM rendering and see if we can detect differences for the homepage. This is very limited tests as it doesn't take into account all the subtleties of using a website. Chris Peterson is collecting Pros and Cons for each scenarios. seeAlso https://github.com/whatwg/compat/issues/145

Two Minutes ( 👹 )

The useful, the silly, the things you did since the last meeting. Pro and Perso accepted.

• Dennis: Looking at broken websites! Meeting with Firefox UI folks to chat about Proton-related stuff. Also unexpectedly received my first vaccine shot. Side effect: [bad puns](https://twitter.com/denschub/status/1395821317308522503).
• Guillaume:
• James: Got the patch to run wdspec tests to use the right profile landed. Updated the WebDriver-BiDi spec proposals around navigation for the review feedback. Updated the geck owpt usage doc and sent it out.
• Karl: Review for webcompat.com. Firefox iOS Process. Diagnosis. Thinking about triage issues for webcompat softvision team. Trying to wrap my head around Google announcement about UA reduction. Working on HTTP UA version 100 checker. Working on webcompat strategy document. I planted Edamame. I ate a couple of red radish, but I also learn that density of seeds has a big influence on growing.
• Kate:
• Ksenia: labelling issues that are likely invalid by ml bot. diagnosis. going for walks/hikes
• Oana: Triage and moderation and Sitewait issues verification. Went hiking and done some gardening. Just had my 2nd vaccine today.
• Raul: Triage and moderation and Sitewait issues verification.One of my plants made a baby, it seems. Do not know what to say about the weather, it is very picky.
• Thomas: Work on v23 of the compat addon, trying to get the Facebook shim update into fx90, some h2 planning. Longer walks with the dog, longer and greener grass, and long weekends full of pollen allergies.

PTO / Travel ( 👹 )

(no more travel until the end of 2021… probably) Coming holidays across the world https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/ June 9 (TomW, taking the day off due to having to drive surprisingly far for a Covid vaccine) June 22-26 (TomW, PTO) May 31 (Oana, PTO) [Maybe] June 7-11 (Oana, PTO) 2nd and 5th of July (Raul PTO) June 28 - July 2 (Webcompat Team Wellness day)

FYI: 2021H1 Ideas (karl)

Let's keep this around so we have a reference. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w3_AU4ZYJJLSkqOW5j_6K49JxmutEsxcpsiwHXz8Tbw/edit?usp=sharing