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Mark Smith ([staff profile] mark) wrote in [site community profile] dw_dev2013-03-04 01:08 pm
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A little organization and updates!

Hi all!

I've been doing some poking around and realized that I don't have a good overall state-of-the-DW-development. I have some vague ideas about what some people are working on and interested in, but I wanted to make those vague ideas become a bit less vague. :)

If you have a few minutes, I'd appreciate you taking the time to answer a couple of quick questions here!

  1. Are you actively working on a bug (or several) right now? Which ones?
  2. What are you interested in working on -- broadly or narrowly, what do you want to do? (Or are you just open for suggestions?)
  3. Is there anything explicitly blocking you from doing what you want? (Knowledge, someone has the bug claimed for a year, need a hand with something, etc.)
  4. Free form! Anything you want to say or ask. :)

I also want us to have another development focused chat like we did some months ago. I think the last one I did was well timed for US developers but bad for EU, so I'll go the other way this time. I'm thinking something like 8AM Pacific which is midnight for [personal profile] fu and 4PM UTC on a Sunday. Reasonable?

Thanks!

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[personal profile] swaldman 2013-03-09 05:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Late to the party here due to the new-house-no-internets dance, but:

1. My focus for a little while has been adding the ability for DW to tweet notifications of new entries. This is with Fu for review in a draft form at the moment, and I'm glad to say that its blocking bugs have been fixed :-)

Once it's in it should be fairly straightforward to add other sites that use OAuth (only Tumblr springs to mind, but there are probably others) and I may well take that on. However, a IMHO blocker for wider other-sites support is a redesign of the Other Sites settings page - I've bodged Twitter in, but with any more sites it would get very unwieldy. This probably needs input from somebody with considerably more front-end ability than me. There is an existing bug for this, but I forget the number ;-)

2. While the twitter thing is (by my standards) a fairly significant feature, my general comfort zone is to swat the little bugs to leave the more capable people free to look at bigger things :-) To this end, I'm always open to suggestions of little things that would be really helpful to have fixed. In the past I've picked up things that have caused a number of support tickets.

3. See above re Other Sites settings UI.

4.
a) My input will decrease significantly from about a fortnight ago, due to starting a phd. However, once I'm up and running on that I hope to not be totally absent. (I am totally absent now owing to having no connectivity in my new house).
b) As I discussed with fu on IRC a little while ago, I think it would be nice to have occasional posts from you guys outlining the big picture of where you see development going - what are the priorities at present, what's happening, and so forth. Things sometimes seem a little opaque. (this is intended as a suggestion rather than as a complaint!)
c) There was something else I was going to say, but I have completely forgotten what it was.

4pm on a Sunday sounds good for me. As much notice as possible would be helpful!

[personal profile] swaldman 2013-03-09 05:16 pm (UTC)(link)
Since I got around to looking them up,
The bug to add Twitter support is 4504. The one for a new Other Sites UI is 3590.
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)

[staff profile] denise 2013-03-11 07:44 am (UTC)(link)
i'm so excited about 4504, you have no idea!

and yeah, i agree that the UI for the external sites tab is kind of a mishmash. one of these days we will lure somebody with design skillz! in the meantime, just do what you can. :)

also, just to say it again (since it's been a while) -- having people working on the huge features is awesome, don't get me wrong, but i also adoooooooore people hacking on the little bugs, especially stuff that comes up frequently in support. one of the things i love most about running dw is how we're getting to fix all the tiny little bugs that always drove me bugfuck while we were working on lj but couldn't really get approval for hack time for the tiny shit. there are a few major features we've added that i love to bits and pieces, but i think the sheer accumulated weight of all the little fixes is even more awesome (and definitely more immense), really. and i love being the kind of project where we care about the little shit.

you're totally right on needing more big-picture type stuff! i always keep intending to do that and i always keep getting distracted. i should do a "what we want to accomplish in 2013" post.
ninetydegrees: Art: self-portrait (Default)

[personal profile] ninetydegrees 2013-03-12 02:25 pm (UTC)(link)
b) As I discussed with fu on IRC a little while ago, I think it would be nice to have occasional posts from you guys outlining the big picture of where you see development going - what are the priorities at present, what's happening, and so forth. Things sometimes seem a little opaque. (this is intended as a suggestion rather than as a complaint!)

*nods* Oddly enough, I find it easier to know what some of my current fellow volunteers are working on but not so much what the 'fixed' part of DW is doing.
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