CiviWiki weekly sync — 2018-05-14

Mon, May 14, 2018 · 21m

BCMWGC+1

4 speakers

Chapter 1 of 6 · Meeting Kickoff and Gordon's Progress Update0:00 / 20:35

Chapters

Meeting purpose

Review weekly engineering progress on CiviWiki, address pull request organization, and plan upcoming development tasks.

Key takeaways

Gordon Candler will separate pull request 193 into smaller, focused pull requests for the docstrings, apostrophe rendering fix, and Python 2-to-3 refactor after his internet service is restored.
Joe Grassel is nearly finished with issue 150 for thread sharing, and the team agreed to find a lightweight JavaScript library that does not load third-party tracking scripts.
Mitchell West is finalizing updates to the About Us page and asked active contributors to upload profile pictures and provide email addresses if desired.
Gordon's work on ProPublica integration is completed and isolated, ready to be pushed once his internet is back online.

Topics discussed

Gordon Candler shared that he addressed login and rendering bugs, added docstrings, but had to reset his branch after an accidental merge collision, with pushing delayed by an internet outage.
Briley Christopher Oxley advised splitting Gordon's changes into three or four modular pull requests for easier review and instructed him to pick upcoming tasks from the Next Up column on Waffle.
Joe Grassel provided an update on dropdown sharing for thread civvies and discussed avoiding tracking iframes from social platforms by using self-contained JavaScript sharing solutions.
Mitchell West detailed updates to the About Us page structure to categorize active and resting contributors, while offering to follow up with Juhi regarding her contributions.
Gordon confirmed that his ProPublica integration code was kept separate from other updates and is ready to push once his network connection is restored.
The team discussed the upcoming congressional vote regarding net neutrality, state-level actions, and the potential to expand relevant advocacy writing on CiviWiki.
Joe and Mitchell evaluated which platforms to support in the share menu, clarifying differences between Google+ sharing and generic email or Gmail links.

Next steps

Gordon Candler will cherry-pick his changes into clean, separate pull requests once his internet is restored and notify Briley on GitHub for review.
Gordon Candler will self-assign one or two small tasks from the Next Up column on the Waffle board.
Joe Grassel and Briley Christopher Oxley will research client-side JavaScript sharing libraries that do not depend on third-party scripts.
Joe Grassel will finish issue 150 and transition next to open ad ID issues.
Contributors wanting their profiles updated on the About Us page will upload image files to GitHub and coordinate email details with Mitchell West.
Mitchell West will email Juhi to obtain a status update on her recent work.

Transcript

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BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Hello and welcome to the CivWiki weekly meeting. Today's Monday, May 14th, 2018. My name is Briley Christopher Oxley.

MWMitchell West

And I am Mitchell West.

GCGordon Candler

I'm Gordon Candler.

JGJoe Grassel

I'm Joe Grassel.

MWMitchell West

Paul Scheid.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Sorry, Paul, I interrupted you. As Mitchell was indicating right before we started this meeting, meeting. Gordon is on dial-in on telephone and will get kicked off right at 30 minutes. So we wanted to start with you, Gordon. Do you want to give us an update about your progress?

GCGordon Candler

OK. OK. I went ahead and I finished up a couple bugs, specifically one that I mentioned that I would finish up last week. I got the login error taken care of. I got the, um, like where it was doing funny symbols. I got, um, bug number 21, which was the, uh, just put docstrings on everything.

That's completely finished, uh, all the way up until last week's, uh, upload. Um, and, you know, after that, bug number 161, 171, whose names have completely escaped me. Um, I also had the utter misfortune of— and I'm sure you guys have seen the pull request that I made— I actually merged everything under my all pending requests, updates, everything.

So I'm going to have to— I tried rebasing so that I'd only have only my updates to push to you guys.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Yeah.

GCGordon Candler

But that didn't work very well because I had already committed to my repository. So I'm in the process of nuking everything and starting from over.

MWMitchell West

Okay.

GCGordon Candler

I copied all my updates, and just my updates, into another folder, but my, uh, internet decided to die, uh, Saturday, and the earliest the Spectrum guy could get here was sometime today between 9 AM and 6 PM. Uh, yeah, don't ever let cats sit on the stupid little modem boxes.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

OK, cool.

GCGordon Candler

Once the Spectrum guy gets here, I'm going to get all that updated. Unfortunately, I don't have internet, so you guys are just going to have to assign me a new bug.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Yeah, that's cool. So I was just reading your PR, and it's good that you're starting a new branch from scratch. And then you can just cherry-pick those changes you made so that we don't lose that work since you've already spent time on that.

MWMitchell West

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Cool. So that's good work. One thing I'd like to encourage is that every pull request should be really focused in doing one kind of thing, and it can close multiple issues if those issues are related, if there's some kind of cluster of bugs or a couple of features that might be touching the same part of the code.

The issues that are marked as being fixed by pull request number 193, they are not so closely related, so I would urge you to open 3 or 4 pull requests.

GCGordon Candler

Okay.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

It makes the review a lot easier, and we can just close it really quick that way.

GCGordon Candler

OK, not a problem.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Cool, thank you. And other than that, yeah, I see that the collision, the kind of train wreck of commits, I've had that happen where I work too, where somehow I'll get my local branch out of sync with other development activities. And then when I rebase, everything is like I've got hundreds of commits and lines that are not things that I did.

And it's a little bit of a pain, but I would just have to go and kind of cherry-pick the changes I made. clean it up. So I feel your pain there.

GCGordon Candler

Yeah, I've been there, done that. Yeah.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Okay, cool. So, uh, but it looks like— so the issues that you were mentioning, since you're on your phone, I'll go ahead and read them off. You're doing the docstring on all model files. Uh, that one, just open a pull request just for the docstrings.

GCGordon Candler

And— Okay, I'll do that.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

So Firefox and Safari are rendering the apostrophe. It sounded like that was a small fix, maybe? So just open up—

GCGordon Candler

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's 4 lines.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Yeah, I was thinking so. That's no problem. Open up one for that and we'll probably— I can just, I can glance at it and approve it. Usually things that are that small, like on the train or something, I can approve a pull request. Now there's 2 to 3 refactor and there's one more, uh, 193. I think those can go in the same PR.

What was it? Anyway, the 2 to 3 refactor is the big one, right? That's got the most changes?

GCGordon Candler

Yes, yes.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Yeah, so that would be its own pull request. Maybe it's it. Maybe there's only 3 of them. Seemed like there's 4 issues marked as closed on the FPS. Okay, so let me know. You can just mention my name in GitHub or send me an email whenever those pull requests are ready for review. Oh, the relative imports.

MWMitchell West

And while we're talking about Gordon, we might want to jump over to the Waffleboard to decide what next tasks to assign Gordon since he's on the phone.

GCGordon Candler

Yeah.

MWMitchell West

Since he mentioned that he couldn't see that. So maybe we jump over—

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Let's give him a chance to finish these up. I think these might take a week to iron out the 2 to 3 in the pull request thing, unless you really want to stack on another Because right now he's got 3 in the in progress column.

GCGordon Candler

You can toss me something and it really doesn't matter. If I get started on it, awesome. If it turns out that it's going to be longer, if I cannot get to it before Tuesday or something, I'll just put it back.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Well, let's flip it the other way around. Let's say by Tuesday or something, someday in the next couple of days, days. Look at our Next Up column on the Waffle, the Kanban board, or filter the issues by Next Up tag and self-assign one of those, one or maybe 2 at the most if they're small and related.

Do you know?

GCGordon Candler

Okay, I'll do that.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

All right, cool. So do you know how to get to our Waffle? It's linked in the README, or if you just go to the GitHub issues, you can use the filters to say Next Up, Good First Issue, Help Wanted. Those are The low-hanging fruit ones.

GCGordon Candler

Okay, no problem.

MWMitchell West

That sounds good. So maybe we should move on to Gordon's updates for the week? I mean, sorry, Joe's updates for the week?

JGJoe Grassel

Yeah, that works. So basically I've been working on number 150, which is the sharing Civvie threads, and I've been building a dropdown menu with like a button next to the export one, just to the right of it basically. And I'm almost done with it. I just need a couple more CSS tweaks, basically. I was wondering, though, if you guys would want a Google+ +1 button on there.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Well, one thing I would like to mention we haven't really talked about, but these social media sharing buttons are a privacy concern.

GCGordon Candler

OK.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

So what they do, many implementations, they render code directly from Facebook or Google. Like they go while the page is loading, they pull in these third-party scripts. And these companies are not using them— well, they're using them to track people across the web.

JGJoe Grassel

Yeah, they use a script to generate an iframe. And then they load the button in the iframe. Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

OK, cool. So let's not use any of those types of scripts.

JGJoe Grassel

OK, so you're saying like a custom button for each link?

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Yeah, in fact, there's a plugin, a JavaScript thing that I can find the link to. And there's probably another example of this. But anyways, all it does is it's ready-made, and it'll render a sharing, a configurable sharing menu that you pick which networks. And all of the code is stored locally. None of the— it doesn't pull any code from any third-party sites.

I think it's called Carrot Share.

JGJoe Grassel

OK. Oh yeah, that would actually be perfect because I was actually running into some issues with some of the iframes from Facebook and stuff. They were causing a couple of weird CSS glitches.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Yeah, exactly. And you shouldn't have to fight with any of that. This is such a common pattern. Dang, it's unmaintained. It's such a common pattern. Let's try to turn to a library, a small library. Oh man, CarrotShare is unmaintained and their website has been squatted. I can't really recommend this one. If you're— I'm not sharing my screen.

What issue number is this? I'll try to find a link to this.

JGJoe Grassel

Yeah, it's going to be number 150.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

150. OK, cool. So let's just both do some research here. If you just do a couple Google searches for JavaScript share button, something like that, and just try to find one that doesn't load any third-party assets.

JGJoe Grassel

Yeah, OK, sounds good. Thank you.

MWMitchell West

Yep. That sounds really good. And is that going to keep you busy moving into next week, or do we want to talk about additional issues to assign?

JGJoe Grassel

Um, I should be able to finish it up, uh, pretty quickly from here. But after that, if there's like still some, uh, ad ID issues, I think I would like to tackle those next and just get those out of the way.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

All right, cool. Make sure to self-assign any issue when you, when you start working on it, because that That was currently in the prioritized backlog with no assignee. Your GitHub name is DeltaPlus?

JGJoe Grassel

Yeah, that's me.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Yeah, I thought so. I'm just going to move it to in progress and put you as the assignee there.

JGJoe Grassel

OK, sounds good.

MWMitchell West

Yeah, that sounds good. So I'll say too, one thing too everyone can take a look at if you have a few extra minutes. We did, I believe, and you can confirm this, Briley, did Juhi push up the edits to the About Us page?

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

I'll have to look at the pull request if it got merged. I don't have a quick recollection of that. So Juhi, I could check in the Done column. About Us.

It looks like it's in the Next Up column, No Assignee.

MWMitchell West

Ah, well then, I'm going to jump on trying to get that correctly pushed up. Because I did one draft of it, and then GitHub didn't push it up, which might have been a conflict because I had a couple of other privacy policy edits that I didn't want to push up, and I don't think I had updated Everything— I had pulled down an updated copy of all of our files, so that might have created something that prevented me from uploading it.

JGJoe Grassel

All right, I'll go ahead and—

MWMitchell West

Either way, I ended up emailing it to Ju-hee since she had drafted the original About Us page. And she made, I think, one change where I had some div elements out of order. But we are in a position soon to have that pushed up to where we'll have updated that page to have just active contributors and resting contributors.

contributors. So if you want to add either a picture or an email to your active contributor little, like, profile block, then just make sure that you upload a picture you would like to to our images thread— sorry, images file, and send either a copy of an email you'd want to be uploaded to me Or you could put it inline in the code, but I can put it in if you just want to have an email.

Otherwise, it'll just be a blank space where we say, you know, no email provided. And you'll have a, you know, a kind of stand-in, you know, blank square for your picture. But if you have a picture you'd like to have online, then, you know, just upload it to GitHub and we can get the link properly set. I believe the links that I had planned on using were just your first name with no capital letters, and we used PNG files.

But whatever you upload, we can probably make it work.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

OK, I'm trying.

MWMitchell West

Aside from that, I don't have a separate update from Ju-hee. I spoke to her briefly, but haven't gotten any input on— I don't think she pushed up her work as yet on the updates she was making. I will email her after this call to try and get an update.

And if there's anything that I can pass along, I'll pass it out through Riot or otherwise. The other thing I did want to check with Gordon— I know last week we had been talking about doing some work on trying to integrate ProPublica. Was that part of your big pull request?

GCGordon Candler

Uh, no, it was not. Um, I, I hadn't— thankfully I hadn't, uh, merged that code in with the rest of the, you know, spaghetti I've got on my computer. Um, so, but that is also ready to go up. It's just, again, you know, once Spectrum gets here and does what— does their dark magic, then I'll be able to get that up.

MWMitchell West

Sounds good. Well, that's great to have— yeah, it sounds like you got a lot of work done this last week. So we're looking forward to seeing that pushed up. Paul, did you have any updates you wanted to give or any comments on what we've talked about or plans for the next week?

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Nope, not really.

MWMitchell West

Everything seems fine. Well, I think we've covered the main issues, aside— so I'm gonna need to reach out to Joohee to get an update from her. But it looks like we have good updates in terms of progress from Gordon and Joe, and we have plans for next week. So I guess I'll open it up to any additional issues that people want to raise.

I know we've only got like 8 minutes possibly before Gordon might get kicked off the call.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Hey, totally aside, but what's the status of the— what is the latest code red in the US with net neutrality? It's going to a vote in Congress. to sort of repeal the FCC ruling. And there's a— like, basically, they won't leave net neutrality alone, so we just have to every, like, 6 months or so, we have to, like, stand up and say, hey, we want net neutrality.

And the majority of the United States populace has said that we want net neutrality, but then it's being ignored. Do any of you— are any of you following this?

JGJoe Grassel

Uh, yeah, actually Washington State just, uh, passed a law that protects net neutrality. It's like the first state in the US to do so.

GCGordon Candler

Nice.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Okay.

GCGordon Candler

Uh, California has something on the line as well. Um, state of Missouri obviously went the complete other way, and they're banning municipalities from, you know, banning, uh, yeah, anti-net neutrality stuff. Uh, yeah, I think Congress is supposed to— either they've already voted or they have, or Having a vote sometime within the next couple days.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Yeah, this is the link I'm sending in the chat. It says call your congressperson now. This is the time because Congress can override that FCC ruling, and they'll, they'll hook you up with who to call if you fill in the form. It's battleforthenet/redalert.

GCGordon Candler

Yep, you only need one to put Okay, yeah, it's really close then, huh? Yep.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Alright, but then Donald Trump has to also sign it, so...

GCGordon Candler

Oh God, we're all in trouble now.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

That makes me want to cry. Okay.

MWMitchell West

Yeah, yeah. It would be nice— we had one net neutrality post on CivilWiki. I don't think it's a very detailed post. It'd be interesting to try and add another SolutionCivvy to that that links in. I guess it would only be relevant for a short period of time. But even, you know, just a general contact your representative before since we don't have full implementation. It might be fun to do some more writing on net neutrality on CivilWiki.

But definitely thank you for the link because that's, you know, right now a better way to make an impact. But it'd be really great if we could have, you know, our platform to a place that it could, you know, be a channel for, you know, this sort of advocacy.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Yeah, definitely. It's good to align with these other groups because, you know, we don't want to act in a vacuum, basically.

MWMitchell West

Yeah, I'm pulling up that link. Any other comments on this topic or another topic someone wants to raise?

JGJoe Grassel

Yeah, so like as far as the social media links, are there any besides like the big 3, like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit that you guys would want? Like would Google+ be like even an option? I'm not sure if that's even a relevant thing that a lot of people use these days.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Yeah, that sounds good. Let's find the library and see what it supports, and then come back to that question.

JGJoe Grassel

Yeah, OK, sounds good. I'll just add a comment then on like 150.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Yeah, I did.

MWMitchell West

I added a comment. And I was going to say—

GCGordon Candler

sorry.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Go ahead, Goku.

MWMitchell West

What were you going to say, Gordon?

GCGordon Candler

How about Digg? Don't forget Digg.

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Oh yeah, that's true.

JGJoe Grassel

MySpace.

MWMitchell West

Sounds good. Yeah, and I was just going to say that I think that— isn't there a way to use just any Gmail account rather than a Google+ account particularly?

JGJoe Grassel

Well, I was going to have an email button in there. That's not too hard to implement, just like a mailto link basically. But as far as a Gmail-specific link, would that just be like— Like to create a Gmail email?

BCBriley Christopher Oxley

Basically. Google+ is a little bit different than email, so it's not to be confused necessarily with Gmail. Google+ is a social network of sharing photos and sites.

MWMitchell West

Yeah, but I've seen on other websites— so I've seen the Google+ buttons before. I don't feel like the Google+ social media website really took off, so I don't see it as like a Great button to have, because I feel like relatively fewer people use that platform, but maybe I'm wrong. But I have seen other websites that have just had a— where it's not necessarily just your email, but it's specifically linked to Gmail accounts.

And I feel like that might be a little broader. But I suppose if we just have an email login, that's also just as easy. But I agree. We'll do some more research on what resources we have for easily integrating. I think the more the merrier in terms of easy ways for people to create a secured account. Are there any other comments on this issue or another issue we want to raise?

We've got, like, 3 minutes before we might lose Gordon. Hearing none, I think we're coming near the close of the meeting. Good progress and good plans for next week. I'm going to reach out to Joohee to see about getting a written update on her progress, and I will pass that along if there's anything relevant.

If there are no additional comments, I suppose we can cut it off for a good week of work. All right, sounds good. Thanks, guys. See you guys next week.

GCGordon Candler

Okay, bye-bye.

MWMitchell West

See you next week.

JGJoe Grassel

Yep, better.

GCGordon Candler

Okay.

Meeting purpose

Key takeaways

Topics discussed

Next steps

Speakers