Background
As part of T264343: Have a special page for mentors to sign up, the Growth team is working on a sign up form for mentors. We decided to create a structured mentor list, MediaWiki:GrowthMentors.json, to serve as the new canonical location for the list of mentors, similar to what community configuration does.
Task objective
Deploy the structured mentor list to Wikimedia wikis. This has to be done carefully, because it will be difficult to go back once we do the deployment.
Deployment checklist
Prerequisites
- Write a migration script (T310446)
- Wait until code is ready to adequately support the structured mentor list (currently tracked under T264343)
Testing the structured mentor list
- Temporarily allow all beta users to enroll as mentors for testing purposes (patch)
- Make beta enwiki use structured mentor list (patch)
- Run mwscript extensions/GrowthExperiments/maintenance/migrateWikitextMentorList.php --wiki=enwiki at beta cluster
- Thoroughly test the structured mentor list at beta enwiki (T312102)
- Make beta arwiki use structured mentor list (patch)
- Run mwscript extensions/GrowthExperiments/maintenance/migrateWikitextMentorList.php --wiki=arwiki at beta cluster
- Habib (Arabic Ambassador) tests the structured mentor list at arwiki
Migration
- Review existing wikitext mentor lists for inconsistencies, bugs, etc. (T310906)
- Switch beta cluster + testwiki to structured mentor list (substeps have to be done at once; beta patch, testwiki patch)
- Set $wgGEMentorProvider = "structured" for all affected wikis
- Run mwscript extensions/GrowthExperiments/maintenance/migrateWikitextMentorList.php --wiki=XXwiki for all affected wikis
- Thoroughly QA behavior with the structured mentor list at those wikis; ask Ambassadors to review the interface
- Document the new interface (project page)
- Announce the migration to the pilot wikis, inform them about the impact (T314858)
- Switch the pilot wikis to structured mentor list (substeps have to be done at once; point of no return; patch)
- Set $wgGEMentorProvider = "structured" for all affected wikis
- Run mwscript extensions/GrowthExperiments/maintenance/migrateWikitextMentorList.php --wiki=XXwiki for all affected wikis
- arwiki: If deployed before T291564 is fixed, transfer messages from manual list manually.
- Wait 1 week for possible issues
- Address all raised issues
- Announce the migration to the rest of the wikis, inform them about the impact (T314858)
- Switch all remaining wikis to structured mentor list (substeps have to be done at once; point of no return)
- Set $wgGEMentorProvider = "structured" for all affected wikis
- Run mwscript extensions/GrowthExperiments/maintenance/migrateWikitextMentorList.php --wiki=XXwiki for all affected wikis
Clean up
- Remove code supporting the wikitext-based mentor list (T321501)
Blockers
Soft-blockers
Soft blocker is a task that's nice to have, but it is reasonably easy to proceed without it.
Pilot rollout
(none)
Other wikis
- T291564: On MentorDashboard the Message to your mentees is not used if the mentor is on the manual list
- All items from T310906#8153006 marked with❗are addressed.