Input: 2014q3 post-mortem

, Will Kahn-Greene | share this (mastodon)
Note: This is an old post in a blog with a lot of posts over a long span of time. The world has changed, technologies have changed, and I've changed. It's likely this is out of date, the code doesn't work, the ideas haven't aged well, or the ideas were terrible to begin with. Let me know if you think this is something that needs updating.

This is the 2014q3 Input post-mortem. It was a better quarter than 2014q2--that one kind of sucked. Instead 2014q2 started out well and then got kind of busy and then I was pretty overwhelmed by the end.

Things to know:

  • Input is Mozilla's product feedback site.

  • Fjord is the code that runs Input.

  • I unilaterally decided to extend 2014q3 to October 6th.

  • I am Will Kahn-Greene and I'm the primary developer on Input.

Bug and git stats

Bugzilla
========

Bugs created:        58
Bugs fixed:          54

git
===

Total commits: 161

      Will Kahn-Greene :   150  (+195704, -188071, files 672)
         Ian Kronquist :     7  (+201, -53, files 11)
         L. Guruprasad :     3  (+8, -18, files 3)
       Ruben Vereecken :     1  (+34, -14, files 6)

Total lines added: 195947
Total lines deleted: 188156
Total files changed: 692

We added a bunch of code this quarter:

  • October 7th. 2014: 23466 total, 11614 Python

Compare to previous quarters:

  • 2014q1: April 1st, 2014: 15195 total, 6953 Python

  • 2014q2: July 1st, 2014: 20456 total, 9247 Python

Nothing wildly interesting there other than noting that the codebase for Input continues to grow.

Contributor stats

Ian Kronquist was the Input intern for Summer 2014. He contributed several fixes to Input. Yay!

We spent a bunch of time making our docs and Vagrant provisioning script less buggy so as to reduce the problems new contributors have when working on Input. I talked with several people about things they're interested in working on. Plus several people did some really great work on Input.

Generally, I think Input is at a point where it's not too hard to get up and running, we've got several lists of bugs that are good ones to start with and the documentation is good-ish. I think the thing that's hampering us right now is that I'm not spending enough time and energy answering questions, managing the work and keeping things going.

Anyhow, welcome L. Guruprasad, Adam Okoye and Ruben Vereecken! Additionally, many special thanks to L. Guruprasad who fixed a lot of issues with the Vagrant provisioning scripts. That work is long and tedious, but it helps everyone.

Accomplishments

Dashboards for everyone: We wrote an API and some compelling examples of dashboards you can build using the API. It's being used in a few places now. We'll grow it going forward as needs arise. I'm pretty psyched about this since it makes it possible for people with needs to help themselves and not have to wait for me to get around to their work. Dashboards for everyone project plan.

Vagrant: We took the work I did last quarter and improved upon it, rewrote the docs and have a decent Vagrant setup now. Reduce contributor pain project plan.

Abuse detection: Ian spent his internship working on an abuse classifier so that we can more proactively detect and prevent abusive feedback from littering Input. We gathered some interesting data and the next step is probably to change the approach we used and apply some more complex ML things to the problem. The key here is that we want to detect abuse with confidence and not accidentally catch swaths of non-abuse. Input feedback has some peculiar properties that make this difficult. Reduce the abuse project plan.

Loop support: Loop is now using Input for user sentiment feedback.

Heartbeat support: User Advocacy is working on a project to give us a better baseline for user sentiment. This project was titled Heartbeat, but I'm not sure whether that'll change or not. Regardless, we added support for the initial prototype. Heartbeat project plan.

Data retention policy: We've been talking about a data retention policy for some time. We decided on one, finalized it and codified it in code.

Shed the last vestiges of Playdoh and funfactory: We shed the last bits of Playdoh and funfactory. Input uses the same protections and security decisions those two projects enforced, but without being tied to some of the infrastructure decisions. This made it easier to switch to peep-based requirements management.

Switched to FactoryBoy and overhauled tests: Tests run pretty fast in Fjord now. We switched to FactoryBoy, so writing model-based tests is a lot easier than the stuff we had before.

Summary

Better than 2014q2 and we fixed some more technical debt further making it easier to develop for and maintain Input. Still, there's lots of work to do.

Update April 21st, 2015

LGuruprasad found a bug in the script that caused commits-by-author information to be wrong. Fixed the script and updated the stats!

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