Hi Quim, Sorry for the late reply to your question, but here are my thoughts on the documentation for onboarding QA volunteers.
Generally speaking, I think a lot of the Mediawiki QA documentation is helpful to new contributors getting on board. I found it particularly helpful in understanding the various technologies involved in doing browser automation at WMF, and how they all fit together. For example, this page provides solid technical info on how to run tests: http://www.mediawiki .org/wiki/QA/Browser_testing/Running_tests. I do think it could use a few more examples of cucumber feature files and their corresponding Ruby test steps, aside from the Search feature mentioned. There were some gaps in the documentation. One big gap I found at the beginning of my volunteering here was that I could not figure out how to get started in volunteering for QA, when I initially read the docs and was interested in contributing. For example, this page: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Quality_Assurance/Browser_testing/How_to_contribute gives info about ways to contribute, but doesn't really mention a set process for a new user to follow to get on board with the QA group or how to let them know you are interested. This page, http://www.mediawiki .org/wiki/Groups/Proposals/Browser_testing, talks about joining the browser testing group, but doesn't really tell you how to do so. I know that after I made contact with Chris, he told me to edit the page under members and put my name there. Otherwise, I would not have known to add myself to that section. I'm wondering if we are still intending to use this Browser Testing MediaWiki Group, as not all the new volunteers are mentioned in here? One other thing I would like to see in the QA docs is some links to presentations on test automation done by Chris or Zeljko , such as this one, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UPDzPBf4t8, which I personally found very helpful in understanding the whole picture. There should also be obvious link to the youtube recordings from the training automation sessions we are having, so new contributors could learn from those training sessions as well. We should also have a link to the QA mailing list, so potential contributors could sign up for that at first, if they had some interest. That my .02. I am interested to hear what other people think. --Rachel *Gnome FOSS Outreach Program for Women Intern Browser Test Automation, Wikimedia Foundation* On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 6:02 PM, Quim Gil <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > There must be about a dozen people in this list (at least) trying to get > started contributing to Wikimedia in browser test automation and other QA > tasks. > > Your experiences these days at mediawiki.org are very valuable! Please > send us feedback before you forget: > > * Was it easy to find the information you were looking for? > > * Once you found it, were the docs good enough to get you started? > > * If you got stuck, did you know where to ask? > > * If you asked, did you get useful answers? > > * If you are still stuck, where is the broken pipe we should fix? > > * And by the way, is this whole wiki way of working clear? > > You don't need to answer those questions exactly. What matters is what has > been your experience so far trying to become a Wikimedia QA contributor, > what should we promote and what should we fix or improve. > > We will use your feedback to pave better roads for you and the new > volunteers to come! > > Whether you reply with a sentence or an essay, we will read it and > respond. This is a top priority for us. Thank you very much. > > -- > Quim Gil > Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation > http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/**User:Qgil<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil> > > ______________________________**_________________ > QA mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/qa<https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/qa> >
_______________________________________________ QA mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/qa
