Grants:Project/Commons app/Commons app Android v4/Timeline

This project is funded by a Project Grant

Timeline for Commons app

Timeline	Date
Discussions & feedback from WLM community, WLM feature design/mockups finalized	1 March 2021
Base WLM implementation completed, released to beta for testing and hotfixes	1 July 2021
WLM feature polished and released to production, in time for WLM 2021. WLM community notified.	15 August 2021
Completed other technical features: Display of existing photos on Nearby map, allow users to view others' profiles, SPARQL filtering in Nearby.	1 December 2021
Completed publicity tasks: Nearby photo walk, virtual Nearby competition	1 Feb 2022

Monthly updates

Please prepare a brief project update each month, in a format of your choice, to share progress and learnings with the community along the way. Submit the link below as you complete each update.

July

We are currently finishing up our last grant before moving on to this one. At the same time, we are looking for the contractor who will join us in this grant to implement the additional code quality requirements listed here.
We received a surprisingly large number of applications for our job posting, with several being of high quality. We eventually approached our two best applicants to see if they were willing to split the role between them, and they agreed. Therefore Ujjwal Agrawal and Madhur Gupta will be joining our team for this grant. Both are our previous/current GSoC students and have contributed significantly to our codebase prior to this, so we are reasonably confident that they will do a good job.
We have gotten the ball rolling with community discussions re: WLM integration on the WLM mailing list. Based on the input of Multichill and Jean-Frederic, we have decided to go with Wikidata as the choice of data source for integration. Further details will be discussed later.

August

Encountered a delay with finishing up our last grant due to issues with pausing and resuming uploads. For the time being we are still focused on finishing the last grant.
Ujjwal Agrawal has requested to leave the team due to personal reasons, and Madhur Gupta has agreed to take up the remainder of the role, essentially becoming our new contractor.

September

Still working on finishing up the last grant. Work has been slower than usual for the past couple of months due to the Covid situation causing personal difficulties to some members of the team. We are very close to finishing and being able to start on this grant, however.

October

All new features for the last grant completed, we are polishing v3.0 for release.

November

A few bugfixes left for v3.0, checklist can be viewed on GitHub.
Tentative date for v3.0 beta release: 11 Dec.

December

v3.0 has been released to beta.
Now that the last grant is being wrapped up, we are starting to plan the timeline and task assignments for our team for this grant. We intend to meet virtually to discuss our plans, and to start working on this grant by the end of January.

January

Meeting completed and project plan made.
We have started working on mockups for the WLM feature. We will create a wiki page to house them and will invite comments/feedback from the WLM mailing list soon.

February

Wiki page created with mockups and implementation plan, feedback invited from WLM mailing list. Now working on finalizing implementation plan based on comments received.
Working on stability upgrades (switching to WorkManagers to reduce crashes) and on mockups for other features.

March

Plan for WLM feature finalized, work has begun on implementation.
Stability upgrades and WorkManager switch completed.
Mockups for other features in progress.

April

WLM integration hit a snag on which Wikidata property identifier to use. Currently there doesn't seem to be a uniform identifier that works for all countries. Reached out on mailing list, but no community consensus was reached on which identifier to use, although we did get many good ideas for future enhancements (which are not possible for us to implement in time for this year's WLM). We have decided to stick to P2186 for the time being in order to allow work to proceed, and we can modify as needed later.
Implementation of "Allow users to view other user's profiles" feature in progress.
Increased code coverage.

May

It seems that the WLM community is largely split on whether P2186 or P1435 should be used as the property identifier (mailing list discussion). The benefits of P1435 are that it is a tried and tested method (used by other tools e.g. Monumental) and appears fairly future-proof, but the disadvantages are that it is a broad designation which includes sites that aren't eligible for WLM (e.g. natural heritage sites). The benefits of P2186 are that it offers national organizers more control over which sites they do or don't want to be included in the map (as mentioned by the national organizers themselves), however some members of the community feel that it is a "hack" that should be deprecated soon and that they want the community to move away from using it.
Held office hour with WLM organizers on 27 May. Turns out there are more complications with using one property identifier than we foresaw. Stephen La Porte and Lodewijk mentioned that they might be able to help out by creating a tool that we can query to bypass this issue. Waiting on further developments for that, in the meantime we will progress on the feature as best we can.
Mockups for all features completed.

June

Stephen suggested creating a .json file for us with the desired property for each country, which they would maintain for us. We accepted and are now in the process of hashing out the finer details. As this change involves a different property identifier for each country, that means the SPARQL query would vary depending on the search coordinates. Due to this, we are going to postpone our other planned new feature (SPARQL modification) to the next release, to minimize potential conflicts and difficulties with debugging.
Development of WLM integration feature more than 50% completed, awaiting .json file from WLM organizers.

July

We are at the final step of implementation - attaching the relevant templates to uploads. Looking at the WLM 2020 template, initially we thought that this would be an easy step, however we realized that there was no field in that template which allows us to place the value of the monument ID in. After asking the WLM community on the mailing list, it turns out that there is no universal template, each country uses their own template (as listed in this table), and also there is no universal way to retrieve the monument ID as each country has a different ID system!
Additionally, we have not heard back from the volunteer working on the .json file, despite sending 3 emails over the last month with no responses. This is very troubling.
Also, we implemented address displays for each monument based on the suggestion we received here. However after testing this implementation, we found that the vast, vast majority of monuments globally have no P669 and P670, thus leaving the field empty most of the time.

August

Some country codes are not working because the codes allowed are defined at https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2021&action=edit . The problem is that this template keeps changing as countries add themselves. I am trying to talk to the WLM organizers to see if we can have a set date to manually check the contents of that template and then have an if statement that only attaches the WLM template if the country code matches the codes listed in that template. If they agree, then we can do nothing for now, but release an update on the set date with this change.
We have released v3.1.0-alpha containing WLM integration to closed alpha testing! (Much) more information can be found here. Made WLM mailing list post.

September

v3.1.0 beta is out! See c:Commons:Mobile_app/WLM_release.
Posted to wikitech-l, mobile-l and commons-l.
v3.1.1 pushed to production. Working on hotfixes for bugs reported while in production.

October

Working on remaining technical features
Collected stats for midpoint report

November

Writing midpoint report
Working on remaining technical features

December

Submitted midpoint report
One feature completed (viewing other user profiles), two still being worked on (SPARQL modification and displaying existing photos on map)
Some of us will be away for the holiday period

January

SPARQL modification completed. Only one feature remaining: displaying existing photos on map
Working on increasing test coverage
Preparing for v4 release (tentatively at the end of Feb)

February

Displaying existing photos on map almost complete
I (Josephine) have been affected by the severe flooding in Australia, which impacted my work temporarily
Current tentative date for v4 release is early April

March

The final feature (displaying existing photos on map) is ready and being tested

May

v4.0 released to beta!
Working on hotfixes for reported bugs/crashes
Photo walk completed

June

Was traveling for 2 weeks, then got Covid after coming back.
v4.0.1 released with hotfixes.

July

All hotfixes done except for a date bug fix requested by the Commons community
Once the date bug has been fixed, we will release v4.0.2.

August

A pretty crazy month - we tried to release v4.0.2 but got hit by multiple Google policy issues due to the new policies enacted after our previous update.
Finally solved all the policy issues, and v4.0.5 was released to beta and production

Is your final report due but you need more time?

Extension request

New midpoint date

31 August 2021

Rationale

We had a late start with this grant as we had to complete various features for the last grant before starting. Currently we are on track to release v3.1 (containing WLM integration and SPARQL modification) by 15 August. This seems like a good milestone for writing the midpoint report, as we can report on the completion of two major features at that stage.

Approval

Noting here that this midpoint extension request is approved. My apologies for the delayed reply and posting here. Thank you. -- JTud (WMF), Grants Administrator (talk) 23:06, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Extension request

New grant end date

31 May 2022 (new Final Report due date 30 June 2022)

Rationale

We have recently completed WLM integration, and are in the midst of working on the remaining small new features. We anticipate that the features will be done and v4 will be released to beta by Feb. After that, we can start fixing bugs for a production release based on beta bug reports, and working on the publicity tasks, which should take a few more months.

Approval

Noting here that the new grant end date request is approved. -- JChen (WMF) (talk)

Midpoint report approved

Midpoint report reviewed and accepted. Report can be found here and discussions on talkpage. Conversation between Programme Officer and Project representative took place on 8 February 2022 -- JChen (WMF) (talk)

Extension request

New end date

30 July 2022 (final report due 31 Aug 2022)

Rationale

v4.0 is out in beta, and we are fixing the reported bugs and crashes. There is still one more publicity task to go as well.

Extension request

New end date

31 August 2022 (final report due 30 Sep 2022)

Rationale

We are working on fixing a date bug that was reported by the Commons community and that is causing problems for patrollers.

Extension request

New end date

Final report due 31 October 2022

Rationale

Due to new Google Play policies, we were hit by multiple policy issues when we tried to release v4.0.2. It took us the better part of a month, and multiple trial and error attempts, to finally be able to release v4.0.5 to beta and production.

I will be traveling most of September, so I intend to collect statistics at the end of August before I leave, and start writing the final report in October when I return.

Extension request

New end date

31st December 2022

Rationale

As I have started on my new career and have a few upcoming deadlines, I am struggling to find time to work on the final report. I am still determined to get it done, but the work will be slow and sporadic, so it will take longer than I initially expected.