Notes from #MetaBrainz Meeting 2021-09-27

[Freso]

MetaBrainz Meeting 2021-09-27

Meeting start: Making sure you're not a bot!

World Tourism Monday

Tourist: A Love Song from Paris

Agenda

• Reviews
• Dead link collection
• MBS-11986: New technical account flag: Spam(mer)
• Chocolate

Last meeting: 2021-09-20
Next meeting: 2021-10-04

Reviews

@yyoung

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@yyoung

• Last week I worked on MBS-11901, it is now basically complete, but thetests are blocked by MBS-11990, so I started fixing that and submitted a patch.
• Also did regular editing on MB, added several releases.
• That’s all, thank you.

@lucifer

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@lucifer

i worked last on doing misc stats improvements. monkey had discovered some bugs in stats, which caused dupes. i fixed them temporarily. @rob is working on getting better data in dumps for a permanent fix.
i also refactored some of stats code and worked on better aligning various stats with each other. plus also worked on de-duplicating some code in LB and spark to make adding newer stats easier.
also reviewed a few LB PRs.

@mr_monkey

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@mr_monkey

Last week I finished three big PRs I was working on for ListenBrainz: user’s Loved/Hated tracks page, refactoring the main component we use to display tracks, and submitting listens from BrainzPlayer when listen to music on LB.
The first two are deployed, the third one is in testing.
I also reviewed some PRs for LB and BB.
I took Friday mostly off but did find a bit of time to start working on the summit t-shirt. Apologies in advance if you don’t get yours by summit time !

@bitmap

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@bitmap

last week I worked on MBS-11985 and MBS-11974 - the former is a pre-requisite to the newer relationship editor code
I also picked my PR for the rewritten timeline graph back up. started rebasing it and fixing issues + updating it to d3 7.0 which was released in the meantime. hope to push the changes there this week since I’ve neglected it for a while
other than that I mostly did code review for MBS

@yvanzo

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@yvanzo

Last week we released a new MB server and its docker-compose companion; See
Making sure you're not a bot!
While addressing small issues, found a larger issue with errors in external links editor, the fix is under review.
Tried to limit disk I/O usage of MB dump containers to address disk latency alerts on aretha, didn’t change anything.
Then I worked on improving MB logs with timestamps to allow determining the exact cause of these alerts.
(Spent time discussing logs handling with @alastairp by the way.)
Also reviewed more PRs for next week’s release. (Decided to keep allowing music video links to either recording or release for now.)
(with @reosarevok ^)

@reosarevok

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@reosarevok

I worked on improving the style and clarity of our Perl code, plus a lot of small URL fixes, and looked into putting together an SQL style guide (first draft is at sql_guide.md · GitHub)

@ApeKattQuest_MonkeyPython

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@ApeKattQuest_MonkeyPython

Working, adding releases, celebrating autumn equinox
did some testing of series on BB (will do more of this)
currently trying to figure out how to prepair herring (sild)
will be working on instruments later this week too

@alastairp

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@alastairp

last week I was a few days in the office, which tends to turn into a lot of discussions, most of it useful
I spoke with @mr_monkey about brainzplayer listens reporting, @rob about some data management and processing stuff, and with @yvanzo about docker container logging once he arrived at the office too
I also continued work on upgrading the JS/TS/React in AB
one thing I didn’t finish is reviews for @lucifer, sorry @lucifer

@Freso

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@Freso

I updated the staff on the forums, so I think everyone on Team - MetaBrainz Foundation should have their title reflected there now.
I filed a couple of MBS spam related tickets (more on that later).
And other than that, dealt with various reports etc. and was around and about.

@rob

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@rob

last week was another week in the mbid mapping gulag, trying to make some minor improvements that are a lot of work.
I can hopefully finish that tomorrow, then return to the other task in the mapping.
and I took care of the usual background tasks, taking care of the foundation and stuff.
We’ve accepted into a short project with The ODI about open data stuff and we may end up getting paid 15k GBP, which is nice.
I’m kinda thinking about what we could do with that money, so if someone has a clear idea, let me know.

@akshaaatt

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@akshaaatt

This was an exciting week for me since I was focusing on making contributions.
I have done the proper setup for the dark mode of the MB interface and have quite a few major components ready. I love the design from my end so far.
Thinking about a few more things and trying to follow the best practices as always.
I also targeted some parts of LB this week and the design system for meb is also on its way for nice and clean usage.
My college is finally slowing down with many things sorted and not much left in the semester to bug me. Hoping for refreshing work ahead!
Also, I will be available on IRC as akshat moving forward.

@zas

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@zas

I’m stuck in traffic, usual upgrades, maintenance, user support, Picard pr reviews

Dead link collection

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@reosarevok

Well, I was asked to put together the steps for a bot dealing with broken links
What I have rn is
URL_ENDER.md · GitHub
Opinions welcome

It was generally agreed that this seemed sensible, but might need to given a bit more thought. Topic left for next week, but may be removed if it gets resolved during the week.

MBS-11986: New technical account flag: Spam(mer)

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@Freso

I’ve pretty much written my reasoning on the ticket, so I’m just going to copy/paste here.

I’m currently not deleting spam accounts since I’m hoping to feed them to SpamBrainz once SpamBrainz actually materialises. This means that currently I mark spam with “Editing/voting disabled”, “Edit notes disabled”, and “Untrusted” – the two former being dangerously close to “Banner message editor” (which probably deserves its own ticket, actually), so I’m wary of accidentally one day giving that permission to a spammer.

Additionally, this approach means that the profile will still be viewable by users and search engines and they get to still use the account to log into forums, LB, CB, BB, or other sites using MB authentication.

This flag would ideally freeze a marked account so that only account admins are able to see the profile (I don’t know if we should return a 404 and pretend like it doesn’t exist, or a 403 and acknowledge it exists and just isn’t available currently; possibly greying out potential edit note links?) and that the account wouldn’t be able to log in (possibly giving an error message that their profile has been flagged as spam and to mail support@ if they think this is a mistake?).

Does this seem reasonable to others or are there strong objections against this? Not sure how invasive new account flags are.

General consensus in favour of this. Some discussion about implementation details and edge cases, but this discussion was requested to be redirected to the ticket.

Chocolate

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Since the summit will be held virtually, @ApeKattQuest_MonkeyPython suggested a way to still get “The MetaBrainz Chocolate Experience”, but given the logistics of this it wasn’t deemed feasable.

[MrClon]

@reosarevok

Well, I was asked to put together the steps for a bot dealing with broken links
What I have rn is
URL_ENDER.md · GitHub
Opinions welcome

Sounds as good algorithm.
I check 164688 Bandcamp urls used in MB and found 16240 on them broken.

[aerozol]

Thanks, love seeing these staff updates!!

@rob

I’m kinda thinking about what we could do with that money

Was this a question to staff or the community?

[rob]

Anyone, really. But please, lets keep it to sensible ideas.

[aerozol]

Three weeks later… but my first thought was a bounty pool for external developers to implement some tickets. Some may get interested and stick around the project. However I imagine running that kind of thing brings with it some complications that I’m not aware of

Document management and retention & disposal (particularly regarding sensitive user information and HR) is usually a biggie for non-profits. But I’m not sure how that looks for a ‘nerd heavy’ <3 org like MB, might be okay!

I’ll also >brazenly< plug myself, I do freelance design, comms & marketing. My ideal working relationship is to have a fixed number of hours a month so that things can be done as they come up. Good example, I work for another non-profit (discounted ofc) for 4 hours/week for just under 12k/year. That means they can send me things as they come up without worrying about quotes etc, and if there’s no work that week (hasn’t happened yet!) the hours flows over and is there for bigger projects. Usually gets used on boring corporate stuff like email footers and Word/Gdoc templates, but if that’s what’s needed…

There are singular design projects that I think MB could benefit from - a styleguide (if there isn’t one?) including web elements that can be referenced across all projects, a set of illustrations that can be used to promote or ‘jazz’ up MB elements, illustrations for things like cover types, a uniform icon set/library etc