State of MDN - February 2014

[Ali Spivak]

Hello all,




Welcome to the February 2014 edition of the State of MDN.




Last month we focused on making it easier to contribute documentation and code to MDN, which will set the foundation for our goal of doubling active contributors in 2014 (from around 550 to 1,000). The dev team made some significant improvements to the codebase infrastructure to make it easier for new contributors, and as a result immediately added 7 new volunteers (which doubled the number of people contributing platform code). We also began the process of rearchitecting and improving contribution documentation, which will be completed in March.


We also launched a project with the Apps & UX teams to polish up the content and structure of Firefox OS, Marketplace, and Apps Center content. There is already a lot of great content in these areas, and the team is working on making it more discoverable and comprehensive. This project will be ongoing through March & April.


Additional February Highlights


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58 bugs were filed & x 67 bugs were closed
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129 code commits were made
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More status pages added to track key “health” indicators for the documentation. Accessibility, CSS, DevTools, HTML, JavaScript, MathML and SVG are currently live, with more to come in the next few months!
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Began archiving obsolete content into a new “ Archive ” zone on MDN.
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A beginner's tutorial series covering how to write and run automated tests on Firefox OS , using Marionette/B2G Desktop/unittest, etc.
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A detailed guide to writing a best practices geolocator app , using Geolocation API, Google Maps and OpenStreetMap.
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Demo/prototype for MDN tooltips in the devtools .
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Screencasts for responsive design view and CSS sourcemaps.
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MDN Badges defined and initial implementation tested.
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JavaScript doc cleaned up: ECMAScript Internationalization API, Map & Set objects.
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Created the first in a series of “How to” pages to help volunteers create good documentation: How to document a CSS property .



What’s coming up in March





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MDN Work Weekend in Paris, March 7-9. 18 paid staff & 16 contributors were scheduled to attend. Will have a full readout in the March edition!
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Launch of more doc status pages, both for creating new en-US documents, but also to coordinate translation.
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Finish work on MDN contribution guide/Getting Started
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Results of Learning Area Survey
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Requirements for compatibility data improvements
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MDN presence at:


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WriteTheDocs EU (Budapest, March 31th - April 1st)
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DocSprint Berlin (Berlin, April 5th - 6th)
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Locasprint (Paris, April 26th - 27th)




Site Metrics & KPIs


MDN growth continues to be steady, at a rate of 3-4% in February.


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Unique visitors increased 3.87%, to 1,815,737.
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Total number of visits to the site increased 4.13%, to 4,085,301.
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4.4% visits from mobile; 1.14% from tablets
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Pageviews increased 3.37%
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53.6% of visitors are return visitors (no change)
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1% of visitors are signed-in users (down 0.57%)
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7% of signed-in users (564) made a wiki edit (no change)
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Directly referred 21 app submissions and assisted 34 app submissions to Marketplace
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Sent 1,019 page-watch notifications to bring 2,241 additional visits





Geekery


Key metrics we want to focus on in 2014 are the number of visitors who make an edit, which is currently around 7%. This needs to grow significantly for us to meet our contribution goals, and the work we’re doing to streamline the contribution process should start to show results in March & April. We’re also looking at better ways to do outreach and grow awareness of MDN. Since 61% of MDN visitors are between 18 and 34 years of age (according to Google Analytics, but this also confirms what we know about our audience from meeting them), we’re looking at outreach in Universities as one way to help grow contribution.




As always, for more information on what we are up to on MDN, you can visit the New on MDN Twitter feed to see some of the content being added to the site by the MDN contributors and paid staff. And, if you want to geek out on what our talented dev team is doing, you can see what development is in process on our kanban board or within github , as well as a feed of what's been released on MDN lately.
















ali spivak

408-859-8260

asp...@mozilla.com







ali spivak
408-859-8260
asp...@mozilla.com