Karma version 1 released

The first version of Karma plugin is out on Connect. Users can add the karma widget from the widget gallery, it might take a minute to load, because karma updates if you view your widget the first time or every hour after that.


Also, Karma fetches your activities on twitter, planet openSUSE and Novell's Bugzilla. Starting from now, Karma rewards you for your previous 5 tweets, and each of your posts that appear on planet openSUSE in the last 3-4 days and then onwards and all of your resolved bugs on Bugzilla.


There are certain things that you might notice when using the plugin, first as I wrote it might take a minute to load if karma was updated more than an hour ago. Then, only your previous 5 tweets are rewarded for, so If you tweeted about opensuse way back in the past, I'm afraid it might not be counted.   Also do not forget to use the hashtag (#openSUSE) for tweets to be rewarded, and its case insensitive :D


Those of you who have aggregated their blog feeds on Planet OpenSUSE but haven't mentioned their blog url on their Connect profile, will not be rewarded, same goes for Lizards blog. Though rectifying this is in the pipeline, but not now.


Please check it out, let me know if you like it or even if you dislike it completely, I think I can do something about that. :)

Karma update on Widget view

Weekly Report (14 june - 21 june)

In my last report I mentioned about having separate developer and marketing Karma, as I had problems comparing tweeting with Bug fixes or commits. Well, I have accomplished that. We have separate Developer karma for score achieved on fixing bugs or making commits on OBS, Marketing karma for score achieved on tweeting  and posting on Planet openSUSE. Appropriate badges are awarded on securing a higher developer or marketing karma.

During this time  Michal my mentor, tried deploying Karma on the Connect website, but the karma cron script would not run to completion for all Connect users due to certain limits on server or gateway or both. So the idea was to reorder the query and run cron script more number of times with less users each time.


Within the cron script, I save the time of the last run as metadata belonging to a user entity. Then use this metadata to order the query and get 5 users who have been the longest without updating. Cron script now runs every five minutes for 5 users who have remained longest without updating.


This would work with users who already have the karma last update time saved in the database somewhere, so the cron script also assigns this metadata to all users to whom it has not been assigned yet.

 
Then I also worked out the updation of karma on widget view (this is not a part of the cron script). If karma was updated more than one hour ago then karma details are updated on widget view. Assuming Connect has 2000  - 3000 users it would take 33 - 50 hours to update for all users and come back to the first one, if we relied only on the cron script.


Hence, this suffices for situations when karma has not been updated in time by the cron script.

Integration of Karma Plugin with Twitter

This is my report for the last week and a half(1st june - 11th june).


Firstly, the integration of Karma plugin with Twitter has been accomplished. It fetches tweets of Connect users and those which are intended towards promoting openSUSE are rewarded with Karma points.


Then I also finished off the integration of Planet openSUSE. For all those users whose blog feeds are aggregated on Planet openSUSE and who actively post are rewarded with karma points, provided they have specified their blog in their profiles on Connect.


Karma pluigns now has the ability to update user score and keeps track of when it last updated so as to avoid duplicacy when it  again fetches user activities.


It also shows exactly how many bugs a user fixed, tweets and posts they had put up, for which they are being rewarded.

Now the problem that I am facing currently and on which I am going to work next is that tweeting and posting cannot be logically compared to bug fixing but can be compared to each other. So, there needs to be separate developer karma and marketing karma so that their is logical comparison of scores and appropriate badge distribution.

Also there are certain Connect users who haven't specified their blogs in their profile but their blog feeds are aggregated on openSUSE and openSUSE members who blog on Lizards blog also deserve to be rewarded.

Cron Script for Karma plugin

In my last post, I wrote about the integration of Karma Plugin for Connect, with Bugzilla. Since then, I have progressed onto developing a cron script for the plugin which fetches user activities from various sources like Bugzilla, Twitter, Planet OpenSUSE etc and calculates score based on that . So now, Karma details are  fetched for every user on Connect regularly and stored in the database.

Previously, details were fetched on every view of the widget, which was a gross mistake on my part and my mentor Michal suggested that rather than fetching details on every view of the widget, some caching would be a better idea.

The best solution to that was coming up with a cron script. That solved out two purposes, one, karma details could now be fetched from the database, so there was no need to make a call to Bugzilla or other sources on every view of the widget, second, we always wanted score to be calculated on a regular basis rather than only when the user logged in, so we needed a cron script anyway :)

I am still thinking of other sources that I could use for fetching karma details apart fron Twitter, OBS, Planet OpenSUSE and Bugzilla. If any great idea stikes you, do let me know, I'll be most happy to incorporate it. 

Integration with Bugzilla Complete!

After my last post, I worked on the integration of Karma plugin with Bugzilla. Karma plugin now assigns to users of Connect, Karma points based on the severity of the bugs they fix. And that's not it, you get a  "Bug Squasher" badge for attaining a  high score.

The best part, Bugzilla uses the same email id for registration that users register themselves with on Connect. Extracting a list of resolved bugs by a user linked with the email id of user on Connect was pretty simple :)

Others on the list are integration with Twitter for tweets about OpenSUSE, OBS activities, planet opensuse posts. I plan to distribute karma based on user activities on these, but I would really encourage people to come with ideas and let me know if I could use other sources too, to assign Karma points. 

Coding period starts!

I have finally started working on my GSoC project now, that is the Karma plugin for OpenSUSE Connect. Since Connect is developed under the Elgg framework, hence, my project requires me to work with Elgg.

Elgg which is extremely powerful(which i realize now :) ), is totally new to me.

Still stuck up, trying to figure out why the plugin displays default Elgg icons on calling getIcon(), even when I try registering plugin hooks for entity:icon:url or using the setIcon() method to change the default url for locating entity icons!

Time to hurry up now, I guess.

Accepted to GSoC 2012

I got selected for GSoC 2012 to work with OpenSUSE. I will be mentored by Michal Hrusecky and my project involves developing a Karma plugin for OpenSUSE Connect.

This Plugin will reward people with Karma points on reporting bugs, making bug fixes, Wiki entries, posts on OpenSUSE planet, promoting OpenSUSE events on twitter etc. People will also be rewarded with badges on attainment of specific levels of Karma points, and they can also send across positive Karma to others, to show appreciation towards their work.

Have a look at my proposal:http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/proposal/review/google/gsoc2012/priyankam/18002#

This summer will be a great experience with GSoC and OpenSUSE.