Core Contributor News for Sprint: July 5th - July 18th, 2025

Working Groups Core Contributors
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Core Contributor News for Sprint: July 5th - July 18th, 2025

This sprint brought mostly positive experiences. 75% of participants rated their experience as good or great, while 25% reported a neutral experience or faced some challenges.

:tada: What are we celebrating?

@Natalia_Vynogradenko

  • We are slowly but steadily moving Ukrainian translations up. And we now have more responses for Distinguished Contributor Program so soon we are closing the nominations and moving to the next stage.

:sos_button: Who needs help?

If there’s anything you’re stuck on, need help with, or would like input on, please feel free to leave a comment in this topic. We’re here to support you!

:construction: What Pull Requests (PRs) need review?

As a CC, check for PRs that are stuck and need attention. Don’t have write access? No problem! You can still help by reviewing to move things forward. Ping Axim if there are issues merging after you review.

Below is a list of stalled PRs that need urgent attention:

Find a full list of PRs ready for review here, or focus on edx-platform PRs that need attention.

:memo: What are the Working Groups up to?

Working Group Latest Updates
BizDev Next meeting: 30/07/2025. Last meeting notes → 2025-06-18 Partnership development Meeting
Build-Test-Release (BTR) The Teak.1 branch was cut on June 26 with 96.9% test completion, thanks to strong community engagement and successful test-a-thons. Async check-ins and clearly labeled issues improved collaboration and onboarding. Key practices like toggle automation, structured testing, and issue transfer flows will be continued for future releases. Latest meeting notes → 2025-07-21 BTR Meeting Minutes
Contributor Coordination The working group decided to adopt an asynchronous-first model, retiring monthly meetings in favor of ad-hoc calls when necessary. Last meeting notes → 2025-05-13 CC Working Group Meeting Notes
Core Product The status of product subgroups was reviewed; several appear inactive and may be archived, while others remain active with regular meetings. New subgroups were proposed to align overlapping product proposals from multiple teams, especially around Catalog, Learning Paths, and Programs. An update to the Product Review Process was discussed, aiming for a more efficient structure without adding unnecessary recurring meetings.Last meeting notes → 2025-07-15 Core Product Meeting Notes
Data No current updates available. Last meeting notes → 2025-05-07 Meeting notes
Deprecation On June 26, 2025, the Cookie name change ticket was completed, and related middleware marked for deprecation. The Fast Track template is being updated; while automation isn’t in place yet, manual instructions are available to move items through. Board review included updates and check-ins on tickets pending review.Last meeting notes → DEPR Meetings Notes (2025)
Documentation No current updates available. Last meeting notes → 2025-04-17 Docs WG
Educators No current updates available.
Frontend The group agreed to adopt Adam’s strategy of making frontend-build an optional peer dependency in frontend-platform, avoiding unintended installs in production bundles. A PR cleanup and documentation of three dev-dependency scenarios are underway, with Brian and Adam leading next steps. Reminder: Design Tokens launch is set for June 18, 2025, with coordinated merges and QA support planned. Last meeting notes → 2025-06-05 Frontend Working Group Meeting Notes
Large Instances Networking issues at eduNEXT were resolved by updating outdated AMIs; Picasso and other automation tools were discussed as collaboration opportunities. There was consensus on moving away from Discovery Service and aligning efforts on new solutions like Learner Pathways and Tutor-compatible tooling. Last meeting notes → Large Instances Meeting Notes 2025-07-08
Learning Tools (LTI) No current updates available. Last meeting notes → 2025-04-01 Meeting notes
Maintenance Usama Sadiq proposed updating the requirements upgrade workflow so it can run on forks without requiring a GITHUB_TOKEN, enabling open source contributions. A discussion is needed with OpenCraft and others; currently, only the upgrade-one workflow runs without a token. No alternative solutions have been proposed yet. Permissions for the AppHelix team were also discussed—Jeremy will review replacing the arbi-bom team with AppHelix under the maintainers-at-large group. Last meeting notes → 2025-07-10 Meeting notes
Marketing No current updates available. Last meeting notes →Agenda, May 21st, 2025
Mobile Zeitlabs will support code reviews and is pushing forward multi-tenant mobile features. The team plans to contribute mobile content to the Open edX developer onboarding course and update docs on XBlock support, offline use, and app publishing. RG is advancing an e-commerce solution using RevenueCat, aiming to integrate with eduNEXT APIs and avoid duplicating work. Last meeting notes →Agenda, July 18th, 2025
Technical Oversight Committee No current updates available. Last meeting notes → TOC Meeting Notes - 2025-05-14
Translation No current updates available. Last meeting notes → 2025-04-16 Translation WG Meeting
UX/UI The session included quick updates on current UX/UI efforts, including a centralized database of design projects (Sam Daitzman) and a proposal to reintroduce the search bar in the Learner Dashboard (Chelsea Rathbun). @Edward Byun shared progress on a Platform UX issue tracker, while @Santiago Suarez proposed a multi-question problem editor to enhance authoring flexibility. Last meeting notes →2025-06-12 - UX/UI Working Group Meeting

:date: What events are coming up?

:rocket: What are we working on?

:handshake: Want to participate in Core Contributor Governance?

  • Participate to the work of the Contributor Coordination Working Group. The group works asynchronously using the working group tasks board, and we’d love your input there. You can review and comment on existing threads there, or post your own topic to discuss with the group by creating your own ticket on the board (“+ Add item” in “New topics and issues to discuss”).

:speech_balloon: Anything to add?

Share your thoughts in Slack (openedx.slack.com) or the comments below!

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Hi @Natalia_Choconta (cc @antoviaque @itsjeyd @Michelle_Philbrick )

For the top 10 oldest PRs, could we pull across the whole GitHub organization, not just edx-platform? We’ve done such a good job addressing the oldest edx-platform PRs that the “oldest” PRs you’re listing there are in some cases only a week old!

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Also can we exclude PRs in the “Waiting on Author” state from the “top 10 oldest PRs” list since we (as reviewers) can’t currently help move them forward?

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@Natalia_Choconta I pinged you on Github but figured I’d share here too for better context :blush:

  1. We mentioned checking on the overall performance of this new format after 2–3 months. Do you have any feedback or insights so far?
  2. Totally possible I missed it, but are you crossposting updates to Slack as we discussed? Just want to make sure these are getting the visibility they deserve (eg. this one).

Really appreciate you managing this and continuing to post so consistently. Thank you!

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Hi @Cassie,
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I was planning to review the performance of the new format during this sprint, so I’ll be sharing the insights I gather soon.

On the other hand, I realize I haven’t been consistently crossposting the updates on Slack as we discussed — I’ll make sure to improve on that and start sharing them more regularly.

Thanks so much for your feedback and support!

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Hi @Cassie! Here are my comments based on the review of the new format over the past few months:

The first edition (March 29–April 11) clearly stood out in terms of engagement, with significantly higher views and likes compared to the following posts. This suggests the launch likely benefited from novelty and initial curiosity. However, subsequent editions have shown a drop in both views and interactions, stabilizing at a lower range of visibility (around 25–40 views and minimal likes per post).

While the posts are being seen, the low level of engagement indicates that readers might not be interacting actively. This opens up opportunities to improve distribution especially by consistently sharing the posts on Slack and to encourage participation more explicitly within the posts themselves.

I’ll continue monitoring and adjusting based on what we see in upcoming sprints. Thanks again for the nudge and support!

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Hi @sarina,

Thanks for the note! In the latest post — Core Contributor News for Sprint July 19th–Aug 1st, 2025 — I included the list of the oldest PRs across the entire GitHub organization, not just edx-platform, as you suggested.

Just wanted to confirm that this aligns with what you were referring to — or were there other specific PRs you had in mind?

Thanks again for the feedback!

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This is a good next step :slight_smile: Thanks @Natalia_Choconta

@Eden_Huthmacher @Michelle_Philbrick When do you aim to start sending out the Open edX newsletter? As that also points readers to these updates which might help.