Community Call: OpenRefine Developer AMA (Ask Me Anything)

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We are organizing an OpenRefine Community Call as a Developer Ask-Me-Anything session.

This session is intended for users, extension developers, code contributors, and anyone interested in understanding how OpenRefine works. The goal is to meet with some of the developers who maintain OpenRefine and its extensions and to create space for questions about the project.

This session will not be recorded to keep the discussion informal.

Session overview

This call will be an opportunity to meet some of the people involved in OpenRefine development and ask questions about the project.

Topics may include:

  • Technical questions about the OpenRefine codebase
  • Questions about OpenRefine goals, priorities, and what is achievable
  • How OpenRefine development is organized
  • Extension development and maintenance
  • Current and upcoming technical work
  • Practical advice for new contributors

Depending on the number of questions, we may group or moderate them so the discussion can cover several topics.

Agenda

  • Short introduction of each participant
  • Community announcements
  • How OpenRefine development is organized
  • Advice for new code and extension contributors
  • Current and upcoming technical work
  • Open AMA and discussion

Questions from users, trainers, extension developers, and code contributors are welcome.

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Thanks to everyone who joined the Developer AMA, including @DaxServer, @tfmorris, @Antoine2711, and @Devansh-18155.

The discussion covered several current development topics and questions from contributors.

Wikimedia / Wikibase reconciliation

@DaxServer provided some insights into the current status of the Wikibase reconciliation service.

One key improvement that would help OpenRefine users assess the service's status is better information about latency and response times, so users can understand when the service is operating normally or experiencing issues.

We also discussed whether the Wikibase reconciliation extension should remain separate or become part of the main OpenRefine codebase. Tom expressed a preference for keeping related development in one larger repository, while also noting the importance, and difficulty, of maintaining the integration well. Martin supported this approach from a community perspective: the main OpenRefine repository attracts more contributors than separately hosted extension repositories such as the Commons Extension.

macOS build and notarization

We reviewed recent work on the macOS build process and fixes to the notarization workflow.

One recurring maintenance challenge is that signing and notarization credentials only need attention occasionally, which means the project has to rediscover parts of the process every few years when keys or certificates need to be renewed. Martin will better document the current set up.

OpenRefine 4.0 and breaking changes

OpenRefine 4.0 is expected to be a major release with breaking changes.

The discussion included:

  • changes to internal protocols
  • moving to a newer version of Jetty
  • grouping several months of internal changes into a single breaking-change release
  • how existing OpenRefine projects will be migrated to the new version
  • the need to assess the impact on extensions

Extension compatibility will therefore be an important part of preparing for the 4.0 release.

AI-assisted contributions and code review

We also discussed the growing use of AI coding tools in contributions.

There was general agreement that these tools can be useful, particularly for experienced contributors who use them to prototype or work faster. At the same time, AI-generated contributions can increase the review workload, especially when the resulting pull requests have not been carefully checked by the contributor.

One main constraint remains reviewer bandwidth. For example, when an author uses AI to help produce a pull request, an AI review initiated by the same author does not replace the need for review by another contributor.

We discussed using GitHub Copilot review as an additional tool to help identify issues in pull requests, including whether a contribution follows the project guidelines and whether the overall quality is sufficient for human review.

Supporting new contributors

For first-time contributors, some practical reminders also came up:

  • include screenshots when a change affects the user interface
  • avoid starting work on an issue before it has been triaged and confirmed as ready for contribution
  • review AI-generated changes carefully before submitting them

We spent part of the session helping @Devansh-18155 identify possible next contributions.

Thanks again to everyone who participated and shared questions and experience during the call.

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