This has mostly died down now so I'm reluctant to perform thread necromancy, but there are a few things for me to say here. I'm going to stick to the product side of things (i.e. MassMessage stuff), as that's my primary domain. I could also offer some thoughts on the other topics of management and community code deployment, but I think the (in my view) more important discussion of the product.

I think, as one of the people with an overall responsibility for platform, I would be negligent in my duties to simply accept Terry's "no" without doing a more detailed assessment of the situation myself. If someone asks me why I didn't do something, and my only response is "a director told me no", then I'm a bad product manager. I need to have my own reasons. I also think this no from Terry has not taken into account that this is not intended to be a long term solution, which I will elaborate on below. The mistake I have made so far in this is that I made "sure, let's do this" comments on these bugs without properly assessing the long term plan and vision of the product, which is also bad product management. I will do this assessment in this email. I'll look at the problem, the solutions, and questions that arise from this.

The problem: the presently available mass message delivery system is inadequate.
Whether you're looking at it from the point of view of site performance, or purely in terms of delivering messages effectively, I think we all agree on this. EdwardsBot has been around for a long time and when it was made it solved a problem to which there was no other readily available solution, namely getting messages out to people. However, it is fundamentally a hack, and might not integrate with the vision of the future (e.g. Flow).

Given that we're agreed on what the problem is, trying to derive a product that solves the problem is easier than if we disagreed! So, let's look at the high-level details. It doesn't make sense to get bogged down in details (e.g. exact workflows for the product's operation, such as the question of whether it makes sense for any admin to post messages to any wiki from any other wiki) before we even consider the high-level solutions. The way I see this discussion so far, there are two high-level solutions to the problem that've been proposed.

Proposed solution 1: refine and enable MassMessage (with the view that it will be superseded at some point by a better solution) then work on the better solution.
Proposed solution 2: abandon MassMessage, and continue to use EdwardsBot, and focus our efforts on the better solution.

The first thing I observe about these solutions is that both of them recognise that MassMessage is, relatively speaking, a short term solution. We all know it's going to be replaced by something better in the future. So the above solutions really boil down to a single question.

The question: do we need an interim solution for message delivery, until a future-proofed solution is developed?

How I answer this question depends on questions that I don't have the answer to yet.

1) "How much of a performance problem is EdwardsBot?".
a) If it's a big problem for site performance, then I think working on something to alleviate that problem in the mean time (i.e. MassMessage) could be worthwhile. Platform now has a performance engineer, Ori, who I can explore that question with. If the answer is "Not a performance problem at all", then that helps us rule out the need for an interim solution.

2) "How long will the future-proofed solution take to make?".
a) If it's going to be a "long" time (for some definition of "long"), then polishing off MassMessage into a form we're all happy with, so it can be used, may make sense. This also means we don't have a long term commitment to maintaining it, as we will be kicking it out when we're done with it.

If the solution is that there is zero need for an interim solution, then we needn't discuss any of the details.

In terms of my own training and enrichment as a product manager, I think it makes sense to try to explore these questions anyway, as it will contribute to my skill set. In fact, even writing this email has helped me with that.

A quick comment on the long term solutions. I disagree with the idea that echo should be used actually deliver newsletters (e.g. The Wikipedia Signpost, Wikiproject newsletters). It should notify one of the delivery, not actually deliver. I think, in terms of the future (i.e. Flow), it doesn't make sense to have a bot (whether it's EdwardsBot or a MassMessage bot) starting a discussion on a Flow page to deliver a message to you. That's also doing it backwards. However, Brandon has talked a lot about how his ideas for Flow will include being able to subscribe to discussions. One could extend that to also subscribe to newsletters, and you can then choose whether echo notifies you of them or not. The newsletter is held in a centralised location and displayed to you on some relevant feed that's designed for newsletters. That's my vision of the future, in particular because it's not specific to the WMF domain and can easily be used by other large wikis to get notices out to people. Whether there needs to be a specific use case for subscribing to newsletters, or whether it's included in a separate use case, is a discussion to have about Flow.

I'll put the assessment of these things onto my priority list.

Dan


On 3 October 2013 20:22, Terry Chay <tchay@wikimedia.org> wrote:
I am posting this to wikitech-l, ee-l, and will cross-post this to https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35306 because it's important to keep frank discussions in the open.

When I use to loaded words like "back-dooring" etc, I believe that no malice was intended and the discussions so far have been in good faith from all parties. I think people have a valid concern and want it addressed and are wondering honestly how decisions have been made. In particular, my decision to not allow the MassMessage Extension to roll out onto MediaWiki last week, since that occurred during a meeting that didn't even involve or derive have consultation (except ex-post-facto) with any product manager or engineer here.

Here is why I am inijating this thread:

1) https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deployments&diff=83188&oldid=83134

2) On Sep 30, 2013, at 4:25 PM, MZMcBride <z@mzmcbride.com> wrote:

Hi Fabrice, Terry, and Howie,

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35306#c19 is awaiting feedback (if you have any).

MZ

3) https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deployments&diff=84903&oldid=84888

…

We have two separate but related bugs here: 

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35306
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52723

bug 35306 is an tracking bug MZMcBride posted for a solution to deal with EdwardsBot. I believe it dates to around the time I was first employed almost two years ago.

bug 52723 is a recent bug to deploy Legoktm's MassMessage extension as a solution to bug 35306, it is less than a month old there has been little public discussion, and until it appeared on the deploy calendar last week, I wasn't even aware of its existence.

The problem with moving on bug 52723 as a solution to bug 35306 is it commits Features Engineering to maintaining an extension that is a stop gap solution with no or very little discussion in a manner that doesn't serve a broad strategic goal about how messages, notifications, etc. should be handled on the wikis. To the first, maybe there is something wrong with my e-mail client, but I have yet to find this discussion on wikitech-l or anywhere outside the bug.

Because of the above, my view is that this solution is being back-doored in and just moves the "technical debt" from one sheet (the community and tool labs) to another that has even less capability. I am biased against that because the latter sheet (WMF Features Engineering) is my responsibility. This is just my view, I'm open for us coming to consensus on a solution for this bug, but what I have seen is not consensus.

It is along these lines that, I asked to remove MassMessage from the deploy calendar when it was added to the deploy calendar without discussion from Features, Design, or Product last week. After discussion during that Friday meeting among the EPMs, I compromised to let it to go out on two test wikis, but not on mediawiki. Nobody made the case that it should go out on mediawiki. I demurred because no person at the WMF, including me as Director of Features Engineering, should fiat a decision when unaware of the status of discussions involved.

But let frank: if this had been a WMF employee writing this extension, it wouldn't have made it to even the test wikis by a country mile. In fact, a lot of extensions have been written by employees and either have extensive discussion, review, and buy-in (e.g. GuidedTours), or have not been deployed (e.g. Etherpad, the org chart, BetaFeatures) even though much more work has been done on them.

I also don't like that WMF resources in Platform and Design are being spent to review something that has had no adequate discussion over in the annual plan, in anyone's 20% time, in any cross-team discussion, or public discussion on wikitech-l (There was a last minute thread in the Design list, I am not on the design list, nor should I be, and the Creative Director is new and the team is just trying to get their sea legs and some consideration to that needs to be done here). Furthermore, after further discussion, nearly all of Product felt I should not have compromised earlier because the following situation might occur: Having gotten it onto "the cluster" people would then move to back-door it into deployment on the basis that it's already on the cluster. Their prediction is occurring right now. This is a bogus argument because nobody agreed this should be on the cluster, it's just that nobody has reviewed it in a thorough enough manner to shout "NO!"

If necessary, I'm going to shout "NO!" at this moment.

Having said that, there is the larger issue of bug 35306 which has been sitting there unsolved for a while as well as the smaller issue of the month's work Legoktm and MZMcBride have already put into Bug 52723 and [[mw:Extension:MassMessage]] possibly going to waste if I keep blocking it. Besides, MZ is sitting there trying to hold everything up on his own shoulders with EdwardsBot, and we all know it.

…

Let me address the functionality overlap with Echo:

LanguageEngineering built their own parallel message/notification system before Echo that lives on Meta today. They commit to supporting their own parallel message/notification system, and I'm okay with it living outside Echo (where it currently does), but there is an understanding that they've basically committed to that work with no support from Features for the duration that it does live outside Echo.

In those lines, I'm glad that Platform has helped out here, but unless Platform is committing to support MassMessage indefinitely into the future and not just provide one-time security and deploy assistance, I'm not okay with them adding to Features work even though they've been super helpful to MZMcBride and Legoktm. If Dan Garry is willing to commit Platform to support MassMessage, I'll think the same precedent we've done with LE applies here.

Furthermore, before *in-echo, outside-echo, use-echo) for a solution to be bug 35306, it needs to actually exhibit product discipline. The WMF gets panned for having a "agile processes" but not actually doing so, but we do have some process and we need to at least apply the same product discipline that we apply everywhere else to this bug.

For example, features in MassMessage and EdwardsBot need to be addressed in a Must-Have, Should-Have, Could-Have, Won't-Have (MoSCoW) framework. Features like "mass delivery from a list" are probably a Must-Have; features like "cross-wiki notification" are probably a should-have, other features like "public over private notifications", "page-centric over user-centric" or "longer stream notifications" are either not a must-have or could have or are should-haves to  be done outside Echo by a different service (bot) using the Echo API or some extension thereof. All that is a product issue, and I nor anyone in my team is in product. Those decisions should be done in discussion with the Product team and they should not be disintermediated from it, which they have been.

I understand that many people would like to see a solution to Bug 35306 would be great to have. I'd like to see a better Signpost notification system and a more generalized solution for newsletter delivery also! I'd also like a pony. But we have already committed resources and continue to commit resources without discussion from the people (Product Design, not Features Engineering) who have been tasked with this responsibility and are very good at these sort of thing. I hope everyone participating on this bug can see that dropping this bomb on a newly hired associate product manager is simply not cool on so many levels.

…

Here is my suggestion:

(This is thinking, not a directive so don't think of this as definitive or final, I'm seeking consensus here.)

First, bug 35306 is a long-standing request. I think it's important we get headway on this, but I hope others will be understanding if it doesn't happen immediately, so long as there is a commitment for this to happen.

(For perspective, Flow was first proposed years ago, and was added to the annual plan almost two years ago before their first actual development sprint was completed (end of this week!). Echo was first deployed almost 8 months ago and is still not out on all the wikis. BetaFeatures has been in discussion for months and is still not deployed, nor is the commitment to maintain inside Features and that has caused a lot of issues. Fixing things right right takes time because consensus takes time and open discussion.)

There is an RfP for student developer time for legoktm for things like this (Finding a solution for Bug 35306 but not [[mw:Extension:MassMessage]] because MassMessage would not be deployed if it was my own engineer). Benny Situ has been spending all his time supporting [[mw:Extension:Echo]] when he should balancing [[mw:Flow]] development time into Echo bug fixes and needs to spend at least one sprint (two weeks) solely getting up to speed on Flow before doing enhancements for [[wm:Echo]]. Furthermore, Echo is not deployed everywhere yet and is still rolling out (though I've been pushing up the timetable on this as I feel we're too slow here), so it can't reach the places that EdwardsBot cat.

After the above happen, I'd like Benny and Kunal to work together to add some of the functionality of EdwardsBot into Echo for mass message delivery. Because of this, I'm moving bug 35306 into Echo as an enhancement and raising it's priority.

In the meantime I'll be OK with leaving MassMessage on test and test2 wikis because the alternative would be to remove it from the cluster entirely. The experiences and code Kunal derives by that can inform the enhancement to Echo, as well as things it already does that find themselves outside Echo (Echo does not and should not post to talk pages). So I figure two stages:

1) wait for some things to happen: legoktm to get an RfP, Echo to be on all wikis, and Benny to do an entire Flow only sprint and balancing his time more effectively wrt Echo.
2) MoSCoW other features of MassMessage/EdwardsBot for integration into Echo
3) Enhance and deploy a first pass to Echo to allow some sort of mass notification from a wiki list
4) Some sort of cross wiki notification enhancement (requires a design pass)
5) Discuss how to implement must-have or should-have features of EdwardsBot that can't live in Echo (permanent log of events)?
6) Add those to plan and be done.

The above can occur independently or in parallel to the above. If Product thinks it cool to commit Platform's constrained engineering resources to deploying and supporting MassMessage Extension forever and use it to take advantage of Echo when the features roll out in some undefined future, consider this thinking moot or at least orthogonal to MassMessage. IMO, it is bad enough that something important like BetaFeatures is without a home, but my answer from Features is "No" for MassMessage. If this was my own engineer, I'd raise hell with them for this and yell at their Product Manager for not being a good steward of Platform's time.

Take care,

terry


terry chay  최태리
Director of Features Engineering
Wikimedia Foundation
“Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment.”

aim: terrychay




--
Dan Garry
Associate Product Manager for Platform
Wikimedia Foundation