Quim Gil, 26/08/2013 20:02:
On 08/24/2013 01:19 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
I
don't see why the chapters couldn't consider this list as a source of
inspiration for software projects they could sponsor.
Well, I see several possible reasons.
1) Some of them are definitely WMF-specific, like the bugzilla
improvements. No reason for a chapter to even touch those.
office.wikimedia.org is WMF-specific.
bugzilla.wikimedia.org is not.
These projects list features that would benefit the whole community, not
just the WMF.
I didn't say bugzilla is WMF-specific, but maintaining and curating
bugzilla is very clearly in the exclusive scope of WMF as of now. Even
the most minuscule changes like adding a keyword (stupid example) are
decided by WMF (for a reason).
Wikidata and Kiwix are mentioned as success stories of tech projects
driven by chapters. Is Wikidata Germany-specific? Does Switzerland
really need offine Wikipedia?
The answer to these questions is actually "yes" in part, but I agree we
can ignore it.
No, these chapters decided to go beyond
their strict duties and make a technical contribution just as useful to
the rest of us.
It's not about will but about feasibility.
2) Others rely heavily on WMF to be put in use,
or interact/overlap
heavily with current work by WMF. The list is very good because it
provides a) proof of interest by WMF, b) a mentor who serves as contact
with WMF to keep things on track and avoid clashes. However, several of
those projects, if completed, could still sit on a dead end like many
GSoC projects in the past.
From the 20 ongoing projects, all of them are generating code that has
a place in the Wikimedia servers. This is no coincidence: we set strong
filters during the selection process to avoid all these problems you are
mentioning.
You can't eliminate them, only reduce the risks. So this is only
tangential to what I was saying (i.e. all the parts you cut out of your
quote).
Nemo
To anybody willing to take a tech project: just ask or share your plans
in advance to make sure your contributions will be as useful for the
community as you expect.
Typically, a chapter would be interested either
because "its" language
communities have a particular interest in something, or as a part of
some other project of the chapter (Commons improvements are probably the
easiest to fit in here).
Sure, I'm just trying to encourage chapters and other orgs to ask their
communities about tech projects they would like to help developing. And
to consider budget, grants, hackathons etc to complete those projects.
If these orgs don't do this then any tech decentralization will be harder.