I am both a long-time community member and a new WMF paid developer (in
the SF office) so I think I'm in a unique position to clear up some
misconceptions.
First of all, all this talk of secret listservs and IRC channels is
malarkey. Yes, there are private listservs and IRC channels. All of them
are private for very specific and well-established reasons. Most of them
are only used in very specific circumstances (for example if there was a
security breach that needed to be discussed privately) and tend to be
very low traffic. They are not the places where important decisions are
made.
Secondly, the idea that developers here in the office don't interact
with the community is absurd. The developers here interact with the
community constantly. We discuss community opinion and ideas, we talk
with community members all day long on IRC, listservs, and on-wiki. I'm
amazed that the developers here ever get anything done considering how
much time they spend documenting what they are working on and
interacting with the community about it. The problem is they can't
interact with everyone everywhere: Code Review, IRC, listservs, the Tech
Blog, meta, Signpost, etc. So no matter what, someone is going to feel
like they are out of the loop.
The WMF is extremely interested in new developers interacting with the
community, indeed they try to hire developers from within the community
when possible. The notion that the foundation is hiring corporate drones
who are only going to listen to their task masters is completely
unfounded. Yes, there have been situations where the foundation has been
given grant money for very specifically defined projects and those
projects have been implemented without adequate community involvement.
Everyone (including the foundation) knows that that's not how we want to
do development in the future. As has been discussed throughout the past
year, the foundation wants to move away from accepting any money with
strings attached and away from relying on grants in general. Hopefully,
if this year's fundraiser goes well, we won't have to worry about these
issues in the future.
Ryan Kaldari
On 9/7/10 4:15 PM, Robert Stojnic wrote:
I made seven
suggestions. Only one was about actually dissolving the
office, and I acknowledged that it might be extreme. What about the
others? Why does the private IRC chat need to exist, for example?
Why can't we have clear official statements that everything should be
as public as possible and that volunteer developers should be treated
as peers? Why can't teleconferences be replaced by public-logged IRC
chats? Are these also too extreme?
Aryeh, I think many volunteer and more casual developers share your
concern. I in principle agree with your proposals, although of course
no-one can be forced to abandon private communication, and private means
of communication are always going to exist. I have raised similar
concerns about volunteers not knowing what is going on by not being on
secret channels of communication, in person, to a couple of members of
staff during last two wikimanias and developer meetings, and I had the
feeling they agreed with me.
The community needs to be nurtured, and I think all new employees of the
WMF need to be aware of it, and at first interview informed that they
will *need* to interact with the community and with volunteer
developers. I think many programmers who have worked in programming
companies are too used to just talking and listening to their team
leaders and no-one else. It should be made clear that this is not how
things (should) work in WMF, and this should be an official position
from however is hiring. Or maybe it is utopia and we do need to have a
more stereotypical corporate setup, but I really hope not because
wikipedia is fueled by enthusiasm.
Finally, speaking as a volunteer who is not on any secret IRC channels,
mailing lists or payrolls I want to share my experience in WMF software
development. Back in 2006 I wanted to make search better, and if then it
wasn't for Tim Starling to give me shell access and a couple of test
servers to play with, I think we would not have the new search, or at
least not developed by me. An act of kindness, but also a sign that a
core developer cares about what a relatively unknown volunteer is trying
to do and achieve.
As for code review, I know the foundation knows how important this task
is, and that it is no 9-5 job, but one that requires an extremely
dedicated person with a great knowledge of the mediawiki codebase and
ability to comment on virtually every programming issue. The foundation
better pay this person well and not just hope for someone to fill in
this place in their spare time.
Cheers, Robert
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