Hi, In the date delinking proposed decision I have added four principles that relate to the technical community. They are a draft only. If there any major objections here or on the talk page, I will drop them over on the Workshop page so discussion can occur there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Date_delink… ===MediaWiki developers=== 18) The projects run by the Wikimedia Foundation, such as the English Wikipedia project, are run on the MediaWiki software, which is an open source project hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. As it is an open source project, anyone may participate in the improvement of the software, by way of patches, however these changes are subject to approval by the core MediaWiki development team. The MediaWiki development team are part of the Wikimedia community, however their development work is beyond the jurisdiction of the English Wikipedia community and its Arbitration Committee. The paid development team is answerable to the Foundation, and the Board influences the development priorities based on the needs of the projects, of which English Wikipedia is only one of many. The Wikimedia projects may, of course, question their decisions but must at all times respect those decisions. Bug reports, feature requests, complaints and concerns should be lodged at the appropriate forums, such as Bugzilla, mediawiki.org, mediawiki-l and wikitech-l, and foundation-l or meta for larger problems, with each of these forums having their own processes and customs which should be respected. ===System administrators=== 19) System administrators are responsible for the MediaWiki software configuration of the projects run by the Wikimedia Foundation, such as English Wikipedia. They make changes to configuration based on a mix of Wikimedia Foundation, technical and project considerations. While their decisions may affect the English Wikipedia, those decisions are beyond the jurisdiction of the English Wikipedia community and its Arbitration Committee. The local community may, of course, challenge these decisions, but must at all times respect them, Complains should be lodged at meta forums, such as Bugzilla, #wikimedia-tech, wikitech-l, foundation-l and meta, each having their own processes and customs which should be respected. ===Open source=== 20) The software used by the English Wikipedia project is open source and may be improved by anyone, by way of bug reports, design documents, code patches, technical documentation, etc. Fair criticism of open source software is acceptable, however it is incumbent on everyone to participate in [[wikt:build a better mousetrap|building a better mousetrap]]. Deriding the developers who are in short supply is not acceptable. Developers are volunteers, and at no time is it acceptable to expect them to fix non-critical problems. ===Deprecation of MediaWiki functionality=== 21) The MediaWiki software used on the Wikimedia projects, and configuration of that software, is the responsibility of the developers and system administrators. In the same way that system administrators are the decision makers to enable new functionality, deprecation or removal of MediaWiki functionality is a technical decision, and implementation of that decision may have technical implications that need to be considered. The project community should engage the technical team in decisions which relate to use the software. Policies, procedures and the manual of style may govern how and when the software may be used, however decisions to deprecate or disable software features are best left in the hands of the technical staff. Regards, John Vandenberg