<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 1:34 PM, Shahyar Ghobadpour <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sghobadpour@wikimedia.org" target="_blank">sghobadpour@wikimedia.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div id=":lcx" style="overflow:hidden">I'm a bit late to this conversation, but figured I'd chime in, as a<br>
former deviantART engineer. I don't recall the exact number, but I<br>
believe we were about 50-60 engineers. And yes, as Erik mentioned,<br>
that post is a bit dated, but not a whole lot has changed in terms of<br>
_how_ the teams work. They changed software along the way, but the<br>
general practices remained the same. I'm getting to the end of my<br>
first week here at WMF, and I can discuss a bit about how things are<br>
different.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Thank you for sharing. All this is extremely helpful. </div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div id=":lcx" style="overflow:hidden">
dA uses Mumble for large meetings, and Skype for chat and small<br>
meetings, versus our use of Hangouts for meetings and IRC for chat.<br>
There are pros and cons to each of these, and while we always<br>
complained about Skype, the major benefit of it is that even if you're<br>
offline, you can still be messaged, and people can still talk to/about<br>
you in a chat room -- you will receive the entire chat room and<br>
private messaging history upon your next login. This is a bit of an<br>
annoyance with IRC. I think I'll have to get more used to emailing<br>
people here.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>The solution many of us use for this problem is an IRC bouncer. I'm actually connected all the time in IRC even when my laptop and/or client is closed, so I get messages and scrollback etc. </div>
<div><br></div><div>One of the things that keeps us stuck in IRC land is that it's not just an internal company tool. It's also deeply embedded in the Wikimedia community, even among a segment of "non-technical" community members. We used to actually hold IRC office hours (you can look up the logs on Meta) as general community chats, though this is slowly dying out as a communication practice. </div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div id=":lcx" style="overflow:hidden">
<br>
Almost everyone is remote, which means everyone is _always_ in chat,<br>
and from timezones around the globe. And when they're not, they are<br>
usually easy to get ahold of via email. This makes for easy<br>
integration into work as a remotee, because someone is always around<br>
to answer your question. There's global rooms (for departments, and<br>
general chit-chat), and smaller rooms (for teams/projects).<br>
<br>
All developers are full-stack, which allows them to easily move<br>
between teams / new short- and long-term projects. Typically, people<br>
start in Reactor, then move onto other teams for various amounts of<br>
time. The first things you do in Reactor are easy bug fixes and one<br>
major code refactor. That major code refactor can take days or weeks;<br>
you keep committing code for review, and as concerns are raised, you<br>
fix them and keep committing until finally someone approves your code<br>
for landing. This is the process for almost all code; rarely does<br>
something significant get pushed without being reviewed.<br>
<br>
<br>
The big difference is that they use Phabricator to manage code<br>
(including review), commits (including auditing), unit testing, as<br>
well as bugs and features. I see you last really looked into it in<br>
2012, and the main reason for not using it was the lack of permission<br>
controls. As of November 2013, they've had per-object access<br>
restriction in place, so I'm thinking it might be time to give it<br>
another look. I can flat out tell you that Phabricator is by far the<br>
best project/code/bug management system I have ever used, and I've<br>
gone through at least half a dozen of them over the past few years.<br>
It's a huge improvement in terms of productivity, since all the<br>
features are integrated together in one single tool, and the interface<br>
makes things like issue tracking, code review, and feature discussion<br>
a LOT easier to do.<br>
<br>
Things like Bugzilla and IRC were the de facto standards for<br>
open-source communities in the past. I think we're stuck in that<br>
mindset, and should be looking at more contemporary solutions. I would<br>
really like to discuss this with everyone, and see if we can<br>
reevaluate Phabricator for our needs this year. I think we could be<br>
working a lot more efficiently by switching to it.</div></blockquote></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br></div>Having played with their test version, I'd definitely be happy moving to Phabricator as a replacement for Bugzilla, IRC, and maybe even Trello/Mingle. <br>
<br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div>Steven Walling,</div><div>Product Manager</div><div><a href="https://wikimediafoundation.org/" target="_blank">https://wikimediafoundation.org/</a></div>
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