The librarian in me couldn't resist providing a citation for Pine's and Kevin's and Revi's points.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developers/Maintainers#MediaWiki_extensions_d...
This page may not be quite current. Until yesterday, the education program extension was still marked as supported. The listed maintainer (and original developer of our dear extension), Jeroen De Dauw, has not worked on it since 2012 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program/status, afaict. [1] Nevertheless, this page illustrates a pattern of neglect and abandonment. (Did I just actually type that?? Ah well, truth to power...)
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program/status
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Anna Koval, M.Ed. Manager, Wikipedia Education Program Wikimedia Foundation +1.415.839.6885 x 6729 Skype: annakoval.wiki akoval@wikimedia.org education.wikimedia.org
On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 1:04 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
That is a good point, Revi. And this is the kind of mess that makes me discouraged sometimes. But I think that James' involvement will be helpful here, as will a possible migration plan to a maintained tool.
(I've noticed a pattern recently of a few people separately deciding that they're not going to maintain certain tools or projects any longer. This maintainability problem really needs to be addressed, and is something that I'm hoping a CTO or VPE would address head-on.)
On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 12:58 AM, Yongmin Hong lists@revi.pe.kr wrote:
- 오전 3:52에 "Floor Koudijs" fkoudijs@wikimedia.org님이 작성:
The option that we are currently considering (and I cannot yet
guarantee a timeline or anything like that because we're in the middle of the planning phase) is adapting the Wiki Ed Foundation's Dashboard to make it fit for international use. See the Phabricator task here, and the related Phabricator project. We would like to make this a feature project for the next round of Outreachy, which means that we'll have a dedicated intern to work on this project full time for three months, with the support of two mentors. If this works out as I hope it will, we may have something ready before the next academic year - but again, no hard guarantees here. I am currently working on getting the project shaped up, looking into mentors and confirming with possible interns.
Two important points that were addressed in this thread:
- Have community involvement early on. I really love this idea, and I'm
very grateful you're bringing this up and keep reminding us not to forget about that. What I'd personally love to see is a group that can be involved in advice, user testing and anything else on the user end that we may need. I'm copying Quim Gil on this email to see if this fits within the scope of Outreachy, as he may have some ideas around how to organize this best. We would have to be careful not too derail the project with too ambitious ideas and suggestions, and focusing on attainable and concrete tasks for the intern to work on. That said, having several minds involved in this with different backgrounds could be hugely valuable, in my opinion.
- Think about maintenance. This is what I'm currently looking into,
since it's clear that the issue is not so much developing new tools, but also looking ahead and making sure there will be ongoing support for these tools. That's a longer discussion that wwill take place in parallel to the development of the tool itself. This may not sound reassuring, but please trust that it's foremost in all of our minds at WMF - we already have enough tools out there that don't get the proper support, and we really don't want to build more.
I seriously doubt that the software will be maintained after the internship period if this is Outreachy project. The likely workflow: 1.The Outreachy term ends 2.User disappear/become inactive 3.We are going to get this same message again at some stage after new security vulnerability is found.
Well, yeah, Flow, LQT, (ironic both tools are going to be not be developed)[1] etc etc.
[1]: context: Flow was developed with the purpose of 'replacing LQT/make discussion easier' but I feel if they succeded to replace LQT fully. (disclaimer: Flow is "not active development mode" according to the WMF team.)
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Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education