On Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 1:18 PM, Gergo Tisza <gtisza(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
(This assumes that you need external code review. Two Europeana devs
working on the project and doing code reviews for each other could be an
alternative.)
Thanks for all the smart comments in the thread so far, and big thanks to
everyone who's worked on this proposal. GWT is a pretty amazing reflection
of the unique value Wikimedia can provide to the cultural and educational
sector already, so I am really happy this is getting additional attention.
A couple of points:
1) I agree with Gergo's point quoted above, and within the context of the
current proposal, would recommend budgeting for at least a 20 hour/week
developer supporting Dan with code review and integration, ideally someone
with prior MW experience. This cannot entirely eliminate integration effort
on the WMF side of things, but will ensure that the people who have the
greatest interest in seeing the project through to completion are set up
for success in doing so. With or without this, let's really carefully
negotiate what exactly everyone's commitments are so we avoid a repeat of
phase 1.
2) I say "within the context of the current proposal", because I would ask
you to give serious consideration to the following question: Does
GLAMWikiToolset need to existing within MediaWiki? When it was first
developed, we didn't have OAuth (so a tool outside MediaWiki couldn't
perform user actions), and our APIs were less mature. Today we have many
examples of external tools that are doing amazing things. Magnus' tools
have made tens of millions of edits to Wikidata. The Wiki Edu Foundation
has created
wizard.wikiedu.org and
dashboard.wikiedu.org for managing
student assignments and courses.
I know we have GWT and so it seems natural to just fix bugs and improve it.
But consider the long term development velocity. GWT is used by a very
small subset of Wikimedia users, it's not "core site functionality" and
does, as far as I can tell (I may be missing something), not benefit
dramatically from deep integration. You pay a lot of cost for this
integration without necessarily getting a lot of "bang for the buck".
I would wager that if you started over with a new external tool, applying
all the lessons learned so far and spending extra effort on UX, you could
pretty quickly catch up with current functionality and then would move at a
faster velocity from there. Consider where we want to be in 2016, 2018,
2020 -- is the strategy of maintaining a deeply integrated MediaWiki
extension for this really sustainable or desirable? I think it's at least
worth seriously considering the alternatives.
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Product & Strategy, Wikimedia Foundation