I'm trying to compare the feeling of the group (that we know exactly
why we are here and how this aligns with the WMF mission) and my
personal feeling (that we do whatever is asked and often the asks are
questionable).
I'm willing to admit that some of the difference in viewpoint is based
on the particular work that I have done over the last year. I have
been on loan to Multimedia, developed Wikimania Scholarships, on loan
to Release Engineering and developed IEG grant review. In between and
overlapping I worked briefly on the "DevOps sprint", setup logstash,
rewrote scap and dabbled in HHVM related research. This level of
bouncing around and number of solo projects has not given me a great
feeling that I'm on a well scoped team. It actually makes me feel like
I'm just a gun for hire (or worse monkey at a keyboard) to be called
to service whenever and wherever RobLa and Erik feel an extra hand is
needed.
I'm not looking for pity or a "you're doing good job Bryan" out of
this rant, I'm just trying to make my point of view clear. I've
actually generally enjoyed the work that I've done here and have
certainly had plenty of things to keep me busy and learning. I am
however interested in acquiring a better model of what it is that I
should be trying to do when I have the opportunity to choose work from
the never ending list of things that could be done. I feel that this
is important not just for me personally but for the team as a group
when doing things like grooming our collective project backlog and
defending our choices to management.
I went to the wiki page for our group [0] and found this list of
"responsibilities" for the MediaWiki Core team:
* Manage the MediaWiki release cycle
* Ensure that MediaWiki core is meeting the evolving needs of the website
* Make quality MediaWiki releases available for others outside of the
Wikimedia Foundation
* Develop and document a clear set of APIs so that external developers
can create applications that easily interface with MediaWiki
This seems out of date to me. I think that the newly formed Release
Engineering team is responsible for the first and third bullet points.
That leaves "meeting the evolving needs of the website" and "develop
and document a clear set of APIs" still on our plate. Neither of these
seems like something that can be used to exclude much work from
consideration. This can be seen as a good thing when the team is
presenting their ideas outwardly, but it seems like a double edged
sword for incoming work requests. It also feels like something is
missing here. I really don't see any mention of our team's role in
code review and stewardship of quality for MediaWiki and
responsibility for security and performance considerations.
I think it would be a worthwhile exercise to spend some time next week
talking about what it is that we do here and what reasonable
boundaries and expectations we would like to set with the Foundation
and the community.
[0]:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Platform_Engineering#MediaWiki_Core
Bryan
--
Bryan Davis Wikimedia Foundation <bd808(a)wikimedia.org>
[[m:User:BDavis_(WMF)]] Sr Software Engineer Boise, ID USA
irc: bd808 v:415.839.6885 x6855