On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 1:02 AM, Bryan Davis <bd808@wikimedia.org> wrote:
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).

The way I see it, our team mission is basically "we do the stuff other teams don't": very important and essential to the WMF mission, but very ill-defined and subject to getting miscellaneous stuff shoved on us where creating a dedicated team is overkill (or just not in the budget).

I'm used to that sort of work, since my previous jobs have been along the lines of "Brad does everything computer-related" or "Brad does everything complicated that's computer-related". It's nice here *not* being the only one doing stuff while still mostly working individually as I'm used to (although more team-work would probably be better for my professional development; I should also exercise more and spend less non-work time on the computer).

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This seems out of date to me.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.

I completely agree there. Although the cause is obvious: Release Engineering was basically split off from us, taking the two bullets with them.
 
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.

+1, although that may fall under the extremely broad "Ensure that MediaWiki core is meeting the evolving needs of the website".
 


--
Brad Jorsch (Anomie)
Software Engineer
Wikimedia Foundation