I wanted to forward this from the general Wikimedia developers' list. If you are particularly interested in any of the existing Request For Comment topics on mediawiki.org then now is a good time to give your opinion on them, on the wiki.

best, Sumana

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Wikitech-l] Architecture guidelines and RFCs Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 06:50:04 -0700 From: Rob Lanphier robla@wikimedia.org Reply-To: Wikimedia developers wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org To: Wikimedia developers wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org

Hi folks,

Many of us met at the Amsterdam Hackathon to discuss architecture guidelines (almost everyone with +2 in MediaWiki core, plus other knowledgeable people), and generally about the need to have more substantive conversations about MediaWiki architecture. It was a really productive discussion, and had a number of outcomes:

1. RFC review: we agreed that RFCs need more diligent review. Brion and Tim are planning to pull together the architects for regular discussions (weekly? TBD) to at least touch all of the outstanding RFCs, with the goal of clearing the current backlog of RFCs. If y'all don't see substantial movement on this in a couple of weeks, please point this out.

2. RFC use: right now, RFCs aren't used in many cases where they should be. Assuming we get into a good flow with RFCs, we can then reasonably expect people to actually write them when they're making significant changes to the MediaWiki architecture.

3. Architecture guidelines: we now have a rough beginning draft of architecture guidelines[2] we plan to use as guiding principles for RFC review. This is a document that we plan to discuss on wiki in c2 wiki style[3]. Please participate! This is a living document, which will be referenced in RFCs and responses to RFCs. We will use this mailing list to discuss the more contentious issues and generally ensure we continue to move forward refining this document.

4. A general agreement that we need to make sure that we have similar conversations at every substantial gathering of +2 developers. For example, we plan to figure something out for Wikimania.

We have raw notes from both days of meetings, available here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Amsterdam_Hackathon_2013/Architectural_princi...

Rob

[1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Architecture_guidelines [3] "c2 wiki style" is with inline comments similar to the c2 Design Patterns wiki: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DesignPatterns

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