I think, and that's my personal opinion based on my personal feelings and the things written here already: something like "kind of". First of all: you can already propose any feature you want using phabricator. Based on these features, a paid developer or even a volunteer developer will start working on it (or discussing) or not.
I think, that the new platform team will have an eye on the things in phabricator, too, however, I think that they will mainly work on features that benefit the WMF.
In addition to the review of patches things: I highly appreciate this and hope that this will heavily decrease the time for a core patch to get a review :) And I think that this can be an opportunity for all of us, volunteers, other companies and third parties and everyone else to get new, well-formed and developed features into MediaWiki. There's no need that all features has to be implemented by a paid WMF Developer. We all can (more or less) easily create a Gerrit Account and propose changes, and there's mostly no reason to prevent a good patch from being merged. So, I think it would be great, if more features and good patches would arrive from outside and then be reviewed by the new platform team (or even volunteers) :) so, don't ask for features, write them yourself! (Don't vote me on that :P)
Best, Florian
-----Original Message----- Date: Mon, 03 Apr 2017 21:43:29 +0200 Subject: Re: [MediaWiki-l] Introducing the MediaWiki Platform Team! From: Jasmine Smith jassmith55@outlook.com To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Question, will the 'new features' mainly benefit the wider MediaWiki community or the wikimedia foundation?
Are site owners able to request features?
Jasmine.
On 3 Apr 2017, at 07:16 pm, "Victoria Coleman"
vcoleman@wikimedia.org wrote:
Thank you Nischay. The Product Manager of the MediaWiki Platform team
will be responsible for the features the team will work on. Quim's team will also provide support as a place to coordinate the roadmap with the external developer community. Looking forward to working with everyone!
Best regards,
Victoria
Sent from my iPhone
On Apr 3, 2017, at 1:46 PM, Nischay Nahata nischayn22@gmail.com
wrote:
We use MediaWiki for almost everything in our company and it feels
great to
hear this news.
I hope there is process setup for external users of MediaWiki to
contribute
ideas and code in a more streamlined manner.
Regards, Nischay
On Apr 2, 2017 8:52 PM, "Victoria Coleman" vcoleman@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Hello everyone,
I am pleased to share with you the news about the formation of the
latest
team in the Technology department, the MediaWiki Platform team![1]
The MediaWiki Platform team will be tasked with leading maintenance
and
improvements related to the core MediaWiki platform codebase. That
includes
encouraging future development of the MediaWiki platform and
addressing the
technical debt that has accumulated during the 15-year history of
MediaWiki.
MediaWiki is an amazing, powerful, and complex open-source software platform. The number and variety of extensions, and the wide variety
of
communities who have adopted MediaWiki as their method for knowledge collection and dissemination, are a testament to its strength as a
software
platform.
Like any significant codebase with a long development history, there
are
remnants of design choices and experiments that are no longer in use,
and
some areas of code are in need of modernization. However, at its core
is a
large amount of highly functional, secure, performant code, capable
of
supporting a robust platform through the use of extensions and hooks.
There
is also a great amount of flexibility to adapt to new requirements.
This team will have a more focused purpose than the previous
MediaWiki Core
team.[2]. While the previous team was at times spread too thin, many
areas
are now covered by dedicated teams like Security and Performance. The
new
MediaWiki Platform team will center their efforts on the core
codebase. The
team will also have a dedicated Product Manager who will be creating
the
platform roadmap in collaboration with the team, the Architecture
Committee
and the MediaWiki user community.
Specific goals for this team are to:
- Assist and encourage development of features for MediaWiki by
providing
developers with a strong core.
- Undertake feature development work which is primarily architectural
in
nature.
- Facilitate the development and publication of MediaWiki's roadmap
to
assist coordination between internal and external users.
- Maintain and promote guidelines and standards for the MediaWiki
core.
I am thrilled that Tim Starling has agreed to lead the team,
reporting
directly to me. He will be joined by Brion Vibber, Kunal Mehta and
Brad
Jorsch. The team officially launches on Monday April 3, and will
complete
the hiring and onboarding of additional team members in the coming
months.
Their initial workplan will include core support for multi content revisions for the Structured Data on Commons project and will be
discussed
in more detail during the upcoming consultation for the Wikimedia Foundation 2017-2018 annual plan.
I am excited by this latest evolution in the structure of the
Foundation's
Engineering group. We will continue to learn from our collective
knowledge
and expertise, and make adjustments to our composition and plans. I appreciate the input provided by many in the community that helped
inform
this decision. I also want to thank the members of the Wikimedia Foundation's Product, Technology, and Community Engagement
departments who
were involved in this process. In particular, I would like to thank
Toby
Negrin, Adam Baso, and Trevor Parscal - whose support was critical in bringing this plan together.
Join me in welcoming and celebrating our new team!
Victoria
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Platform_team < https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Platform_team%3E [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_MediaWiki_Core_Team < https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_MediaWiki_Core_Team%3E _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list To unsubscribe, go to: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list To unsubscribe, go to: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
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