I've been worried about this project for a very long time. I checked out
slowly from pywikibot and I expressed my concerns to the developer
relations team privately but after this bug [1], I think it's time to speak
out.
Disclaimer: I'm not saying pywikibot is dying or will die soon. I'm saying
this project is going in unhealthy direction. I'm not de-valuing other
people's work and I think they are great but they are missing a few steps
that other projects don't.
1- Pywikibot has the biggest number of open patchsets after mediawiki/core.
You might say, it's okay. Pywikibot is completely volunteer-based but ratio
of distinct users / open patchsets is horrifyingly high. Meaning we have
some developers that make a patch and they don't engage in reviewing them
even if the patch got -1 or -2 (and funnier sometime they -1 or -2 their
own patches) and move on to making other patches. Most of them end up in a
obsolete situation needing a rebase or not needed anymore.
2- Developers don't engage in dialogue in proper places so others don't
know about issues. No one can subscribe to the phabricator board, it's too
big but it would be nice to bring some discussions here.
3- No active developer is connected to other part of wikimedia projects
like listening to api announcements.
4- (Sometimes) It's a hostile environment. Behavior of other developers
sometimes is demotivating.
5- There's no ArchCom here. I have an approach which might be wrong but
another developer comes and disagrees and suggests another approach. I
don't like it but there is no place to give the last call so it'll stay at
-1 or -2 mode forever. TLDR: Sometimes I feel someone just owns the project
and makes patches stuck just by disagreeing on the approach.
6- There is no, absolutely not, a single guide on how to code review. I
know code review sucks in Wikimedia technical projects but this one is
another level. People send out -2 because "the syntax is ugly" (and the
patch is not a fifty nested loops, it's a['foo'] = 1 instead of
a['foo'] =
True). Mostly they just care about style rather than bugs.
[1]:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T142155
I might be wrong and/or out-dated. Correct me please.
Best
On Sun, Aug 7, 2016 at 6:59 PM Bináris <wikiposta(a)gmail.com> wrote:
How is it possible that I haven't got any mail
from this list since
January? Is it dead or have I dropped out?
--
Bináris
_______________________________________________
pywikibot mailing list
pywikibot(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/pywikibot