It was around 2014 when I dropped out of pywikibot (last time) partly due to a missing management. Some people where working on compat some on core - depending on who you asked the focus was either compat or core (or git migration). IMHO at that time a lot of unecessary additional load was created by decicions that never have been discussed truly. There was never a plan or schedule on how to proceed or what to work on. It was like "Oh, did you see that API change? We have to catch up and fix wikipedia.py." An thus some people kind of counteracted ("commit" war) each other. Essentially the one having most free time to invest boarded the ship. As long as you work on your small piece of code and do not interfere with others it's fine but if you do - good luck... ;) Everybody just works on and cares for its "own few pieces of code" in there and thus prefer to judge the style most.
I would vote for some minimal leadership/management and that people working on basic or fundamental code (affecting everybody else) have to come together and reach an agreement first (before starting to code) and make it public. A long time ago I proposed a draft of a code of conduct I wanted the community to write and then to (optionally) agree on. A style guide should be part of that. We are to many developpers, having fluctuations etc. we need to give us a constitution.
Dr. Trigon
Message: 5 Date: Sun, 07 Aug 2016 15:01:50 +0000 From: Amir Ladsgroup ladsgroup@gmail.com To: Pywikibot discussion list pywikibot@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [pywikibot] Vital sign Message-ID: CA+ttme1m6-N57L14hHKyn088i38kUj4XNhqoHAdfu42Nvqf_xw@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
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.
I might be wrong and/or out-dated. Correct me please.
Best
On Sun, Aug 7, 2016 at 6:59 PM Bináris wikiposta@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@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/pywikibot