Hi Lila,
May I request a Tech Talk about efficiency and quality of Wikimedia
software development? It would be interesting to have you, Erik and Damon
as presenters.
Thanks,
Pine
On Oct 7, 2014 9:07 AM, "Lila Tretikov" <lila(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Are you in? Or are you out? That is the question.
Lila
P.S. If you'd like to talk about operational efficiency and quality of
software manufacturing -- please start a thread on that. We are deep into
working on that here, so would be happy to share the love!
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 7:36 AM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 1:40 PM, Milos Rancic
<millosh(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Because of that, I am very happy to see somebody
with courage and
integrity in the top management. Such person has much larger potential
to create the momentum and build community enthusiasm again.
Is someone saying "I have courage and integrity" all it takes to convince
you that they are indeed possessed of those qualities? Every politician
says that. I'd reserve judgment and wait to see their performance.
Besides, what has been lacking is not courage. Creating the
Superprotection
feature, pressing ahead with the Flow concept in
the face of massive
community skepticism and rolling out a very poorly implemented
VisualEditor
undoubtedly took courage of a sort.
What's been lacking is an ability to convince the community through
argument rather than the exercise of power, an ability to understand the
community's needs and concerns, and sheer old-fashioned engineering
competence – something the VisualEditor signally failed to demonstrate.
Jimmy Wales acknowledged that there have been huge problems. Recently, a
Wikipedian quoted the following to him on his talk page:
*“The Foundation has a miserable cost/benefit ratio and for years now has
spent millions on software development without producing anything that
actually works; the feeling is that the whole operation is held together
with the goodwill of its volunteers and the more stupid Foundation
managers
are seriously hacking them off”,*
Wales replied[1] (my emphasis),
*“Other than the extreme nature of the comment (‘without producing
ANYTHING’ is too strong) why do you think I would disagree with that?
This
is precisely the point of the new CEO and new
direction – to radically
improve the software development process. That statement, while too
strong,
is indeed an accurate depiction of what has gone
wrong. I’ve been
frustrated as well about the endless controversies about the rollout of
inadequate software not developed with sufficient community consultation
and without proper incremental rollout to catch showstopping bugs.”*
I don't want to be unduly churlish to Damon, who deserves his welcome
here
like any new team member, but given the above
background I personally
would
have appreciated an intimation from Damon that he
is aware of the
problems
to date, that roll-outs will be handled more
competently on his watch,
and
that the community will not be presented with
substandard software again.
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=n…
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