I would like that all developers (others may participate as well of course) help setting up a list to define how development tasks completed could be rewarded.
This will be followed by a public poll to define how the rewards would be perceived...
and a private poll for developers to know what their opinion on the matter is
Please, contribute to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bounty
thanks :-)
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Anthere wrote:
I would like that all developers (others may participate as well of course) help setting up a list to define how development tasks completed could be rewarded.
Heh. I was going to suggest a payment system for developers after my project deadline next week.
The core idea of my proposal is:
* developers should be paid every month * developers who received money the previous month receive "voting power" (i.e. power to influence the proportions how money will be distributed) for the next month * how much total money is awarded for the completion of a particular feature or bugfix is determined by the donors: with every donation, the donor can say "this-and-this much of this donation (but no more than, say, 25% of the donation) should go towards rewarding the completion of this-and-that feature/bugfix".
Then the whole thing would work approx. like this:
* Alice donates $20 and says "$5 of this should go to feature X" * Bob donates $50 and says "$10 of this should go to feature X" * Charlie The Developer suggests an implementation plan for X * Doris The Developer makes a major start towards feature X * Emily The Developer finishes feature X * Developers who received money last month vote on what percentage of the feature was done by Charlie, Doris and Emily * The votes are averaged out and may yield something like Charlie - 5%, Doris - 75%, Emily - 20% * Charlie's Wikimedia account is increased by 75¢ * Doris's Wikimedia account is increased by $11.25 * Emily's account is increased by $3.00
This is my basic idea.
It is in part modelled after the "Bazaar" that LiveJournal once used to have (albeit only for one month, ironically). Timwi
On Sun, 25 Jul 2004 02:26:49 +0100, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Anthere wrote:
I would like that all developers (others may participate as well of course) help setting up a list to define how development tasks completed could be rewarded.
Heh. I was going to suggest a payment system for developers after my project deadline next week.
The core idea of my proposal is:
- developers should be paid every month
- developers who received money the previous month receive "voting power" (i.e. power to influence the proportions how money will be distributed) for the next month
- how much total money is awarded for the completion of a particular feature or bugfix is determined by the donors: with every donation, the donor can say "this-and-this much of this donation (but no more than, say, 25% of the donation) should go towards rewarding the completion of this-and-that feature/bugfix".
Then the whole thing would work approx. like this:
- Alice donates $20 and says "$5 of this should go to feature X"
- Bob donates $50 and says "$10 of this should go to feature X"
- Charlie The Developer suggests an implementation plan for X
- Doris The Developer makes a major start towards feature X
- Emily The Developer finishes feature X
- Developers who received money last month vote on what percentage of the feature was done by Charlie, Doris and Emily
- The votes are averaged out and may yield something like Charlie - 5%, Doris - 75%, Emily - 20%
- Charlie's Wikimedia account is increased by 75¢
- Doris's Wikimedia account is increased by $11.25
- Emily's account is increased by $3.00
This is my basic idea.
It is in part modelled after the "Bazaar" that LiveJournal once used to have (albeit only for one month, ironically). Timwi
It seems too convoluted and prone to conflicts to work effectively IMO. Donors are unlikely to identify all the features/bugs needing work. Likewise, we're unlikely to reach an agreement to the percentages. It might also lead to races between developers who start stepping on each other's work in order to get more money.
Dori wrote:
It seems too convoluted and prone to conflicts to work effectively IMO. Donors are unlikely to identify all the features/bugs needing work.
Aw, come on now. That's not really a problem. We can certainly give Jimbo and/or the Board of Trustees the additional power to assign up to 25% of unassigned donated money to development task.
The point is just anyone who personally thinks a particular feature or bug is really overdue, should be able to directly encourage developers by saying "I offer you $xyz for this". The more important a bug or feature is to the community, the greater the amount of money will be.
Likewise, we're unlikely to reach an agreement to the percentages.
I think you didn't understand this part. There is no agreement or consensus required. Everyone specifies percentages of their own (in some sort of designated user interface; they're kept secret). At the end of the month, they are averaged out.
Example: * I say: Alice has done 5% of feature X, Bob has done 10%, Charlie has done 85%. * You say: Alice has done 15% of feature X, Bob has done 15%, Charlie has done 70%. * Jimbo says: Alice has done 10% of feature X, Bob has done 26%, Charlie has done 64%.
Then the end-result will be: Alice - 10%, Bob - 17%, Charlie - 73%.
Of course, the averaging could optionally be weighted by the amount of money the voters received in the previous month.
It might also lead to races between developers who start stepping on each other's work in order to get more money.
I don't think that will be a problem. Such blatantly un-co-operative people can easily be penalised with very low percentages. People will know they will get more money if they use their common sense to behave within proper forms of etiquette.
Timwi
Timwi wrote:
The point is just anyone who personally thinks a particular feature or bug is really overdue, should be able to directly encourage developers by saying "I offer you $xyz for this". The more important a bug or feature is to the community, the greater the amount of money will be.
The point is that we currently have no decision making procedure for which features _should_ be implemented.
Encouraging donators to offer money for features they want to be realized would make the situation even worse since most people not involved in coding don't "wish" things which would be necessary from a developer's point of view.
My vision: * we should clean up these immense lists of feature wishes * we should establish priorities * the developers should say what makes sense and what doesn't * the developers should give an estimate for the most important features: ** how complicated it is to implement ** if someone's willing to do it ** or if there should be a bounty set out for it (because noone wants to do it or noone can do it)
greetings, elian
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
Timwi wrote:
The point is just anyone who personally thinks a particular feature or bug is really overdue, should be able to directly encourage developers by saying "I offer you $xyz for this". The more important a bug or feature is to the community, the greater the amount of money will be.
The point is that we currently have no decision making procedure for which features _should_ be implemented.
Encouraging donators to offer money for features they want to be realized would make the situation even worse since most people not involved in coding don't "wish" things which would be necessary from a developer's point of view.
My vision:
- we should clean up these immense lists of feature wishes
- we should establish priorities
- the developers should say what makes sense and what doesn't
- the developers should give an estimate for the most important features:
** how complicated it is to implement ** if someone's willing to do it ** or if there should be a bounty set out for it (because noone wants to do it or noone can do it)
greetings, elian
Elian is absolutely correct.
I just had a look at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.3_comments_and_bug_reports
Ihmo, that is just as a village pump; it might be nice to sweep the floor sometimes :-)
On top of estimates listed by Elian, I would add estimate of "how long could it take to be developped".
ant
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
The point is that we currently have no decision making procedure for which features _should_ be implemented.
I wouldn't have thought this decision was particularly hard.
Encouraging donators to offer money for features they want to be realized would make the situation even worse since most people not involved in coding don't "wish" things which would be necessary from a developer's point of view.
Again, as I said, 25% of the money that donors don't explicitly assign to a bug or feature, should be assignable by someone else. The Board of Trustees was a suggestion, but if you think the developers should have some say about this, then certainly we can come up with an averaging-percentage system for this too (and give the Board of Trustees permanent voting power). Something like:
At the beginning of Month A, * I say: Feature X is worth $10, Y is worth $20, Z is worth $25 * You say: Feature X is worth $10, Y is worth $50, Z isn't worth anything * Jimbo says: Feature X is worth $22, Y is worth $26, Z is worth $11
Then we get: X = $14, Y = $32, Z = $12
Again, the averaging could optionally be weighted by voting power.
Timwi
On Sun, 25 Jul 2004 02:51:19 +0100, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Dori wrote:
It seems too convoluted and prone to conflicts to work effectively IMO. Donors are unlikely to identify all the features/bugs needing work.
Aw, come on now. That's not really a problem. We can certainly give Jimbo and/or the Board of Trustees the additional power to assign up to 25% of unassigned donated money to development task.
I don't know that we could. It might piss off some donors if we said we'll use this for hardware, and we end up using it for software features. Although we do have some money that wasn't donated, and we could certainly advertise that doners could donate toward a specific feature/bug. However, that's not what I was talking about. I simply thought that the process had too many rules to be properly understood and to work well.
The point is just anyone who personally thinks a particular feature or bug is really overdue, should be able to directly encourage developers by saying "I offer you $xyz for this". The more important a bug or feature is to the community, the greater the amount of money will be.
Likewise, we're unlikely to reach an agreement to the percentages.
I think you didn't understand this part. There is no agreement or consensus required. Everyone specifies percentages of their own (in some sort of designated user interface; they're kept secret). At the end of the month, they are averaged out.
Yes, I did misunderstand that. I still don't see it as a fair method though. Averages could give some screwey results which might leave people who made more work, receive less compensation.
Example:
- I say: Alice has done 5% of feature X, Bob has done 10%, Charlie has
done 85%.
- You say: Alice has done 15% of feature X, Bob has done 15%, Charlie
has done 70%.
- Jimbo says: Alice has done 10% of feature X, Bob has done 26%, Charlie
has done 64%.
Then the end-result will be: Alice - 10%, Bob - 17%, Charlie - 73%.
Of course, the averaging could optionally be weighted by the amount of money the voters received in the previous month.
It might also lead to races between developers who start stepping on each other's work in order to get more money.
I don't think that will be a problem. Such blatantly un-co-operative people can easily be penalised with very low percentages. People will know they will get more money if they use their common sense to behave within proper forms of etiquette.
It's not necessarily blatant. It could even be inadvertant, or it could be as simple as if I am going to do this part I might as well do that part or I would prefer that part to work like I plan it. Coding is much harder to do collaboratively than editing (unless we're talking about unrelated parts).
Dori wrote:
On Sun, 25 Jul 2004 02:51:19 +0100, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Dori wrote:
It seems too convoluted and prone to conflicts to work effectively IMO. Donors are unlikely to identify all the features/bugs needing work.
Aw, come on now. That's not really a problem. We can certainly give Jimbo and/or the Board of Trustees the additional power to assign up to 25% of unassigned donated money to development task.
I don't know that we could. It might piss off some donors if we said we'll use this for hardware, and we end up using it for software features. Although we do have some money that wasn't donated, and we could certainly advertise that doners could donate toward a specific feature/bug.
The prize we had in june has no string attached, so might be spent for rewarding developers. Also, I think that membership fees and donation should make it possible that the donor or the member may be able to indicate how if wishes part of the money to be spent. For now, I suppose we have three "specials" * I would prefer that this be assigned to hardware * I would prefer that this be assigned to software development * I would prefer that this be assigned to wikireaders production distribution
ant
Dori wrote:
On Sun, 25 Jul 2004 02:51:19 +0100, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
It seems too convoluted and prone to conflicts to work effectively IMO. Donors are unlikely to identify all the features/bugs needing work.
Aw, come on now. That's not really a problem. We can certainly give Jimbo and/or the Board of Trustees the additional power to assign up to 25% of unassigned donated money to development task.
I don't know that we could. It might piss off some donors if we said we'll use this for hardware, and we end up using it for software features.
We shouldn't be saying we'll be using the money for anything particular. That just ties our hands.
I simply thought that the process had too many rules to be properly understood and to work well.
"Too many rules"? Are you saying it's too complicated and you don't understand how it's supposed to work? It's not complicated at all; as I said, the LiveJournal Bazaar worked similar to this, and developers there were perfectly happy with it and understood how it worked.
If you have any specific questions about the system, feel free to ask. Please don't dismiss it solely on the grounds that you don't understand it; if you have any specific criticism that you think makes the system unsuitable, I will happily accept that. Otherwise, I would really like to give this a try, at least for a few month until we can definitely say that it doesn't work well. I'll do all the necessary coding for the voting interface, the averaging, etc.
Yes, I did misunderstand that. I still don't see it as a fair method though. Averages could give some screwey results which might leave people who made more work, receive less compensation.
It is perfectly fair. Think about it. Who did "more" or "less" work is completely subjective. Everyone has their own perception of what percentage of the work was done by certain people. By averaging out the percentages, we create some sort of "collective subjective judgment", and everybody's own judgment will be part of it.
If you're afraid that people might cheat the system by giving ridiculous percentages, this isn't a problem either. Firstly, only people who have actually done development in the last month, and the Board of Trustees perhaps, have voting power. You won't get much voting power if you're not a responsible individual. Hence, when averaging stuff, the "irresponsible percentages" will be given much less weight.
Additionally, of course, you shouldn't be able to vote for yourself. :)
It might also lead to races between developers who start stepping on each other's work in order to get more money.
I don't think that will be a problem. Such blatantly un-co-operative people can easily be penalised with very low percentages. People will know they will get more money if they use their common sense to behave within proper forms of etiquette.
It's not necessarily blatant. It could even be inadvertant, or it could be as simple as if I am going to do this part I might as well do that part or I would prefer that part to work like I plan it. Coding is much harder to do collaboratively than editing (unless we're talking about unrelated parts).
A bug or feature should be assigned to a particular developer (this is a core feature of BugZilla, which I'm still hoping we will switch to in the long run). It will be easy to enforce a policy that only the current assignee of the bug may work on it. (I admit that the fact that this worked in LiveJournal is no surprise because nobody has CVS access there and people only submit patches to BugZilla. But even on Wikipedia, I suppose CVS access should be given only to responsible developers who will follow this rule.)
Any more questions? ;-) Timwi
Anthere wrote:
I would like that all developers (others may participate as well of course) help setting up a list to define how development tasks completed could be rewarded.
This will be followed by a public poll to define how the rewards would be perceived...
and a private poll for developers to know what their opinion on the matter is
Please, contribute to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bounty
thanks :-)
Hello,
Personally, having users happy when I fix a bug or implement a new feature is enough for me. Imho a simple thanks through irc is more rewarding than 10 US$.
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