Funding bot maintenance - Wikimedia-l

22 Feb 2015

One of the areas that I would like to see the foundation putting in money is for the
running and maintenance of wanted orphan bots. Wanted in the sense that editors are using
them or would if they were still running, and orphan in the sense that the original
developer isn't around or available to run them/migrate them to the latest platform.

If we work on the premise that community funds should go for things that volunteers want
to have happen but aren't volunteering to do, then this is a classic and uncontentious
niche. Programmers like to write new code and solve new problems, but the person with the
idea or who writes new code doesn't always have the time and motivation to keep
maintaining and running that code, let alone creating slightly bespoke version for scores
of our thousand wikis.

Now it may be that we are in an unusual situation that the migration from toolserver to
labs has cost us a number of bots that would otherwise have continued for years. But there
will always be demand to localise existing bots for wikis where they don't currently
run, and in the long run all of our volunteer bot writers are likely to move on.

Employing a python programmer or two somewhere cheap like India or South America would not
be a huge investment for the foundation, but it would be a valuable service to the
community, and unlike mediawiki development this could be completely volunteer driven with
wikimedians deciding which bots are worth maintaining and their relative priority.

Disclosure: whilst I'm not pitching for the money for this, I would be front of the
queue to ask such a maintainer to take on bots that I used to use the results of and in at
least one case which I designed.

Regards

Jonathan/WereSpielChequers

...
  On 22 Feb 2015, at 11:42,
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 ------------------------------

 Message: 3
 Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2015 17:39:31 -0800
 From: Erik Moeller &lt;erik(a)wikimedia.org&gt;
 To: Wikimedia Mailing List &lt;wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt;
 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] Types of allowed projects for
    grant funding (renamed)
 Message-ID:
    &lt;CAEg6ZHmFQ-K8tksj==b-cx1aNKCc+wy1gCfK+0+pkis38uk5zA(a)mail.gmail.com&gt;
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  On Sat, Feb 21, 2015 at 4:19 PM, MZMcBride
&lt;z(a)mzmcbride.com&gt; wrote:

 Erik seems to be pushing toward a model that favors using OAuth and the
 MediaWiki API over "deep integration" that comes with a MediaWiki
 extension. He recently mentioned this here:
 https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/glamtools/2015-February/000343.html

 He may be right that development for deployment to the Wikimedia
 Foundation cluster may not be the best approach for every project, but I
 think this view overlooks all the very real benefits that extension
 deployment includes.  
 I don't think one size fits all -- every case needs to be judged on
 its merits, though in the case of GLAMWikiToolset I am definitely
 arguing for considering separation from the MediaWiki codebase because
 it is so highly specialized. I also think we sometimes still have a
 tendency to underestimate the value of non-MediaWiki tools and apps,
 even though they've contributed millions of edits to Wikimedia wikis
 already (though to be fair, without Magnus Manske the tally would not
 be nearly as awesome).

 Regarding the criteria for grantmaking, I think this initial blanket
 prohibition against all MediaWiki extension development is indeed
 something we ought to revisit. These grants can cover tens of
 thousands of dollars of paid work, so we shouldn't treat the review
 and integration burden lightly, and avoiding stalled projects that are
 going nowhere was a reason I advocated for this restriction to begin
 with. But as long as there is a good plan in place -- either not
 significantly dependent on WMF or with clear commitments negotiated
 upfront -- I do agree that the risks can be significantly mitigated.

 Damon, Luis and members of their teams will need to weigh in on this,
 and will want to think through the implications for their respective
 areas, but it's a good conversation to have -- keeping in mind that
 Luis is just starting in his new role, so please give him at least a
 few days to get up to speed. ;-)

 Erik
 -- 
 Erik Möller
 VP of Product & Strategy, Wikimedia Foundation

 ------------------------------

 Message: 4
 Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2015 18:12:02 -0800
 From: Luis Villa &lt;lvilla(a)wikimedia.org&gt;
 To: Wikimedia Mailing List &lt;wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt;
 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] Types of allowed projects for
    grant funding (renamed)
 Message-ID:
    &lt;CAM2wSz6x5DQdLjNwjS3Va_SU57nUp0UhXLQ6zktAhEeY2t4SEg(a)mail.gmail.com&gt;
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

  On Sat, Feb 21, 2015 at 5:39 PM, Erik Moeller
&lt;erik(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote:

 Damon, Luis and members of their teams will need to weigh in on this,
 and will want to think through the implications for their respective
 areas, but it's a good conversation to have -- keeping in mind that
 Luis is just starting in his new role, so please give him at least a
 few days to get up to speed. ;-)  
 Thanks for at least a few hours of cushion, Erik ;)

 I'm a big believer in the power of/need for software tools, and at least
 philosophically I'm very open to funding software development outside the
 Foundation (though obviously there are lots of pragmatic difficulties -
 code review, etc.) So, yes, as part of our broader review of how we support
 communities and contributor growth, CE will look at funding code very
 seriously.

 Luis

 -- 
 Luis Villa
 Sr. Director of Community Engagement
 Wikimedia Foundation