Maybe we the technical side of WMF could get a "communications advisor", some trusted volunteer from among the regular Wikimedians, like they've done at the Chapters Committee recently.

Thanks, Pharoos

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 11:13 PM, Eugene Zelenko eugene.zelenko@gmail.com wrote:

Hi!

There are many signs of miscommunications between technical side of WMF operations and outside worlds (users, administrators, external projects): periodical rattling on Planet Wikimedia, frustrations on TranslateWiki, almost impermanently growing number of bug reports in Bugzilla.

Typical example may include:

1. There is approved project X which still not created for Y days
2. Why new translations are not propagated to project X
3. Bug reports with opened years ago with several duplications

Definitely technical stuff members are limited resource. And even trivial fixes or problems may took much more time then expected. Code changes reviewing require efforts. But outside world don't know what is going on and could only make uneducated guesses and in best case scenario perceive technical stuff as black box

I think will be good idea to introduce some kind of technical stuff reporting and future planning (may be located on WMF site). It'll provide approximate answer for question 1; explain clearly situation with 2 (like "rXYZ introduced database scheme changes, currently updating WMF servers"). This will also highlight and communicate priorities to general public.

This is not about control over developers but about development process transparency, which I believe, will improve understanding and appreciation of job done from outside. Think how CodeReview improve transparency of MediaWiki code base maintaining.

Also development road map for next quarter/year may be considered.

Possible solution for problem 3:

• WMF may consider to allocate some part of development budget to

outside developers. It may be in form of bug fixing bounties, gifts or sponsoring travel/accommodation for participation in Wikimania/MediaWiki developers conference.

• Advertisement of "Google Summer of Code" jobs on WMF projects.

Eugene.

PS

Disclaimers: I write weekly reports on work and don't think is most interesting part of it. I don't believe that reports are best reflection of working process.

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