Nick Jenkins schreef:
The next thing to consider is what has priority, the continued unabated rush to get new functions in, or is it wise to stop including such functionality until some of the projects that /are /prioritised by the WMF become a reality.
But a significant number of features are written by people who are volunteers. Try telling volunteers that "the WMF has not prioritized that feature", and see what happens!
Both Brion and Tim are no volunteers, it is perfectly reasonable for the WMF to indicate that specific things have a priority. This may mean that people do not get their attention with what they volunteered to develop at the moment they are done with it, it would be perfectly reasonable. Because not only developers are volunteers. You make it as if it is you developers that dictate what happens. As to Brion's time, you can only get so many pork chops out of a pig. :)
If this means that Brion does not do anything but SUL for a month on new functionality until SUL gets done, it would be in your interest to help him in order to get your stuff in production.
If you want SUL done, and you take a "means-justify-the-ends" approach, then the best approach is probably to kidnap him, fly him to Antarctica, with a laptop, various test boxen, a supply of tea, and dump him by himself in an isolated hut with adequate power & food, but no internet connection whatsoever, and no phones, no post (i.e. no way of communicating with the outside world) and no other responsibilities _whatsoever_ besides doing SUL, and don't release him until it's done.
This would be completely and utterly insane. As I indicated before, the first priority is the continued running of the services. With Brion and or Tim flown to Antartica, these services are likely to suffer a lot. Then and only then comes new functionality including SUL.
Failing that, stop asking so few people to do so much stuff, and then acting surprised when the non-urgent items get pushed back. For me, the remarkable thing is not that SUL isn't done, but rather that anything has been done about SUL at *all*.
We surely disagree on what has urgency, to me the first thing after what has already been given priority is the needed improvement of the basic running of the localisation for languages like Marathi. It is ridiculous to consider that things that are "nice to have" are given priority when things that are manifestly broken are not fixed. Given that the Wikimedia Foundation claims that it is important that people are able to edit in their language, the consequence is that this is given priority. Failing to do so is what is considered to be discrimination.
Given that Brion is the release manager, he is the one who has to look at the code that Nikerabbit has produced. It has to be accepted and implemented. It is code that is there, it needs his stamp of approval. When you think that all what you produce in code should have priority over what will help operationally on the most basic level, please explain.
Thanks, GerardM