2016-04-04 17:02 GMT+03:00 Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org:
The first question to answer is what information are you looking for when you want to measure developers' "productivity". What would be the motivation of that estimation? What is the motivation behind this thread?
One reason comes to me mind. My gut feeling is that we are not very good at consistently giving recognition for technical work. One possible reason is that we do not have clear and understandable metrics or promote those metrics enough. Nor am I aware of any process for awards and celebration (The Academy Awards would be an example in another context, also Wikipedian of the year).
As an example, I recall vaguely that during the Bugzilla times we used to have regular emails on wikitech-l with list of people who closed most bugs.
Having some metrics for different activities could stir up some healthy competition (also unhealthy if we are not careful) and of course there is a lot of important work that is not visible from the numbers only.
I am not expert on this subject, but I think developers (especially volunteers, but also others) are more likely to stick around if they feel that their work is recognized and appreciated. For the latter we already know that we should improve our code review process.
-Niklas