Roan Kattouw wrote:
This'll probably take months, so I know I'm asking for quite a bit of patience here. But I believe Aryeh is right that regular code deployments will cure most of the problems we've been discussing, and I'm willing to bet on that by putting my disagreements with other people regarding this topic aside for the next few months, until we've gotten back to regular code deployment, at which point we can re-evaluate. My understanding is that Aryeh is also doing that, and I call upon you all to join us.
Letting tensions and frustrations sit for months is a fantastic way to guarantee a much larger problem in the future. MediaWiki is a community-driven project and the community is being driven away. This isn't hyperbole, it's a statement of fact.
Roan Kattouw (also) wrote:
We need to come up with a plan that takes us back to regular (weekly?) deployments. I think cleaning up the CR backlog is an uncontroversial first step. What I have in mind personally is to have this move to regular deployments coincide with the 1.17 release, but that should be discussed in a separate thread I guess.
The problem with mailing lists is that they're great for creating a rallying cry, but shortly after the thread dies, so does the action. (Scan the archives for discussion about something like a parser rewrite or category intersection sometime and you can see what I mean.)
The issues surrounding code deployment, branches, and special exemptions for staff-written code are well documented at this point. And the solutions are all fairly readily apparent. It isn't time to say "we need to come up a plan," it's time to _implement_ a plan.
The alternative is that any implementation of a proper plan to fix the backlog becomes a typical Wikimedia procrastination situation where the deadline for moving forward is always "after X," where X is the next MediaWiki release, the next fundraiser, the next Wikimania, the next whatever.
Erik Moeller wrote:
I think that we agree more than we disagree here. Obviously a huge code review and deployment backlog is bad for everyone.
You're the Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. You're directly responsible for the Chief Technical Officer, and as a consequence, the tech staff. You say you agree that the code backlog is a problem and you're in a position of power to address it.
So what's your plan of action? What resources are you committing in order to fix this problem?
MZMcBride