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