2017-05-11 17:16 GMT+03:00 Brad Jorsch (Anomie) bjorsch@wikimedia.org:
On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 7:41 PM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
How is duplicating a default value to hundreds of wikis, in a separate code base with its own user interface, a sane or desirable architecture?
Sane or desirable? Probably not. But it seems a lot easier for someone to get that working than to design, implement, and deploy global preferences in MediaWiki, either in core or as an extension.
Of course, if someone does want to work on implementing a global preferences extension and doing the work to get it deployed, then more power to them. A better solution to be sure, but it'll likely take more time and effort.
Or, I suppose, someone can try to convince a WMF team's PM that it should be prioritized above the team's existing work. But that seems like the least timely way to get it done, and I can give no estimate of the probability of success.
My understanding is that the code is kind of there already, but it would have to be deployed, and before deployment it would have to be reviewed. So the manager to convince would be the manager of the team that needs to review and deploy it.
Being the PM of the Language team, I couldn't support global preferences (and lots of other global things) any more strongly, as they would be clearly beneficial to the users of multiple wikis. But in the current organizational structure, the implementation and the deployment of global preferences is much closer to the realm of the MediaWiki Platform team.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore