Thanks for articulating this very clearly Faidon! More inline...
On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 3:11 AM, Faidon Liambotis faidon@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 02:30:22PM -0800, Rob Lanphier wrote:
Ultimately, WMF TechOps has correctly blocked a lot of software making it to the Wikimedia cluster that hasn't been through the RFC process, even though they themselves weren't entirely clear about the scope. Wikimedia Foundation leadership has an (unfortunately) long history of being
unclear
about the scope. I share the blame for this. This is my attempt to clarify.
This is true, although the word "blocked" is perhaps a bit strong.
We generally prefer large architectural changes to be discussed with a wider group across the movement, than just us and the person or team that proposed them. [ArchCom seems to be more diverse than Ops, and
probably better than leaving it up to Ops to keep organic growth under
control] That said, there have been important deployments that have bypassed the RfC process entirely (including proposals that resulted into staffed WMF teams) and others that did go via the RfC process, but the resulting feedback wasn't incorporated into the final design (for various reasons).
I definitely appreciate it when Ops has been a firm stakeholder in this process. Mark unofficially dropped out of ArchCom back in August, which I only recently acknowledged on the ArchCom page https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Architecture_committee (sorry!) The remaining ArchCom members have been very good at ensuring that Ops' voice is reflected in the decisions (e.g. the schema change update to the development policy https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Development_policy)
It seems reasonable for y'all to object to deployments of code for which consensus isn't clear. We shouldn't expect you to be the police, and you need to be careful about maintaining the trust and goodwill of the broader community (and not seen as an obstacle to progress), but when you see <something> that doesn't look right, a polite note to wikitech-l saying "I'm confused about <something>" would be greatly appreciated.
It's also worth noting that the opposite has happened as well: TechOps
has blocked the production deployment of features that the MediaWiki ArchComm has approved. The fact that an optional feature is considered good enough for the MediaWiki architecture does not mean that it's appropriate for Wikimedia's complex and demanding production environment -- or for being worked on by the Wikimedia Foundation, for that matter.
This is a failure of process we should address. ArchCom shouldn't approve things that don't make sense for our environment.
That said, we want Wikimedia software to improve quickly. We should aspire to incorporate the best elements of the "bold, revert, discuss https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bold,_revert,_discuss" consensus-building process that serves many of our projects well. We should endeavor to take acceptable risks for things that are easily reversible, and only challenge those risks where the consequences of failure aren't clearly understood and/or disproportionately fall on the wrong people.
This is especially true given that ArchComm really has absolutely no say
in resourcing and a given feature may not have secured funding (people, hardware etc.)
Awww....you're mail was so great, and then you ended with this! Are you saying that the only real power in this world belongs to people with control of the money?
Rob