Strainu,
I, too, am glad for the discussion!
On Sat, 9 Mar 2019 at 22:31, Strainu strainu10@gmail.com wrote:
Let me start with a simple question, to put the references to wmf into context. You keep talking below about volunteer developers and how they can take over any project.
I'm confused by this. I didn't mention volunteer teams taking over projects at all, and I don't think that'd work except in very rare and limited circumstances. I was talking about people helping with bug triage on Phabricator.
While that's true, how many fully-volunteer teams are there? How does that number compare to the number of wmf teams? Am I right to assume the ratio is hugely in favor of wmf teams? Note: teams, not developers, since decisions on project management are usually done at team level.
See above; this wasn't what I meant.
In my experience in b2b contracts they don't keep it a secret, they usually have SLAs they respect, but ok, let's leave it at that.
Yes, I have more to say about this, but this would be tangential to this discussion. :-)
Responsibility for what? Developing and hosting MediaWiki? Helping communities concentrate on creating and attracting content without having to work around bugs? I'm sorry, but that's precisely one of the responsibilities of the wmf and this is what's discussed here.
Well, in your earlier emails in this thread, you mentioned the bug backlog steadily increasing, so that was what I was talking about. Is that not what you were talking about in your subsequent emails?
This is one thing that we agree on: nobody committed on anything. Ever. That's why I asked above: what does it take to have someone (anyone) at the WMF act upon these discussions?
My role in the Wikimedia tech community is tech ambassador above all else, so I'm caught in the middle here: I have to explain new features and technical decisions to people who don't care about php, js or server performance , but I also feel obligated to relay their requirements, as I see them, to the development team. This second process does not happen as smoothly as it should.
It's not healthy to ignore discussion after discussion and claim it's a community issue. It's not. It's a governance issue and it's growing every day.
I agree. It's not a community issue, it's a movement-wide one. I don't know how to solve it.
The projects belong to the community at large, not just the technical subcommunity. They are the ones affected by the bugs and also they are the ones that need our support. So why should they be ignored in taking this decision?
I'm confused by this too. I wasn't talking about ownership of the Wikimedia projects, I was again talking about the bug backlog, which anyone is welcome to get involved in simply by registering an account.
My proposal is to begin the discussion here: how can we better relay issues that are more important to communities than new features? How can we have a "community whishlist for bugs"?
The community wishlist explicitly accepts requests to fix bugs, as well requests for new features. So, is what you're asking for some process to supplement that?
Dan