Separate thread. I'm not sure which list is
appropriate.
*... but not all the way to sentience
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uplift_War>.*
The annual community wishlist survey (implemented by a small team,
possibly in isolation?) may not be the mechanism for prioritizing large
changes, but the latter also deserves a community-curated priority queue.
To complement the staff-maintained priorities in phab ~
For core challenges (like Commons stability and capacity), I'd be
surprised if the bottleneck were people or budget.
Currently there are zero people and no budget for multimedia, aside from
whatever work I and others manage to get done here there. And I'm afraid I
don't scale.
It's Wikimedia Foundation's job to assign budget and people here. I've been
hoping for years that this will happen, and continue to hope.
-- brion
We do need a shared understanding of what issues are most important and
most urgent, and how to solve them. For instance, a
way to turn Amir's
recent email about the problem (and related phab tickets) into a family of
persistent, implementable specs and proposals and their articulated
obstacles.
An issue tracker like phab is good for tracking the progress and
dependencies of agreed-upon tasks, but weak for discussing what is
important, what we know about it, how to address it. And weak for
discussing ecosystem-design issues that are important and need persistent
updating but don't have a simple checklist of steps.
So where is the best current place to discuss scaling Commons, and all
that entails? Some examples from recent discussions (most from the wm-l
thread below):
- *Uploads*: Support for large file uploads / Keeping bulk upload tools
online
- *Video*: Debugging + rolling out the videojs
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T248418> player
- *Formats*: Adding support for CML
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T18491> and dozens of other
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297514> common high-demand file
formats
- *Thumbs*: Updating thumbor <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T216815>
and librsvg <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193352>
- *Search*: WCQS still <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297454> down
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297454>, noauth option
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297995> wanted for tools
- *General*: Finish implementing redesign
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T28741> of the image table
SJ
On Wed, Dec 29, 2021 at 6:26 AM Amir Sarabadani <ladsgroup(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I'm not debating your note. It is very valid
that we lack proper support
for multimedia stack. I myself wrote a detailed rant on how broken it is
[1] but three notes:
- Fixing something like this takes time, you need to assign the budget
for it (which means it has to be done during the annual planning) and if
gets approved, you need to start it with the fiscal year (meaning July
2022) and then hire (meaning, write JD, do recruitment, interview lots of
people, get them hired) which can take from several months to years. Once
they are hired, you need to onboard them and let them learn about our
technical infrastructure which takes at least two good months. Software
engineering is not magic, it takes time, blood and sweat. [2]
- Making another team focus on multimedia requires changes in planning,
budget, OKR, etc. etc. Are we sure moving the focus of teams is a good
idea? Most teams are already focusing on vital parts of wikimedia and
changing the focus will turn this into a whack-a-mole game where we fix
multimedia but now we have critical issues in security or performance.
- Voting Wishlist survey is a good band-aid in the meantime. To at least
address the worst parts for now.
I don't understand your point tbh, either you think it's a good idea to
make requests for improvements in multimedia in the wishlist survey or you
think it's not. If you think it's not, then it's offtopic to this thread.
[1]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org…
[2] There is a classic book in this topic called "The Mythical Man-month"
On Wed, Dec 29, 2021 at 11:41 AM Gnangarra <gnangarra(a)gmail.com> wrote:
we have to vote for regular maintenance and
support for
essential functions like uploading files which is the core mission of
Wikimedia Commons
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