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On 11/05/2013 05:57 PM, Erik Moeller wrote:
tl;dr: I’d appreciate thoughts from the Wikimedia
technical community
at large whether the designation of individual technical contributors
as "architects" should be meaningful, and if so, how to expand it
beyond the original triumvirate (Brion, Tim & Mark), e.g. by
transitioning to a community-driven process for recognizing
architects.
Since this thread is about architecture and governance it makes sense to
step back and look at the architecture and governance of our technical
project(s).
In my humble opinion any step formalizing community roles should help
separating concepts that are still tangled:
1. Wikimedia Foundation professional titles and roles vs open source
community roles.
2. MediaWiki open source project meritocracy vs Wikimedia movement
meritocracy.
For instance, the nomination of a MediaWiki release team with Mark &
Markus was very helpful in these directions.
Open source community roles include admins, +2, release team members
and, it seems, architects. The handling and discussion about community
roles should be driven by the the open source project, not by the WMF.
The architecture of MediaWiki and the architecture of the Wikimedia
infrastructure are different things. The meritocracy of the MediaWiki
project and the meritocracy of Wikimedia tech should be different things.
Yes, there is a big overlap but the differences are relevant. If we talk
about software architecture and community roles in this open source
project, a thread like this could refer to "Architectural leadership in
the MediaWiki project" and could be driven by the current community
architects.
I hope this doesn sound too abstract or beyond the point of the thread
because I believe it is at the core of the question. I don't have an
opinion between the options suggested by Erik, because these questions
come first:
Do the three architects consider themselves assuming this role as WMF
employees or as community members?
Do they consider their roles to be part of a MediaWiki centric
meritocracy or a Wikimedia centric meritocracy?
What is their opinion about moving forward their current team of three?
Because these three long-term contributors have earned their community
reputation and are clearly smart, the chances are that many of us would
agree with any common answer they would agree with themselves.
- --
Quim Gil
Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil
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