Hi,
On 10/6/22 07:38, Kate Chapman wrote:
I'm curious about the perception of TechCom being
more community
oriented than the new process. During the time I was responsible for
facilitating TechCom it was entirely represented by Wikimedia Foundation
staff, the exception being when Daniel Kinzler worked for Wikimedia
Deutschland.
How many non-WMF/WMDE staff sent proposals through the TechCom RfC
process? A bunch. How many have used TDF? 0.5 of a proposal maybe.
Yes, TechCom was composed of nearly entirely WMF staff, but that didn't
matter. Anyone was invited to submit a proposal through the process, and
usually it would get a public meeting/discussion with input on how to
move it forwards. You could just show up and participate in a meeting if
you were interested in that topic, you didn't need to agree to a 6-month
long commitment.
On the flip side, here's the first sentence from the TDF wiki page: "The
Wikimedia technical decision making process empowers teams to make
decisions that are..."
It clearly states this is about empowering [WMF/WMDE] teams, not anyone
else. That's a very different mission from what TechCom did. Don't get
me wrong, TechCom had plenty of flaws, but I would not put transparency
nor inclusion of community among them.
The idea behind the current representation is to make
sure
the right stakeholders are identified to help make a decision, not that
the representatives are voting on a decision or anything like that.
This is not what has been said publicly. For example, "Some of us try to
proxy vote for what we understand technical community including the
poorly defined "third party" users are interested in..."[1]
Regarding the public TechCom meetings. There
aren't a bunch of secret
Technical Decision Forum meetings going on now that people aren't being
invited to. Is the desire to have an IRC meeting at some point in the
decision making process to gain input? Or are there other ways people
think would be better for contributing?
It might not be meetings, and it might not be anyone's intention to be
exclusionary, but there is definitely secret things going on.
For example, myself and at least 3 WMF staff members have been asking
for information related to the "Authentication Experiments 2022" project
to be made public and have been met with total silence[2]. I'm not
really surprised anymore, this appears to be the default posture when it
comes to literally anyone trying to get info from the TDF (see Zabe's
email, or unanswered comments on Phabricator, etc.).
The TDF clearly has no teeth either, since people can just withdraw
their proposals from the process after receiving objections and
implement them anyways[3].
At this point I think we should stop trying to make the TDF a legitimate
body and work on setting up a functional, inclusive and representative
Technology Council.
[1]
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T293323#7485829
[2] Requests made in May (x2), July and September
[3]
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T301724#7942826
Thanks,
-- Kunal / Legoktm