It's been a hectic few weeks for many of you who subscribe to this list, preparing for and then carrying out the 1.18 upgrade, with all its last minute patches and after-the-fact patches. It is easy for those of us uninvolved in the process to play armchair quarterback, and to decry that the upgrade failed to be seamless. I recognize that there was beta testing going on at some of the smaller projects over the last little while, but many of the things that were noticed once the "big" wikis were upgraded may never have been triggered (or were considered unimportant) in the smaller projects; software features that become indispensible on more mature projects might be rarely used in those who are still in their infancy.

This has been the first upgrade that I've really paid a lot of attention to, and I was really impressed with the response of the Ops team, in particular Mark Hershberger's work at the English Wikipedia Village Pump (Technical). Having an experienced Ops team member calmly addressing issues identified on-project, and making sure that there was a matching bugzilla, was a major factor in keeping the level of community distress at a minimum during the immediate aftermath of the upgrade.

I know there's still much to do, both in resolving issues from this upgrade and in addressing other issues for the next upgrade. But I thought the tech team might appreciate knowing that it went pretty smoothly from this non-techie's point of view.

Best,

Risker (Administrator, English Wikipedia)