if i knew php (may it forever rot in hell) it would already be done. Since I dont know php it is up to someone else On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 9:24 PM, David Whitten <whitten(a)netcom.com> wrote:

We need some sort of think tank (well some thing with a better name) non-profit that people donate to. To have it hire people to crank out MediaWiki features outside of just the stuff WMF wants. I'd love to spend 80% of my time cranking out fringe MediaWiki features where what the community wants and what my specialties are intersect. -- ~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://daniel.friesen.name] On Sun, 26 Aug 2012 18:24:16 -0700, David Whitten <whitten(a)netcom.com> wrote:

Mark A. Hershberger wrote: Yes, what the world needs is another horribly confusingly named foundation. After we establish the MediaWiki Foundation, we can start work on the MikiWedia Foundation and the WediaMiki Foundation. ;-) In all seriousness, this has come up a few times before (on wikitech-l and mediawiki-l, I believe) and it deserves thoughtful consideration. I think the first step is to write a draft somewhere on MediaWiki.org detailing: * what you view as the current deficiencies of the Wikimedia Foundation owning/operating MediaWiki; and * what possible problems might be solved (or created!) by the establishment of a MediaWiki Foundation. A discussion of some analogous organizations (such as Mozilla) might be good as case studies to include in such a page as well. MZMcBride

Daniel Friesen wrote: Thank you for this! This is exactly what I had in mind. It's interesting, with a lot of (proposed) non-profits, the biggest concerns are engaging volunteers and generating income. With this proposed foundation, I think most of the typical concerns aren't in play. Instead, as Nikerabbit so deftly commented on the RFC's talk page, the big question is: What projects would a MediaWiki Foundation work on and how would those projects be chosen? This seems to be _the_ crucial issue. Getting grants from the Wikimedia Foundation or Wikia or others doesn't seem like it'd be very difficult. Assuming there was broad support for the creation of such a foundation from active MediaWiki developers (and related stakeholders), getting the Wikimedia Foundation to release the trademark and domain also doesn't seem like it would be very difficult. But there's a huge unresolved question about how, out of the infinite number of project ideas, a MediaWiki Foundation would choose which ideas to financially support. Cute. :-) MZMcBride

A number of comments: 1. The community is an a massive untapped resource for development. (They like to edit wikis, upload photos and also to code....) e.g. The amount of Template Code in about 20 times the size of MediaWiki code base. 2. I would seriouly look at maximizing its potential before allocating more funds for paid devlopment. 2.1 This means making it much easier to develop/test/deploy to Live wikis. (Short Tutorials, Code Samples, Documentation) 2.2 Create a culture where new coders are assigned to work with experinced coders to fix and maintaining existing code. 2.3 Motivating paid developer to work (i.e. review and direct) the community.... 2.4 Team up with Wikia and WikiHow Devteams on common features and on small wiki testing. 3. Looking at the metrics - The Mediawiki team is still not setup to do developement like other leading Open Souce development communities. Git is a step in the right direction but - the agility of the teams is too low to collaborate at the levels required. to accept "AnonymousDonation" of source from the community. While I applud Sumana who does a great job with the community - this works needs to be followed though organicaly by all members of the development teams or we will continue sending the community the message - that we prefer to delay fixing bugs, pay a premiunm for new features etc ... 4. Only once such issues are adressed would it become productive to engage more developers with WMF or external funding. 5. The one point I do agree with is that features the community asks for should be given due proirity and this process should be more transparent. Oren Bochman On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 8:10 PM, Mr. Gregory Varnum <gregory.varnum(a)gmail.com > I'll post more on the RFC, but I wonder if an entity within WMF would be > more appropriate and realistic. Utilizing the existing operations structure > would be far easier. Perhaps setup something like FDC to oversee priorities > and funds. > > My hunch is WMF would be far more likely to sign off on something they > retain a sense of sign-off on for the sake of maintaining the WMF projects > than having to deal with an independent entity that would have the legal > right to go rogue one day and not do what's in the best interest of the WMF > projects. I recognize to some extent that's the point, but looking down a 5 > year road of possibilities, is that something we'd ever want to happen? My > feeling is no and allowing WMF to maintain some level of authority in the > development of MediaWiki is in our collective best interests. From project > management, fundraising, usability, system resources and paid developer > support perspective. > > I would instead propose a MediaWiki department or collective (insert your > favorite term here). > > -Greg aka varnent > > ____________ > Sent from my iPhone. Apologies for any typos. A more detailed response may > be sent later. > > On Sep 1, 2012, at 10:42 PM, MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> > > Daniel Friesen wrote: > >> Done in true developer style "[RFC] MediaWiki Foundation": > >> > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/MediaWiki_Foundation > > > > Thank you for this! This is exactly what I had in mind. > > > > It's interesting, with a lot of (proposed) non-profits, the biggest > concerns > > are engaging volunteers and generating income. With this proposed > > foundation, I think most of the typical concerns aren't in play. > Instead, as > > Nikerabbit so deftly commented on the RFC's talk page, the big question > is: > > > > What projects would a MediaWiki Foundation work on and how would those > > projects be chosen? > > > > This seems to be _the_ crucial issue. Getting grants from the Wikimedia > > Foundation or Wikia or others doesn't seem like it'd be very difficult. > > Assuming there was broad support for the creation of such a foundation > from > > active MediaWiki developers (and related stakeholders), getting the > > Wikimedia Foundation to release the trademark and domain also doesn't > seem > > like it would be very difficult. But there's a huge unresolved question > > about how, out of the infinite number of project ideas, a MediaWiki > > Foundation would choose which ideas to financially support. > > > >> As you command oh great catalyst[1]. > >> [1] Hope you don't mind. I found it amusing. And it kind of fits in a > >> positive way. > > > > Cute. :-) > > > > MZMcBride > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikitech-l mailing list > > Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > -- Oren Bochman Office tel. 061 4921492 Mobile +36 30 866 6706 skype id: orenbochman e-mail: oren(a)romai-horizon.com site http://www.riverport.hu

On Mon, 03 Sep 2012 12:59:19 -0700, Oren Bochman <orenbochman(a)gmail.com> wrote: Volunteers have very little spare time, WMF employees' 20% time is also small, many of our bugs and large features are not useful to WMF's goal, and many of them are large enough simply by unavoidable fact that people avoid starting them when they only have spare time to work with. How is trying to 'maximize [the] potential' of an unrewarded group of people -- who are here on their own terms, not to be expected anything of -- going to help when many of the features we're expecting to get done are too big for someone to do in their spare time? We can try to fix the issues with getting the community involved. But I do not believe that doing that excludes also fixing the gap we have of people who have enough time to complete the large features we are missing. They are not mutually exclusive so there is nothing stopping us from doing both. Wikia has been trying to get some of their tweaks in lately. But in general they build custom stuff for anything they want. I'm not sure how much we can even collaborate with them on. This could be aided by having a MediaWiki Foundation, rather than be a reason to not have one. If the community had an idea of what replacement for Gerrit would work the foundation could hire someone to make it into something that could replace Gerrit and improve the experience. If there were a MediaWiki Foundation and people liked my Gareth idea, I wouldn't be opposed to working semi-full-time to turn it into a ready-to-use piece of software. -- ~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://daniel.friesen.name]

On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 12:08 AM, Daniel Friesen <daniel(a)nadir-seen-fire.com Some of us chatted on this subject at the tech portion of WMF's all-staff meetings today; while we didn't come to any firm conclusions at this time there's definitely a lot of interest in: * improving 3rd-party support (installer, dependencies, various features) * getting existing people doing support and contracting more organized * improving distro packages and packaging support * getting big MW users/customizers to share code a bit more (real-world example: WMF and Wikia are collaborating on the visual editor project rather than working on separate incompatible versions) I definitely want to keep the ideas and discussion flowing, especially from anybody who's already doing 3rd-party support and is interested in organizing a bit more. I've pointed people at the RFC page and hope for more good to come! -- brion