On Jan 22, 2015 6:43 PM, "Brian Wolff" bawolff@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 22, 2015 2:08 PM, "Tyler Romeo" tylerromeo@gmail.com wrote:
I think that’s kind of insulting to those of us who don’t work at the
WMF. Just because they hire the “best and the brightest” does not mean there are not people out there who are just as intelligent, if not more, but do not or cannot work for the WMF for whatever reason. Restricting Archcom to WMF employees is just about the stupidest thing you could do for an open source software project. It defeats the entire purpose of MediaWiki being open-source.
I apologize, i didnt mean to imply non wmf employees are any less bright than wmf employees.
What i more meant to say (which i didnt express very well) is that the arch comitte (essentially bdfl by comittee in my understanding. Not just about architecture but also "vision" for mediawiki) should be composed of leaders of the community who have been in the mediawiki community a long time, and have fairly universal respect due to demonstrating "wisdom" over the long term.
I dont think arch comitte should be composed solely of wmf'ers, i think selection should be made entirely independent of affiliation (so working for wmf should not disqualify someone). It just happens that the people who i think are likely candidates all happen to currently work for the wmf/wm-de.
This assumes of course that wmf wont force its employees to have certain opinions. I dont think they have any intention of doing so.
After all, look at the current dev summit attendence list. How many people on that list: *has been fairly regularly active devs for at least 5 years *has demonstrated "wisdom" (however you define that) *does not currently work for wmf
Otoh perhaps other people have a different conception of what the arch comitte should "be" or what the criteria for membership should be.
--bawolff
Ah, I see. Yeah then it was just a misunderstanding. I completely agree with you on that point. I would be fine with an entirely-WMF ArchCom as long as being in the WMF was not one of the criteria they were selected because of.
-- Tyler Romeo 0x405D34A7C86B42DF
On January 22, 2015 at 17:51:59, Brian Wolff (bawolff@gmail.com) wrote:
I apologize, i didnt mean to imply non wmf employees are any less bright than wmf employees.
What i more meant to say (which i didnt express very well) is that the arch comitte (essentially bdfl by comittee in my understanding. Not just about architecture but also "vision" for mediawiki) should be composed of leaders of the community who have been in the mediawiki community a long time, and have fairly universal respect due to demonstrating "wisdom" over the long term.
Bawolff, I don't think the list of attendees of the current SF meeting is indicative of anything other than of the difficulty we have in talking with non-Wikimedia people; and even within Wikimedia, between WMF and non-WMF. Cf. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:MediaWiki_Developer_Summit_2015#Name .
As for «fairly regularly active devs for at least 5 years», we simply have no idea how many such persons there are outside our fishbowl. If, before even starting, we already exclude the iceberg of invisible people and use cases, no wonder we stay where we are. You don't need a committee to reinforce and calcify existing trends and structures.
If there is a need to expand/strengthen/diversify the committee, I'd rather look for members able to enlarge the MediaWiki contributor base in new directions. Mark mentioned some examples. Again, all this in the assumption we suffer from disunity, see my previous message.
Nemo
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