Recent threads have demonstrated there seems to be some disconnect about what is expected about maintainership and ownership of repositories.
This has spilled over into talk about the code of conduct, IMHO specifically because some people are trying to avoid being bound by it or protesting its existence by looking for loopholes to avoid it. Which I think is a shame, but I don't expect much constructive talk to come out of that thread.
I think we should though clarify that code repositories on gerrit and diffusion are not owned by any one person, but are technical community spaces held in common for the benefit of the Wikimedia movement. And yes, that means sometimes your favorite project will get documentation commits you personally didn't like.
If this has been unclear, it should be made clear. If that means some people host their self-maintained code outside of Wikimedia technical spaces, then that is their decision and I respect it.
If some kind of official kerfluffle is needed to decide this, let's talk about how to do that.
-- brion
This is outrageous. Not only are you blatantly misrepresenting what various people are saying in the other thread and their intentions, you are now suggesting that repository owners do not in fact get to decide what goes in their repository and what does not, as if this has been the case all along. It is incredibly ironic how against the spirit of the CoC this all is.
On 9 June 2018 at 16:58, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
Recent threads have demonstrated there seems to be some disconnect about what is expected about maintainership and ownership of repositories.
This has spilled over into talk about the code of conduct, IMHO specifically because some people are trying to avoid being bound by it or protesting its existence by looking for loopholes to avoid it. Which I think is a shame, but I don't expect much constructive talk to come out of that thread.
I think we should though clarify that code repositories on gerrit and diffusion are not owned by any one person, but are technical community spaces held in common for the benefit of the Wikimedia movement. And yes, that means sometimes your favorite project will get documentation commits you personally didn't like.
If this has been unclear, it should be made clear. If that means some people host their self-maintained code outside of Wikimedia technical spaces, then that is their decision and I respect it.
If some kind of official kerfluffle is needed to decide this, let's talk about how to do that.
-- brion _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Sat, Jun 9, 2018 at 10:00 AM Alex Monk krenair@gmail.com wrote:
This is outrageous. Not only are you blatantly misrepresenting what various people are saying in the other thread and their intentions,
Perhaps. I've tried to go by the plain readings of position statements and I could have made a mistake?
you are now
suggesting that repository owners do not in fact get to decide what goes in their repository and what does not, as if this has been the case all along.
Yes I'm definitely explicitly saying that. Same applies to pages on Wikipedia: you don't get to own them and veto others' clarifications. And sometimes an admit makes an edit stick that you don't like.
It is incredibly ironic how against the spirit of the CoC this all is.
Can you clarify?
-- brion
On 9 June 2018 at 16:58, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
Recent threads have demonstrated there seems to be some disconnect about what is expected about maintainership and ownership of repositories.
This has spilled over into talk about the code of conduct, IMHO specifically because some people are trying to avoid being bound by it or protesting its existence by looking for loopholes to avoid it. Which I think is a shame, but I don't expect much constructive talk to come out
of
that thread.
I think we should though clarify that code repositories on gerrit and diffusion are not owned by any one person, but are technical community spaces held in common for the benefit of the Wikimedia movement. And yes, that means sometimes your favorite project will get documentation commits you personally didn't like.
If this has been unclear, it should be made clear. If that means some people host their self-maintained code outside of Wikimedia technical spaces, then that is their decision and I respect it.
If some kind of official kerfluffle is needed to decide this, let's talk about how to do that.
-- brion _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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On 9 June 2018 at 18:14, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Sat, Jun 9, 2018 at 10:00 AM Alex Monk krenair@gmail.com wrote:
This is outrageous. Not only are you blatantly misrepresenting what
various
people are saying in the other thread and their intentions,
Perhaps. I've tried to go by the plain readings of position statements and I could have made a mistake?
For example where you said "IMHO specifically because some people are trying to avoid being bound by it or protesting its existence by looking for loopholes to avoid it", which is not at all what that thread is about as has been made very clear in that thread.
On 9 June 2018 at 18:14, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
you are now
suggesting that repository owners do not in fact get to decide what goes
in
their repository and what does not, as if this has been the case all
along.
Yes I'm definitely explicitly saying that. Same applies to pages on Wikipedia: you don't get to own them and veto others' clarifications. And sometimes an admit makes an edit stick that you don't like.
This is a bad analogy. Repository owners *are* essentially the admins, and in this case get content control. The people involving themselves are more akin to global users like stewards trying to override local admin actions, and in this case they're not really supposed to have such control of content. Like with on-wiki stuff, it's not really so bad when a global user comes and does uncontroversial cleanup, but global permissions are not for the purpose of involving oneself in local controversy.
On 9 June 2018 at 18:14, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
It is incredibly ironic how against the spirit of the CoC this all is.
Can you clarify?
Making Wikimedia technical spaces less welcoming to outsiders.
On Sat, Jun 9, 2018 at 10:21 AM Alex Monk krenair@gmail.com wrote:
On 9 June 2018 at 18:14, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Sat, Jun 9, 2018 at 10:00 AM Alex Monk krenair@gmail.com wrote:
This is outrageous. Not only are you blatantly misrepresenting what
various
people are saying in the other thread and their intentions,
Perhaps. I've tried to go by the plain readings of position statements
and
I could have made a mistake?
For example where you said "IMHO specifically because some people are trying to avoid being bound by it or protesting its existence by looking for loopholes to avoid it", which is not at all what that thread is about as has been made very clear in that thread.
I disagree that it has been made clear. I found the opposite to be true in my experience of reading that thread -- for instance the ability to exclude the code of conduct from some interactions between developers and users was cited as a desired feature, and thus a reason to want to avoid advertising the code of conduct in the repo.
Perhaps I'm reading too much into the idea of wanting to avoid the code of conduct as a proxy for not liking it?
On 9 June 2018 at 18:14, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
you are now
suggesting that repository owners do not in fact get to decide what
goes
in
their repository and what does not, as if this has been the case all
along.
Yes I'm definitely explicitly saying that. Same applies to pages on Wikipedia: you don't get to own them and veto others' clarifications. And sometimes an admit makes an edit stick that you don't like.
This is a bad analogy. Repository owners *are* essentially the admins, and in this case get content control. The people involving themselves are more akin to global users like stewards trying to override local admin actions, and in this case they're not really supposed to have such control of content. Like with on-wiki stuff, it's not really so bad when a global user comes and does uncontroversial cleanup, but global permissions are not for the purpose of involving oneself in local controversy.
I'll let that one stand. Sounds like a good analogy except that this is exactly the sort of thing a steward might have to intervene for.
On 9 June 2018 at 18:14, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
It is incredibly ironic how against the spirit of the CoC this all is.
Can you clarify?
Making Wikimedia technical spaces less welcoming to outsiders.
Not just outsiders generally, but outsiders who have not had a fair shake in the past because the place has been unwelcoming or full of toxic interactions.
Reducing toxic interactions is an important part of that, and sometimes that means telling people who cause toxic interactions that they are not welcome because we would rather have other people who are less toxic and can bring different perspectives and representation.
-- brion
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On 09/06/18 17:30, Brion Vibber wrote:
On Sat, Jun 9, 2018 at 10:21 AM Alex Monk krenair@gmail.com wrote:
For example where you said "IMHO specifically because some people are trying to avoid being bound by it or protesting its existence by looking for loopholes to avoid it", which is not at all what that thread is about as has been made very clear in that thread.
I disagree that it has been made clear. I found the opposite to be true in my experience of reading that thread -- for instance the ability to exclude the code of conduct from some interactions between developers and users was cited as a desired feature, and thus a reason to want to avoid advertising the code of conduct in the repo.
Perhaps I'm reading too much into the idea of wanting to avoid the code of conduct as a proxy for not liking it?
I am genuinely at a loss how this could possibly be made any clearer. People are already explicitly stating this. Yaron in particular stated this from the start.
... This is a bad analogy. Repository owners *are* essentially the admins, and in this case get content control. The people involving themselves are more akin to global users like stewards trying to override local admin actions, and in this case they're not really supposed to have such control of content. Like with on-wiki stuff, it's not really so bad when a global user comes and does uncontroversial cleanup, but global permissions are not for the purpose of involving oneself in local controversy.
I'll let that one stand. Sounds like a good analogy except that this is exactly the sort of thing a steward might have to intervene for.
That is not what stewards do. They are not superadmins, but backups. Support. As people with more general +2 normally do in specific repositories.
Not just outsiders generally, but outsiders who have not had a fair shake in the past because the place has been unwelcoming or full of toxic interactions.
Reducing toxic interactions is an important part of that, and sometimes that means telling people who cause toxic interactions that they are not welcome because we would rather have other people who are less toxic and can bring different perspectives and representation.
-- brion
Perhaps I was too subtle the last time I hinted at this: this is toxic. What you and others are doing misrepresenting what others are saying, the general heavy-handedness, the implications that anyone against a specific aspect of implementation is against the very concept of good conduct...
Please stop.
-I
On Sat, Jun 9, 2018 at 10:55 AM Isarra Yos zhorishna@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps I was too subtle the last time I hinted at this: this is toxic. What you and others are doing misrepresenting what others are saying, the general heavy-handedness, the implications that anyone against a specific aspect of implementation is against the very concept of good conduct...
Please stop.
Fair enough, I'll leave the thread and ponder for a bit.
Be good to yourselves, all, and don't fall into anger. I'm not immune either.
-- brion
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512
Hi,
CoC.md business aside, I agree with the main thing you've said. Specifically:
On 06/09/2018 08:58 AM, Brion Vibber wrote:
I think we should though clarify that code repositories on gerrit and diffusion are not owned by any one person, but are technical community spaces held in common for the benefit of the Wikimedia movement. And yes, that means sometimes your favorite project will get documentation commits you personally didn't like.
100% agreed. We[1] do a lot of maintenance work across mediawiki/* repositories, whether it be rote cleanup, CI fixes, fixing deprecated things, etc. I'd like to think that 98% of the things we do in this area are uncontroversial, and to be honest, boring.
I think it's important that we retain this shared ownership model.
[1] Where "we" are people who are not the main maintainer nor the original author of the repository.
- -- Legoktm
And that's fine and good and should continue, but doesn't mean it's a shared ownership model. As I was saying before with the analogy, global users make uncontroversial edits using their rights but aren't supposed to use their global rights to involve themselves in controversies.
On 9 June 2018 at 19:06, Kunal Mehta legoktm@member.fsf.org wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512
Hi,
CoC.md business aside, I agree with the main thing you've said. Specifically:
On 06/09/2018 08:58 AM, Brion Vibber wrote:
I think we should though clarify that code repositories on gerrit and diffusion are not owned by any one person, but are technical community spaces held in common for the benefit of the Wikimedia movement. And yes, that means sometimes your favorite project will get documentation commits you personally didn't like.
100% agreed. We[1] do a lot of maintenance work across mediawiki/* repositories, whether it be rote cleanup, CI fixes, fixing deprecated things, etc. I'd like to think that 98% of the things we do in this area are uncontroversial, and to be honest, boring.
I think it's important that we retain this shared ownership model.
[1] Where "we" are people who are not the main maintainer nor the original author of the repository.
- -- Legoktm
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I'd just like to apologize for dragging the other thread into this one and being overly personal and failing to assume good faith.
That was a failing on my part, and not good practice.
Please if you respond further to this thread, treat only the narrow issue of ownership / maintainership expectations and where/how we should be more clear on it.
Further discussion on people's motives about the code of conduct will likely not be productive for anyone on this thread.
My apologies to all; I should do better. You all deserve better.
-- brion
Taking a step back here...
I agree with you in principle...but
Shared spaces imply that occasionally disputes are going to arise as to what belongs in a repo. If we dont have a fair method of resolving such disputes (/my way or the highway/ is not fair), then this model is not going to work.
-- Brian
On Saturday, June 9, 2018, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'd just like to apologize for dragging the other thread into this one and being overly personal and failing to assume good faith.
That was a failing on my part, and not good practice.
Please if you respond further to this thread, treat only the narrow issue of ownership / maintainership expectations and where/how we should be more clear on it.
Further discussion on people's motives about the code of conduct will likely not be productive for anyone on this thread.
My apologies to all; I should do better. You all deserve better.
-- brion _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
I think there's a lot of misunderstanding on this whole thing.
The issue pointed out was that the CoC makes a false feeling of protection by being in extensions that are developed outside WMF's technical spaces. That is if I had an issue with an extension's maintainer WMF would refuse to help as it wasn't in WMF's technical spaces as per the CoC.
This has probably been interpreted as maintainers are against CoC. However, if the CoC.md file were to claim that the authors support a specific Code of Conduct it would probably be fine.
Also I would like to note that I have immense respect and thanks for the WMF devs for their hard work on maintenance on all of these extensions.
Regards, Nischay Nahata
On Sat, Jun 9, 2018 at 11:58 PM Brian Wolff bawolff@gmail.com wrote:
Taking a step back here...
I agree with you in principle...but
Shared spaces imply that occasionally disputes are going to arise as to what belongs in a repo. If we dont have a fair method of resolving such disputes (/my way or the highway/ is not fair), then this model is not going to work.
-- Brian
On Saturday, June 9, 2018, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'd just like to apologize for dragging the other thread into this one
and
being overly personal and failing to assume good faith.
That was a failing on my part, and not good practice.
Please if you respond further to this thread, treat only the narrow issue of ownership / maintainership expectations and where/how we should be
more
clear on it.
Further discussion on people's motives about the code of conduct will likely not be productive for anyone on this thread.
My apologies to all; I should do better. You all deserve better.
-- brion _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Here's my 2 cents.
License is one example for me, if you are using gerrit and all of WMF infrastructure (from jenkins to translatewiki integration) you have to publish your code with at least one OSI-approved license. You can't say "All rights reserved" and still use all the benefits that came with donor's money [1] and this has to be explicit by adding LICENSE or COPYING file (or adding a note on top of the files, any sort of notion, etc.)
The same goes with CoC, you can't use the benefits while avoiding to be hold responsible for your acts, being harsh towards others, etc. Some might disagree but I don't think this is up for discussion. The point of making this explicit by adding CoC.md in the files to make sure people see it, newcomers feel welcome, etc. might be up for discussion. Even though, while there is no clear body of decision making, people on all sides have strong feelings about it, and there is no group responsible for mediation, etc. This is not going anywhere. Three groups that can decide about it are, "RelEng" who are responsible for maintaining gerrit, "Technical engagement team", or "TechCom". One useful discussion that can happen here is that who can decide about this matter and leave the decision to them. Maybe a voting in mediawiki is also an option.
One note particularly about this incident, I personally would be happy if Yaron thought the wording is wrong, put the file back with a better wording, like "gerrit part of development of this extension is covered by the WM CoC". It would make everyone happy. And also, it would send the proper signal to people who want to contribute to know where they should feel welcome and where they can't have that assumption. For me personally and after this stuff, I wouldn't touch any code Yaron is developing outside of gerrit with one-yard stick but I'm fine with making patches in gerrit in his extensions because I know it's covered by CoC. But what happened? He reverted my commit with the commit message of "No Thanks", like I offered him a dessert :) And in here, called my comments (and my colleagues) "unbelievable" I don't see that productive and constructive.
[1]: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use/en#7._Licensing_of_Content
On Sat, Jun 9, 2018 at 8:28 PM Brian Wolff bawolff@gmail.com wrote:
Taking a step back here...
I agree with you in principle...but
Shared spaces imply that occasionally disputes are going to arise as to what belongs in a repo. If we dont have a fair method of resolving such disputes (/my way or the highway/ is not fair), then this model is not going to work.
-- Brian
On Saturday, June 9, 2018, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'd just like to apologize for dragging the other thread into this one
and
being overly personal and failing to assume good faith.
That was a failing on my part, and not good practice.
Please if you respond further to this thread, treat only the narrow issue of ownership / maintainership expectations and where/how we should be
more
clear on it.
Further discussion on people's motives about the code of conduct will likely not be productive for anyone on this thread.
My apologies to all; I should do better. You all deserve better.
-- brion _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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I'll only state the obvious: it's not a community space if the community feels forced to walk out of it.
Federico
+1
The CoC was supposed to encourage collegiate behavior, not to be an excuse for those with big white hats to /force/ others to "respect my authoritah", to quote South Park.
Folks, get a grip. Seeing bad faith accusations and character attacks against long term contributors, is not why any of us want to remain here.
Fae
On Sun, 10 Jun 2018, 13:33 Federico Leva (Nemo), nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
I'll only state the obvious: it's not a community space if the community feels forced to walk out of it.
Federico
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