So I see that User:Grunny, User:Rtnf and Dessalegn Yehuala were appointed.
Respectfully, given the criteria was someone with +2 rights, I would question the decision to appoint Dessalegn Yehuala, who not only has never contributed to MediaWiki, but also appears to have never edited any Wikimedia project, or even have an account.
Brian
On Thu, Oct 6, 2022 at 1:58 AM Technical Decision Forum Support < TDFsupport@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi Brian,
We have our representatives but we are always looking for some more as we rotate throughout the year. My apologies for the late updates to the forum. The lists are here https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Forum. The community representatives have completed one feedback to the IP Masking Proposal and next week we should have "Modern user interfaces for all users" proposal out to the representatives for their feedback. You can see it on the TDF https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/5179/ board.
Thank you, TDF
On Wed, Oct 5, 2022, 5:46 PM Brian Wolff bawolff@gmail.com wrote:
Out of curiosity, what happened? Aug 12 has come and gone. More to the point, i was wondering if TDF is even still a thing?
-- Brian
On Tuesday, August 2, 2022, Erica Litrenta elitrenta@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi everyone.
This is a reminder that the search for community representatives for the Technical Decision Forum is still OPEN.
There are a few weeks left to apply and/or recommend someone who would be a great fit for the role (learn more at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Community_represent... ).
Please let us know if there are any questions we can answer before you submit your application, or a friend's name! Email us at TDFSupport@wikimedia.org by Aug 12, 2022.
Looking forward to hearing from you soon…
The Technical Decision Forum.
On Tue, Jul 12, 2022 at 11:17 AM Erica Litrenta elitrenta@wikimedia.org wrote:
*(This email may not be written in your native language, and/or may be a crosspost: our apologies.)*
Greetings, everyone.
The Technical Decision Forum, or TDF (1), is seeking community representatives. Please visit the TDF Community Representation (2) page for more information, and email TDFSupport@wikimedia.org by Aug 12, 2022 to be considered for selection.
Don't worry about the requirements listed on wiki, they are not set in stone; just provide your name, name of the group you "represent" if any, and a short sentence or two explaining your interest.
For any questions, please post at *MediaWiki.org (3)*, or on the related Movement Strategy Forum topic (4), or simply email TDFSupport@wikimedia.org.
Thanks,
The Technical Decision Forum.
(1) https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Forum (2) https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Community_represent... (3) https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Technical_decision_making/Forum (4) https://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/technical-decision-forum-tdf-is-lookin...
--
Erica Litrenta (she/her)
Senior Manager, Community Relations Specialists (Product)
Wikimedia Foundation https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Elitre_(WMF)
--
Erica Litrenta (she/her)
Senior Manager, Community Relations Specialists (Product)
Wikimedia Foundation https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Elitre_(WMF)
Hi Brian, Thank you for your feedback. When we sent out the announcement to everyone here, we did say that if anyone feels they can contribute please go ahead and put your name on the list even if you do not meet the criteria. We thought that the Wikimedia community would want to contribute and be part of the process, but in reality, only three people responded to our call. We appreciate these representatives for stepping up to the plate to contribute to the process.
In the spirit of the Wikimedia Movement Strategy, to be inclusive and support open knowledge, I applaud everyone to reach out to others in our community to help and support those who are not as fortunate to have the skills and knowledge you have. We should be lifting each other up and stop pushing others down for trying to help the community.
If anyone out there is willing to contribute to the Technical Decision Forum process, please add your name to the list https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Community_rep_nomination .
Brian and everyone else, if you have ideas on how we can have more community representation, please feel free to contact us at TDFsupport@wikimedia.org. We need to come together with ideas and solutions and remove negativity from the process.
Thank you,
Linh
On Wed, Oct 5, 2022 at 8:02 PM Brian Wolff bawolff@gmail.com wrote:
So I see that User:Grunny, User:Rtnf and Dessalegn Yehuala were appointed.
Respectfully, given the criteria was someone with +2 rights, I would question the decision to appoint Dessalegn Yehuala, who not only has never contributed to MediaWiki, but also appears to have never edited any Wikimedia project, or even have an account.
Brian
On Thu, Oct 6, 2022 at 1:58 AM Technical Decision Forum Support < TDFsupport@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi Brian,
We have our representatives but we are always looking for some more as we rotate throughout the year. My apologies for the late updates to the forum. The lists are here https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Forum. The community representatives have completed one feedback to the IP Masking Proposal and next week we should have "Modern user interfaces for all users" proposal out to the representatives for their feedback. You can see it on the TDF https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/5179/ board.
Thank you, TDF
On Wed, Oct 5, 2022, 5:46 PM Brian Wolff bawolff@gmail.com wrote:
Out of curiosity, what happened? Aug 12 has come and gone. More to the point, i was wondering if TDF is even still a thing?
-- Brian
On Tuesday, August 2, 2022, Erica Litrenta elitrenta@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi everyone.
This is a reminder that the search for community representatives for the Technical Decision Forum is still OPEN.
There are a few weeks left to apply and/or recommend someone who would be a great fit for the role (learn more at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Community_represent... ).
Please let us know if there are any questions we can answer before you submit your application, or a friend's name! Email us at TDFSupport@wikimedia.org by Aug 12, 2022.
Looking forward to hearing from you soon…
The Technical Decision Forum.
On Tue, Jul 12, 2022 at 11:17 AM Erica Litrenta < elitrenta@wikimedia.org> wrote:
*(This email may not be written in your native language, and/or may be a crosspost: our apologies.)*
Greetings, everyone.
The Technical Decision Forum, or TDF (1), is seeking community representatives. Please visit the TDF Community Representation (2) page for more information, and email TDFSupport@wikimedia.org by Aug 12, 2022 to be considered for selection.
Don't worry about the requirements listed on wiki, they are not set in stone; just provide your name, name of the group you "represent" if any, and a short sentence or two explaining your interest.
For any questions, please post at *MediaWiki.org (3)*, or on the related Movement Strategy Forum topic (4), or simply email TDFSupport@wikimedia.org.
Thanks,
The Technical Decision Forum.
(1) https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Forum (2) https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Community_represent... (3) https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Technical_decision_making/Forum (4) https://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/technical-decision-forum-tdf-is-lookin...
--
Erica Litrenta (she/her)
Senior Manager, Community Relations Specialists (Product)
Wikimedia Foundation https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Elitre_(WMF)
--
Erica Litrenta (she/her)
Senior Manager, Community Relations Specialists (Product)
Wikimedia Foundation https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Elitre_(WMF)
Hi,
On 10/6/22 00:36, Linh Nguyen wrote:
In the spirit of the Wikimedia Movement Strategy, to be inclusive and support open knowledge, I applaud everyone to reach out to others in our community to help and support those who are not as fortunate to have the skills and knowledge you have. We should be lifting each other up and stop pushing others down for trying to help the community.
I think it is patently unfair to describe Brian's email as "pushing others down". It is an absolutely fair critique of the *TDF* to ask why they are appointing members who appear to have no experience in Wikimedia technical spaces. This is not a commentary on the people who applied, but rather the TDF process.
If anyone out there is willing to contribute to the Technical Decision Forum process, please add your name to the list https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Community_rep_nomination.
I am fine with saying the quiet part out loud. Most volunteer developers aren't interested in participating in the TDF because it treats them as second-class participants. Contrasting to TechCom, which for all its faults at least had public meetings that volunteers could participate in as equals, the implementation of the TDF literally left volunteers as an afterthought.
At this point joining the TDF would only add the appearance of legitimacy to a closed, non-transparent system that is antithetical to Wikimedia development principles.
Brian and everyone else, if you have ideas on how we can have more community representation, please feel free to contact us at TDFsupport@wikimedia.org mailto:TDFsupport@wikimedia.org. We need to come together with ideas and solutions and remove negativity from the process.
The negativity mostly exists because people (WMF staff and volunteers) having spent months asking questions about TDF composition and decisions and then were entirely ghosted.
I currently count about 33 out of 40 TDF members being WMF Staff. Over the past 90 days, only 49.4% of Gerrit patches came from WMF Staff[1]. My straw-dog proposal is that representation should be proportional, i.e. WMF Staff should make up less than half of the TDF, or whatever decision-making body replaces it.
[1] https://wikimedia.biterg.io/
-- Kunal / Legoktm
Kunal, I hear you but we only have 3 people who actually put the effort into applying for the position. We are appointing people who are at least trying to help. If you want to help in the process please feel free to put your name on the list.
"I currently count about 33 out of 40 TDF members being WMF Staff. Over the past 90 days, only 49.4% of Gerrit patches came from WMF Staff[1]. My straw-dog proposal is that representation should be proportional, i.e. WMF Staff should make up less than half of the TDF, or whatever decision-making body replaces it."
If you can't even get more than 2 people to apply for the positions what ideas do you have to increase the number of experienced representatives? So based on what you said we should only have 3 people as representatives, 2 from the community and 1 from WMF.
"The negativity mostly exists because people (WMF staff and volunteers) having spent months asking questions about TDF composition and decisions and then were entirely ghosted."
All the information is here https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making. As I have pointed out before, If you have any questions please contact us at TDFsupport@wikimedia.org.
"I am fine with saying the quiet part out loud. Most volunteer developers aren't interested in participating in the TDF because it treats them as second-class participants. Contrasting to TechCom, which for all its faults at least had public meetings that volunteers could participate in as equals, the implementation of the TDF literally left volunteers as an afterthought."
I was not there but from what I understand TechCom did not achieve what it set out to do. If TechCom worked TDF would not exist.
"At this point joining the TDF would only add the appearance of legitimacy to a closed, non-transparent system that is antithetical to Wikimedia development principles."
I would see the community joining TDF to help improve and develop a better process. Without experiencing and having a firsthand understanding of how things are done, how can the community contribute to improving the process?
TDF is not hiding anything from the community. We are always working on improving the process. We are learning to walk and there are times we stumbled but we need to pick ourselves up and try again.
I am into productivity and improvement on what we are trying to do. I can see this cycle of frustration is not being productive at all. I would like for you and Brian to have a video conference call with me so we can see how to make this a productive process. I can clear a couple of hours this Friday for us. If you need more time please let me know. It would be even better if we can meet in person. If you are near the WMF office in San Francisco, I can book us a meeting room and I'll drive to the city to meet you. If you aren't in the area, I can fly out to wherever you are, on my own dime. I know we are all working toward the same goal, but our approaches are misaligned. We just need to work together. Email me directly, lnguyen@wikimedia.org, so we can set up a time to meet. To be transparent and productive, we can record our meeting, in person or on google meet, and share it with the community. Any community member who feels they have ideas to improve the process, please I invite you to email me directly. We can also have 1:1 if that makes it easier for you. I'm looking forward to meeting you and getting to know you better.
See you soon,
Linh
On Wed, Oct 5, 2022 at 10:40 PM Kunal Mehta legoktm@debian.org wrote:
Hi,
On 10/6/22 00:36, Linh Nguyen wrote:
In the spirit of the Wikimedia Movement Strategy, to be inclusive and support open knowledge, I applaud everyone to reach out to others in our community to help and support those who are not as fortunate to have the skills and knowledge you have. We should be lifting each other up and stop pushing others down for trying to help the community.
I think it is patently unfair to describe Brian's email as "pushing others down". It is an absolutely fair critique of the *TDF* to ask why they are appointing members who appear to have no experience in Wikimedia technical spaces. This is not a commentary on the people who applied, but rather the TDF process.
If anyone out there is willing to contribute to the Technical Decision Forum process, please add your name to the list <
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Community_rep_nomin...
.
I am fine with saying the quiet part out loud. Most volunteer developers aren't interested in participating in the TDF because it treats them as second-class participants. Contrasting to TechCom, which for all its faults at least had public meetings that volunteers could participate in as equals, the implementation of the TDF literally left volunteers as an afterthought.
At this point joining the TDF would only add the appearance of legitimacy to a closed, non-transparent system that is antithetical to Wikimedia development principles.
Brian and everyone else, if you have ideas on how we can have more community representation, please feel free to contact us at TDFsupport@wikimedia.org mailto:TDFsupport@wikimedia.org. We need to come together with ideas and solutions and remove negativity from the process.
The negativity mostly exists because people (WMF staff and volunteers) having spent months asking questions about TDF composition and decisions and then were entirely ghosted.
I currently count about 33 out of 40 TDF members being WMF Staff. Over the past 90 days, only 49.4% of Gerrit patches came from WMF Staff[1]. My straw-dog proposal is that representation should be proportional, i.e. WMF Staff should make up less than half of the TDF, or whatever decision-making body replaces it.
[1] https://wikimedia.biterg.io/
-- Kunal / Legoktm _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/
Is nobody at the TDF wondering *why* so few people applied to join? I find it absurd to deflect responsibility for this to the volunteer community, to be honest – it should be in the Forum’s own interest to establish its legitimacy within the Wikimedia developer community as a whole.
Am Do., 6. Okt. 2022 um 08:54 Uhr schrieb Linh Nguyen <lnguyen@wikimedia.org
:
Kunal, I hear you but we only have 3 people who actually put the effort into applying for the position. We are appointing people who are at least trying to help. If you want to help in the process please feel free to put your name on the list.
"I currently count about 33 out of 40 TDF members being WMF Staff. Over the past 90 days, only 49.4% of Gerrit patches came from WMF Staff[1]. My straw-dog proposal is that representation should be proportional, i.e. WMF Staff should make up less than half of the TDF, or whatever decision-making body replaces it."
If you can't even get more than 2 people to apply for the positions what ideas do you have to increase the number of experienced representatives? So based on what you said we should only have 3 people as representatives, 2 from the community and 1 from WMF.
"The negativity mostly exists because people (WMF staff and volunteers) having spent months asking questions about TDF composition and decisions and then were entirely ghosted."
All the information is here https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making. As I have pointed out before, If you have any questions please contact us at TDFsupport@wikimedia.org.
"I am fine with saying the quiet part out loud. Most volunteer developers aren't interested in participating in the TDF because it treats them as second-class participants. Contrasting to TechCom, which for all its faults at least had public meetings that volunteers could participate in as equals, the implementation of the TDF literally left volunteers as an afterthought."
I was not there but from what I understand TechCom did not achieve what it set out to do. If TechCom worked TDF would not exist.
"At this point joining the TDF would only add the appearance of legitimacy to a closed, non-transparent system that is antithetical to Wikimedia development principles."
I would see the community joining TDF to help improve and develop a better process. Without experiencing and having a firsthand understanding of how things are done, how can the community contribute to improving the process?
TDF is not hiding anything from the community. We are always working on improving the process. We are learning to walk and there are times we stumbled but we need to pick ourselves up and try again.
I am into productivity and improvement on what we are trying to do. I can see this cycle of frustration is not being productive at all. I would like for you and Brian to have a video conference call with me so we can see how to make this a productive process. I can clear a couple of hours this Friday for us. If you need more time please let me know. It would be even better if we can meet in person. If you are near the WMF office in San Francisco, I can book us a meeting room and I'll drive to the city to meet you. If you aren't in the area, I can fly out to wherever you are, on my own dime. I know we are all working toward the same goal, but our approaches are misaligned. We just need to work together. Email me directly, lnguyen@wikimedia.org, so we can set up a time to meet. To be transparent and productive, we can record our meeting, in person or on google meet, and share it with the community. Any community member who feels they have ideas to improve the process, please I invite you to email me directly. We can also have 1:1 if that makes it easier for you. I'm looking forward to meeting you and getting to know you better.
See you soon,
Linh
On Wed, Oct 5, 2022 at 10:40 PM Kunal Mehta legoktm@debian.org wrote:
Hi,
On 10/6/22 00:36, Linh Nguyen wrote:
In the spirit of the Wikimedia Movement Strategy, to be inclusive and support open knowledge, I applaud everyone to reach out to others in
our
community to help and support those who are not as fortunate to have
the
skills and knowledge you have. We should be lifting each other up and stop pushing others down for trying to help the community.
I think it is patently unfair to describe Brian's email as "pushing others down". It is an absolutely fair critique of the *TDF* to ask why they are appointing members who appear to have no experience in Wikimedia technical spaces. This is not a commentary on the people who applied, but rather the TDF process.
If anyone out there is willing to contribute to the Technical Decision Forum process, please add your name to the list <
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Community_rep_nomin...
.
I am fine with saying the quiet part out loud. Most volunteer developers aren't interested in participating in the TDF because it treats them as second-class participants. Contrasting to TechCom, which for all its faults at least had public meetings that volunteers could participate in as equals, the implementation of the TDF literally left volunteers as an afterthought.
At this point joining the TDF would only add the appearance of legitimacy to a closed, non-transparent system that is antithetical to Wikimedia development principles.
Brian and everyone else, if you have ideas on how we can have more community representation, please feel free to contact us at TDFsupport@wikimedia.org mailto:TDFsupport@wikimedia.org. We need
to
come together with ideas and solutions and remove negativity from the process.
The negativity mostly exists because people (WMF staff and volunteers) having spent months asking questions about TDF composition and decisions and then were entirely ghosted.
I currently count about 33 out of 40 TDF members being WMF Staff. Over the past 90 days, only 49.4% of Gerrit patches came from WMF Staff[1]. My straw-dog proposal is that representation should be proportional, i.e. WMF Staff should make up less than half of the TDF, or whatever decision-making body replaces it.
[1] https://wikimedia.biterg.io/
-- Kunal / Legoktm _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/
Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/
Am 06.10.2022 um 08:52 schrieb Linh Nguyen:
Kunal, I hear you but we only have 3 people who actually put the effort into applying for the position. We are appointing people who are at least trying to help. If you want to help in the process please feel free to put your name on the list.
The original mail doesn't really make it clear what impact one might have by joining, or what would be expected of a member. Asking people to click a link for details loses most of the audience already.
One thing that has worked pretty well in the past when we were looking for people to join TechCom was to ask for nominations, rather than volunteers. We'd then reach out to the people who were nominated, and asked them if they were interested. Self-nominations were of course also fine.
Another thing that might work is to directly approach active volunteer contributors to production code. There really aren't so many really active ones. Ten, maybe.
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for the suggestion on possible additions to the recruitment process.
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. 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.
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?
Thanks,
-Kate
-- Kate Chapman (she/her/hers) Director of Digital Transformation Wikimedia Foundation kchapman@wikimedia.org
Am 06.10.2022 um 13:38 schrieb Kate Chapman:
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for the suggestion on possible additions to the recruitment process.
I'm curious about the perception of TechCom being more community oriented than the new process.
Oh I didn't mean to imply that. I was just sharing my experience that asking for nominations worked better than asking for volunteers -- for staff members. TechCom was in theory open to the community, but that never materialized. In that regard, TechCom didn't work any better than TDF.
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?
The IRC meetings helped to raise and focus attention, but they were frantic and participation was very ad-hoc. I personally wouldn't want them back.
With TDF, feedback gathering happens mostly on google docs. Perhaps that could be done on phabricator instead, or on wiki pages. I think that would be more accessible to the general public. Currently, TDF process tracking in on phab, discussion is on google docs, and publication is on wiki. It might work better to have everything in a singe public place.
On Thu, Oct 6, 2022 at 4:50 AM Daniel Kinzler dkinzler@wikimedia.org wrote:
Am 06.10.2022 um 13:38 schrieb Kate Chapman:
I'm curious about the perception of TechCom being more community oriented than the new process.
Oh I didn't mean to imply that. I was just sharing my experience that asking for nominations worked better than asking for volunteers -- for staff members. TechCom was in theory open to the community, but that never materialized. In that regard, TechCom didn't work any better than TDF.
I didn't think you were implying it. I structured my email a bit awkwardly. I am curious about others that have suggested TechCom was more community oriented and what the positives were from the TechCom process that should be considered.
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
Where is the working space of the technical forum? The someone chat, wiki discussion, mailist(s) or the the forum somewhere?
2022-10-15 6:56 GMT+02:00, Kunal Mehta legoktm@debian.org:
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 _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/
Le 15/10/2022 à 09:26, Dušan Kreheľ a écrit :
Where is the working space of the technical forum? The someone chat, wiki discussion, mailist(s) or the the forum somewhere?
Hello Dušan,
As far as I know, the working space is a Google Drive (which still allows to share a folder/documents with people outside of the WMF).
There is a small chat channel on the WMF private Slack, which is merely to sync up about the process or state a new document got proposed. It is not a general work area with lot of discussions.
There is a public email TDFsupport@ (which is a Google group mailing list), though it receives low traffic and I don't think its content is publicly available.
The original intent in 2020 (see [background]) stated the process would be held on Phabricator and there is a tag there: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/tech-decision-forum/
It gives a quick overview but the bulk of the work is stored in Google Drive and is thus not accessible.
I am guessing if one wants more details they should reach the author of the proposal, a forum representative or I maybe the TDFSupport email.
[background] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Background
(Sorry to "hijack" the thread, I am not personally involved in TDF but since I was the original "messenger", I'm interested in learning more about Daniel's POV. The original email linked to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Community_represent... . While I'm well aware that info a click away is not optimal, I'm definitely more against walls of text that may be hard to understand for non-native readers. That page was marked for translation instead, and among other things, it offered exactly the process you are describing, and the second email asked specifically for recommendations. We had /also/ asked for recs to a few dozens colleagues, and none of the people pinged gave their availability. Interested to hear what could have been done differently.)
On Thu, Oct 6, 2022 at 1:06 PM Daniel Kinzler dkinzler@wikimedia.org wrote:
Am 06.10.2022 um 08:52 schrieb Linh Nguyen:
Kunal, I hear you but we only have 3 people who actually put the effort into applying for the position. We are appointing people who are at least trying to help. If you want to help in the process please feel free to put your name on the list.
The original mail doesn't really make it clear what impact one might have by joining, or what would be expected of a member. Asking people to click a link for details loses most of the audience already.
One thing that has worked pretty well in the past when we were looking for people to join TechCom was to ask for nominations, rather than volunteers. We'd then reach out to the people who were nominated, and asked them if they were interested. Self-nominations were of course also fine.
Another thing that might work is to directly approach active volunteer contributors to production code. There really aren't so many really active ones. Ten, maybe.
-- Daniel Kinzler Principal Software Engineer, Platform Engineering Wikimedia Foundation
Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/
So i think you would want a compromise approach with the email. Having the email be 20 pages long would be bad, but its still possible to have more of a "hook" without turning it into a massive wall of text.
That said, i think the lack of details in the email is not the main problem here.
To attract candidates you basically have to answer the following questions:
* what exactly would candidates be doing, practically speaking? The process is very opaque from the outside, and most people aren't going to sign up for it blind. * why does the committee want community members. What value does it hope to get from us? ** more specificly, to put it bluntly, are we being used as tokens to give the appearence of community consultation, or are people legitametely interested in what we have to say? Quite frankly, the current appointments of an anon, or listing fandom as a "volunteer organization" does feel a bit dehumanizing, as if the committee doesn't care who the community representitives are, as long as they can check that box. * What do committee members get out of the process? Just because we are volunteers, doesn't mean we do things purely out of the goodness of our hearts.
These questions weren't really answered anywhere, which i expect reduced interest.
For me personally, some other factors that came to mind:
* This is a committee of like 40 people. I've never seen a group of more than 5 people that is actually useful. Its unclear why you would want a committee of half the world, instead of just an open comment period (actually i suspect the answer is to force wmf staff to actually participate by having a directly responsible individual, but this approach doesn't mesh well with the community) * opinions of people currently on the committee seem quite mixed. Some are positive, but some are very negative. When WMF staff behind closed doors describe there experience on the committee in such negative terms, it really puts a damper on enthusiasm. * the opaqueness of the committee makes it unclear how feedback is actually taken and used. There is an underlying fear that the committee is a long winded process where decisions that have already been made get a rubber stamp of approval regardless of any feedback brought up. * inconsistent updates and response to feedback on wiki make the committee look dead. This puts a damper on interest.
-- Brian
On Monday, October 10, 2022, Erica Litrenta elitrenta@wikimedia.org wrote:
(Sorry to "hijack" the thread, I am not personally involved in TDF but since I was the original "messenger", I'm interested in learning more about Daniel's POV. The original email linked to https://www.mediawiki.org/ wiki/Technical_decision_making/Community_representation . While I'm well aware that info a click away is not optimal, I'm definitely more against walls of text that may be hard to understand for non-native readers. That page was marked for translation instead, and among other things, it offered exactly the process you are describing, and the second email asked specifically for recommendations. We had /also/ asked for recs to a few dozens colleagues, and none of the people pinged gave their availability. Interested to hear what could have been done differently.)
On Thu, Oct 6, 2022 at 1:06 PM Daniel Kinzler dkinzler@wikimedia.org wrote:
Am 06.10.2022 um 08:52 schrieb Linh Nguyen:
Kunal, I hear you but we only have 3 people who actually put the effort into applying for the position. We are appointing people who are at least trying to help. If you want to help in the process please feel free to put your name on the list.
The original mail doesn't really make it clear what impact one might have by joining, or what would be expected of a member. Asking people to click a link for details loses most of the audience already.
One thing that has worked pretty well in the past when we were looking for people to join TechCom was to ask for nominations, rather than volunteers. We'd then reach out to the people who were nominated, and asked them if they were interested. Self-nominations were of course also fine.
Another thing that might work is to directly approach active volunteer contributors to production code. There really aren't so many really active ones. Ten, maybe.
-- Daniel Kinzler Principal Software Engineer, Platform Engineering Wikimedia Foundation
Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l. lists.wikimedia.org/
--
Erica Litrenta (she/her)
Senior Manager, Community Relations Specialists (Product)
Wikimedia Foundation https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Elitre_(WMF)
I didn't respond to the call for recommendations because, as a member, I feel that TDF is not a good use of my time and I wouldn't wish volunteers' time to be spent on it.
Its only purpose is to avoid WMF people who don't read Wikitech-l complaining to your manager that they were not consulted about a change. It won't benefit from community seats, and I worry that they might lead to WMF forgoing real community consultation.
Just the fact that the forum has not managed to respond to [0] for 10 months (with some reminders on [1]) made me stop thinking about joining.
It just feels like a product manager party so they don't have to respond to mailing list threats or on phab.
Zabe
[0] https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/t... [1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T293323
Erica,
There are a lot of emails on this list and Wikimedia-l starting with "you can find translations of this announcement on meta". I think this is a very effective way to indicate translations where needed, while keeping the announcement in a single place. Sending us to a link feels like the catchy press titles: "you won't believe what's happening! Click here to find out!"
Second, as much as we want to be multilingual, participating in the technical community without some command of English is basically impossible. In that respect, the technical audience is not the same as a general Wikimedia audience.
My 2c, Strainu
Pe luni, 10 octombrie 2022, Erica Litrenta elitrenta@wikimedia.org a scris:
(Sorry to "hijack" the thread, I am not personally involved in TDF but
since I was the original "messenger", I'm interested in learning more about Daniel's POV.
The original email linked to
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Community_represent... .
While I'm well aware that info a click away is not optimal, I'm
definitely more against walls of text that may be hard to understand for non-native readers.
That page was marked for translation instead, and among other things, it
offered exactly the process you are describing, and the second email asked specifically for recommendations.
We had /also/ asked for recs to a few dozens colleagues, and none of the
people pinged gave their availability.
Interested to hear what could have been done differently.) On Thu, Oct 6, 2022 at 1:06 PM Daniel Kinzler dkinzler@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Am 06.10.2022 um 08:52 schrieb Linh Nguyen:
Kunal, I hear you but we only have 3 people who actually put the effort into
applying for the position. We are appointing people who are at least trying to help. If you want to help in the process please feel free to put your name on the list.
The original mail doesn't really make it clear what impact one might
have by joining, or what would be expected of a member. Asking people to click a link for details loses most of the audience already.
One thing that has worked pretty well in the past when we were looking
for people to join TechCom was to ask for nominations, rather than volunteers. We'd then reach out to the people who were nominated, and asked them if they were interested. Self-nominations were of course also fine.
Another thing that might work is to directly approach active volunteer
contributors to production code. There really aren't so many really active ones. Ten, maybe.
-- Daniel Kinzler Principal Software Engineer, Platform Engineering Wikimedia Foundation
Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/
--
<
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/t1GetqH3N05ZDv75_-Q6W0YEm4ofn22ZQVNUIoPTIa...
Erica Litrenta (she/her)
Senior Manager, Community Relations Specialists (Product)
Wikimedia Foundation
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org