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26 Oct 2010 26 Oct '10

11:39 p.m.

After the recent dicussions open open-ness and clarity with requests by serveral people what is contained within the RT after several people have asked and given answers like "it's staff stuff". So what is stored in it that can't be within either the staff or internal wiki where it must be private or bugzilla for other matters?

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Ryan Lane

27 Oct 27 Oct

6:47 a.m.

On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 4:39 PM, a b <cheeseyapacman(a)gmail.com> wrote:

After the recent dicussions open open-ness and clarity with requests by serveral people what is contained within the RT after several people have asked and given answers like "it's staff stuff". So what is stored in it that can't be within either the staff or internal wiki where it must be private or bugzilla for other matters?

RT is used by the ops team to track and plan operations work. It may contain procurement information, quotes, and other sensitive information that can not be released to the public due to contractual or confidentiality reasons. Who is telling you "it's staff stuff"? I'm pretty sure all of the ops people have been pretty clear about why we can't allow public access to the system. Respectfully, Ryan Lane

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MZMcBride

7:01 a.m.

Ryan Lane wrote:

On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 4:39 PM, a b <cheeseyapacman(a)gmail.com> wrote:

After the recent dicussions open open-ness and clarity with requests by serveral people what is contained within the RT after several people have asked and given answers like "it's staff stuff". So what is stored in it that can't be within either the staff or internal wiki where it must be private or bugzilla for other matters?

RT is used by the ops team to track and plan operations work. It may contain procurement information, quotes, and other sensitive information that can not be released to the public due to contractual or confidentiality reasons.

Just as a clarification for readers, "RT" refers to "Request Tracker", an open source issue tracker by Best Practical Solutions[1] used by the Wikimedia operations team.[2] According to the server admin log it was set up on August 10, 2010.[3] I'm not sure RT has been discussed publicly (at least on a mailing list) before now. There is a bit more information about it at <http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/RT>. While I can see the value of having a private place to put confidential information like server price quotes, for better or worse, it seems that RT is being used to track issues that could likely be tracked by Bugzilla. That said, I can't see what the difference between using RT and using an internal wiki would be. MZMcBride [1] http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/ [2] http://rt.wikimedia.org/ [3] http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/index.php?oldid=29466#August_10

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Ryan Lane

4:58 p.m.

Just as a clarification for readers, "RT" refers to "Request Tracker", an open source issue tracker by Best Practical Solutions[1] used by the Wikimedia operations team.[2] According to the server admin log it was set up on August 10, 2010.[3] I'm not sure RT has been discussed publicly (at least on a mailing list) before now. There is a bit more information about it at <http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/RT>.

We don't discuss most ops things on the lists. We use IRC for the majority of our communications.

While I can see the value of having a private place to put confidential information like server price quotes, for better or worse, it seems that RT is being used to track issues that could likely be tracked by Bugzilla. That said, I can't see what the difference between using RT and using an internal wiki would be.

A wiki isn't the answer for everything. I know we make MediaWiki, but let me repeat this again: a wiki isn't the answer for everything. RT allows us to include people who don't have access directly to RT via email, including vendors. Bugzilla is not a terribly good software package, and we definitely don't want to use the same Bugzilla for dev and ops, as it makes it harder for us to track ops issues. I don't see how this is an issue anyway. Though we do document solutions in RT, we also move that documentation to wikitech. All of our ops volunteers have access to RT, and the rest of the community can simply ask us about things in IRC to be kept in the loop. There isn't any beneficial reason for RT to be public. Respectfully, Ryan Lane

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MZMcBride

28 Oct 28 Oct

11:16 p.m.

Ryan Lane wrote:

MZMcBride wrote:

While I can see the value of having a private place to put confidential information like server price quotes, for better or worse, it seems that RT is being used to track issues that could likely be tracked by Bugzilla. That said, I can't see what the difference between using RT and using an internal wiki would be.

A wiki isn't the answer for everything. I know we make MediaWiki, but let me repeat this again: a wiki isn't the answer for everything. RT allows us to include people who don't have access directly to RT via email, including vendors.

Agreed. For example, a wiki certainly isn't ideal for a server admin log. :-) I wasn't trying to suggest that a wiki was an ideal solution here or that RT is a poor choice. I was trying to (a) clarify what "RT" was for people reading the list; and (b) respond to the idea that an internal wiki would somehow improve the situation (which the opening poster seemed to suggest).

I don't see how this is an issue anyway. Though we do document solutions in RT, we also move that documentation to wikitech. All of our ops volunteers have access to RT, and the rest of the community can simply ask us about things in IRC to be kept in the loop. There isn't any beneficial reason for RT to be public.

Well, transparency _in general_ is important. But I certainly agree that it's far more important to write things down than it is where they're written. MZMcBride

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