On 7/1/15, Mark A. Hershberger <mah(a)nichework.com> wrote:
I just posted this at
http://mwstake.org/mwstake/wiki/Blog_Post:18 and I
would like to invite your comments.
= MediaWiki needs a governance model =
Eighteen months ago, at the
[
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Architecture_Summit_2014 MediaWiki
Architecture Summit], a manager from Wikia said, repeatedly, that he was
there to find out where MediaWiki was going to be in five years.
This year, at the
[
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Developer_Summit_2015 MediaWiki
Developer's Summit], Damion Sicore, the new VP of Engineering for Wikimedia,
asked about MediaWiki's governance model.
Both these people were relative outsiders to the core of MediaWiki
development and both of them described the same problem: MediaWiki doesn't
have direction.
I'm not sure we should conflate lack of direction with lack of a
formal governance model, but I'll give you they are both issues that a
lot of people feel we have, and they are both related.
During the [
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2015
Wikimedia Hackathon] this year, I cornered Damon and asked him what he
thought needed to be done. After some back-and-forth, Damon said that if we
could come up with a governance model for MediaWiki that the stakeholders
would endorse, that would be a great start.
I only had two questions: What was a governance model? And, could I get the
stakeholders for MediaWiki to buy into one?
== Stakeholders ==
This past year Markus Glaser and I started the
[
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Stakeholders'_Group MediaWiki
Stakeholders] user group. This is a group of people interested in MediaWiki
as software because we use it in our businesses and organisations. We want
to have a voice in its development.
We do have issues – some of the most visible users of MediaWiki, such
as Wikia and WikiHow – are not involved – but we've also had
some really good successes that we can point to, like our
[
http://mwstake.org/mwstake/wiki/Category:Events monthly meetings], our
[
http://mwstake.org/ own wiki], and the meeting at the Wikimedia Hackathon
this spring.
If you use MediaWiki for your own projects and you're interested in the
future of the software, we ask you to [
http://mwstake.org join us]. We
especially need your involvement if you are a large, visible user of
MediaWiki like Wikia or WikiHow.
I'd like to emphasize that there is a difference between the
Stakeholder group with a capital S, and people with a stake in
MediaWiki development (Although to be fair, you do talk about this
later on in the email). There are a lot of stakeholders (with a
lowercase s), many of them with conflicting priorities and the
Stakeholder group only represents some of them (and this will always
be the case. No group will ever represent all interests). I think that
there is a distinction between the MWStakeholder group and the set of
everyone in the world with an interest in mediawiki should be kept
clear when having these types of discussions.
== Governance ==
That brings me to the first, less intuitive, question: What is a governance
model? Why is it needed?
Research done on
[
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/06/28/research-newsletter-june-2015/#How_Wi…
Wikipedia's governance model] is instructive. Online social production "is
contrasted with traditional, contract-bound, hierarchical production models
that characterize most organizational settings." Despite this contrast with
traditional production, Wikipedia's governance model is "becoming less open
and more codified…a positive change."
Indeed, Wikipedia and MediaWiki are closely related but they cannot share
governance models since [
https://wikiapiary.com/wiki/Main_Page most
MediaWiki installations] are outside of the Wikimedia Foundation, and, as a
result MediaWiki development cannot be driven only by the needs of the
Foundation.
This does not follow. Even ignoring that Wikipedia community tends to
be operated mostly independently of the WMF, a governance model is not
the same as the results of a governance model. Both the United States
are Sweeden are democracies. Roughly speaking they have the same
governance model. That doesn't imply that they always do the same
thing, or that one controls the other.
Instead, we need to begin to use the governance model
to separate its
development from the Foundation and establish it as an independent open
source software product.
I'm not sure I'd phrase that like that. I would like all potential
developers to be able to develop MediaWiki and influence its
development to the same extent, regardless of their affiliation. (Not
to say that it should be a free for all, but the ability to contribute
to MediaWiki should be based on e.g. the quality of the person's
ideas, or their experience with the project, or some other instrinsic
quality of the person, not their affiliation).
As a result, we need to start looking at MediaWiki development in the
context of the larger world of open source software. The
[
http://oss-watch.ac.uk/ OSS Watch] [
http://wiki.oss-watch.ac.uk/StartPage
Wiki] has a lot of relevant information about how open source software
projects are run. See, for example, the explanation given on the
[
http://wiki.oss-watch.ac.uk/GovernanceModel GovernanceModel] page:
A clear governance model allows potential contributors to understand how
they engage with the project, what is expected of them and what protections
are provided to ensure their contributions will always be available to them.
It also describes the quality control processes that help assure potential
users of the viability of the project.
''[…]''
[Governance] provides a mechanism for allowing the community as a whole to
define the direction they feel the project should take, '''while ensuring
that the core project team does not lose control'''.
== Why does the MediaWiki community need to do anything? What is wrong with
the status quo? ==
Now, some members of the MediaWiki developer community will not see a need
for such a model. Indeed, they'll tell you there is already one in place.
Well, there is one in place :P, you just don't like it (And I agree,
its suboptimal)
One problem is that this model is only sporadically documented and isn't
well communicated. So each person in the community ''thinks'' they know
what the rules of the game are, but their individual models can differ
drastically.
Another problem, especially when it comes to features of MediaWiki that are
not used on Wikipedia, is that it is developer-focused instead of
user-focused.
Welcome to open source software ;)
For example, if you've used MediaWiki's built-in hitcounter in the past,
you'll be [
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T74420 surprised and shocked]
when that [
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/150699/ functionality is
removed] without any ready replacement,
As the [
http://wiki.oss-watch.ac.uk/GovernanceModel GovernanceModel] page
goes on to explain:
There are almost as many variations on open source management strategies as
there are open source projects. '''It is therefore critical that you clearly
communicate your policies''' and strategy '''to potential
users''' and
developers of your product as it is one of the most important steps towards
sustainability through open development.
== Who needs to agree to this? ==
This email? There's not much proposed here to agree to yet. Other then
agreeing there is the existence of a problem.
On the broader issue of a change in governance - Who needs to agree
and who should agree are different questions. Who should agree is the
various (lower-case s) stakeholders. Who needs to agree is the same as
who needs to agree to almost any change (Short of a revolution of the
masses) in the power structure of anything: The current elites in the
current power structure.
The easy answer is easy: the stakeholders. Here I
don't mean the
Stakeholders User Group, though we will certainly be involved in the
discussion. We need the developers, the project managers, the
[
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_sharing knowledge sharing]
specialists inside organisations that use MediaWiki and even the end users
of MediaWiki to be involved. Each of these groups exists inside and outside
of the Wikipedia community. We need to get people who represent Wikia;
executives from Hallo Welt!; independent consultants like myself; and end
users of sites like [
http://wikipathways.org/index.php/WikiPathways
WikiPathways].
Over the next few weeks and months we need to develop a governance model and
answer questions like
* How will governance be enforced? How will things change?
Which presupposes that the governance model will enforce things. Will
the governance model be enforcing things, and which "things" will be
in its remit are probably questions that should be asked first.
* Who proposes new or revised rules/directions?
* Who approves changes to the rules/directions?
* Where does the roadmap fit in to this governance?
* How are conflicts mitigated?
= Where do we start? =
Some other members of the MediaWiki stakeholders and I have already begin
discussing the governance model. During our next
[
https://plus.google.com/events/c0kd2on1qe5kj0di0j9d1pfuba0?authkey=CPeZ0K6F…
online meeting using Google Hangouts], we'll continue the discussion in the
wider group. However, we have a distinct limitation there in that G+ only
lets 10 people in at a time.
In a couple of weeks we'll be
[
https://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/MediaWiki_Stakeholders…
meeting again at Wikimania] and, hopefully, inviting broader participation.
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