+10000. Splitting devs way from support means support questions go unanswered by devs. As long as we aren't splitting the discussion up into multiple channels it sounds like a good solution. - Ryan

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 11:25 AM, Derric Atzrott <datzrott(a)alizeepathology.com> wrote: Well the IRC spam from L10n was a separate issue, that's been silenced. -Chad

I like bots. I've taken care of some bugs or CR only because I've seen it on IRC. +1 for flood protection and thanks for silencing l10n //Saper

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 11:47 AM, Petr Bena <benapetr(a)gmail.com> wrote: Well let's not shut anything off in #mediawiki just yet. This has only been on the list for an hour so let's allow some other people the chance to weigh in :) -Chad

Le 21/06/12 18:09, Derric Atzrott a écrit : And since we do not deploy on Friday, that is never going to happen before at least monday June 25th :-] -- Antoine "hashar" Musso

Le 21/06/12 17:13, Petr Bena a écrit : Please note we also have #mediawiki-codereview which received notifications from Special:CodeReview. It is already setup, so we could just use that existing channel. -- Antoine "hashar" Musso

That's my point as well On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 6:25 PM, Krenair <krenair(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Or we could keep both codereview as it is and new -feed for all lightweight feed bots we had in #mediawiki because if we move the bot from -codereview the new feed will have way too many review reports On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 6:40 PM, Petr Bena <benapetr(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 12:25 PM, Krenair <krenair(a)gmail.com> wrote: Will the world end if we do this? No. -- John

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 8:13 AM, Petr Bena <benapetr(a)gmail.com> wrote: If we relegate the bots to a separate channel, pretty soon they'll figure out no one is paying attention to them, and plot to overthrow us. You can't be too careful about these things! On second thought, all hail our robot overlords! (seriously, let's move the bot traffic to a separate channel) Rob

wikibugs is one of most active bots there, if we are supposed to keep it, we should filter only bugs related to mediawiki at least On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:42 PM, K. Peachey <p858snake(a)gmail.com> wrote:

I didn't say so, but still it's second most active bot On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:56 PM, K. Peachey <p858snake(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 21/06/12 22:42, K. Peachey wrote: Me too. -1 to moving them to another channel. It's yet another channel to join, keep an eye on, add to autojoin. We start with a negative weight. #mediawiki bots give useful, human-generated content. Compare with tsnag at #wikimedia-toolserver, that's a nagios bot that spits out warnings quite frequently on its own. There's little utility other than ignoring it. What do #mediawiki bots report? - A person created a bug. We want that. - Someone commented a bug (sometimes more relevant than others, but also useful) - A new patchset - A new comment They are *useful* data. How many bugs advanced just because someone commented it and then a bunch of developers looked at it from the wikibugs log? We also use them in our workflow. If we are talking about some bug, it's useful to view in the same channel that someone created that bug, or added extra information. If it's at a different tab, I may see it too late. Also things like a discussion "$USER, you should fix X", the commit appearing in the channel is an indirect answer. Same for when you refer to a comment, "Foo, that fixme message [on the previous line] is on a commit of yours". Go to another tab, and look in the scrollback for a notification at a similar time isn't agile. Someone adds a bug, you comment on the channel something about that one. Being on the same place improves the workflow. Now, the problems: I agree commit bursts can be annoying, such as translatebot, but that has been fixed. Also, bug topic segregation will help by leaving only the relevant ones (eg. by excluding bugs for SMW, labs, WLM... which would go to their own channels). "You assume that it's bot activity". I disagree. I consider #mediawiki as written by someone, and look at it as coming from a human, even when it has been a bot (heh, it has been *someone* at another place). "It's hard to make a conversation." I don't find them being a problem. The messages are espaciated enough not to be problematic if you were talking anything else at the same time. There are also sometimes several intermixed conversations taking place at once. Which they are not a problem if they aren't too many. This is jut the same. Why are they suddenly a problem? I guess part of the problem is that gerrit-wm is more verbose than svn commits (even when they spawned several lines). For instance, it outputs two messages for a merge (New review + Change merged), instead of just one. You have to parse them to realise they are just the same action. That's something that ought be fixed (at gerrit side), but taking the bots out of the channel isn't a solution. *That* would lead to them being ignored. (btw, as a last resort option, you can /ignore the bots)

I have never seen any such a channel for user support and developers which is getting flooded like this one. It's nearly unusable for people who are seeking help with mediawiki. If you really want to keep the bots in channel, we should create #mediawiki-help for people who are seeking that and don't want to be brought in channel where everyone ignores them because their support question is lost in the feeds. That isn't just unfriendly but it doesn't even make sense to have such a channel. Indeed it's useful for devs, but in this case we shouldn't use it as a support channel On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 2:16 AM, MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote:

On Thu, 21 Jun 2012 16:49:05 -0700, Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote: This very likely accounts for at least 1/3 of all the bugs and reviews I contribute to. -- ~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://danielfriesen.name/]

On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 5:27 PM, Brion Vibber <brion(a)pobox.com> wrote: I think I agree with Brion more than anyone else. I find the bots to be incredibly useful, and jumping back and forth between channels is a pain. Also like I've said multiple times in multiple places over the past couple of days--when you move channels you fracture discussion. It happened with #wikimedia-dev, and it'll happen again here if we don't do this right. However, I see the argument to be made that if you're not a regular then the bots can be rather annoying to filter out. And honestly, someone who drops in for a few minutes to ask a question shouldn't be asked to /ignore every random bot they see. Is there some middle ground here? -Chad

Yes, the bots are useful for devs, that's the reason why we made them and there is a little point to argue about that. But they aren't useful for other users of #mediawiki especially users who seek help. IMHO #mediawiki should be used for development (bots are probably ok), #wikimedia-dev for wikimedia related developement (some bots are ok) and there should be another channel for mediawiki support, which would be user friendly. If we keep the bots as they are we won't fix anything (if you think that there is no issue, read the first mail). If we move the bots to #wikimedia-dev we likely kill the #wikimedia-dev channel, and all #mediawiki devs will loose the track of what's going on (defacto we rename #mediawiki to #wikimedia-dev and most of people who were in #mediawiki will just move to -dev). If we move the bots to separate channel which would be +m, we will make all channels more usable for regular talk. But some people will find it difficult because they would have to switch channels more often. If we create new channel for mediawiki help and keep the rest as it is, we solve this problem as well. If we get all bots to -feed channel, and reconfigure them to send only topic related feed to current channels, (mediawiki related stuff to #mediawiki, wikimedia related stuff to #wikimedia-dev) then we could either make the channels friendlier and we could have a relevant stuff in there (I don't understand why #mediawiki devs need to see bugs related to wikimedia platform issues, these should go to -dev). That would mean more spam in -dev and less spam in #mediawiki and more relevant feeds, people who just like to watch spam and flood could stay in #mediawiki-feed. It would involve some people to work on that and change the code of bots, devs are lazy (like me) so this is likely a bad option :) Don't say things are OK right now, they clearly aren't. If they are fine for you, that doesn't mean they are fine for others. Bots are good for devs, no wonder, we made them. But there are other users too. On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 5:10 AM, Krinkle <krinklemail(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 4:48 PM, Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote: Could we maybe take this single discussion on-wiki? I'm finding it impossible to keep track of all of the IRC discussions in separate locations (here, bugzilla) when what we need is just one centralized place to hash this out. Might I suggest: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Git/IRC? Thanks, Chad

On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 10:19 AM, Petr Bena <benapetr(a)gmail.com> wrote: Then please feel free to move it to a better name. I really don't care what the pagename is :) -Chad

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 12:43 AM, Chad <innocentkiller(a)gmail.com> wrote: Project:CurrentIssues perhaps? if people don't want it to be in the git "NS"?

Le 27/06/12 10:24, Petr Bena a écrit : Per Chad, yes please :-} https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Git/IRC -- Antoine "hashar" Musso