[Labs-l] [Labs-announce] Does anyone care about service groups?

[Andrew Bogott]

     Back when we created tools, we implemented tool accounts as a 
general labs-wide feature, 'service groups.'  A tool is a service group, 
but any other project can also create a single-use group or user via the 
'Manager Service Groups' link in Wikitech.

     I just ran a big report of all uses of this feature outside of 
tools, and reached out to many of the projects that contain service 
groups.  The use cases I encountered were:

1) "I'm a Labs Op and am using that to test a feature for the tools project"
2) "I used that feature by mistake/I was just clicking around at random"
3) "That feature seemed like it might be useful but it wasn't and I 
never cleaned up afterwards"

     So!  I propose deprecate and remove the service group feature 
outside of Tools.  Specifically:

- The new tools admin tool (https://toolsadmin.wikimedia.org/) will 
implement a tool request/approval/creation system that replaces the 
wikitech 'service groups' feature for tool creation purposes.

- Once that is done, I will remove the 'Manage Service Groups' link from 
wikitech, and disable all wikitech features related to service groups.

- I will delete all existing service groups outside of case 1 above

- The backend implementation of service groups will remain the same as 
it is now, and by special request (mostly, again, for case 1), operators 
will still be able to create/manipulate service groups outside of the 
Tools project via arduous by-hand commandline machinations.

     Does that sound OK to everyone?  Does anyone want to speak up in 
favor of preserving this feature?

-Andrew


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