<div dir="ltr">I for one am psyched to see this news :)</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 10:17 AM, Bryan Davis <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bd808@wikimedia.org" target="_blank">bd808@wikimedia.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">I recently transferred from the Reading Infrastructure team to the<br>
Community Tech team [0]. The move happened because I want to spend<br>
more of my time working with the developers who build tools and bots<br>
to help the Wikimedia communities. I've been thinking about needs of<br>
the Tool Labs developers for a while, and in November I finally wrote<br>
up a proposal about a job focused on this work [1]. I was ready for a<br>
lengthy discussion with management to defend my ideas about this need,<br>
but to my surprise the feedback I got instead was mostly "it's about<br>
time" and "when can you start?". My draft position proposal is now<br>
"official" and posted on meta [2]. This project will be my major focus<br>
on the Community Tech team, but I will also be helping out with code<br>
review, deployments, and other things that the rest of the team is<br>
working on.<br>
<br>
People watching wikitech, labs-l, and Phabricator may have noticed<br>
that I have been poking at various things since January like a<br>
redesign of the wikitech main page [3], a new namespace for tool<br>
documentation [4], and generally being more active in discussing<br>
problems and possible solutions. Now that I am working on these issues<br>
full time I want to start talking about bigger issues. I have drafted<br>
a "vision" document on meta [5] describing some of the larger issues<br>
with Tool Labs (and Labs and wikitech) that are making things harder<br>
than they could be. This vision comes with a straw dog project roadmap<br>
that I think we could work towards. This is not a set in stone<br>
timeline, but rather a very high level description of a series of<br>
projects that I believe would move Tool Labs towards being an easier<br>
environment for collaborative FLOSS projects to thrive in. I will<br>
continue to refine these project ideas and create Phabricator tasks to<br>
track them, but before I dive too deeply into that I would like to<br>
solicit input on both the problems and the general solution roadmap.<br>
The project page is on meta rather than wikitech to make it easier for<br>
existing Wikimedians who aren't wikitech users to participate. The<br>
talk page is open for comments [6] and I look forward to hearing about<br>
problems and solutions that I have not yet imagined. I hope that as<br>
the various sub-projects solidify some of you will join me in getting<br>
the work done.<br>
<br>
<br>
[0]: <a href="https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Staff_and_contractors&diff=105580&oldid=105576" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Staff_and_contractors&diff=105580&oldid=105576</a><br>
[1]: <a href="https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:BDavis_%28WMF%29/Projects/Tool_Labs_support" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:BDavis_%28WMF%29/Projects/Tool_Labs_support</a><br>
[2]: <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Tech/Tool_Labs_support" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Tech/Tool_Labs_support</a><br>
[3]: <a href="https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page</a><br>
[4]: <a href="https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Tool_Labs_tools" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Tool_Labs_tools</a><br>
[5]: <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Tech/Tool_Labs_support/Tool_Labs_vision" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Tech/Tool_Labs_support/Tool_Labs_vision</a><br>
[6]: <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Tech/Tool_Labs_support/Tool_Labs_vision" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Tech/Tool_Labs_support/Tool_Labs_vision</a><br>
<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
Bryan<br>
--<br>
Bryan Davis Wikimedia Foundation <<a href="mailto:bd808@wikimedia.org">bd808@wikimedia.org</a>><br>
[[m:User:BDavis_(WMF)]] Sr Software Engineer Boise, ID USA<br>
irc: bd808 v:<a href="tel:415.839.6885%20x6855" value="+14158396885">415.839.6885 x6855</a><br>
<br>
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</font></span></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr">Arthur Richards<div>Team Practices Manager</div><div>[[User:Awjrichards]]</div><div>IRC: awjr</div><div>+1-415-839-6885 x6687</div></div></div>
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