[Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] New, lower traffic, announcements only email list for Wikimedia developers

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Amir E. Aharoni, 12/07/2012 12:42:
> What's needed is a medium to announce important impending technical
> changes, which require local changes. [...]
>
> We could just blame the projects for not caring enough, or we could
> come up with a more effective solution.

You're right that this is an important problem to address and your 
examples are very good, however I think they're not about a 
communication problem. The example problems you've mentioned are just 
impossible to solve for most wikis whatever communication you have with 
them, because they're too complex; the solution here is to make things 
simpler.
I don't know about right-to-left stuff, but protocol-relative URLs have 
been fixed only with a "central" direct intervention to fix mistakes of 
local wikis (and WMF staffers, even)[1] and RL is helped only by good 
documentation for JS gurus[2] or, on most (helpless) wikis, again by a 
central effort.[3]

>> We surely need ways to spread the word better and especially
>> during the "emergencies" such as deploy a mailing list can be the way but
>> surely it's not good for brainstorming or to gather feedback in a useful way
>> (compare https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech which is lately serving this
>> purpose, to my surprise I have to say, thanks to the effort of some users).
>
> Thank you, I didn't know that page. I'll try to start following it.
>
> In practice, it's harder to follow a wiki page than a mailing list.
> But maybe that's just my own feeling.

Of course the wiki page is not good for announcements, but it's better 
than a mailing list for all the other things you mentioned. If there are 
some committed "maintainers" and/or a working IRC channel ([[Tech]] is 
now tightly connected with the revamped #wikimedia-tech, which would be 
improved by [4]), it can work although all attempts have failed in the 
past.[5]

Nemo

[1] 
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards%27_noticeboard/Archives/2012-04#Fixing_HTTPS_on_Wikimedia_wikis>
[2] 
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ResourceLoader/Migration_guide_%28users%29>
[3] 
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Krinkle/Le_Tour_de_Wik%C3%AD/2011_Resource_Walker> 
or even better things like 
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Salvatore_Ingala/Notes> to reduce 
the codebase to be maintained.
[4] <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16043#c19>
[5] Today I've closed two problem report pages, see 
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project_talk:Test_reports>