[Wikimedia-l] About the concentration of resources in SF (itwas: "Communication plans for community engagement"

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Quim Gil, 26/08/2013 20:02:
> On 08/24/2013 01:19 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
>>> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs/Possible_projects
>
>>> I don't see why the chapters couldn't consider this list as a source of
>>> inspiration for software projects they could sponsor.
>>
>> Well, I see several possible reasons.
>> 1) Some of them are definitely WMF-specific, like the bugzilla
>> improvements. No reason for a chapter to even touch those.
>
> office.wikimedia.org is WMF-specific. bugzilla.wikimedia.org is not.
> These projects list features that would benefit the whole community, not
> just the WMF.

I didn't say bugzilla is WMF-specific, but maintaining and curating 
bugzilla is very clearly in the exclusive scope of WMF as of now. Even 
the most minuscule changes like adding a keyword (stupid example) are 
decided by WMF (for a reason).

>
> Wikidata and Kiwix are mentioned as success stories of tech projects
> driven by chapters. Is Wikidata Germany-specific? Does Switzerland
> really need offine Wikipedia?

The answer to these questions is actually "yes" in part, but I agree we 
can ignore it.

> No, these chapters decided to go beyond
> their strict duties and make a technical contribution just as useful to
> the rest of us.

It's not about will but about feasibility.

>
>> 2) Others rely heavily on WMF to be put in use, or interact/overlap
>> heavily with current work by WMF. The list is very good because it
>> provides a) proof of interest by WMF, b) a mentor who serves as contact
>> with WMF to keep things on track and avoid clashes. However, several of
>> those projects, if completed, could still sit on a dead end like many
>> GSoC projects in the past.
>
>  From the 20 ongoing projects, all of them are generating code that has
> a place in the Wikimedia servers. This is no coincidence: we set strong
> filters during the selection process to avoid all these problems you are
> mentioning.

You can't eliminate them, only reduce the risks. So this is only 
tangential to what I was saying (i.e. all the parts you cut out of your 
quote).

Nemo

>
> To anybody willing to take a tech project: just ask or share your plans
> in advance to make sure your contributions will be as useful for the
> community as you expect.
>
>> Typically, a chapter would be interested either because "its" language
>> communities have a particular interest in something, or as a part of
>> some other project of the chapter (Commons improvements are probably the
>> easiest to fit in here).
>
> Sure, I'm just trying to encourage chapters and other orgs to ask their
> communities about tech projects they would like to help developing. And
> to consider budget, grants, hackathons etc to complete those projects.
> If these orgs don't do this then any tech decentralization will be harder.
>