On 3 January 2012 23:15, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
"Next" though would likely still mean no sooner than March/April. Any help is as always appreciated.
You say that help is always appreciated, and I think that, *in general*, it is; but with regard to specific projects, particularly where there's a lot of WMF staff involvement, I'm not entirely convinced. I've been explicitly *dis*couraged from taking a stab at projects because they were 'on the list' of staff todos (one, ironically, Andrew's project for *after* LQT... :-D ). Unless you give volunteer devs more detail about what they *can* productively do that won't be duplicated or wasted effort, I doubt anyone will be able to do very much useful towards this (or any other) project.
Perhaps this, as something that a *lot* of people from everywhere on the spectrum care about and would probably be enthusiastic to work towards, is a good opportunity to try a more structured approach towards parceling out work? Publicise clearly whatever specification is currently floating around the office (or take the time *now* to define it if it's not already); make it clear what work needs to be done, and especially what would make a good isolated module; and then come back in April and see if anything has materialised that you can use? If nothing useful has been done, you've wasted no time or effort, just rescheduled it a bit; if good work has been done then you've accelerated the project; and if work has been done but it doesn't fit with what the staff produce, then you know that the enthusiasm is there but that you need to work on your communication for the next project.
--HM