On 3 January 2012 23:15, Erik Moeller <erik(a)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