Thanks for articulating this very clearly Faidon! More inline... On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 3:11 AM, Faidon Liambotis <fai...@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 02:30:22PM -0800, Rob Lanphier wrote: > > Ultimately, WMF TechOps has correctly blocked a lot of software making it > > to the Wikimedia cluster that hasn't been through the RFC process, even > > though they themselves weren't entirely clear about the scope. Wikimedia > > Foundation leadership has an (unfortunately) long history of being > unclear > > about the scope. I share the blame for this. This is my attempt to > > clarify. > > This is true, although the word "blocked" is perhaps a bit strong. > > We generally prefer large architectural changes to be discussed with a > wider group across the movement, than just us and the person or team > that proposed them. [ArchCom seems to be more diverse than Ops, and probably better than leaving it up to Ops to keep organic growth under > control] > That said, there have been important deployments that have bypassed the > RfC process entirely (including proposals that resulted into staffed WMF > teams) and others that did go via the RfC process, but the resulting > feedback wasn't incorporated into the final design (for various > reasons). > I definitely appreciate it when Ops has been a firm stakeholder in this process. Mark unofficially dropped out of ArchCom back in August, which I only recently acknowledged on the ArchCom page <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Architecture_committee> (sorry!) The remaining ArchCom members have been very good at ensuring that Ops' voice is reflected in the decisions (e.g. the schema change update to the development policy <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Development_policy>) It seems reasonable for y'all to object to deployments of code for which consensus isn't clear. We shouldn't expect you to be the police, and you need to be careful about maintaining the trust and goodwill of the broader community (and not seen as an obstacle to progress), but when you see <something> that doesn't look right, a polite note to wikitech-l saying "I'm confused about <something>" would be greatly appreciated. It's also worth noting that the opposite has happened as well: TechOps > has blocked the production deployment of features that the MediaWiki > ArchComm has approved. The fact that an optional feature is considered > good enough for the MediaWiki architecture does not mean that it's > appropriate for Wikimedia's complex and demanding production environment > -- or for being worked on by the Wikimedia Foundation, for that matter. > This is a failure of process we should address. ArchCom shouldn't approve things that don't make sense for our environment. That said, we want Wikimedia software to improve quickly. We should aspire to incorporate the best elements of the "bold, revert, discuss <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bold,_revert,_discuss>" consensus-building process that serves many of our projects well. We should endeavor to take acceptable risks for things that are easily reversible, and only challenge those risks where the consequences of failure aren't clearly understood and/or disproportionately fall on the wrong people. This is especially true given that ArchComm really has absolutely no say > in resourcing and a given feature may not have secured funding (people, > hardware etc.) > Awww....you're mail was so great, and then you ended with this! Are you saying that the only real power in this world belongs to people with control of the money? Rob _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
