Re: [Wikitech-l] Who owns (or should own) OOjs UI?

[Jon Robson]

This might be a good discussion for the dev summit?

I talked to Moriel about this a couple of days ago. I too am a bit
concerned and feel like this needs a dedicated team, preferably
without a product to manage and mediate/prioritise requests against it
as otherwise the library will be biased towards a single product
rather than all our products.

Ideally, I feel that we need a team determining how it evolves and its
architecture. A big rewrite to split out OOjs UI into
components/making it support mobile /adding a new component to OOjs UI
is not something that should be done in an ad-hoc nature - it should
be done by people with a vision of what this library needs to grow
into, the problem it is solving and knowledge of its history and
mistakes of the past - guardians as such - ensuring that the library
is the best it can be.

I worry about its success if arranged in a cross-functional skunkworks team.

On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie)
 wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 3:40 PM, James Forrester 
> wrote:
>
>> Short-cut answer to the title question: Me.
>>
>
> I'm glad to hear that you are accepting responsibility for OOjs UI
> development! Do you have a timeline on a fix for T113681, or a page that
> indicates what higher-priority development you and your team are working on
> in the near future?
>
>
>> > If OOjs UI is the thing that we're supposed to be using in the future for
>> > our UI stuff, it's very concerning that further development is blocked on
>> > T113681
>>
>> "Further development" is not blocked on this task. A few things that some
>> people want to do are.
>
>
> Let's not chop logic here. If "a few things that some people want to do"
> cannot be done due to T113681, then T113681 is indeed blocking some further
> development even if other further development isn't blocked. This email
> thread isn't even about
> T113681 specifically, it's about that there are no development resources
> for fixing things in OOjs UI unless someone is willing to do it as a
> skunkworks project, and OOjs UI isn't yet a finished product where we might
> be able to justify that.
>
> I'm disappointed that you don't think that the fact that "some things
> people want to do" are blocked and no development resources are available
> to remedy the situation is cause for concern. When the situation was
> brought up in today's Scrum of Scrums, the consensus was that it is indeed
> concerning.
>
>
>> Please do not exaggerate for effect to try to get your way. I'm sorry that
>> we disagree as to whether your patch belongs in the library in its current
>> form.
>>
>
> Since you brought it up, let's look at my patch. There are two concrete
> blockers that have been raised on my patch. Neither of them actually have
> to do with the form of the patch itself.
>
> The long-standing blocker has been disagreement over how the widget can be
> internationalized in the context of OOjs UI: The Language and translatewiki
> faction wants OOjs UI developers to integrate cldrjs, while the OOjs UI
> developers are unwilling to make any decision as to whether cldrjs is the
> way to go or translatewiki will just have to deal with providing
> translations for month and weekday names as they do for everything else.
> The closest we have to a decision is really a cop-out: "shove it into
> MediaWiki even though it doesn't belong there, because MediaWiki already
> happens to have most of the needed i18n strings and we can't make any
> decision here".
>
> In last week's Scrum of Scrums, you brought up T113681 as a new blocker:
> OOjs UI is already too large, so we can't add new stuff until someone
> reworks it to be able to load individual components. MatmaRex then stated
> that no one owns or maintains OOjs UI to the extent that we can expect T113681
> to be solved any time soon, which brought the lack of maintainership in
> OOjs UI into clear view.
>
> MatmaRex also raised some other objections (disagreement with Design's
> design, non-use of moment.js despite moment.js not gaining us anything,
> doubt that anyone actually needs  despite evidence
> to the contrary), but no one else has agreed with those and he hasn't
> deigned to respond to attempts at further discussion in Gerrit.
>
> If you have objections to the actual form of my patch, as opposed to lack
> of a willingness to make any decision on the i18n issue or any progress on
> the form of OOjs UI as a whole, you should raise them in Gerrit instead of
> continuing to sit on them. Although I wonder why you haven't done so
> already.
>
>
> --
> Brad Jorsch (Anomie)
> Senior Software Engineer
> Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Who owns (or should own) OOjs UI?

[Rob Lanphier]

On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 5:40 PM, Jon Robson  wrote:
> [OOjs UI ownership] might be a good discussion for the dev summit?

Perhaps.  I'd say the idea in Phab.  It's obviously way past the
scheduled date for submissions[1], but the schedule isn't etched in
stone, and it might make a good unconference session anyway.

Rob
[1]  And, admittedly, we're behind the schedule we planned on for
putting the schedule together.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Who owns (or should own) OOjs UI?

[Brad Jorsch (Anomie)]

On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 2:40 PM, Brion Vibber  wrote:

> Unfortunately since the mid-2015 Engineering department reorgs, there is no
> such team...
>

I agree, such a team should be created. I'll be first in line to sign up,
and as part of such a team I'd be happy to help "own" OOjs UI (although I'd
not be comfortable being the lead on owning it).


> If we can't lobby management to (re)create one, we'll have to set up a
> "cross-functional" skunkworks team if we want anything big to get done.
>

IMO a skunkworks team for critical infrastructure would be a sad outcome.


> I would love to be involved, but I'm already stretched thin with
> multimedia-related commitments and probably don't have time to be the main
> point person. But if there's a few others who would like to chip in...
> maybe we can make some decisions and push some code around!
>

Me too, with the API and the AuthManager project. Plus I don't understand
our JS ecosystem well enough to perform the requisite major surgery on OOjs
UI without hand-holding from someone who does know how the packaging should
work.


-- 
Brad Jorsch (Anomie)
Senior Software Engineer
Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Who owns (or should own) OOjs UI?

[James Forrester]

Short-cut answer to the title question: Me.

On 9 December 2015 at 10:26, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) 
wrote:

> On Sun, Dec 6, 2015 at 7:30 PM, Bartosz Dziewoński 
> wrote:
>
> > On 2015-12-04 18:59, Adam Baso wrote:
> >
> >> I do wonder though if we've spent much time studying the ease of getting
> >> at
> >> least some part of oojs-ui split out or making it so that new stuff
> going
> >> forward is part of the oojs-ui family but it's not as monolithich?
> >
> > Not any more than what is written at <
> > https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T113681#1673158>, as far as I know.
> >
> > OOjs UI doesn't have a dedicated team (or even a dedicated person)
> > supporting it. The changes are mostly driven by whatever the VisualEditor
> > or Design teams need, and what they are willing to implement themselves
> > (and to a lesser extent, Multimedia team and random people like Brad or
> > Florian). This makes it difficult to make any big changes happen.
> >
>
> If OOjs UI is the thing that we're supposed to be using in the future for
> our UI stuff, it's very concerning that further development is blocked on
> T113681


​"Further development" is not blocked​ on this task. A few things that some
people want to do are. Please do not exaggerate for effect to try to get
your way. I'm sorry that we disagree as to whether your patch belongs in
the library in its current form.


> but no one is planning on working on that task or feels ownership
> for the thing.
>

​The value-add of doing that accrues to the people currently not using
OOUI.​ The work is, and has always been, a group effort by engineers,
designers and product people making our front-end architecture more sane
and consistent. Responsibility for change lies with those that want it and
can justify the time, mostly. This is the same model as used for most
shared things around MediaWiki. The passion, care and effort from volunteer
and staff developers that goes into improving the library as people extend
its use to more places is great. I'd love for there to be dedicated
engineers to support the use of OOUI, but however.


> Is someone going to step up to actually own and maintain the thing?


​I am, and remain, the product owner responsible since 2012.​ The plan was
to transfer the product/design side of it entirely to Volker, but we've not
formally 'handed over the keys' yet. It doesn't appear that there's a
particular rush, given the lack of movement to re-do how skins in MediaWiki
work, as had been the ambition in 2013.

​[Trim the rest.]

​J.
-- 
James D. Forrester
Lead Product Manager, Editing
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

jforres...@wikimedia.org | @jdforrester
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Who owns (or should own) OOjs UI?

[Brad Jorsch (Anomie)]

On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 3:40 PM, James Forrester 
wrote:

> Short-cut answer to the title question: Me.
>

I'm glad to hear that you are accepting responsibility for OOjs UI
development! Do you have a timeline on a fix for T113681, or a page that
indicates what higher-priority development you and your team are working on
in the near future?


> > If OOjs UI is the thing that we're supposed to be using in the future for
> > our UI stuff, it's very concerning that further development is blocked on
> > T113681
>
> ​"Further development" is not blocked​ on this task. A few things that some
> people want to do are.


Let's not chop logic here. If "a few things that some people want to do"
cannot be done due to T113681, then T113681 is indeed blocking some further
development even if other further development isn't blocked. This email
thread isn't even about
T113681 specifically, it's about that there are no development resources
for fixing things in OOjs UI unless someone is willing to do it as a
skunkworks project, and OOjs UI isn't yet a finished product where we might
be able to justify that.

I'm disappointed that you don't think that the fact that "some things
people want to do" are blocked and no development resources are available
to remedy the situation is cause for concern. When the situation was
brought up in today's Scrum of Scrums, the consensus was that it is indeed
concerning.


> Please do not exaggerate for effect to try to get your way. I'm sorry that
> we disagree as to whether your patch belongs in the library in its current
> form.
>

Since you brought it up, let's look at my patch. There are two concrete
blockers that have been raised on my patch. Neither of them actually have
to do with the form of the patch itself.

The long-standing blocker has been disagreement over how the widget can be
internationalized in the context of OOjs UI: The Language and translatewiki
faction wants OOjs UI developers to integrate cldrjs, while the OOjs UI
developers are unwilling to make any decision as to whether cldrjs is the
way to go or translatewiki will just have to deal with providing
translations for month and weekday names as they do for everything else.
The closest we have to a decision is really a cop-out: "shove it into
MediaWiki even though it doesn't belong there, because MediaWiki already
happens to have most of the needed i18n strings and we can't make any
decision here".

In last week's Scrum of Scrums, you brought up T113681 as a new blocker:
OOjs UI is already too large, so we can't add new stuff until someone
reworks it to be able to load individual components. MatmaRex then stated
that no one owns or maintains OOjs UI to the extent that we can expect T113681
to be solved any time soon, which brought the lack of maintainership in
OOjs UI into clear view.

MatmaRex also raised some other objections (disagreement with Design's
design, non-use of moment.js despite moment.js not gaining us anything,
doubt that anyone actually needs  despite evidence
to the contrary), but no one else has agreed with those and he hasn't
deigned to respond to attempts at further discussion in Gerrit.

If you have objections to the actual form of my patch, as opposed to lack
of a willingness to make any decision on the i18n issue or any progress on
the form of OOjs UI as a whole, you should raise them in Gerrit instead of
continuing to sit on them. Although I wonder why you haven't done so
already.


-- 
Brad Jorsch (Anomie)
Senior Software Engineer
Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Who owns (or should own) OOjs UI?

[Brion Vibber]

OOjs UI is used as a core component of MediaWiki's user interfaces,
including heavy use in WMF-sponsored initiatives such as VE and Flow and
slowly increasing use within core; as such it should probably be maintained
by the MediaWiki Core team at Wikimedia Foundation.

Unfortunately since the mid-2015 Engineering department reorgs, there is no
such team... If we can't lobby management to (re)create one, we'll have to
set up a "cross-functional" skunkworks team if we want anything big to get
done.


I would love to be involved, but I'm already stretched thin with
multimedia-related commitments and probably don't have time to be the main
point person. But if there's a few others who would like to chip in...
maybe we can make some decisions and push some code around!

-- brion

On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 10:26 AM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie)  wrote:

> On Sun, Dec 6, 2015 at 7:30 PM, Bartosz Dziewoński 
> wrote:
>
> > On 2015-12-04 18:59, Adam Baso wrote:
> >
> >> I do wonder though if we've spent much time studying the ease of getting
> >> at
> >> least some part of oojs-ui split out or making it so that new stuff
> going
> >> forward is part of the oojs-ui family but it's not as monolithich?
> >>
> >
> > Not any more than what is written at <
> > https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T113681#1673158>, as far as I know.
> >
> > OOjs UI doesn't have a dedicated team (or even a dedicated person)
> > supporting it. The changes are mostly driven by whatever the VisualEditor
> > or Design teams need, and what they are willing to implement themselves
> > (and to a lesser extent, Multimedia team and random people like Brad or
> > Florian). This makes it difficult to make any big changes happen.
> >
>
> If OOjs UI is the thing that we're supposed to be using in the future for
> our UI stuff, it's very concerning that further development is blocked on
> T113681 but no one is planning on working on that task or feels ownership
> for the thing.
>
> Is someone going to step up to actually own and maintain the thing? Or
> should we consider declaring it a failure and figure out a plan to move
> away from it, if no one wants to maintain our home-grown JS UI library
> anymore?
>
>
> --
> Brad Jorsch (Anomie)
> Senior Software Engineer
> Wikimedia Foundation
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