Re: [Wikimedia-l] "let's elect people to serve on the wikimedia engineering "community" team!" (brainstorming)

[Pine W]

I was asking for an overview of what WMF as a whole is doing in response to
the feedback on the Annual Plan, including FDC feedback, about performance
metrics such as a call for more SMART goals.

Pine


On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 11:22 PM, Steven Walling 
wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 7:06 AM, Pine W  wrote:
>
> > Hm. Garfield is the closest person I know in the Foundation to the FDC in
> > its role of evaluating the Foundation's Annual Plan for the entire
> > organization. The only other people I can think of who might be able to
> > comment for the whole org are Gayle and Lila.
> >
>
> You don't need to go through the FDC to talk to teams about their goals.
> You can just go talk to them via the wiki, or a mailing list.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] "let's elect people to serve on the wikimedia engineering "community" team!" (brainstorming)

[Steven Walling]

On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 7:06 AM, Pine W  wrote:

> Hm. Garfield is the closest person I know in the Foundation to the FDC in
> its role of evaluating the Foundation's Annual Plan for the entire
> organization. The only other people I can think of who might be able to
> comment for the whole org are Gayle and Lila.
>

You don't need to go through the FDC to talk to teams about their goals.
You can just go talk to them via the wiki, or a mailing list.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] "let's elect people to serve on the wikimedia engineering "community" team!" (brainstorming)

[Pine W]

Hm. Garfield is the closest person I know in the Foundation to the FDC in
its role of evaluating the Foundation's Annual Plan for the entire
organization. The only other people I can think of who might be able to
comment for the whole org are Gayle and Lila.

By the way, after the latest Product launch controversy (MediaViewer) I
proposed the creation of a Board-chartered Technology Committee that would
include significant community involvement. See
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard#Suggestion_for_the_Board:_Technology_Committee

Pine






On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 10:52 PM, Steven Walling 
wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 7:09 PM, Pine W  wrote:
>
> > MzMcbride, I'm not sure that WMF is overstaffed, but I would like to see
> > more specific performance metrics for some groups. The FDC commented on
> > this as well and I hope WMF is taking that to heart. I'm pinging Garfield
> > for comment on that portion of this discussion.
> >
>
> Garfield is not really the right person to ask about this. A CFO (or at
> least, our CFO) doesn't set or monitor performance metrics for individual
> teams other than his own.
>
> Regardless, I think it's an important topic Pete. Having more community
> members comment on and question the yearly or quarterly goals for teams in
> general would be step toward the kind of feedback Gryllida mentioned in the
> start of the topic. If anyone is interested in digging in to this more,
> there's a thread on the Talk page of the WMF engineering goals for 2014-15
> document, which is at
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/2014-15_Goals. (There
> are also goals for other teams of course, but since this is an
> engineering-related thread I wanted to focus on just that.)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] "let's elect people to serve on the wikimedia engineering "community" team!" (brainstorming)

[Steven Walling]

On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 7:09 PM, Pine W  wrote:

> MzMcbride, I'm not sure that WMF is overstaffed, but I would like to see
> more specific performance metrics for some groups. The FDC commented on
> this as well and I hope WMF is taking that to heart. I'm pinging Garfield
> for comment on that portion of this discussion.
>

Garfield is not really the right person to ask about this. A CFO (or at
least, our CFO) doesn't set or monitor performance metrics for individual
teams other than his own.

Regardless, I think it's an important topic Pete. Having more community
members comment on and question the yearly or quarterly goals for teams in
general would be step toward the kind of feedback Gryllida mentioned in the
start of the topic. If anyone is interested in digging in to this more,
there's a thread on the Talk page of the WMF engineering goals for 2014-15
document, which is at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/2014-15_Goals. (There
are also goals for other teams of course, but since this is an
engineering-related thread I wanted to focus on just that.)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] "let's elect people to serve on the wikimedia engineering "community" team!" (brainstorming)

[Steven Walling]

On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 1:53 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:

> Theoretical overlap, perhaps. People in the role of "Community Liaison,
> Product Development and Strategic Change Management", a title Orwell would
> be proud of, are not doing what's being described in this e-mail. The
> current community liaisons are really paid advocates and they're tasked
> with shilling bad products. This isn't the fault of the people in these
> roles, many of whom I know and respect, but we should be honest that their
> role is much closer to that of a marketer or public relations person.
>

You're being a jerk in this paragraph, Max. There is a huge difference in
attitude, skills, and experience between marketers/PR people and the
Wikimedians that work in the community liason role. The community liasons
put in a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to advocate not only *to *the
community, but *for it* within the Foundation. They do this quietly, often
behind the scenes, and with little praise. If you know and respect these
people, the respectful thing would not be to reduce their very hard jobs to
a pithy but inaccurate summary for your rhetorical purposes.

To come back to the proposal: there's a lot of merit to the idea of a
formal community group not paid by the WMF to get deeply involved in
understanding the engineering roadmap and advising the Foundation. The list
of potential tasks Gryllida made is pretty good.

There are certainly staffers who've seriously considered trying to set this
up. The only barrier has been time and energy. It's probably best if the
community just goes ahead and elects a volunteer group, and then proposes
that it work with WMF engineering and product teams. TL;DR: be bold. If
you're not proposing setting up something involving money, the only barrier
is finding the right people, which will just take time. A gesture of good
faith might be to involve one relevant WMF person, like Rachel diCerbo (the
new director of the community liasons in product). She's been doing this
kind of thing a long time.

Steven
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Android "Nearby" Feature (was: Re: Community RfCs about MediaViewer)

[Andy Mabbett]

An answer would be appreciated...
On Jul 12, 2014 1:38 AM, "Andy Mabbett"  wrote:

> "On 11 July 2014 22:34, Erik Moeller  wrote:
>
> > The new Android app isn't simply an upgrade of the last version, it's
> > a complete re-write in native code
>
> This technical nicety is of no interest to most users, whose app was
> "updated".
>
> > In determining the feature set, the team
> > looked at core functionality they really wanted to deliver in the
> > first release, and iterated on that based on user feedback during the
> > beta.
>
> I didn't participate in this round of the beta, because there was no
> suggestion in anything that I read that significant - significantly
> useful - existing functionality would be removed. (Indeed, the removal
> wasn't mentioned when the "revamped" app was announced by your WMF
> colleagues.) I did tough, spend some time testing the "nearby" feature
> in v1's beta
>
> > And a more understandable view of the current sprint in Trello:
> >
> https://trello.com/b/5DhKhjmW/mobile-app-sprint-35-article-usability-enhancements
>
> I can't find the string "near" on that page.
>
> > The "nearby" feature in the old app also relied on third
> > party infrastructure, which makes us a bit uncomfortable from a user
> > privacy and principles perspective. Our plan is to build out our own
> > OpenStreetMap infrastructure later this year which will help in
> > further developing such geo-functionality.
>
> Is this a blocker for the return of the "nearby" feature to the app?
>
>
> In splitting this thread and describing it as "off topic", you've
> overlooked that my comments were in the context of - and in response
> to - your comment about "change-aversion [tending] to correlate pretty
> strongly with impact on existing workflows and noticeable changes to
> user experience and behaviour".
>
> --
> Andy Mabbett
> @pigsonthewing
> http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] "let's elect people to serve on the wikimedia engineering "community" team!" (brainstorming)

[svetlana]

With due notes that I just yesterday updated my nick and my e-mail, and I'm the 
one who started this thread;

On Wed, 6 Aug 2014, at 06:58, Quim Gil wrote:
> > - encourage feedback by absolutely /anyone/ about the next features they'd
> > like,
> >
> 
> Betas and Bugzilla today. Phabricator should make it easier to provide
> feedback in a wider range of topics, not only "bugs".

99% of users of Wikimedia projects don't /know/ about these tools. That's the 
problem, and your response is not reflecting it.

> 
> 
> > - run programming and documentation activities requested (or started) by
> > community [there would be a lot of small projects, unlike the big ones the
> > current Teams are working on],
> >
> 
> I for one would welcome more initiatives and requests from the community.
> The PyWikiBot is a good example of a team that asks us to help organizing
> and promoting their special activities. More proposals are welcome.

Listening to me (or other mailing list members) here or in your personal e-mail 
is not the way to go, as mentioned in my earlier line.

> > - encourage localising documentation for, and centralising the location
> > of, all community-developed programming work,
> >
> 
> Nemo has been a very active advocate, and I want to believe that WMF teams
> have been increasingly relying on centralized and translatable
> documentation in their releases, asking explicitly for translation help.

I had trouble talking with Nemo. He doesn't go in lengthy discussions about 
development and explaining things on IRC. Is he more willing to follow-up and 
give examples over e-mail? Probably; I have not tried.

On the plus side, I've had infinitely nice experience with him regarding 
translations of documentation.


> > - raise awareness of community development efforts across all Wikimedia
> > projects,
> >
> 
> This is an explicit goal for Tech Ambassadors and Community Liaisons.

Related message:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-August/073696.html

> 
> 
> > - actively encourage members of community become MediaWiki and Gadgets
> > hackers in the Free Software philosophy?
> >
> 
> Ah, you are touching a point of my personal ToDo list that I know we are
> not addressing as well as we could.

That is correct, and is the problem.

> Still, we are trying to focus this line
> of activity in conjunction with our participation in Google Summer of Code,
> FOSS Outreach Program for Women, and recently also Google Code-in and
> Facebook Open Academy.

Those, and IEG/PEG grants, scratch only a very small part of the userbase, and 
only their bigger projects. The problem is with engaging a vast majority of 
userbase in scripting the software to meet their personal needs.

See, for instance, with Firefox, customizing is exceptionally easy using 
existing add-ons or writing your own using the Jetpack. These are 
well-documented technologies and they're also, unlike what happens at Wikimedia 
projects, well advertised to end users.

 "Would you like to see MediaWiki as openly customizable as Firefox?"

> This would be, in my view, a relatively small, collaboration-type team
> > (with just half a handful of people for timezone coverage for IRC support).
> >
> 
> To me this is not a task of one team or two, but a set of practices better
> embodies in our development and deployment processes, and also a set of
> activities that a larger community should embrace.
> 
> In fact, this is what my Wikimania session is about! Shameless plug:
> 
> https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/The_Wikimedia_open_source_project_and_you

Wikimania people are a tiny part of the userbase. _How_ would you do what 
you're talking about there? This is not mentioned in the abstract, even though 
the problem raised is similar.

> 
> (It was scheduled at the "Technology, Interface & Infrastructure" track but
> believe me, it's more about
> WikiCulture & Community.)
> 
> I'm curious about the subject of you message, especially the "let's elect
> people" part. What do you mean?

Community volunteers could be featured for their technical work, and get 
rigorous feedback from community. If some of them start doing it contrary to 
community expectations, there should be means to clearly display that (and kick 
them out if they start doing rubbish and fail to hear the said feedback). -- 
This is very unclear and unspecific. I would expect others to come up with a 
specific mechanism for such cases.

Svetlana.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] "let's elect people to serve on the wikimedia engineering "community" team!" (brainstorming)

[Quim Gil]

Hi Gryllida,

On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 12:33 PM, Gryllida  wrote:

> Could we please have some more people (potentially a dedicated ‘community’
> team) who could do these things:
>

The tasks you describe would or could fall into the responsibilities of two
teams at the WMF:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Community_Engagement_(Product)
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Engineering_Community_Team

Also the own development teams (including product managers) are involved in
some of these activities, as part of their development and deployment
process.



> - encourage feedback by absolutely /anyone/ about the next features they'd
> like,
>

Betas and Bugzilla today. Phabricator should make it easier to provide
feedback in a wider range of topics, not only "bugs".


> - run programming and documentation activities requested (or started) by
> community [there would be a lot of small projects, unlike the big ones the
> current Teams are working on],
>

I for one would welcome more initiatives and requests from the community.
The PyWikiBot is a good example of a team that asks us to help organizing
and promoting their special activities. More proposals are welcome.


> - encourage localising documentation for, and centralising the location
> of, all community-developed programming work,
>

Nemo has been a very active advocate, and I want to believe that WMF teams
have been increasingly relying on centralized and translatable
documentation in their releases, asking explicitly for translation help.



> - raise awareness of community development efforts across all Wikimedia
> projects,
>

This is an explicit goal for Tech Ambassadors and Community Liaisons.


> - actively encourage members of community become MediaWiki and Gadgets
> hackers in the Free Software philosophy?
>

Ah, you are touching a point of my personal ToDo list that I know we are
not addressing as well as we could. Still, we are trying to focus this line
of activity in conjunction with our participation in Google Summer of Code,
FOSS Outreach Program for Women, and recently also Google Code-in and
Facebook Open Academy.


This would be, in my view, a relatively small, collaboration-type team
> (with just half a handful of people for timezone coverage for IRC support).
>

To me this is not a task of one team or two, but a set of practices better
embodies in our development and deployment processes, and also a set of
activities that a larger community should embrace.

In fact, this is what my Wikimania session is about! Shameless plug:

https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/The_Wikimedia_open_source_project_and_you

(It was scheduled at the "Technology, Interface & Infrastructure" track but
believe me, it's more about
WikiCulture & Community.)

I'm curious about the subject of you message, especially the "let's elect
people" part. What do you mean?
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] "let's elect people to serve on the wikimedia engineering "community" team!" (brainstorming)

[Pine W]

Hm. I wonder if the engineering community liason role could be adapted to
address the suggestIons here. Also I would like to know what the liasons
currently do besides file bug reports and respond to dev process questions,
which are good to do but not what I would call strategic change management.
I think the role of this department is under development anyway after
Rachel's arrival so this is a good time for the questions raised in this
thread. I'm pinging Rachel to ask her to comment.

MzMcbride, I'm not sure that WMF is overstaffed, but I would like to see
more specific performance metrics for some groups. The FDC commented on
this as well and I hope WMF is taking that to heart. I'm pinging Garfield
for comment on that portion of this discussion.

Pine
On Aug 5, 2014 5:53 AM, "MZMcBride"  wrote:

> Fæ wrote:
> >On 5 August 2014 11:33, Gryllida  wrote:
> >>WMF Engineering is currently composed of individual teams as documented
> >>at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering . These teams
> >>look after the software that faces us everyday, and often work together.
> >>
> >> Could we please have some more people (potentially a dedicated
> >>‘community’ team) who could do these things:
> >> - encourage feedback by absolutely /anyone/ about the next features
> >>they'd like,
> >> - run programming and documentation activities requested (or started)
> >>by community [there would be a lot of small projects, unlike the big
> >>ones the current Teams are working on],
> >> - encourage localising documentation for, and centralising the location
> >>of, all community-developed programming work,
> >> - raise awareness of community development efforts across all Wikimedia
> >>projects,
> >> - actively encourage members of community become MediaWiki and Gadgets
> >>hackers in the Free Software philosophy?
> >>
> >> This would be, in my view, a relatively small, collaboration-type team
> >>(with just half a handful of people for timezone coverage for IRC
> >>support).
> >>
> >> Open to brainstorming and suggestions. I would compile thoughts into a
> >>wiki page afterwards to continue thinking on the idea.
> >
> >The roles you describe seem to have a lot of overlap with what we
> >might expect WMF volunteer coordinators / WMF community liaison
> >employees to be busy with.
>
> Theoretical overlap, perhaps. People in the role of "Community Liaison,
> Product Development and Strategic Change Management", a title Orwell would
> be proud of, are not doing what's being described in this e-mail. The
> current community liaisons are really paid advocates and they're tasked
> with shilling bad products. This isn't the fault of the people in these
> roles, many of whom I know and respect, but we should be honest that their
> role is much closer to that of a marketer or public relations person.
>
> Substantive, meaningful communication between the people building software
> and the people using software is the goal, but the current implementation
> dramatically fails, as a number of software projects from the past two
> years have demonstrated and continue to demonstrate.
>
> And of course there are separate "community advocacy" and "engineering
> community" teams. The Wikimedia Foundation staff is heavily bloated and I
> very much doubt that hiring additional staff will improve matters.
>
> Gryllida's proposal has merit, but implementing it probably requires more
> than a small team. Part of the issue is that thousands of editors' views
> are discounted in favor of the latest hare-brained ideas from Wikimedia
> Foundation middle management. And while many of these ideas can be, and
> eventually are, killed or mitigated, it's draining work that's likely more
> easily accomplished with a larger pool of focused energy.
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Effective censorship of Wikipedia by Google

[Nathan]

On July 7th, Katherine Maher of the WMF said that they had not received any
notifications and had not made a decision as to how or whether to publicize
them. She did say that she thought it would be on next year's transparency
report (the first instance of which either came out recently or is coming
out shortly). My guess is the report will only describe these notifications
in aggregate.


On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 9:52 AM, Fæ  wrote:

> On 05/08/2014, John Mark Vandenberg  wrote:
> ...
> > We have a reply:
> > https://twitter.com/JulietteGarside/status/496644233580003328
> >
> > "@jayvdb @guardian @Wikipedia @wikisignpost We won't know unless
> > Wikipedia chooses to make that information public"
>
> Unless I'm missing something, this means that WMF senior management
> can tell us exactly which Wikipedia articles are "suppressed" after
> RTV requests to Google.
>
> What do we (the unpaid volunteer community) want to do with this
> information? Ethically this is difficult territory, but openness is
> one of our core values, so this should not all be stitched up in
> back-rooms without explaining what is going on to the whole community
> and aiming for a consensus on action.
>
> Fae
> --
> fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Effective censorship of Wikipedia by Google

[Fred Bauder]

I would prefer decency as a core value.

Fred

> On 05/08/2014, John Mark Vandenberg  wrote:
> ...
>> We have a reply:
>> https://twitter.com/JulietteGarside/status/496644233580003328
>>
>> "@jayvdb @guardian @Wikipedia @wikisignpost We won't know unless
>> Wikipedia chooses to make that information public"
>
> Unless I'm missing something, this means that WMF senior management
> can tell us exactly which Wikipedia articles are "suppressed" after
> RTV requests to Google.
>
> What do we (the unpaid volunteer community) want to do with this
> information? Ethically this is difficult territory, but openness is
> one of our core values, so this should not all be stitched up in
> back-rooms without explaining what is going on to the whole community
> and aiming for a consensus on action.
>
> Fae
> --
> fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Effective censorship of Wikipedia by Google

[Fred Bauder]

I would prefer decency as a core value.

Fred

> On 05/08/2014, John Mark Vandenberg  wrote:
> ...
>> We have a reply:
>> https://twitter.com/JulietteGarside/status/496644233580003328
>>
>> "@jayvdb @guardian @Wikipedia @wikisignpost We won't know unless
>> Wikipedia chooses to make that information public"
>
> Unless I'm missing something, this means that WMF senior management
> can tell us exactly which Wikipedia articles are "suppressed" after
> RTV requests to Google.
>
> What do we (the unpaid volunteer community) want to do with this
> information? Ethically this is difficult territory, but openness is
> one of our core values, so this should not all be stitched up in
> back-rooms without explaining what is going on to the whole community
> and aiming for a consensus on action.
>
> Fae
> --
> fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Effective censorship of Wikipedia by Google

[Fæ]

On 05/08/2014, John Mark Vandenberg  wrote:
...
> We have a reply:
> https://twitter.com/JulietteGarside/status/496644233580003328
>
> "@jayvdb @guardian @Wikipedia @wikisignpost We won't know unless
> Wikipedia chooses to make that information public"

Unless I'm missing something, this means that WMF senior management
can tell us exactly which Wikipedia articles are "suppressed" after
RTV requests to Google.

What do we (the unpaid volunteer community) want to do with this
information? Ethically this is difficult territory, but openness is
one of our core values, so this should not all be stitched up in
back-rooms without explaining what is going on to the whole community
and aiming for a consensus on action.

Fae
-- 
fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Effective censorship of Wikipedia by Google

[John Mark Vandenberg]

On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 12:27 PM, John Mark Vandenberg  wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 8:49 AM, Risker  wrote:
>> I'm not sure you're correct about what is being "disappeared", Fae.  I
>> believe that the Guardian is referring to an article of theirs that is now
>> not seen in Google search results for certain terms.  The article makes it
>> pretty clear that The Guardian does not known which article is involved.
>
> As it says anonymous applicant, it does seem likely they dont know
> which article, or maybe the status of the applicant is officially
> 'anonymous' but the details are known and unable to be reported.
>
> Anyway, I've asked in the off-chance they can give clues.
>
> https://twitter.com/jayvdb/status/495802112429682688

We have a reply:
https://twitter.com/JulietteGarside/status/496644233580003328

"@jayvdb @guardian @Wikipedia @wikisignpost We won't know unless
Wikipedia chooses to make that information public"

-- 
John Vandenberg

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] "let's elect people to serve on the wikimedia engineering "community" team!" (brainstorming)

[MZMcBride]

Fæ wrote:
>On 5 August 2014 11:33, Gryllida  wrote:
>>WMF Engineering is currently composed of individual teams as documented
>>at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering . These teams
>>look after the software that faces us everyday, and often work together.
>>
>> Could we please have some more people (potentially a dedicated
>>‘community’ team) who could do these things:
>> - encourage feedback by absolutely /anyone/ about the next features
>>they'd like,
>> - run programming and documentation activities requested (or started)
>>by community [there would be a lot of small projects, unlike the big
>>ones the current Teams are working on],
>> - encourage localising documentation for, and centralising the location
>>of, all community-developed programming work,
>> - raise awareness of community development efforts across all Wikimedia
>>projects,
>> - actively encourage members of community become MediaWiki and Gadgets
>>hackers in the Free Software philosophy?
>>
>> This would be, in my view, a relatively small, collaboration-type team
>>(with just half a handful of people for timezone coverage for IRC
>>support).
>>
>> Open to brainstorming and suggestions. I would compile thoughts into a
>>wiki page afterwards to continue thinking on the idea.
>
>The roles you describe seem to have a lot of overlap with what we
>might expect WMF volunteer coordinators / WMF community liaison
>employees to be busy with.

Theoretical overlap, perhaps. People in the role of "Community Liaison,
Product Development and Strategic Change Management", a title Orwell would
be proud of, are not doing what's being described in this e-mail. The
current community liaisons are really paid advocates and they're tasked
with shilling bad products. This isn't the fault of the people in these
roles, many of whom I know and respect, but we should be honest that their
role is much closer to that of a marketer or public relations person.

Substantive, meaningful communication between the people building software
and the people using software is the goal, but the current implementation
dramatically fails, as a number of software projects from the past two
years have demonstrated and continue to demonstrate.

And of course there are separate "community advocacy" and "engineering
community" teams. The Wikimedia Foundation staff is heavily bloated and I
very much doubt that hiring additional staff will improve matters.

Gryllida's proposal has merit, but implementing it probably requires more
than a small team. Part of the issue is that thousands of editors' views
are discounted in favor of the latest hare-brained ideas from Wikimedia
Foundation middle management. And while many of these ideas can be, and
eventually are, killed or mitigated, it's draining work that's likely more
easily accomplished with a larger pool of focused energy.

MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] "let's elect people to serve on the wikimedia engineering "community" team!" (brainstorming)

[Risker]

On 5 August 2014 12:05, Gryllida  wrote:

> On Tue, 5 Aug 2014, at 20:48, Fæ wrote:
> > On 5 August 2014 11:33, Gryllida  wrote:
> > > Hi all.
> > >
> > > WMF Engineering is currently composed of individual teams as
> documented at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering .
> These teams look after the software that faces us everyday, and often work
> together.
> > >
> > > Could we please have some more people (potentially a dedicated
> ‘community’ team) who could do these things:
> > > - encourage feedback by absolutely /anyone/ about the next features
> they'd like,
> > > - run programming and documentation activities requested (or started)
> by community [there would be a lot of small projects, unlike the big ones
> the current Teams are working on],
> > > - encourage localising documentation for, and centralising the
> location of, all community-developed programming work,
> > > - raise awareness of community development efforts across all
> Wikimedia projects,
> > > - actively encourage members of community become MediaWiki and Gadgets
> hackers in the Free Software philosophy?
> > >
> > > This would be, in my view, a relatively small, collaboration-type team
> (with just half a handful of people for timezone coverage for IRC support).
> > >
> > > Open to brainstorming and suggestions. I would compile thoughts into a
> wiki page afterwards to continue thinking on the idea.
> >
> > The roles you describe seem to have a lot of overlap with what we
> > might expect WMF volunteer coordinators / WMF community liaison
> > employees to be busy with. Compare with:
> > *
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Volunteer_Development_Coordinator
> > * http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Community_Liaison
> >
> > Do you intend this to be an unpaid team of volunteers doing these
> > tasks, or a end user group (in the Agile sense) that would be
> > supported by employees and may themselves be paid for some activities?
> >
> > Fae
>
> "Both please"? [This is a question! This is a brainstorming thread.]
>
> Some part of such group of people could be paid (like the job openings you
> linked), and a very vast part could be volunteer and supported by the said
> employees (and documentation).
>
>

You mean like the tech ambassadors?
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/Ambassadors



One thing to keep in mind is that English Wikipedia is only one of hundreds
of projects. The technology and engineering groups generally work at a
global level because they affect all projects; it's rare that they're doing
something for one project only.

There are lots of opportunities for community members to interact and to
test software in advance (the "beta" preferences are but one of them) - but
when discussing a global project or process or software, the best place to
discuss is rarely going to be a single page on a single non-global project.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] "let's elect people to serve on the wikimedia engineering "community" team!" (brainstorming)

[Gryllida]

On Tue, 5 Aug 2014, at 20:48, Fæ wrote:
> On 5 August 2014 11:33, Gryllida  wrote:
> > Hi all.
> >
> > WMF Engineering is currently composed of individual teams as documented at 
> > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering . These teams look 
> > after the software that faces us everyday, and often work together.
> >
> > Could we please have some more people (potentially a dedicated ‘community’ 
> > team) who could do these things:
> > - encourage feedback by absolutely /anyone/ about the next features they'd 
> > like,
> > - run programming and documentation activities requested (or started) by 
> > community [there would be a lot of small projects, unlike the big ones the 
> > current Teams are working on],
> > - encourage localising documentation for, and centralising the location of, 
> > all community-developed programming work,
> > - raise awareness of community development efforts across all Wikimedia 
> > projects,
> > - actively encourage members of community become MediaWiki and Gadgets 
> > hackers in the Free Software philosophy?
> >
> > This would be, in my view, a relatively small, collaboration-type team 
> > (with just half a handful of people for timezone coverage for IRC support).
> >
> > Open to brainstorming and suggestions. I would compile thoughts into a wiki 
> > page afterwards to continue thinking on the idea.
> 
> The roles you describe seem to have a lot of overlap with what we
> might expect WMF volunteer coordinators / WMF community liaison
> employees to be busy with. Compare with:
> * 
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Volunteer_Development_Coordinator
> * http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Community_Liaison
> 
> Do you intend this to be an unpaid team of volunteers doing these
> tasks, or a end user group (in the Agile sense) that would be
> supported by employees and may themselves be paid for some activities?
> 
> Fae

"Both please"? [This is a question! This is a brainstorming thread.]

Some part of such group of people could be paid (like the job openings you 
linked), and a very vast part could be volunteer and supported by the said 
employees (and documentation).

Gryllida.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Rarest records

[David Gerard]

On 5 August 2014 10:55, Andy Mabbett  wrote:
> On 4 August 2014 19:24, David Gerard  wrote:

>> I've wanted one of these for years: http://www.elpj.com/

> How much? Maybe we should put in a grant application.


Tens of thousands of dollars and a waiting list ... and I don't know
anyone who actually has one and uses it for preservation. Though
apparently they are *damn fine*.


- d.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] "let's elect people to serve on the wikimedia engineering "community" team!" (brainstorming)

[Fæ]

On 5 August 2014 11:33, Gryllida  wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> WMF Engineering is currently composed of individual teams as documented at 
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering . These teams look after 
> the software that faces us everyday, and often work together.
>
> Could we please have some more people (potentially a dedicated ‘community’ 
> team) who could do these things:
> - encourage feedback by absolutely /anyone/ about the next features they'd 
> like,
> - run programming and documentation activities requested (or started) by 
> community [there would be a lot of small projects, unlike the big ones the 
> current Teams are working on],
> - encourage localising documentation for, and centralising the location of, 
> all community-developed programming work,
> - raise awareness of community development efforts across all Wikimedia 
> projects,
> - actively encourage members of community become MediaWiki and Gadgets 
> hackers in the Free Software philosophy?
>
> This would be, in my view, a relatively small, collaboration-type team (with 
> just half a handful of people for timezone coverage for IRC support).
>
> Open to brainstorming and suggestions. I would compile thoughts into a wiki 
> page afterwards to continue thinking on the idea.

The roles you describe seem to have a lot of overlap with what we
might expect WMF volunteer coordinators / WMF community liaison
employees to be busy with. Compare with:
* 
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Volunteer_Development_Coordinator
* http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Community_Liaison

Do you intend this to be an unpaid team of volunteers doing these
tasks, or a end user group (in the Agile sense) that would be
supported by employees and may themselves be paid for some activities?

Fae
-- 
fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

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[Wikimedia-l] "let's elect people to serve on the wikimedia engineering "community" team!" (brainstorming)

[Gryllida]

Hi all.

WMF Engineering is currently composed of individual teams as documented at 
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering . These teams look after 
the software that faces us everyday, and often work together.

Could we please have some more people (potentially a dedicated ‘community’ 
team) who could do these things:
- encourage feedback by absolutely /anyone/ about the next features they'd like,
- run programming and documentation activities requested (or started) by 
community [there would be a lot of small projects, unlike the big ones the 
current Teams are working on],
- encourage localising documentation for, and centralising the location of, all 
community-developed programming work,
- raise awareness of community development efforts across all Wikimedia 
projects,
- actively encourage members of community become MediaWiki and Gadgets hackers 
in the Free Software philosophy?

This would be, in my view, a relatively small, collaboration-type team (with 
just half a handful of people for timezone coverage for IRC support).

Open to brainstorming and suggestions. I would compile thoughts into a wiki 
page afterwards to continue thinking on the idea.

Regards
Gryllida.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Rarest records

[Andy Mabbett]

On 4 August 2014 19:24, David Gerard  wrote:
>
> I've wanted one of these for years: http://www.elpj.com/

How much? Maybe we should put in a grant application.

-- 
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk

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