Roan Kattouw wrote:
> This'll probably take months, so I know I'm asking for quite a bit of
> patience here. But I believe Aryeh is right that regular code
> deployments will cure most of the problems we've been discussing, and
> I'm willing to bet on that by putting my disagreements with other
> people regarding this topic aside for the next few months, until we've
> gotten back to regular code deployment, at which point we can
> re-evaluate. My understanding is that Aryeh is also doing that, and I
> call upon you all to join us.

Letting tensions and frustrations sit for months is a fantastic way to
guarantee a much larger problem in the future. MediaWiki is a
community-driven project and the community is being driven away. This isn't
hyperbole, it's a statement of fact.

Roan Kattouw (also) wrote:
> We need to come up with a plan that takes us back to regular (weekly?)
> deployments. I think cleaning up the CR backlog is an uncontroversial
> first step. What I have in mind personally is to have this move to
> regular deployments coincide with the 1.17 release, but that should be
> discussed in a separate thread I guess.

The problem with mailing lists is that they're great for creating a rallying
cry, but shortly after the thread dies, so does the action. (Scan the
archives for discussion about something like a parser rewrite or category
intersection sometime and you can see what I mean.)

The issues surrounding code deployment, branches, and special exemptions for
staff-written code are well documented at this point. And the solutions are
all fairly readily apparent. It isn't time to say "we need to come up a
plan," it's time to _implement_ a plan.

The alternative is that any implementation of a proper plan to fix the
backlog becomes a typical Wikimedia procrastination situation where the
deadline for moving forward is always "after X," where X is the next
MediaWiki release, the next fundraiser, the next Wikimania, the next
whatever.

Erik Moeller wrote:
> I think that we agree more than we disagree here. Obviously a huge
> code review and deployment backlog is bad for everyone.

You're the Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. You're directly
responsible for the Chief Technical Officer, and as a consequence, the tech
staff. You say you agree that the code backlog is a problem and you're in a
position of power to address it.

So what's your plan of action? What resources are you committing in order to
fix this problem?

MZMcBride



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