On 19-01-18 22:12:22, Pine W wrote:
I'm glad that this problematic change to communications was reverted.
Clarification: Enabling this plugin wasn't reverted, a configuration change was made to the default settings of the plugin.
Thanks to the helpful suggestions on this thread, it's my hope that the upstream plugin (in future) may contain additional configuration options to improve the usability of this plugin for everyone, including Wikimedia technical contributors.
I would like to suggest that this is the type of change that, when being planned, should get a design review from a third party before coding starts, should go through at least one RFC before coding starts, and be widely communicated before coding starts and again a week or two before deployment. Involving TechCom might also be appropriate. It appears that none of those happened here. In terms of process this situation looks to me like it's inexcusable.
As Chad mentioned this is a plugin developed by upstream Gerrit. Enabling this plugin was tracked in Wikimedia's public Phabricator[0].As is now well understood in hindsight, the default configuration of this plugin (as designed by Gerrit upstream) is far from optimal for Wikimedia technical contributors.
[0]. <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T101131>
In the English Wikipedia community, doing something like this would have a reasonable likelihood of costing an administrator their tools, and I hope that a similar degree of accountability is enforced in the engineering community. In particular, I expect engineering supervisors to follow established technical processes for changes that impact others' workflows, and if they decide to skip those processes without a compelling reason (such as a site stability problem) then I hope that they will be held accountable. Again, from my perspective, the failure to follow process here is inexcusable.
As was pointed out by others: it's difficult to make a comparison between the English Wikipedia community and the Wikimedia technical contributors community (although many folks belong to both groups). I don't believe holding individuals to a post hoc set of standards creates a healthy community in any case.
I do agree that technical contributors should be accountable. That is, technical contributors should strive to be responsive to issues when they arise (as issues will arise when attempting to accomplish goals in a technical space).
-- Tyler
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