Strainu,

I, too, am glad for the discussion!

On Sat, 9 Mar 2019 at 22:31, Strainu <[email protected]> wrote:

> Let me start with a simple question, to put the references to wmf into
> context. You keep talking below about volunteer developers and how they can
> take over any project.


I'm confused by this. I didn't mention volunteer teams taking over projects
at all, and I don't think that'd work except in very rare and limited
circumstances. I was talking about people helping with bug triage on
Phabricator.


> While that's true, how many fully-volunteer teams
> are there?  How does that number compare to the number of wmf teams? Am I
> right to assume the ratio is hugely in favor of wmf teams?  Note: teams,
> not developers, since decisions on project management are usually done at
> team level.
>

See above; this wasn't what I meant.


> In my experience in b2b contracts they don't keep it a secret, they usually
> have SLAs they respect, but ok, let's leave it at that.
>

Yes, I have more to say about this, but this would be tangential to this
discussion. :-)


> Responsibility for what? Developing and hosting  MediaWiki? Helping
> communities concentrate on creating and attracting content without having
> to work around bugs? I'm sorry, but that's precisely one of the
> responsibilities of the wmf and this is what's discussed here.
>

Well, in your earlier emails in this thread, you mentioned the bug backlog
steadily increasing, so that was what I was talking about. Is that not what
you were talking about in your subsequent emails?


> This is one thing that we agree on: nobody committed on anything. Ever.
> That's why I asked above: what does it take to have someone (anyone) at the
> WMF act upon these discussions?
>
> My role in the Wikimedia tech community is tech ambassador above all else,
> so I'm caught in the middle here: I have to explain new features and
> technical decisions to people who don't care about php, js or server
> performance , but I also feel obligated to relay their requirements, as I
> see them, to the development team. This second process does not happen as
> smoothly as it should.
>
> It's not healthy to ignore discussion after discussion and claim it's a
> community issue. It's not. It's a governance issue and it's growing every
> day.
>

I agree. It's not a community issue, it's a movement-wide one. I don't know
how to solve it.


> The projects belong to the community at large, not just the technical
> subcommunity. They are the ones affected by the  bugs and also they are the
> ones that need our support. So why should they be ignored in taking this
> decision?
>

I'm confused by this too. I wasn't talking about ownership of the Wikimedia
projects, I was again talking about the bug backlog, which anyone is
welcome to get involved in simply by registering an account.


> My proposal is to begin the discussion here: how can we better relay issues
> that are more important to communities than new features? How can we have a
> "community whishlist for bugs"?
>

The community wishlist explicitly accepts requests to fix bugs, as well
requests for new features. So, is what you're asking for some process to
supplement that?

Dan
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