What frustrates me the most are - bugs found by the editor community, that has obvious simple fixes, which isn't acted upon for several years - new features that isn't fully tested, and you have to answer in the community about stuff you rather want to throw out - new features and changes that are advertised but never implemented
The first one is perhaps the one most easily fixed. I believe WMF could set up either an official bug squad, or use bug bounties to speed up fixing of bugs. I tend to believe bug bounties works best, but it would be really nice to know that bugs are handled in an orderly fashion by a bug squad. When introducing new features make a help page at Meta or Mediawiki, and link to the page from the feature. On that page make a visible link "Don't panic!" and link to the issue tracker. Don't expect the users to figure out which extension provides the specific feature, they don't have a clue. For all important issues make an estimated fix time, and if no one works on the issue say so. Don't assume the users understand fancy wording about "need volunteer". Need volunteer for what? Making coffee? Some features are described in Phabricator, which is fine, but some of them has extensive cookie licking which could give someone the impression that you actually will implement the feature. That often leads to users asking about the feature, and when it will arrive at their project. When it does not arrive users gets upset. If you are working on something, say it, but also be very clear if something has gone into you personal freezer. On Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 9:35 PM Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I'm going to make a few points that I think will respond to some comments > that I've read, and I will try to organize some of my previous points so > that they're easier to follow. > > 1. My impression is that there's agreement that there is a huge backlog. > > 2. I think that there's consensus that the backlog is a problem. > > 3. I think that we're collectively unsure how to address the backlog, or > how to analyze the backlog so that everyone has shared situational > awareness, but we collectively seem to agree that the backlog should be > addressed. > > If any of the above is wrong, please feel free to say so. > > Regarding my own opinions only, I personally am frustrated regarding > multiple issues: > > a. that there's been discussion for years about technical debt, > > b. that WMF's payroll continues to grow, and while I think that more > features are getting developed, the backlog seems to be continuing to grow, > > c. that WMF, which has the largest budget of any Wikimedia entity, is not > more transparent regarding how it spends money and what is obtained from > that spending; > > d. that although I think that the Community Liaisons help a lot with > communications, there remains much room for improvement of communications. > One of my larger frustrations is that the improvements regarding > communications have not been more extensive throughout all of WMF. > > e. that WMF retains the ability to veto community decisions regarding > decisions such as deployments of features, but the community has little > ability to veto WMF decisions. I think that staff as individuals and > collectively have become more willing to negotiate and yield ground in the > past few years, which is good, but I remain concerned that these are > informal rather than formal changes. > > f. that I think that some of what WMF does is good and I want to support > those activities, but there are other actions and inactions of WMF that I > don't understand or with which I disagree. Conflicts can be time consuming > and frustrating for me personally, and my guess is that others might feel > the same, including some people in WMF. I don't know how to solve this. I > realize that some people might say "Then you should leave", and I regularly > consider that option, but Wikipedia and the sister projects do a lot of > good, so I'm torn. This is very much my personal issue and I don't expect > to discuss it more on Wikitech-l, but it's a factor in how I think about > this email thread, which is why I mention it. > > I hope that this email provides some clarity and is useful for this > discussion. > > Pine > ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
