I'll echo Andre here: the specific problem of patches from new volunteer devs which don't get timely responses is a real issue, and one which we have attempted to address (as Andre described) but an area we could probably still use additional ideas, accountability, etc for.
A secondary issue is that too much wiki dev is done by WMF/WMFDE employees (IMO); I don't think the current percentages lead to an overall healthy open source community. But (again in my view) the first step to nurturing and growing our non-employee contributors is to make sure their patches are timely reviewed. --scott On Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 10:54 PM Andre Klapper <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi and thanks for joining the discussion! > > On Sat, 2019-03-16 at 20:37 -0400, Thomas Eugene Bishop wrote: > > Here’s a specific example, created in 2015: > > > > https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T116145 < > > https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T116145> > > > > > > A bug fix was provided years ago but never accepted or rejected. It’s > > the first and last MediaWiki bug ever assigned to me. I’ve just > > unassigned myself. > > > > In cases like this, remarks like “Because you did not fix these bugs” > > and “... anyone is free to pick it up and work on it ... No further > > response needed” miss the point. When a bug fix is provided, but > > nobody with authority to accept or reject it ever does so, that’s a > > failure on the part of those who have authority, not on the part of > > those who are able and willing to fix bugs. Sure, volunteers are > > “free” to waste their time! > > > > You need to use and share your authority more effectively, to “be > > bold” with accepting and rejecting bug fixes. Authorize more people > > to accept or reject bug fixes. Assign each proposed bug fix to one > > such person, starting with the oldest bugs. Then hold those people > > accountable. You don’t lack volunteers, you lack volunteers with > > authority. > > I fully agree. I was referring to bug reports in my emails. > > Code review is an area in which Wikimedia is very frustrating. There > are regular emails about patches by new contributors awaiting review > [1] but that obviously only covers a small group of contributors. > And while we recently started to have code stewardship reviews [2] to > fill some gaps in the list of responsible persons and teams [3] per > code base, we for example still lack meaningful statistics how big the > code review problem is, in general and per team. > > andre > > [1] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2019-March/091632.html > [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_stewardship_reviews > [3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developers/Maintainers > -- > Andre Klapper | Bugwrangler / Developer Advocate > https://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/ > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
