[Foundation-l] Some Ideas About Technical Stuff/Community Relations Improvements

Thu Dec 11 04:30:11 UTC 2008

Maybe we the technical side of WMF could get a "communications
advisor", some trusted volunteer from among the regular Wikimedians,
like they've done at the Chapters Committee recently.

Thanks,
Pharoos

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 11:13 PM, Eugene Zelenko
<eugene.zelenko at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> There are many signs of miscommunications between technical side of
> WMF operations and outside worlds (users, administrators, external
> projects): periodical rattling on Planet Wikimedia, frustrations on
> TranslateWiki, almost impermanently growing number of bug reports in
> Bugzilla.
>
> Typical example may include:
>
> 1) There is approved project X which still not created for Y days
> 2) Why new translations are not propagated to project X
> 3) Bug reports with opened years ago with several duplications
>
> Definitely technical stuff members are limited resource. And even
> trivial fixes or problems may took much more time then expected. Code
> changes reviewing require efforts. But outside world don't know what
> is going on and could only make uneducated guesses and in best case
> scenario perceive technical stuff as black box
>
> I think will be good idea to introduce some kind of technical stuff
> reporting and future planning (may be located on WMF site). It'll
> provide approximate answer for question 1; explain clearly situation
> with 2 (like "rXYZ introduced database scheme changes, currently
> updating WMF servers"). This will also highlight and communicate
> priorities to general public.
>
> This is not about control over developers but about development
> process transparency, which I believe, will improve understanding and
> appreciation of job done from outside. Think how CodeReview improve
> transparency of MediaWiki code base maintaining.
>
> Also development road map for next quarter/year may be considered.
>
> Possible solution for problem 3:
>
> * WMF may consider to allocate some part of development budget to
> outside developers. It may be in form of bug fixing bounties, gifts or
> sponsoring travel/accommodation for participation in
> Wikimania/MediaWiki developers conference.
> * Advertisement of "Google Summer of Code" jobs on WMF projects.
>
> Eugene.
>
> PS
>
> Disclaimers: I write weekly reports on work and don't think is most
> interesting part of it. I don't believe that reports are best
> reflection of working process.
>
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