Re: [Foundation-l] wiki (usability) summer - like google summer of code?
THURNER rupert wrote: hi, on http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2008 there was a statement that such efforts are restricted by mentoring-manpower. now that there are real people and a budget dedicated to improve usability, could it make sense to leverage that effort by bounties given in a way comparable to google sumer of code? imo this might also used to attract additional donations from individuals, as it is simple paraphrasable. and usability is a real pain to a lot of people. GSoC has never produced anything useful for us, so I don't know why you think it would be a good model. Our record with contract development has also been pretty poor. Our most active volunteers are adept at collaborating online in public forums. That's because they're self-selected for that trait and they're adequately motivated that they can perform useful projects without supervision. Remote workers brought in via GSoC and contracts seem to have difficulty integrating with this culture, and either perform their work in isolation or collaborate only with their designated mentor. The idea of a collection of remote workers paid by the line of code might sound nice to an online community member, but I'm beginning to think that it's risky at best. A software development team working in an office together might be old-school, but at least the management practices are established, with good results commonly produced. -- Tim Starling ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] wiki (usability) summer - like google summer of code?
Hoi, Last year Nikerabbit was enrolled in a Finnish Summer of Code project. He did a ton of great work for Betawiki as part of this project. The Liquid Threads project was a GSOC project. It is used by the WikiEducator project and as such I would rate it successful. When you look at our own bigger projects, SUL took a crazy amount of time to materialise, we are still not able to produce predictable data dumps. When you look at commercial projects, at least 50% of such projects fail to meet expectations. The notion that classical in the office projects do better is not one I share. When we are to do a proper job for summer of code projects, obviously all our existing developers are most likely to do the better job. Nikerabbit's project is a case in point. If there are observations why such a project does not work out as well as we hope, we should address those issues. The most important thing achieved with a summer of code project is not only the software but also the experience given to what we hope will be a developer who stays with our project after his project. Thanks, GerardM 2008/12/11 Tim Starling [EMAIL PROTECTED] THURNER rupert wrote: hi, on http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2008 there was a statement that such efforts are restricted by mentoring-manpower. now that there are real people and a budget dedicated to improve usability, could it make sense to leverage that effort by bounties given in a way comparable to google sumer of code? imo this might also used to attract additional donations from individuals, as it is simple paraphrasable. and usability is a real pain to a lot of people. GSoC has never produced anything useful for us, so I don't know why you think it would be a good model. Our record with contract development has also been pretty poor. Our most active volunteers are adept at collaborating online in public forums. That's because they're self-selected for that trait and they're adequately motivated that they can perform useful projects without supervision. Remote workers brought in via GSoC and contracts seem to have difficulty integrating with this culture, and either perform their work in isolation or collaborate only with their designated mentor. The idea of a collection of remote workers paid by the line of code might sound nice to an online community member, but I'm beginning to think that it's risky at best. A software development team working in an office together might be old-school, but at least the management practices are established, with good results commonly produced. -- Tim Starling ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] wiki (usability) summer - like google summer of code?
Hoi, When you consider that the WMF and its projects have not benefited from Betawiki and its functionality, then you prove again for how little internationalisation and localisation count within MediaWiki development. Consistently you will find Siebrand or Nikerabbit as top developers for creating MediaWiki patches. When you exclude Betawiki from what we are about really sad. MediaWiki development is not only development within the Wikimedia Foundation. There have been several projects that should have benefited the WMF projects but did not. There was a presentation on usability at Wikimania Boston and in Alexandria and none of the lessons learned materialised in our code. Let me be clear, I am happy that SUL finally materialised and with 430 users active under my global account, I benefit from it a lot. However, the functionality it provides is minimal. It does not allow me to share many of my preferences. It works, it is great but it could be so much more. There are always good reasons why thing are like they are. Given that we under invested last year relative to the budget, I am amazed by what has been done, however I am not satisfied with the results. As to experience as a developer, I have some 20 years of experience as a consultant. I have seen some great projects and some really bad ones. There have been over time several publications that inform how many projects have gone bad. With 50% I am being nice. Thanks, GerardM 2008/12/11 Chad [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Gerard Meijssen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hoi, Last year Nikerabbit was enrolled in a Finnish Summer of Code project. He did a ton of great work for Betawiki as part of this project. The Liquid Threads project was a GSOC project. It is used by the WikiEducator project and as such I would rate it successful. That's great, but neither Betawiki nor WikiEducator are the WMF, nor are those functionalities being used (beyond the localizations provided from BW) within the WMF. That's precisely what this is about, making use of the GSOC-style of development for MediaWiki itself. When you look at our own bigger projects, SUL took a crazy amount of time to materialise, we are still not able to produce predictable data dumps. When you look at commercial projects, at least 50% of such projects fail to meet expectations. The notion that classical in the office projects do better is not one I share. SUL required a massive amount of work to coordinate, not to mention the task of coming up with a model that not only works, but is scalable to the WMF's needs and also actually make sense. Good data models are essential. Dumps are another thing that requires careful work and coordination. Poor execution leads to poor results. It's bad enough having someone e-mail the list(s) once every month or two saying new dumps please, but imagine if we provided dumps that were just inherently bad. I fail to see where you get this 50% of commercial projects fail. Without a reliable source, I have to assume you've just made up this number and have never worked in software development. When we are to do a proper job for summer of code projects, obviously all our existing developers are most likely to do the better job. Nikerabbit's project is a case in point. If there are observations why such a project does not work out as well as we hope, we should address those issues. The most important thing achieved with a summer of code project is not only the software but also the experience given to what we hope will be a developer who stays with our project after his project. Thanks, GerardM Tim never said that GSOC is a bad model. Nor did he say that it produces bad results. He simply said that based on previous experiences, it hasn't worked _for us_. And it's true. Looking at last summer's projects, I don't see a lot of results: 1) HTMLDiff - ended up as a highly experimental, still somewhat buggy, disabled- by-default feature that was an i18n mess (and still might not be 100% fixed) 2) Category Redirects - what ever happened to this? Was this ever merged from branch to core? The branch hasn't been touched since August, at the least. A model failing in one use case doesn't indicate a failed model overall; it simply means it doesn't work in this situation. :) -Chad ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] wiki (usability) summer - like google summer of code?
Gerard Meijssen wrote: Hoi, When you consider that the WMF and its projects have not benefited from Betawiki and its functionality, then you prove again for how little internationalisation and localisation count within MediaWiki development. Consistently you will find Siebrand or Nikerabbit as top developers for creating MediaWiki patches. When you exclude Betawiki from what we are about really sad. I certainly wouldn't exclude Nikerabbit and Betawiki from the list of projects which benefit the Foundation, but I think he probably would have done it anyway. I said that new developers are poorly integrated, he wasn't a new developer. I do count David McCabe's project LiquidThreads among those that have not been useful for Wikimedia. -- Tim Starling ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] wiki (usability) summer - like google summer of code?
Hoi, When a Google Summer of Code project is about aspects of usability, then we have on the one hand the cost of mentoring and on the other hand the benefit of three months of work done by typically really dedicated people. We have seen that people who started in a SoC program continued to be part of our community after their project. In my understanding the Stanton grant intends to improve our usability. Some people say that we wiki people make unusual decisions, have non traditionals approaches. I would applaud it when the Stanton grant allows us to do more then is traditional and consequently achieve more then is traditional. Thanks, GerardM 2008/12/10 Ting Chen [EMAIL PROTECTED] THURNER rupert wrote: hi, on http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2008 there was a statement that such efforts are restricted by mentoring-manpower. now that there are real people and a budget dedicated to improve usability, could it make sense to leverage that effort by bounties given in a way comparable to google sumer of code? imo this might also used to attract additional donations from individuals, as it is simple paraphrasable. and usability is a real pain to a lot of people. kr, rupert. - http://wikimedia.ch/donate - exempt your donation to wikipedia from swiss tax! ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l If you are inferring the Stanton grant, as far as I know not. That grant is very closely defined and we cannot use it for other issues. Ting ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
