Meta comment: if our common goal is to increase collaboration, then we need to excel ourselves in this collaboration precisely. If we minority of tech-aware contributors are being confrontational between ourselves, then we can only expect to nurture more confrontation than collaboration among the new tech contributors we aim to engage.
So please, let's enjoy this conversation and let's help each other finding better ideas to improve this problem we all want to solve. On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 4:01 AM, svetlana <svetl...@fastmail.com.au> wrote: > > On Wed, 6 Aug 2014, at 06:58, Quim Gil wrote: > > > - encourage feedback by absolutely /anyone/ about the next features > they'd > > > like, > > > > > > > Betas and Bugzilla today. Phabricator should make it easier to provide > > feedback in a wider range of topics, not only "bugs". > > 99% of users of Wikimedia projects don't /know/ about these tools. That's > the problem, and your response is not reflecting it. > Yes, I agree. Can we do better? I think the core of the problem is how to increase the participation of tech-curious contributors, and how to structure it in a way that informs, influences, and actually joins the development process effectively. How can we increase the participation in technical matters among Wikimedia editors and readers? For some thoughts on this topic, see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_technical_volunteer_outreach.jpg https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project_talk:New_contributors#English_Wikipedia_first_26213 Increasing participation by volume of participants is a goal per se. However, this participation needs to be somewhat structured in order to become efficient. For instance, having "more Tech Ambassadors" is good, but wouldn't it be better if we all knew which Wikimedia projects and areas of expertise are they covering? I even think that having a sense of meritocracy among tech ambassadors would be useful, just like it is useful at some point to know who is an official maintainer of a repository, who has been granted permissions to merge new code. Am I referring to the Technology Committee that Pine is proposing? I don't know. What I know is that tech meritocracy (and any meritocracy) works better when it emerges from the grassroots, and therefore I'm skeptical about any process that would start with a mandate from the Board or with a WMF goal. There are many smart, productive, and dedicated technical volunteers in our community. In relation to the problems we are describing here, they have an understanding, an experience, and a vision that most board members and WMF employees can't match. I wonder what do they think, what would they do? And I wonder how can the rest of us help them. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
