Is there a Phabricator task so this topic does not get forgotten? andre
On Mon, 2016-05-30 at 09:40 -0700, Jon Robson wrote: > "I came across a patch from a user who was keen to move himself from > "Patch contributors" to "Developers" in the MediaWiki CREDITS file > [1]. It had been sitting there for over a year. He doesn't seem to > have been active since. I don't know what to do with it. It made me > think. > > Do we have it documented anywhere how we use this credits file and why > we feel the need to distinguish between Developers and Patch > Contributors? It seems like a recipe for disaster in my opinion as it > can only lead to hurt feelings due to contributors feeling unfairly > treated. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Version/Credits leads > with 'We would like to recognize the following persons for their > contribution to MediaWiki." - if someone is not in that list are they > not as important? > > If we keep these files we should probably explain the rules to what > adding names looks like within these files and what the process to > adding your name is (can I add myself? Is there a process like > getting +2?) > > To take another extreme, we might consider abandoning such a file in > favour of something automatically generated. Things like > https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki/graphs/contributors do a far > better job at allowing people to see who contributed to a tool and > making people feel like their work is rewarded. > > On a slightly related note, can we abandon the practice of putting > names inside files themselves? I see this practice in JavaScript and > PHP files throughout core (grep for @author). As Team Geek [2] (great > read btw) says "unlike other collaborative pieces of creative work... > software keeps changing even after it's "done". So while listing > contributors credits at the end of a movie is a safe and static thing, > attempting to add and remove names from a source file is a > never-ending exercise in insanity". For similar reasons this practice > gives an impression of ownership of a file/code review > responsibilities (which are not always true) and risks hurt feelings. > > [1] https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki/blob/master/CREDITS > [2] > http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?index=books&linkCode=qs&keywords=9781449302443 > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l -- Andre Klapper | Wikimedia Bugwrangler http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/ _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
