On Monday, March 18, 2019, John Erling Blad <jeb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 18, 2019 at 10:52 PM bawolff <bawolff...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > First of all, I want to say that I wholeheartedly agree with everything > tgr > > wrote. > > > > Regarding Pine's question on technical debt. > > > > Technical debt is basically a fancy way of saying something is "icky". It > > is an inherently subjective notion, and at least for me, how important > > technical debt is depends a lot on how much my subjective sensibilities > on > > what is icky matches whoever is talking about technical debt. > > > > So yes, I think everyone agrees icky stuff is bad, but sometimes > different > > people have different ideas on what is icky and how much ickiness the > icky > > things contain. Furthermore there is a trap one can fall into of only > > fixing icky stuff, even if its only slightly icky, which is bad as then > you > > don't actually accomplish anything else. As with everything else in life, > > moderation is the best policy (imo). > > > > -- > > Brian > > To set degree of ickyness you need a stakeholdergroup, which is often > just the sales department. When you neither have a stakeholder group > or sales department you tend to end up with ickyness set by the devs, > and then features win over bugs. Its just the way things are. > > I believe the ickyness felt by the editors must be more visible to the > devs, and the actual impact the devs do on bugs to lower the ickyness > must be more visible to the editors. > Technical debt is by definition "ickyness felt by devs". It is a thing that can be worked on. It is not the only thing to be worked on, nor should it be, but it is one aspect of the system to be worked on. If its ignored it makes it really hard to fix bugs because then devs wont understand how the software works. If tech debt is worked on at the expense of everything else, that is bad too (like cleaning your house for a week straight without stopping to eat-bad outcomes) By definition it is not new features nor is it ickyness felt by users. It might help with bugs felt by users as often they are the result of devs misunderstanding what is going on, but that is a consequence not the thing itself. Sales dept usually dont advocate for bug fixing as that doesnt sell products, new features do, so i dont know why you are bringing them up. They also dont usually deal with technical debt in the same way somebody who has never been to your house cant give you effective advice on how to clean it. That said, fundamentally you want user priorities (or at least *your* priorities. Its unclear if your priorities reflect the user base at large) to be taken into consideration when deciding developer priorities? Well step 1 is to define what you want. The wmf obviously tries to figure out what is important to users, and its pretty obvious in your view they are failing. Saying people are working on the wrong thing without saying what they should work on instead is a self-fulfiling prophecy. -- Brian _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
