On Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 10:27 AM Samuel Klein [email protected] wrote:
Separate thread. I'm not sure which list is appropriate. *... but not all the way to sentience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uplift_War.*
The annual community wishlist survey (implemented by a small team, possibly in isolation?) may not be the mechanism for prioritizing large changes, but the latter also deserves a community-curated priority queue. To complement the staff-maintained priorities in phab ~
For core challenges (like Commons stability and capacity), I'd be surprised if the bottleneck were people or budget.
Currently there are zero people and no budget for multimedia, aside from whatever work I and others manage to get done here there. And I'm afraid I don't scale.
It's Wikimedia Foundation's job to assign budget and people here. I've been hoping for years that this will happen, and continue to hope.
-- brion
We do need a shared understanding of what issues are most important and
most urgent, and how to solve them. For instance, a way to turn Amir's recent email about the problem (and related phab tickets) into a family of persistent, implementable specs and proposals and their articulated obstacles.
An issue tracker like phab is good for tracking the progress and dependencies of agreed-upon tasks, but weak for discussing what is important, what we know about it, how to address it. And weak for discussing ecosystem-design issues that are important and need persistent updating but don't have a simple checklist of steps.
So where is the best current place to discuss scaling Commons, and all that entails? Some examples from recent discussions (most from the wm-l thread below):
- *Uploads*: Support for large file uploads / Keeping bulk upload tools
online
- *Video*: Debugging + rolling out the videojs
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T248418 player
- *Formats*: Adding support for CML
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T18491 and dozens of other https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297514 common high-demand file formats
- *Thumbs*: Updating thumbor https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T216815
and librsvg https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193352
- *Search*: WCQS still https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297454 down
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297454, noauth option https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297995 wanted for tools
- *General*: Finish implementing redesign
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T28741 of the image table
SJ
On Wed, Dec 29, 2021 at 6:26 AM Amir Sarabadani [email protected] wrote:
I'm not debating your note. It is very valid that we lack proper support for multimedia stack. I myself wrote a detailed rant on how broken it is [1] but three notes:
- Fixing something like this takes time, you need to assign the budget
for it (which means it has to be done during the annual planning) and if gets approved, you need to start it with the fiscal year (meaning July 2022) and then hire (meaning, write JD, do recruitment, interview lots of people, get them hired) which can take from several months to years. Once they are hired, you need to onboard them and let them learn about our technical infrastructure which takes at least two good months. Software engineering is not magic, it takes time, blood and sweat. [2]
- Making another team focus on multimedia requires changes in planning,
budget, OKR, etc. etc. Are we sure moving the focus of teams is a good idea? Most teams are already focusing on vital parts of wikimedia and changing the focus will turn this into a whack-a-mole game where we fix multimedia but now we have critical issues in security or performance.
- Voting Wishlist survey is a good band-aid in the meantime. To at least
address the worst parts for now.
I don't understand your point tbh, either you think it's a good idea to make requests for improvements in multimedia in the wishlist survey or you think it's not. If you think it's not, then it's offtopic to this thread.
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/... [2] There is a classic book in this topic called "The Mythical Man-month"
On Wed, Dec 29, 2021 at 11:41 AM Gnangarra [email protected] wrote:
we have to vote for regular maintenance and support for essential functions like uploading files which is the core mission of Wikimedia Commons
Commons-l mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
(Anyway I'm just grumping. I hear positive things about plans for this year and I'm heartened to see more folks involved in planning the next stages!)
-- brion
On Mon, Jan 3, 2022, 6:10 AM Brion Vibber [email protected] wrote:
On Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 10:27 AM Samuel Klein [email protected] wrote:
Separate thread. I'm not sure which list is appropriate. *... but not all the way to sentience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uplift_War.*
The annual community wishlist survey (implemented by a small team, possibly in isolation?) may not be the mechanism for prioritizing large changes, but the latter also deserves a community-curated priority queue. To complement the staff-maintained priorities in phab ~
For core challenges (like Commons stability and capacity), I'd be surprised if the bottleneck were people or budget.
Currently there are zero people and no budget for multimedia, aside from whatever work I and others manage to get done here there. And I'm afraid I don't scale.
It's Wikimedia Foundation's job to assign budget and people here. I've been hoping for years that this will happen, and continue to hope.
-- brion
We do need a shared understanding of what issues are most important and
most urgent, and how to solve them. For instance, a way to turn Amir's recent email about the problem (and related phab tickets) into a family of persistent, implementable specs and proposals and their articulated obstacles.
An issue tracker like phab is good for tracking the progress and dependencies of agreed-upon tasks, but weak for discussing what is important, what we know about it, how to address it. And weak for discussing ecosystem-design issues that are important and need persistent updating but don't have a simple checklist of steps.
So where is the best current place to discuss scaling Commons, and all that entails? Some examples from recent discussions (most from the wm-l thread below):
- *Uploads*: Support for large file uploads / Keeping bulk upload tools
online
- *Video*: Debugging + rolling out the videojs
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T248418 player
- *Formats*: Adding support for CML
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T18491 and dozens of other https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297514 common high-demand file formats
- *Thumbs*: Updating thumbor https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T216815
and librsvg https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193352
- *Search*: WCQS still https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297454 down
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297454, noauth option https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297995 wanted for tools
- *General*: Finish implementing redesign
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T28741 of the image table
SJ
On Wed, Dec 29, 2021 at 6:26 AM Amir Sarabadani [email protected] wrote:
I'm not debating your note. It is very valid that we lack proper support for multimedia stack. I myself wrote a detailed rant on how broken it is [1] but three notes:
- Fixing something like this takes time, you need to assign the budget
for it (which means it has to be done during the annual planning) and if gets approved, you need to start it with the fiscal year (meaning July 2022) and then hire (meaning, write JD, do recruitment, interview lots of people, get them hired) which can take from several months to years. Once they are hired, you need to onboard them and let them learn about our technical infrastructure which takes at least two good months. Software engineering is not magic, it takes time, blood and sweat. [2]
- Making another team focus on multimedia requires changes in planning,
budget, OKR, etc. etc. Are we sure moving the focus of teams is a good idea? Most teams are already focusing on vital parts of wikimedia and changing the focus will turn this into a whack-a-mole game where we fix multimedia but now we have critical issues in security or performance.
- Voting Wishlist survey is a good band-aid in the meantime. To at
least address the worst parts for now.
I don't understand your point tbh, either you think it's a good idea to make requests for improvements in multimedia in the wishlist survey or you think it's not. If you think it's not, then it's offtopic to this thread.
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/... [2] There is a classic book in this topic called "The Mythical Man-month"
On Wed, Dec 29, 2021 at 11:41 AM Gnangarra [email protected] wrote:
we have to vote for regular maintenance and support for essential functions like uploading files which is the core mission of Wikimedia Commons
Commons-l mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]