Topic on Talk:Technical communications/Dev wiki consolidation

I don't agree with some of the things you think should be moved to wikitech. The API and development tutorials almost completely belong on MediaWiki.org. Developer access and such also probably belong here.

I was also hesitating. Before discussing the outcome let's try to agree on the principle: what is your reasoning to keep API and dev tutorials in mediawiki.org?

If Wikitech is all about OSS contributors and mediawiki.org focuses on MediaWiki users (as in sysadmins and editors) then we can assume that API docs and dev tutorials fit into Wikitech.

It is true though that you can use those for pure 3rd party development ending in proprietary extensions etc. And those 3rd party developers could also be considered "users" of the MediaWiki API. Still, even those developers will benefit from the proximity with the maintainers and core developers at Wikitech... That was the main reason that made me propose it within the scope of Wikitech.

Then again I have no strong opinion, as long as we agree on the principles. Whatever works better for the actual developers. And perhaps most of the problem can be solved with landing pages linking to the right resources in each site. For instance How to contribute is a clear candidate for Wikitech but this doesn't mean that we can't have it also in mediawiki.org, pointing to Wikitech pages.

This post was posted by Qgil-WMF, but signed as Qgil.

MediaWiki.org should be able the MediaWiki software. That includes sysadmins and editors, but also extension development and API stuff outside of a Wikimedia context.

For the API documentation specifically it's really easy to say that it's definitely more relevant to mediawiki.org - the API is part of the MediaWiki software and is found on all third-party wikis.

Ok, so what about this principle:

3rd party developers are also MediaWiki users and this is why their related docs are in mediawiki.org. As soon as they start contributing patches to projects hosted at http://gerrit.wikimedia.org or https://github.com/wikimedia they become contributors, and therefore the specific documentation for that is hosted at Wikitech.

That could make sense as well. With a couple of links from one wiki to the other we could get good coverage in both, without duplication. Waiting for more feedback.

This post was posted by Qgil-WMF, but signed as Qgil.

No. Just say that everything related to MediaWiki (not excluding MediaWiki development) goes on mediawikiwiki instead of wikitechwiki. Everything which is only useful in the context of wikimedia (wikimedia engineering tasks etc.) can go to wikitechwiki. It should not be divided on the basis of user|contributor.

But having "one site" for contributors is the main motivation of this shuffling. Having "one site" for developers is a good thing as well for any project, as developers know well. Having contributor/devel documentation in one site or another depending on 3rd party adoption doesn't make much sense.

The Wikitech proposed is not about Wikimedia-only stuff. In fact the division line Wikimedia-only vs 3rd-party-only can't be good, right?

Use vs contribute is a sane division of roles seen in many OSS projects. Since all contributors are users, it promotes the cross-pollination of people between both sites. Having a Wikimedia vs MediaWiki division is a lot more dangerous since it may create a real divide.

This post was posted by Qgil-WMF, but signed as Qgil.

Why do you assume contributors and developers are different people? Why do you assume bot operators cannot also be third-party sysadmins, and that neither of those will be developers? Such are often developers. Even when they aren't, the development stuff is useful - you need to know what you're installing, and extensions are just as relevant as the api documentation when writing a bot, because you have to know the framework, and if the framework is lacking, that's when a bot person turns into a developer as well.

And that, I thought, was precisely why it's all here - because these things are all connected. It's organised such that there are resources friendly to users, but such that they can find more information and follow relevant development as well if they want to, and visa versa. Labs was mostly separate for security reasons or something along with the whole labs part not being specific to mediawiki, and wikitech was this internal thing specific to the WMF that everyone else just sort of ignored. So if mediawiki things are truly to be split (sure, they're already split, but I mean such that the rest of us notice), that would just make what is where more confusing. To expect most folks to not ignore one or the other would be about as ridiculous as expecting en.wikipedians to come to mw.org for information about new features (and that is completely ridiculous, in case you were wondering - 'insane' or 'suicidal' would be terms for it), because there is simply no good way to watch multiple wikis or coordinate across them - and for something like this, why should there be? Is mw.org getting too big or something?

Yes, same people may combine different roles. It happens all the time, and still people find their way through different sites as long as it is clear the domain covered by each one.

We are not trying to create two segregated sites. Everything is still a click away. As long as each domain is clear we should be fine. Interwiki redirects (i.e., allowing #REDIRECT wikitech:foo to work automatically), common search and RSS/Atom must be explored to bridge and connect wherever makes sense.

BUT what is more important: I have the feeling that we don't agree on the problem. In order to agree on solutions we need to agree on the problem first.

This post was posted by Qgil-WMF, but signed as Qgil.

That.

What are your thoughts about documentation to develop bots, gadgets and templates? Currently they are spread, including English Wikipedia.

This post was posted by Qgil-WMF, but signed as Qgil.

Should all be on mediawiki.org.

If the most problematic point of this proposal is the location of certain pages then the best is to be conservative moving content from mediawiki.org to Wikitech. We can keep the docs interesting for "independent developers" in mediawiki.org.

There is enough change to do before reaching that point. Once we are there we can look around and decide whether it is worth moving anything else or not.

If there is agreement about this then I can just edit accordingly Technical_communications/Dev_wiki_consolidation#What_belongs_where accordingly.

This post was posted by Qgil-WMF, but signed as Qgil.

I'm all for making things related to MediaWiki and WMF sysadmin work saner, but I'm not sure whether this is the correct way to go about it. Instead of further spreading information between these two wikis — MediaWiki.org and Wikitech — we should be considering consolidating information into one place for easy accessibility. Not just for our sake, but for our users' sake.

Technical communications/Dev wiki consolidation#Proposed solution tries to justify this split by comparing the situation to the mailing lists, but that's a rather bad comparison, given that the mailing lists have been around for (over) 10 years. Sometimes mistakes happen and they may not be easy to fix or people may not even think much of it. Personally, the way I see it, MediaWiki-l is for new users' general questions and whatnot — maybe someone really does prefer mailing lists over on-wiki support desks and whatnot — whereas wikitech-l is for current and future development, wild proposals and other crazy ideas.

Splitting MediaWiki.org into a user-oriented and a developer-oriented wiki possibly can't be good for anyone. We're not a commercial project, there's no reason to have the developer docs on a separate site. MediaWiki.org is a giant hub for all things MediaWiki and many of us like it just that way, as it gives us a nice overview of what's going on where, how I could help (GSoC, OPW, etc.) and so on.

WMF engineering pages, reports and plans here are somewhat of an oddball, but they're still relevant, because the WMF is the single biggest user and developer of MediaWiki and many profilic developers — former volunteers — are current Foundation employees and all.
On the other hand, what about things relevant only to a certain party, such as ShoutWiki, Wikia or wikiHow? If the information is useful, MediaWiki-related and possibly helpful for others struggling with similar issues, then MediaWiki.org should be the place for that kind of info.

tl,dr: One wiki to rule them all; let that wiki be MediaWiki.org and merge everything else into it instead of moving pages from it.

I'm not sure I like the merging Idea.

Basically, I would like MediaWiki as a project to be able to stand on its own 2 feet, and hence be independent of what Wikimedia or anyone else is doing with it. If MediaWiki became simply a subproject of Wikimedia's various technical initiatives, I think that would be sad. (OTOH perhaps that has already happened...). I worry that merging the wikis would be a step in that direction.

Note, I do believe that Wikimedia team reports should be on whatever wiki primary dev documentation for MediaWiki is, since they are team reports about people hacking MediaWiki. On a similar note, if somebody (ShoutWiki, Wikia, etc) put together a team to add some major feature to mediawiki, I think it would be entirely appropriate to have their team reports on the mediawiki dev wiki too.

I still think the using / contributing line could be applied in the location of the reports. For example:

• VisualEditor software announcements and release notes would be in mediawiki.org, where the software can be downloaded.
• VisualEditor team status reports would be in Wikitech, where the software is being developed.

The same would apply to extensions or other projects maintained by non-WMF developers, as long they are using the same contribution infrastructure (Bugzilla, Gerrit, etc) and they publish their releases in mediawiki.org.

If still you want to see some of the info in the other wiki as well, then we could make a better use of RSS/Atom.

This post was posted by Qgil-WMF, but signed as Qgil.

Thank you all for your feedback. It has helped making deep changes to the initial proposal.

This post was posted by Qgil-WMF, but signed as Qgil.