Topic on Talk:Wikimedia Technical Committee/Charter

Apps released under a WMF account would be in scope. Within those, the scope of the committee would be limited to strategic, cross-cutting, and hard-to-undo issues.

I noticed that "official mobile apps" were listed under T-Comm scope. I'm glad to see the inclusion of this as a potential scope area, although I was curious about the decision rights boundary around it. Would someone with familiarity please comment?

What do you mean by "decision rights boundary"? Are you referring to whether TechComm decisions would be binding upon the apps?

Not so much about decisions being binding (there's a general matter about binding versus non-binding that you called out rightly, addressed below), but rather the scope - which apps, and which parts of them. I think Kevin's readout in this topic notes that cross-cutting or strategic questions are the main thing of interest.

@ABaso (WMF): I just realized that I didn't specifically address your question about scope. You are correct that the committee is interested in strategic, cross-cutting, and hard-to-undo changes. Do you think the charter is clear enough on this point?

In addition to Adam's question, I'd like to see an enumeration of what the "official apps" are. There are several apps published by the Wikimedia Foundation account on Google Play that are not developed by staff, but are nevertheless official. Is the thinking that these would be included?

ArchCom discussed this today, and the consensus of those present was that the definition of "official" would be anything published under the WMF account, regardless of who did the development work.

That is not to say that the committee would want to micromanage the apps. Just that they would consider cross-cutting or strategic questions related to such apps to fall within their scope. The apps would be expected to comply with committee decisions and policies.

Does that make sense?

@KSmith (WMF) Yes, it does. These apps are official from the user's perspective since they are published by the Foundation [1], so covering them in this manner makes sense. I would expect that the volunteer developers would welcome helpful and constructive input from the TechCom where relevant. :-)

[1]: I mean "published" in the sense that the author of the app is stated as "Wikimedia Foundation" in Google Play. All credit for the app, of course, goes to the volunteer developers.