Submissions/Engineering Team Practices at the WMF and Improving Open Source Citizenry

After careful consideration, the Programme Committee has decided not to accept the below submission at this time. Thank you to the author(s) for participating in the Wikimania 2015 programme submission, we hope to still see you at Wikimania this July.

Submission no.
3028
Title of the submission

Improving Open Source Citizenry at the WMF

Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop)

discussion

Author of the submission

Arthur Richards, Kristen Lans, Grace Gellerman, Kevin Smith

E-mail address

arichards@wikimedia.org

Username

Awjrichards_WMF

Country of origin

USA

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)

WMF

Personal homepage or blog
Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)

Many people both within the Wikimedia Foundation and within the broader Mediawiki community have argued that while all of the software developed at the WMF is released under open source licenses, engineering practices at the WMF have not done enough to help foster, support, or grow the non-staff community around our projects. The WMF's Team Practices Group, which is dedicated to uncovering better ways of developing software, wants to know: how can we improve the open source citizenry* of engineering at the WMF, and how can we help make the WMF's open source citizenry within our communities less contentious? The Team Practices Group will facilitate an open discussion about what's working well and what isn't, through which we hope to identify concrete ways we can experiment with engineering practices at the WMF to improve our open source citizenry. While this conversation will certainly involve those from engineering (both WMF staff and volunteer), it is worth noting that open source communities involve many more than just engineers - users, designers, testers, product managers, liaisons, cat herders, trolls, etc. This discussion is aimed at anyone in any role who identifies as part of our open source community.

*By 'open source citizenry', we mean to identify the WMF and the WMF staff as active citizens in our broader open source community, specifically within the Mediawiki community. 'Citizenry', here, refers to our engagement as citizens in this community.

Track

Technology, Interface & Infrastructure

Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long)

60 minutes (willing to reduce to 30 minutes, but it will be difficult to have this kind of discussion [which we anticipate to be passionate] in only 30 minutes)

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?
Slides or further information (optional)
Special requests


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  1. JHernandez (WMF) (talk) 11:08, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Ocaasi (talk) 17:53, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 14:42, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]