Talk:Release Management RFP/2014/Mark y Markus LLC

User group
Some contradictions: «Start an unincorporated user group [...] Incorporate the user group». --Nemo 08:20, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
 * There is no contradiction. There is a process: starting an unincorporated user group and then incorporating the unincorporated user group after the use of the "MediaWiki" trademark has been cleared. --24.229.66.193 11:13, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Before being approved, it's not a user group (do you mean a wiki page perhaps?). If you've already decided that you want to incorporate it, the first phase is not an "unincorporated user group" but a "prospective user group". Whether it's incorporated before or after being approved is not that important. AffCom will say how they want to proceed, let's not discuss process here; in the meanwhile it would be useful to clarify that «Start an unincorporated user group» actually means «Start the process for an incorporated user group». --Nemo 12:28, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the invaluable input. I was told that you are dedicated and detail-oriented - and you are!  :) -- 24.229.66.193 15:04, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

General confusion
Hi. I've started a thread at Thread:Talk:Release Management RFP/Cost v. benefit to try to figure out why using free software (tar) to package and distribute free software (MediaWiki) allegedly costs over $100,000 per year. The numbers here simply don't add up in my head. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:58, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I've tried to provide clarification there. -- ☠ MarkAHershberger ☢ (talk) ☣ 14:10, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

user group seems to be stretching scope
So about half the proposal's budget goes towards organizing a "user group". Now don't get me wrong, having a user group sounds like a good idea. After discussions on irc, it sounds like the plan for this user group is in the short term, to be an advisory group of 3rd party users/sysadmins that meets ~once a month on irc to give feedback on MW development, with a medium term plan to be a grant organization to fund skin development work/etc, and a long term plan to be a MediaWiki foundation. Which is great and all. However 60 grand seems like a lot of money just to organize the short term goal, and the longer term goals seem like they would be out of scope for an RfP on release management. Bawolff (talk) 23:09, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Greg and Robla made it very clear to us that they wanted this work done and were disappointed this past year when much of it was not done. If they decide they don't want it now, we've broken the work up in the budget so that they could get just release management for ~$65k -- ☠ MarkAHershberger ☢ (talk) ☣ 14:17, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Why wasn't that information in the actual RfP document itself then? The RfP I read is about release management. Legoktm (talk) 05:48, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Explanation of buget points
I've attempted to provide a more detailed explanation of some of the bullet points in this thread and in this response. -- ☠ MarkAHershberger ☢ (talk) ☣ 14:17, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

wikireleaseteam.org
Hi, do you mind explaining the purpose of http://wikireleaseteam.org? I surely hope you're not planning to create yet another wiki for release management related things. is also...interesting. Legoktm (talk) 05:46, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Re: Request for Community Feedback

 * What do you think about the monthly release cycle?
 * It would be better to have fewer tested stable releases that don't break anything after upgrading, than frequent updates that need debugging after to get everything working properly again.
 * How do you think we can improve MediaWiki for third-party needs?
 * a) Include templates, JavaScript gadgets, Scribunto modules, Lua modules, JavaScript, CSS, etc. Otherwise non-WMF wikis have to extract these from wikipedia.
 * b) Include a way to sandbox new users as an anti-spam measure, or have a way to approve genuine new users. For example a slimmed down mw:Extension:ConfirmAccount, where it only asks "Hello, please tell us briefly about yourself and why you'd like to edit this wiki?".
 * c) Support and maintain Extension:WikiTeX. To improve the quality of presentation. For example Wikibooks:Circuit Idea/Revealing the Mystery of Negative Impedance uses hand drawn diagrams instead of LaTeX. Rob Kam (talk) 04:33, 5 August 2014 (UTC)