Wikimedia Platform Engineering

The Wikimedia Foundation General Engineering team is responsible for the MediaWiki core, managing work from volunteer developers, as well as for providing services that are used by multiple technology teams. The General Engineering group is managed by Rob Lanphier.

Team

 * Tim Starling (lead)
 * Chad Horohoe
 * Sam Reed
 * Priyanka Dhanda

Responsibilities

 * Manage the MediaWiki release cycle
 * Ensure that MediaWiki core is meeting the evolving needs of the website
 * Make quality MediaWiki releases available for others outside of the Wikimedia Foundation
 * Develop and document a clear set of APIs so that external developers can create applications that easily interface with MediaWiki

Activities
Recently completed:
 * MediaWiki 1.16.5 release
 * MediaWiki 1.17rc1
 * MW 1.18 branch
 * MW 1.17 release

The following represents parallel tracks of development time:

Possible future projects (AFTER 1.18 deploy & probably after release):
 * Configuration management (RfC)
 * Template profiling
 * Git migration
 * Continuous external storage recompression

Team

 * Brion Vibber

Responsibilities

 * Ensure that all new code that is released meets quality standards
 * Triage, manage and resolve all bug reports

Team

 * Erik Zachte
 * Nimish Gautam

Responsibilities

 * Implement and manage Web analytics tool to provide data for other foundation departments and the movement as a whole
 * Monitor and analyze key metrics on Wikimedia Foundation websites

Activities

 * Wikimedia Report Card 2011 - Erik Zachte, Erik Moeller, and Nimish Gautam are working on a new version of the report card.

Technical Liaison; Developer Relations
a.k.a. "TL;DR"

Team

 * Guillaume Paumier
 * Mark Hershberger
 * Sumana Harihareswara
 * Siebrand Mazeland (part-time support for translatewiki.net)

Responsibilities

 * Attract and support volunteer developers so that they can become an even more powerful force in driving improvement on the website
 * Manage volunteer-developed extensions and widgets
 * Provide communications support for all groups in the engineering department
 * Develop clear documentation for MediaWiki so that new staff, volunteer developers and external users have a smooth ramp-up process to becoming MediaWiki developers

Activities

 * Summer of Code 2011
 * Wikimedia Foundation engineering project documentation