Developers

MediaWiki/Wikimedia developers are people who write MediaWiki software and/or do systems administration work on the Wikimedia servers. Some developers have shell access, which means that they can change the live copy of MediaWiki, change article histories, read server logs, etc. Those with server access can also carry out various non-development tasks. Developers formerly had an important role in the Wikipedia power structure, since they were the only ones able to create sysops or ban users.

The Wikimedia Foundation legally controls the servers, so the Board of Trustees are ultimately responsible for determining who has developer access. However, they generally delegate this responsibility to Tim Starling who is Wikimedia's Developer Liaison. On a day-to-day basis, various developers with root access manage the server accounts.

There is a rough hierarchy among developers. Initially, people contribute patches on the wikitech-l mailing list or participate in discussion. People who are considered trustworthy and wish to contribute code on a regular basis are given CVS access. A few developers have the ability to grant CVS access. Developers who are particularly well trusted or have a special need may be granted shell access to the server cluster. And several people who are judged to have the appropriate level of skill and trustworthiness are given root access on the servers. Most of the active developers are on the developer committee.

Some developers had shell access to the old servers, but due to inactivity, weren't given shell access on the new servers. Magnus Manske, Nick Reinking, Lee Daniel Crocker, Axel Boldt, Matthias Jordan, Neil Harris and Ed Poor are in this category. Note that Ed Poor was not involved with software development, but instead carried out what are now bureaucratic or sysop tasks, such as promoting sysops and locking accounts. Recent MediaWiki software development activity level of developers may be found through CVS statistics.

For the webshop there is a seperate user group for shell access and database. All those with root access have access to a remote power switch, to which several of the servers are connected.

More detailed about the developers involved in hardware administration and software development may be found at developer activity.

requesting developer status: Tom Gries i.a. for email notification on page and user_talk page changes


 * You're already a developer. Are you asking for CVS access or shell access? -- Tim Starling 05:17, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Note on worldwide developer distribution
Of those whose nationality I know or have a good idea of, here's how the regularly active participants are split:

de: 4 uk: 1 fr: 2 belgium: 1 baltic states: 1 EUROPE TOTAL: 9

Australia: 2

US: 1 (plus JW and Jason who are around less than most)

We should be considerate of the clear US minority on the technical team.:) --Jamesday

This is interesting. It should be updated and summed up one day. Anthere
 * Another interesting fact is that of this group, there are more the same number of native speakers of German than as there are native speakers of English. -- Jeronim 10:36, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC) ... Doh. -- Jeronim 08:19, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Are you excluding Australian and American languages? :) Midom 18:53, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * I presume the implication was that the Belgian was a German-speaker, giving EN(uk+au+us)=4 vs DE(de+be)=5; otherwise, it's even stevens. - IMSoP 21:24, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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