Wikimedia Technical Committee

From mediawiki.org

The Wikimedia Technical Committee (or TechCom) is the guardian of the integrity, consistency, stability and performance of the software supporting the Wikimedia projects. It acts as the senior advisor and the convergence point of all decisions related to technical work that is strategic, cross-cutting, and/or hard to undo.

The committee was created in 2014 as Wikimedia Architecture Committee (or ArchCom), was renamed Wikimedia Technical Committee in 2017. As per the TechCom Charter adopted in July 2017, TechCom acts as an extension of Wikimedia Foundation's CTO. The committee helps guide the vision and direction of the Wikimedia technical projects.

The scope of the committee includes all the official software that serves Wikimedia users. It has standing on questions around architecture, performance, security, database schemas, automated tests, and other technical matters. TechCom will work closely with teams within the Foundation to ensure alignment between the architectural vision and product development. Any technical decision in these areas should be brought to the committee if it is strategic, cross-cutting, or hard to undo.

Members[edit]

Facilitator: Kate Chapman

Activity[edit]

We publish meeting minutes weekly, providing information about the committee's activities.


See /Minutes for older minutes. See /Processes for the facilitation guide.

Requests for comment[edit]

Main article: Requests for comment

See the TechCom-RFC workboard for active requests for comments, see TechCom-RFC-Closed for past RFCs.

Principles[edit]

The Wikimedia Technical Committee helps establish development policies, such as the architecture goals and principles that govern Wikimedia Foundation's Platform Evolution program.

Former members[edit]

  • Mark Bergsma (2013–2016)
  • Trevor Parscal (2015–2016)
  • Rob Lanphier (2016)
  • Gabriel Wicke (2015–2017)
  • Victoria Coleman as CTO (2016–2019)
  • Erika Bjune as CTO (2019)
  • Marko Obrovac (2017–2020)
  • Brion Vibber (2013–2020)

And a special thanks to our faciliators:

  • Sumana Harihareswara (2013-2014)
  • Kevin Smith (2015–2017)
  • S Page (2015)
  • Quim Gil (2016)
  • Deb Tankersley (2018)
  • Alex Paskulin (2019–2020)