Topic on Talk:Product development

We need a low entry barrier and no matter how small a full project is, it is going to imply a significant amount of work and trust in order to work out. Prospective product managers could be directed to Bugzilla, where we have thousands of enhancement requests waiting for someone to take action on them (and not only enhancement requests: product managers also need to have a sense about current issues and how to prioritize them). We also have pretty decent documentation about Bug management that is mostly useful for someone going through enhancement requests.

Once someone has done some exercise in our Bugzilla then everybody will have a better grasp of the tasks to do next. Also getting CCed in 40 reports you just shuffled is a good way to meet people and stick around...

This post was posted by Qgil-WMF, but signed as Qgil.

Directing people around to various random places won't help in the slightest if they don't actually do anything. Hells, even doing stuff won't help if they don't talk to others, and one can get a whole slew of bugzilla mail without it meaning squat if they never get the opportunity to actually work with - and communicate with - other users on actual bugs.

People don't stick around because they've done little things and run into others, they stick around because they've helped and been helped and made a real human connection. People stick around because they can see the difference they've made, and that requires recognition. Documentation and automated tools don't get people recognition, but working directly with others very often does.

Sure but... how do most people start editing Wikipedia, fixing a typo and adding a couple of lines in a paragraph or getting a view of a whole category to assess the quality of the pages in it?

I'm just looking for the simplest tasks a potential volunteer PM can start doing on their own, as a gateway to more complex responsibilities. Currently the simplest tasks described in this page are still pretty complex for a newcomer (and many of us).

This post was posted by Qgil-WMF, but signed as Qgil.

Product development is not editing Wikipedia. Someone seeking to be a product manager will need to get to know the people, the situation, the code, and everything else in between; fixing typos on a content project is not even remotely analogous to that.

My point is that such simple tasks do not address the situation - they would be useful to get done, but they are not a gateway because tasks are not a gateway here, people are. Tasks are secondary.

It doesn't matter what a volunteering activity is about: it is easier to ge more and more diverse people when there is a progression of steps from simplest to more complex. If someone feels like jumping to the more complex from the beginning that is all good, bt we need to have something for those having one evening and willing to try.

Another general rule of distributed volunteering projects: it is better when there is a pile of non-critical little tasks that someone can start and complete, leaving an improvement even if that person walks away the next day. The simplest PM tasks that we are listing not only require significant work to get you started, they also require a nice dose of work before you can improve the current situation and leave.

In other words: I'm not arguing against anything currently proposed at the page, neither with any of your arguments in this thread. I'm only saying that there is more we can do to connect casual volunteers with a first task that would lead them to other tasks.

This post was posted by Qgil-WMF, but signed as Qgil.

Well, for what's on this page, steps that don't go anywhere relevant to this won't help this any. There may be some parallel here to how universities and other bureaucratic entities add tedium to head people off unwanted paths, except wikis and such tend to just add bureaucracy and tedium... just because? I'm not really sure why, really.

Some numbers and links: 78 enhancement requests (vs 23 bugs) are unanswered after 2 years or more. If you count 18 months or more the numbers are 331 requests vs 136 bugs.

Volunteer product managers could start learning and getting their hands dirty while going by picking a first feature request from this list. We could have very simple instructions including to CC volunteer PM mentors like you and me) so we can observe and help them getting through. After a few semi-random requests probably they will start having a better idea of a project to focus, some experience accumulated in our community and a couple of colleagues nearby.

We could also attempt to have a Feature triage day/week just like we organize the bug triage activities.

This post was posted by Qgil-WMF, but signed as Qgil.

So if they're picking features, what are they supposed to do with them? Staff don't tend to answer well to volunteers in my experience, and volunteers can be pretty damn unreliable at times given their own schedules and priorities.

At that point all that remains seems to be doing it themselves... it's the only sure bet, really, assuming there's a chance of the fix/implementation actually getting merged.

Even before picking a feature: triaging is good training to get you started. It's a useful way to learn more about projects, contributors and do useful work.

Once you find an interesting enhancement request you can blow the dust off, CC other contributors that may help assessing it and start converting it in a plan.

If we send them to MediaWiki core first then yes, the chances of finding problems finding developers, discussing the new feature, eventually merge it etc are higher. But this is only one product of many. And arguably most of the enhancement requests are either small suggestions that maybe were overseen or forgotten, or features that can be implemented via extensions or gadgets.

On the other hand: what do you propose to do?

This post was posted by Qgil-WMF, but signed as Qgil.

Wherever folks go there's danger and even likelihood of not getting enough others engaged to really do anything, though. Blow off the dust and you're doing good to even get a 'sure, whatever'. I guess the whole product manager thing just seems like yet another layer of bureaucracy to me, that on top of everything else would only slow down folks working on already limited spare time.

So all in all I'd say we're all doomed. Doomed. Doooomed.

Yeah, I have nothing productive to add.