User talk:Dzonatas/Ethics and MediaWiki

Software engineers shall ensure that their products and related modifications meet the highest professional standards possible. In particular, software engineers shall, as appropriate:

3.01. Strive for high quality, acceptable cost and a reasonable schedule, ensuring significant tradeoffs are clear to and accepted by the employer and the client, and are available for consideration by the user and the public.

3.02. Ensure proper and achievable goals and objectives for any project on which they work or propose.

3.03. Identify, define and address ethical, economic, cultural, legal and environmental issues related to work projects.

3.04. Ensure that they are qualified for any project on which they work or propose to work by an appropriate combination of education and training, and experience.

3.05. Ensure an appropriate method is used for any project on which they work or propose to work.

3.06. Work to follow professional standards, when available, that are most appropriate for the task at hand, departing from these only when ethically or technically justified.

3.07. Strive to fully understand the specifications for software on which they work.

3.08. Ensure that specifications for software on which they work have been well documented, satisfy the users’ requirements and have the appropriate approvals.

3.09. Ensure realistic quantitative estimates of cost, scheduling, personnel, quality and outcomes on any project on which they work or propose to work and provide an uncertainty assessment of these estimates.

3.10. Ensure adequate testing, debugging, and review of software and related documents on which they work.

3.11. Ensure adequate documentation, including significant problems discovered and solutions adopted, for any project on which they work.

3.12. Work to develop software and related documents that respect the privacy of those who will be affected by that software.

3.13. Be careful to use only accurate data derived by ethical and lawful means, and use it only in ways properly authorized.

3.14. Maintain the integrity of data, being sensitive to outdated or flawed occurrences.

3.15 Treat all forms of software maintenance with the same professionalism as new development.

If the cycle ends, those left to manage the wikis have to make do with the tools they have available. Further, if trouble arises when there is no mechanism for feedback, people are left to place blame on others where they don't work well together or with what is available, and that course of action , the blame game, may not be the best ethical solution. When it is the engineers themselves that get blamed in such course of action, and they are do not get feedback because they are being ignored, it becomes much harder, if not impossible, for them to research how to improve the system. Remember that it is the software that is the medium for which the community engages each other. If that medium fails, communication fails. This is where we learn how to bridge the digital divide.

In the absence of evolutionary software enhancements, operators of the system may be left with obsolete tools. When an insufficiently maintained system degrades over time and becomes progressively more dysfunctional, there is a tendency to place the blame on individuals rather than on systemic failure. Diagnosing and resolving systemic weakness is thus an important professional ethic, to avoid an overall loss of morale in the wake of a progressively failing system. Since the MediaWiki medium is also used for communication among the project teams, it's important to preserve that essential communication service at all times, to avoid a catastrophic cascading failure.