On 9/8/07, Armed Blowfish <diodontida.armata(a)googlemail.com> wrote: Well, to be completely clear, I don't have a modification. It was a totally hypothetical question. It'd probably be perfectly safe for developers to say "sure, we'll accept it, if it works *and* performs well". :)

On 9/8/07, Armed Blowfish <diodontida.armata(a)googlemail.com> wrote: I would think the consensus-building would only be required to turn *on* the feature for a particular wiki, not to accept it into the codebase.

Three negative comments about the MediaWiki developers in a row. How about some nice comments, about anything, for a change?

The real problem is the lack of a product manager as such - that is, no one to communicate with the outside world, manage expectations etc. I've asked several times for the actual specification document for this feature, but haven't seen anything yet. It's one of the problems with OSS in general: people will implement what they feel like implementing, when they feel like it, and they don't take kindly to being pressured. Perfectly understandable for volunteers.

But it's a pain for us, because we've been publicly talking about this feature that's going to save Wikipedia, but we're in the dark about its actual progress.

(Of course, I don't actually believe that stable versions is a good idea, nor will it "save Wikipedia". But I'm interested in its progress nonetheless.) Steve

It's your own darn fault for believing it. When someone says "oh that will be implemented.. don't do that yourself" your answer should be "Show me the code". If they don't have code it's not real.

On 9/9/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca> wrote: You don't have to be a coder to ask critical questions like "Have you actually coded anything yet?". As Grease Monkee points out.. We don't need software to have stable versions. We do need software to make stable versions work really well. Because the community of non-coders allowed a group of vocal opposers to stifle progress by claiming that there was mysterious software coming "any day now" we've had nothing all this time, and far more importantly we've lost a year of possible experience with stable version like features which could have helped to shape the functionality of the software. The software that has been implemented has had input from a great number of people, including really extensive input from people in the German Wikipedia community. There are some things I dislike about it. I would rather that we kept section edit links on the stable page, and simply made a diff appear at the top of the edit screen when you click an edit link from the stable version. I'd also prefer that once a user has edited a page a cookie is set which will cause them to view the most recent version of that page, this way inattentive newbies will not really know that their change didn't really go live the moment they made it. Plus, once you've edited you really should be exposed to the whole sausage making process. :) But overall I think it's pretty good, and I'm sure there will be lots of requested changes once it's live. I would have preferred that the features be more driven by experience than informed speculation, but we have what we have.. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

God I wish we had a specifications document somewhere so we could argue meaningfully over what we actually want or don't want. So far there seem to be a few different conceptions of what the community has asked for and what is actually going to be delivered.

On 9/11/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote: Yay for German engineering. Steve

God I wish we had a specifications document somewhere so we could argue meaningfully over what we actually want or don't want. So far there seem to be a few different conceptions of what the community has asked for and what is actually going to be delivered. Steve

Another thing I would like to see is for an anonymous editor visiting the website, have the opportunity to very simply change the viewing system "view by default flagged versions when available" or "always see the latest version for all articles". Toggle type.

of the tool or acceptance with improvment. What I hope will NOT happen is a system where editors say "we are happy to have this system only if there are improvementx X and Y". Then setting the system on with a promise that the improvements are coming in soon. Then see a situation such as the Single Login, where the so-called improvements take 5 years to be done. This would be very wrong. Ant

You were telling me that whenever anyone says something like that I shouldn't believe anything of the sort and should instead check out the source tree personally (presumably learning PHP if I don't already know it). So again, what's the point in asking?

must admit that I have become tremendously frustrated by how long something like this been promised but not delivered.

any specific person's fault, perhaps just a systemic problem resulting from the crossover of the software development side and the editor side of decision-making processes, but from the outside it's not obvious what the holdup is.

From my point of view, the holdup _should_ be to not kill the goose that

As I said, it's not specifically developers that I'm blaming here. It seems to be a system-wide thing. >From my point of view, the holdup _should_ be to not kill the goose that > laid the golden egg (wide open editing) - lets be very very careful with > what gets tinkered with.

be perfectly straightforward to just turn it off again.

Grease Monkee wrote: Stable versions _is_ reversible. Much more reversible than something like categories, which were implemented without much thought being given to their ultimate usage. If categories had been turned off again it would have left a bajillion useless red [[category:]] links everywhere. Stable versions doesn't have to do anything visible if the default is for people to see the most recent version rather than the one marked stable. Enable it, let people noodle around figuring out the procedures for what to mark, and if after a while the resulting version marking looks good maybe then make it the default anon view.

IMO much better as a 'test' than page protection and editable subpages, which sounds rather awkward as far as usability and GFDL compliance go.

And besides, the basic point of my complaint is that after years of people talking about stable versions absolutely _nothing_ has been implemented, not even a crude software-free hack to get things started. Not even the Featured Article talk page templates link to specific versions.

Three negative comments about the MediaWiki developers in a row. How about some nice comments, about anything, for a change? Steve

On 08/09/2007, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote: Well, let's see, the Tor developers are very very nice and will provide 1:1 end-user support to clueless Tor users on the Tor IRC channel and or-talk mailing list... highly ethical, worry about the ethical distinction between entrance block evasion and exit block evasion, feel bad they can't stop child porn.... : ) Tor is good too. It make me feel safer.... : ) So are balloons, especially black latex balloons. Latex is biodegradable, by the way. And kittens! Especially kittens who climb Christmas trees. Wikipaedia Review was rather nice to me... they removed things from their website upon request... or archived said things somewhere non-public... or something.... DeviantArt will even let a non DeviantArt member contact them representing someone else asking them to remove something from their website, and they will, no questions asked!

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On 9/9/07, Casey Brown <cbrown1023.ml(a)gmail.com> wrote: Can you please blank the following pages:

On 9/9/07, Armed Blowfish <diodontida.armata(a)googlemail.com> wrote: And most of the time (under normal circumstances), we do too, and we even give them a nice little e-mail back too. But of course... you would know nothing about this. I would ask you if you had ever e-mailed us, but I doubt I'd like the response I get. Rest assured, though, we work very hard on complaints, press inquires, and article problems (like BLP) that are e-mailed in to us.

-- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 --- Note: This e-mail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will probably get lost.