Hoi,
There are a few issues:
- the choice of what is going to be developed is very much a management
issue; what gets priority and why
- there are always people who object to any project because they are of
the opinion that something else should be considered to be more relevant
- when something is developed FOR a specific project, giving that
project the option to opt out once it is developed defeats the objective of
the functionality; such a decision is very much taken at the start of the
project
- I know that a thread like this is read. Good proposals are considered
when they stand out as such. Personally I like the notion of leaving a
message as the first option..
- I positively hate talk pages, prefer not to use them. I am a seasoned
Wikimedian and when people like me are this negative about talk pages, then
the notion that they are good / usable / can be left alone is suspect.
- have you considered that many of the advanced functionalities used in
the English Wikipedia are actually REALLY problematic in other languages -
ease of use, even dumbing down is in my opinion acceptable when this grows
our editor community in our projects other then the English Wikipedia
- I am known for my hobby horses; working for the "Localisation team"
allows me to be part of much good work. However, there are still many
things that are not going to be developed any time soon that I rate highly
Thanks,
GerardM
On 30 October 2011 12:17, WereSpielChequers <werespielchequers(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
------------------------------
Message: 8
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 21:40:37 +0200
From: Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Show community consensus for Wikilove
To: fae(a)wikimedia.org.uk, Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
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UwegSJZgTbk24D69zgd4EOwoGpypKbdQnJqXSEqKMw(a)mail.gmail.com
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Hoi,
I am happy to make a distinction of what I do officially and what I say
because I am personally of a particular opinion. This is very much my
personal opinion.
There have been LOADS of opportunities where the community is asked,
begged
to be involved in what will be the way forward.
The most obvious
opportunity has been the Strategy project. At this time the Wikimedia
Foundation is looking for all sorts of volunteers that are asked to help
determine what future functionality will be like. Specifically I want to
mention the need for "language support teams" and volunteers for our
mobile
development.
The position of the WMF as I know it is that it wants very much an
involved
community. To be effective, it is important for
the community to be
involved early in the process. Sadly many people want to be only involved
at the end of the process. This does not help much and particularly not
on
issues that are not the bread and butter of
working on content by the
existing community.
I made points in my previous mail. They have not been addressed. We agree
on the need for community involvement. The WMF has a strong tradition on
involving its communities. My argument is that the programs that are
discussed are very much monitored for their effect, based on the results
the functionality will be tweaked. My argument is that these programs are
the result of community consultation and therefore community involvement
is
the origin of the functionality we are
discussing.
Thanks,
GerardM
Hi Gerard,
What changes do and do not require consensus is a fascinating issue, but
not I think related to my query re Wikilove. Brandon has told us that the
devs are only installing wikilove on wikis where there is a consensus for
it. Hence my request for a link to the discussion that established
consensus for the introduction of Wikilove on EN wikipedia, as I seem to
have missed that debate and was having difficulty finding it. I'm not
trying to reopen the debate, I'm not actually opposed to wikilove if that's
what a bunch of editors want to volunteer their time for. If it was tweaked
as per Geni's proposal it might actually become a net positive. I just
wanted to read the discussion and see how that consensus was achieved. If
it's true that every wiki except for the EN Wikipedia gets the chance to
decide whether or not they want it then I wonder why that was the case, and
what that says about the Foundation's attitude to our largest community of
editors.
If wikilove was developed on Foundation money then I think it sad that this
was prioritised above so many more important things. For example a big part
of any welcome template is this bizarre looking instruction to sign posts
on talkpages with ~~~~. Aside from the signing business the original design
of talkpages is way superior and more newby friendly than liquid threads,
but it could do with one small enhancement; Autosign on talkpages, with the
preference defaulted to off for anyone who has signed a talkpage and on for
anyone who hasn't, including of course all new accounts from now onwards.
Implement that and we can easily improve the welcome templates, and greatly
reduce the number of newbies who raise a query on a talkpage only to be
responded with an admonition about their failure to sign their posting.
Then there is that one little bug in Cat a lot that prevents if from being
used to tackle the Commons categorisation backlog
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js#Hidden…
of those would be way more important than Wikilove, the Article
Feedback tool or the image filter. On a different scale altogether is the
question of whether Museums and other GLAMS should skip us and go directly
to Flickr. Balboa Park has set out fairly clearly why they've taken the
decision to use Flickr rather than Commons
http://futureofmuseums.blogspot.com/2011/10/building-better-fishing-pole-ho…
like to know how many developers the Foundation has working to catch
up
there.
There is a broader point, a willingness to invest in things that might be
of use to hypothetical groups of potential new editors really shouldn't
come at the expense of neglecting the needs of the existing editor base. We
have an editor retention problem and one way to confront that is to invest
in fixing the problems that those editors raise and improve the tools they
use. Another is to empower the community and put them in control of their
projects. Only introducing new features where there is consensus for
implementation is a step towards that. A bigger step, and a way to get much
much better value from our IT budget is to get community input on the
priority of new features. The Image filter referendum made a small step
towards that by having a question about its importance. A more meaningful
consultation would be to give editors the ability to rate the relative
importance of a bunch of potential enhancements "How much do you want
this?" Should be the second question after "Do you want this?". The least
lovely feature of Wikilove as with the Article Feedback Tool is to think of
all the amazing things that could have been done instead.
WereSpielChequers
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