In order to anticipate and meet the needs of readers, you have to have a
theory of what those needs are, and what will meet them. The RfC process is
one way of getting toward such a theory, and the kind of work done by the
WMF's Multimedia Team over the last year or so is another.
The pros and cons of RFC-based consensus have been pretty well covered by
others in this thread, and I won't go through them all again -- but I do
want to strongly endorse the point Todd Allen made, that many regular
volunteers DO care about the experience of readers, and many of us DO have
important insights into how readers, new contributors, etc. experience the
site, and what would work for them.
The Multimedia Team's approach, on the other hand, seems at this point to
be all "con," no "pro." Many people in the discussions on ENWP,
Commons,
and MediaWiki have elaborated on the many problems in the methodology.
English Wikipedian Nyttend's comment, while phrased a bit more harshly than
I would choose, summarizes the points fairly well:
"Here at Wikipedia, we have a term for [aspects of the Multimedia Team's
gathering of statistics]: votestacking
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votestacking>, which is a
form of inappropriate
canvassing <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:CANVASS>. Discussions
affected by canvassing are not considered to result in consensus, and those
engaged in votestacking are shown the door
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BLOCK>: we do not accept their
ideas."
-Nyttend
So -- if we are to eschew the RfC process, what better process is
available? How are we going to develop a clear shared understanding of the
needs of readers, and the best methods to meet those needs?
-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 10:13 AM, Brion Vibber <bvibber(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
Keep in mind also that power users like you have
access to power tools:
preferences, user scripts, gadgets, and API client applications exist
EXACTLY so that you guys can completely customize the entire user
experience for your specialized workflows.
-- brion
On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 9:52 AM, Pierre-Selim <pierre-selim(a)huard.info>
wrote:
Well thank you Brion, at least that may explains
why things are imposed
to
the editors community and that also explains the
high rejection rate from
the editors community of the new big features such as VE. For once take
time, think about editors workflow.
For exemple on french wikipedia we used to have a direct link to
Wikimedia
Commons (we technically removed the description
page proxy), now we have
totally lost this feature. So yes you may think it's not important, but
as
an administrator on Wikimedia Commons it screws
my workflow when I see an
obvious copyvio on the French Wikipedia.
So yes you make software for your users, but I think you're
underestimating
part of your users that you should not.
2014-07-10 18:36 GMT+02:00 Isarra Yos <zhorishna(a)gmail.com>om>:
> On 10/07/14 15:53, Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>> Perhaps it's time to stop calling self-selected surveys of a tiny
subset
>> of
>> our user base "community consensus".
>>
>> The vast majority of our user base never logs in, never edits, and
never
even hears about these RfC pages. Those are the people
we're making an
encyclopedia for.
-- brion
And those who do log in, edit, and comment on RfCs generally do so with
the understanding, on some level, that everything they do, that the
entire
> encyclopedia, is for the readers, because without an audience there
would
be
nothing. They know their audience, they interact directly with this
audience on the talkpages and in email, and indeed they often use the
site
exactly as this audience would, simply taking
things a step further to
edit
> as well.
>
> So when they speak for the users who never log in, never edit, and
never
comment,
do not discount them. No more than you discount yourself when
you
try to speak for the users who never log in,
never edit, and never
comment.
-I
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