Technical changes on the Wikimedia projects can be hairy. We are currently
having a discussion about the Wikidata deployment to the Wikipedias, and
there have been many examples in the past of deployments that raised
discussions.
One of my statements in this discussion is that the a priori discussion of
such features is highly undemocratic. What I mean with that is that design
and deployment decisions are often made by a very small group, which are in
the best case a part of the affected community, but, in many cases, even
external to the affected community. So the decisions are made by a group
that does not represent or is constituted by the community - which I mean
with undemocratic.
This has repeatedly raised criticism. And I think that criticism is often
unfair. Additionally, it is usually true (which makes is not anymore fair,
though).
I thought that in order to discuss these design decisions with the
community before hand, telling them on their respective village pump is
sufficient. Not so it seems. No single channel would find acceptance to
communicate with the community. This, obviously means, that it is not
actionable to communicate with the community.
What about setting up a community selected body of representatives to
discuss such issues beforehand? At first, it sounds like a good idea - but
the issue is, it makes the process only more complicated without at all
resolving the underlying issues. Does anyone really think that such a body
would stop the criticism before or after the deployment of the change in
question? Yeah, right. Doesn't change a thing.
So, what do I want to achieve with this Mail? Merely to ask some community
members to be a bit more constructive in their comments. Claiming that the
product managers and designers have no idea of the Wikimedia communities
and the use of wikis is often neither help- nor truthful.
What would be even better would be to come up with processes or mechanisms
to avoid these issues in the future. I would be very glad if the people who
are often critically accompanying such changes would help in building
effective channels for their discussion.
Any thoughts?
--
Project director Wikidata
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