Hi Ingo

Sorry you have to face such as situation.

My immediate feeling is that it is unclear where and how the current users of the wiki voted in favor of reverting to the previous skin by default. The first link to the discussion at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements#Please_... links to the pump in general, so it is not possible to actually see the conversation and vote. The link is not valid. It would be worth fixing the link, so that the vote can be seen. The link is wrong because it is missing the "!" at the end of it.

Then, I suggest that the voting page should be an independant page, so that you can link to it more easily. Alternatively, create a short redirection. Also, if the text submitted for the voting is in swahili, most people (and obviously developers...) will not be able to understand. So make sure that the text describing the decision to vote is available in both English and Swahili. if you have a clear voting page, with clear description of what is being voted upon... then it is easier to request revert to the old skin. It would also be easier to make public noise about the situation in other public spaces.

My other reaction is that, on the village pump... it is possible to see a message posted by the WMF team on the 22nd of September, where they announce the switch to the new skin. And then another announcement on the Oct 22nd, to apology that the switch got delayed. But there was absolutely zero reaction to their announcement. Why did not one react at that time ? I think that... when a change is announced, twice, and no one comment at all, then it is fair game for the WMF team to assume that it is ok to go forward. It can always be argued that a "formal acceptance" rather than "no opposition" would be better. But in the wiki world... most things move forward when something is announced and no one oppose... In the future... should be careful about this.

It looks like the new skin was a proposed in a collection of wikis first. Some rejected the idea (such as English). I know French accepted because I got switched to the new skin automatically. I decided to keep it for a while, to see whether I would get used to it, or even come to enjoy it. After 6 months, I switched back... so I am officially a drop out :) After several months, they made a study to evaluate support and found it figures that suggest the new skin is generally accepted. At this point, I would say that the fact they are switching all languages is pretty logical... Just to say that... 1) if the changes were requested on the community wishlist 2) if the changes are improving the effectiveness 3) if the test phase provide positive outcome with few critics and few drop-out 4) if they announced the change to you and no one reacted Then I do not think explicit consent BEFORE the switch was required. On this part, I do not think they are to blame at all. I think they did what was the most logical thing to do.

Now... IF you ask a switch back and they do not answer and implement, that is not so cool.

What would I suggest doing ? Not fully sure... probably 1) make sure to fix the first link in the discussion to make it easier for non swahili visitors to get themselves to the right place... it never hurts... 2) I would provide an English translation of the voting text... for non swahili visitors to immediately understand what is voted upon (=100% of users are in favor of switching back) 3) collect feedback from similar size wikis... the WMF is probably switching many others at the same time. Did others complain ? Did others voted against the change ? What happened then ? Was it forced switch against community will ? 4) contact their lead and ask for a delay for switching. It seems to be Olga : https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web. Talk to Olga. 5) If Olga does not react... contact her boss

This being said... I think the switch back should only be temporary. Practically speaking, they are right that the old skin will not be maintained anymore, new elements might only work on the new, and once all wikis are switched... it will be better than everyone is by default on the same skin... so I would suggest you negociate for a couple of months only. My 2 cents.

Flo

Le 15/01/2023 à 16:22, Ingo Koll a écrit :

Hi everybody

at Swahili Wikipedia we have seen changes to our appearance which were caused by action of a "Wikimedia Foundation Web team", without our own consent. We discussed it in the community and by unanominous vote decided to go back to the previous format. (see https://sw.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Jumuiya#Muonekano_mpya_wa_kurasa_zet...)

The main reason was that we have a number of Swahili help pages which refer to the position of items on the screen and these we would have to rewrite. As our present active team is too small, we presently do not have the editing power to do that work.

We asked the people who brought the change to set us back, and they refuse.  First they did not react for weeks, and then they answer that we should look for help to change our pages. We do not know who can do this in Swahili language,nor did they propose any idea. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements#Please_...

We see, however, that in large wikipedias like enwiki and dewiki they have not changed the appearance of pages. I know from German wikipedia that they took a vote not to go along. So  their decision was respected. But they tell us that a decison was made (by whom ?) and now it looks they decided to ignore us.

It is very obvious that they do not dare to act like this vis-avis a large wikipedia like dewiki which also continues the old skin. Obviously a small African language version is not worthwhile to be considered.

So who has an idea how to go about this situation?

Cheers - Kipala from swwiki _______________________________________________ African-Wikimedians mailing list -- african-wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to african-wikimedians-leave@lists.wikimedia.org