On 14/01/2008, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
This is the one thing that I find disconcerting about the rollback episode: if we need 80%+ of support for everything, how can we ever hope to make changes to the fundamentals, like getting rid of wiki syntax in favor of rich text editing, or implementing a better discussion system?
To put it mildly, the community is very conservative and will fight even beneficial technical changes tooth and nail, when those changes are presented as a change of culture. Other changes go through under the radar without discussion. For instance, the introduction of per-edit reverts ("Undo") came in without discussion or controversy, although it made it very easy for any editor to perform reverts that were previously almost impossible to perform because there were more recent edits. Had this quite powerful facility been presented in similar terms to the (arguably much less powerful) rollback feature, I don't think we would have switched it on yet.
As it happens, the developers didn't ask and hardly anybody noticed. Which is as it should be.