On 09/09/2007, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
The real problem is the lack of a product manager as such - that is, no one to communicate with the outside world, manage expectations etc. I've asked several times for the actual specification document for this feature, but haven't seen anything yet. It's one of the problems with OSS in general: people will implement what they feel like implementing, when they feel like it, and they don't take kindly to being pressured. Perfectly understandable for volunteers.
Actually, other open source projects tend to actually appreciate (almost) every contributor.
But it's a pain for us, because we've been publicly talking about this feature that's going to save Wikipedia, but we're in the dark about its actual progress.
And when volunteers spend months of personal time writing a patch for Wikipaedia, set up demonstrations, and it never even gets committed... then what?
(Of course, I don't actually believe that stable versions is a good idea, nor will it "save Wikipedia". But I'm interested in its progress nonetheless.)
Steve