Superprotect is now over five years old. Superprotect's removal is now over
four years old. It was a mistake, and it was explicitly acknowledged as
such: the then-ED of the WMF said it had "set up a precedent of
mistrust". Almost all of the people involved in it are no longer affiliated
with the Wikimedia Foundation, and in fact, plenty of the staff members at
the Wikimedia Foundation were hired *after* superprotect was removed.
I don't think bringing up superprotect in this discussion is especially
relevant or helpful.
I sort of want to agree with this, but actually I think it goes a bit
deeper.
If you ask questions about the relationship between the WMF and the
community, sooner rather than later someone will talk about Superprotect.
If you ask any of the 1,000 people who signed the petition against
Superprotect, most of whom are still active one way or another, then
Superprotect will probably be the first thing out of their mouths, even
though it happened 6 years ago. It's sufficiently ingrained in peoples'
minds that asking these people not to talk about Superprotect is like a
British person asking someone from the USA not to talk about the Boston Tea
Party.
In part this is because people were very angry about the issue at the time,
and that anger was dealt with very poorly at the time.
In part it's because people perceive there is nothing to prevent an
identical situation recurring. In some ways I think this perception is
unfair, for all the reasons you mention. But it still exists, and in part
it exists because of things the WMF has not done. The Foundation's
expectations about how it interacts with the community remain fairly
unclear and fairly undocumented, from the Board level down. I recall there
have been some written statements of how the WMF now handles product
features, though I think this didn't come the ED or less the Board. I don't
believe there was ever a written review publilshed of Superprotect, while
there are written reviews and statements lessons learned from many other
situations that had much less impact. In short, the WMF is not seen as
having put the issue to bed in a way that results in everyone involved
moving on.
Thanks,
Chris