On 10/29/11 12:40 PM, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
There have been LOADS of opportunities where the community is asked, begged to be involved in what will be the way forward. The most obvious opportunity has been the Strategy project. At this time the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for all sorts of volunteers that are asked to help determine what future functionality will be like. Specifically I want to mention the need for "language support teams" and volunteers for our mobile development.
The position of the WMF as I know it is that it wants very much an involved community. To be effective, it is important for the community to be involved early in the process. Sadly many people want to be only involved at the end of the process. This does not help much and particularly not on issues that are not the bread and butter of working on content by the existing community.
People who research and write articles *are* involved in the community. They may have a relatively narrow range of topics in which they write, and if that's what pleases them then that's where they serve the community. For many such people participating in endless political wrangles about functionality is anathema. They prefer to control how their valuable and limited time is spent. They won't touch it unless and until an initiative affects them, but by that time the political debate may have long since moved on, and there is no longer any good way of affecting policy.
Ray