On 12.08.2014 16:57, Magnus Manske wrote:
German Wikipedia had 1.1 billion page views in June [1]. ~300 votes (~2/3 against MediaViewer) do not represent the readers, IMHO.
Claiming to speak for a perceived silent majority will not help you much in this discussion.
There is a common pattern in the conflicts between WMF and several communities over software developments during the last few years. As I wrote two weeks ago to Rachel:
| Decision making seems to be focused on reader experience, including | winning readers to become authors, but existing authors and their | experience (in both meanings of the word) is ignored. Even by people | like Eric, who once was a prolific author himself
| Authors see themselves as the single most important group in the |Wikimedia universe. Without their content, there would be nothing: No | readers, no fundraising banners, no donations, no employees, no | foundation. On the other hand, WMF seems to see the readers (and | donors) as their main target audience. Of course WMF knows, that all | the projects need content and authors, but in my opinion most of them | fail in appreciating the existing authors and focus too much on | winning readers to become authors, by simplifying the entry.
This is serious. WMF really needs to appreciate the expertise of the author community and accept their experience a important and valid. If authors tell the WMF and particularly the devs, that a particular function is necessary, then the devs really, really need to think.
If the community tells the devs, that a particular idea is a bad one, a feature is too buggy to be rolled out (as default) or is unsuitable for a project at all, this warrants more than just a cursory thought.
A formal RfD must not be taken lightly, overruling it by creating a whole new user class, and crippling the elected admins is inpermissible. WMF has broken trust again and this time in a unprecedented way.
Until this event, I thought the dev process to be broken, not just the communication around devs. But now I believe the conflict runs deeper.
Henning User: H-stt (admin on deWP and Commons)