I have one more:
- Developers don't have to wait for community consensus before implementing changes. Developers don't have to wait for the community to vote on every line of code.
This is obviously not something I have suggested, so its not a very good argument against the process being broken. My argument applies largely to major changes in MediaWiki - and yes, major changes have been snuck into MediaWiki without consensus.
On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 12:19 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
Chad,
What more would you like me to do, specifically? I have attended the conferences, I am aware of the MediaWiki development process and I am pointing towards high-quality code that meets every possible standard the community could reasonably ask. The most important of those standards is that the design was very well thought out and presented to the community over a period of years. At the same time many features which have come to be known as mainstays of Wikipedia have been snuck into the source code with far less effort.
In this discussion I have expressed feelings I have had for years, and now that there is money on the table, I believe it is time we got to the heart of the issue. I am pointing to the MediaWiki development process being broken as a core part of that issue.
I reject many of the excuses that have been presented. For example:
- Developers didn't have the time
When one considers the period of years that we are talking about this certainly appears to be false.
- Users were already doing this, so we just made it easier for them
This is patently false - that particular advanced users are doing something *does not imply consensus.* Before ParserFunctions were implemented consensus should have been checked. Specifically, I believe a design should have been presented at Wikimania so that everyone had a chance to evaluate them. My experience has been that the community looks down on templates. That these templates were hurting the servers is a great opportunity to ask the community what the best solution is. Was the best solution to ingrain templates into Wikipedia by making them even easier to use, or to remove them altogether in favor of some alternate technology? That discussion was simply not had. And ParserFunctions is just one such example.
- Show us the code - why don't you just fix the problem?
I do not consider writing code to be an impediment to design and process discussions. Furthermore, it would be suggested that I implement the code as an extension so that it might be ignored by the core developers along with every other extension. Lastly, the code has already been written. If it is not production-ready it is at the very least an excellent demo. This is also related to the 'Developers didn't have the time' issue. I fully believe that the core developers could reimplement various extensions in a scalable manner in relatively short order - they are, after all, crack php coders. The real problem is that they do not have the incentive. They have been given the keys and the community has not been given a voice. When a community member writes code to help MediaWiki, its put into the archives of extensions and quickly made obsolete by changes to core MediaWiki code.
On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 11:40 AM, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
2009/1/15 Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu
Access to svn does not imply access to MediaWiki. Changes to MediaWiki
have
been almost entirely up to core developer discretion, and as I have demonstrated, 'consensus' has largely implied that they, and only they, thought the changes made Wikipedia better. The ideas are rarely
presented
to the community in a formal, well-designed demo format (as SMW has been,
time
and time again), and they are not evaluated for their usability. When a usability issue arises third party tools are not properly considered. Rather, they reinvent the wheel in an inferior manner.
Maybe I'm the only one thinking this...but if you see problems, why don't you try to get involved fixing them? Saying "we have problems, and you guys won't listen to us" isn't helpful, it's just complaining. If you have such an enlightened opinion as to the state of usability within MediaWiki, why not get involved and share said wisdom?
As many people have said earlier in this thread: the developers create no barriers to helping with the software. Us getting involved with all of the various wiki communities every time a change is proposed would be counter-productive--I for one don't want to get into an enwiki debate over the placement of a button on the preferences page. Just as you don't expect Commons to come and ask every wiki if they think an image should be deleted, don't expect the developers to come and ask the community for their blessing every time something needs changing.
-Chad _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l