On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 12:41 PM, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske@googlemail.com
wrote:
On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 5:33 PM, Henning Schlottmann < h.schlottmann@gmx.net> wrote:
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.
I do agree with this. Visual Editor (which works much better these days) and MediaViewer are not aimed at the experienced editor. They aim to make the reader more comfortable, and try to ease the first steps into editing. Winning new editors has been deemed a priority, somewhat at the expense of WMF-made support for the power user. This is a judgement call the Foundation has to make.
This is the biggest aspect of the problem, from my perspective: many of us who have opposed the default enabling of the Media Viewer have done so *not* on the basis that we personally dislike it, but on the basis that we believe it causes problems for the process of helping readers become effective editors. I myself have a great deal of experience with this process; I was hired in 2009 by WMF for my expertise in this area; I helped design the Ambassador Training program for the WMF that helps university students convert from readers to editors; and since I left WMF, I have trained hundreds of others to edit Wikipedia, most notably in the 6 week online course I developed and taught 4 times. Whether or not I, as an experienced editor, like the Media Viewer is indeed unimportant; I have no problem disabling the software for myself.
Many WMF staff, however, *continue* to summarize the opposition as, "experienced editors do not like it." This is a straw man argument, and an absolute failure to absorb the considered criticisms layed out on the various RfC pages. At the same time, a frequent piece of the WMF argument is, "many readers *do* like it." But whether or not they *like* it is completely different from whether or not we are guiding them toward becoming editors -- the two have almost nothing to do with one another. Whether the readers "like" it has absolutely nothing to do with the five goals layed out in the 2010 Five Year Strategic Plan. But whether or not they are guided effectively toward becoming editors, that does. And removing the "edit" button, or any suggestion that such a thing might exist, from millions and millions of pages...that does not serve that goal.
The WMF chose to "Narrow Focus" a couple years ago. I believe that what got "narrowed out" was, by and large, processes that serve the secondary purpose of helping the WMF educate itself, in an ongoing way, about how its projects and communities operate. I believe we are seeing the effects of that decision now.
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.
It points out an issue we (community and WMF) should discuss, in a more general sense. What should the decision process be for technical changes? When does the Foundation get precendence, and when should the community have the last word? What weight should small-scale "votes" of editors have?
While I agree that it's important to have some clarity on this stuff, it's also very important -- more important, perhaps -- to keep in mind that when things are working smoothly, we very rarely have to consider the question of "who can overrule whom." That is the kind of ideal the WMF should be striving for -- in actions, not merely in words.
Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]