On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 12:57 PM, Marc A. Pelletier marc@uberbox.org wrote:
There is no such thing as "the community"; we have a huge collection of communities joined loosely over a number of ambigously shared principles that often - but not always - move in more or less the same direction.
Anyone who claims to speak for "the community" is - put simply - full of shit.
So very true! All of the arguments that claim knowledge of what "the community" wants, or what "the readers" want, need to be regarded with a strong dose of skepticism, or put aside entirely.
What we are left with is a question: which version is *acceptable*, as an interim measure, while a more careful decision -- involving things like research and better executed community consultation -- is made?
In favor of the standard MediaWiki image interface is this: it has been part of a collection of features that, over a 13 year period, has led to Wikimedia sites becoming a top 5 web property, and is familiar to all the millions of people who have interacted with it (in that capacity, and on other MediaWiki-based sites) in that 13 year period. That is not to say it's "perfect" or anything close to it, but we do know that it is "good enough."
In favor of the Media Viewer software is a bunch of inquiry and analysis done by the WMF's Multimedia Team. The methodology has been widely criticized, and the results point in various directions. (For example, as I pointed out here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Media_Viewer_RfC/Evidence#Evidence_presented_by_Pete_Forsyth, none of the 3 readers consulted by WMF in a User Experience study, although they were all technically proficient Internet users, were able to find the "Details" page on Commons using the MV software.)
Restoring the default state of the software to the state that worked for the last decade is a clear precondition for healthier discussion of a positive path forward. This is not me drawing a line in the sand, but me observing what has become readily apparent. I am pretty sure this condition is outside of anybody's influence at this point -- it is simply the natural result of a poorly planned and executed product launch.
Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]