On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 1:16 AM, Brian wrote: > Is the assumption that all of the members of the community who are > knowledgeable and interested have already signed up to the relevant mailing > lists and all that is needed is to send out a quick 'ping' and get their > thoughts? Yes, IMO (as a volunteer dev). If something is expected to be controversial on non-technical grounds, there's normally a per-community decision, like with FlaggedRevs or whatnot. The overwhelming majority of technical work comprises straightforward enhancements and bug fixes that only really deserves technical attention. Users who are interested can sign up to wikitech-l and hang out in #mediawiki. Those who aren't can just use the software. > Or is this just a guideline that has been on Jimbo's user page for many > years which is not really relevant Yes. > How large of a change to the software requires full consultation? It's not about large, it's about the effect it has on users. There are enormous overhauls like the new video upload system that don't need to be discussed with the community at all, because everyone agrees that they're wanted. On the other hand, there are plenty of one-line changes that would require community consensus (like, say, giving all users rollback by default). > After consulting the community, does the Foundation feel it is within its > power to then choose something different? I can't speak for Wikimedia, but I don't see how it could possibly be considered outside the Foundation's power to ignore the community. It owns the site. It can and does overrule individual communities sometimes, in technical matters and non-technical alike. For instance, it imposes its copyright policies regardless of community consensus (and some communities don't like those policies at all). An upcoming technical change that will probably be very controversial is deployment of the Vector skin by default -- I predict a lot of people will complain about lack of consensus and be very politely told "too bad, we know better because we just spent a million dollars on a usability study". > Does the Foundation take the requirement that all changes to the software > must be gradual and reversible seriously, or not? What does that mean to > you? It doesn't mean anything to me. Many large software changes need to be deployed all at once, and many aren't easily reversible. That's life. []