On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 3:15 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Unfortunately, we're still able to speak about the community and the UX teams as distinct entities. This division will continue so long as the relationship is viewed in the context of "decision"/"feedback" rather than as a dialogue between peers.
. . .
This isn't how our communities usually work in any case.
Bold. Revert. Discuss. is a common modality.
I think that the group assembled here would largely agree that it would have been acceptable for the UX team to make the change— even with little to no public discussion, then not interfere with the community to reverting it when non-trivial objections were raised, then engage in a discussion about the ultimate disposition of the feature.
This pattern allows a significant majority of changes to happen without significant conflict and without the impediment of excessive discussion.
. . .
I think it's remarkable that we've given people the authority to make changes who still find our process surprising or remarkable.
I emphatically agree with all of the above.
On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 6:31 PM, David Levy lifeisunfair@gmail.com wrote:
Agreed. So why are you dismissing people's arguments on the basis that they stem from such judgement (while simultaneously passing similar judgement of your own)? You can't have it both ways.
I am not. It would be perfectly fine if objections to the change stemmed from judgment, provided the judgment was sound. In some cases (not all), I don't think it was. I provided arguments for why I thought the result of my own judgment was better.
To make an analogy to a more clear-cut case, suppose someone proposes a database schema change to fix a particular bug. Suppose Domas says "that wouldn't give acceptable performance". That one statement of Domas, with no further support, would outweigh quite a lot of countervailing evidence and argument, although not a limitless amount. As soon as he says that, the burden of evidence falls very strongly on anyone who disagrees. Why? Because Domas has worked professionally as a MySQL database engineer for years, and has proven by his actions as a community member that his expertise in that field is sound. His judgment outweighs other people's, because he's simply more qualified.
Now, let me point out two key differences between that case and this:
1) Domas has a track record of years of contributions in this field within the community, and his expertise is well known to anyone who's familiar with MediaWiki development. He has built a deserved reputation within the community. The usability team might be expert in usability, but typical community members can't tell, because its operations and evidence are mostly hidden in practice. (Maybe they're posted somewhere, but nobody sees them.) As such, the community will rightfully demand better explanations when it's overruled by the usability team than by Domas.
2) If a lot of people objected, some kind of clear-cut explanation for Domas' decision would be given. He might not give details to people who asked him stupid questions, but some other developers would ask him more intelligent questions if they didn't understand, and he'd answer them. Everyone qualified to understand the issue in the first place would be able to get a fairly good explanation in the end. As a result, the community would be more informed and would better understand future decisions, and their respect for Domas would increase. In this case, we ended up with no good explanations from the usability team, so no one came out any wiser, and the community has not gained any further respect for the usability team's expertise.
I don't mean to imply that my judgment here (or anyone's) counts nearly as much as Domas' judgment on MySQL issues. My point with this analogy is to show that in some cases, it's totally legitimate for someone to pass judgment while rejecting other people's judgment -- this objection of yours is not valid by itself.
It's entirely reasonable to vigorously disagree with others' arguments, of course. But when the rationale is "they are not backed by data," it's unreasonable to exempt the user experience team and yourself from this standard.
Compare to the analogy I gave above to Domas. If Domas says something about the DB, then yes, his judgment overrules almost anyone else unless they have data or other strong evidence. Not everyone's judgment counts the same. (But in this case, the usability team should be justifying its judgment explicitly and at length, so that the community comes to respect its judgment.)
As previously noted, perceived clutter draws complaints.
I cannot think of any time when I've seen someone propose that MediaWiki interface elements be removed unless they're patently useless, except for a few developers who occasionally go out of their way to cut down on clutter. If there have been any, they were probably right after the clutter was added, so people complained mostly because it changed and gave clutter as a justification.
Of course not. But for reasons explained throughout the discussion, many of us regard this feature as immensely important and feel that it should not be demoted in the absence of data indicating that the change is beneficial.
I agree with the "be bold, revert, discuss" methodology that's being employed now. However, I don't think that data in favor of a change should be an absolute requirement in the face of objections (even strong ones), unless there's data against the change. (Which there isn't really here.) The judgment of sufficiently trusted parties is a legitimate substitute for data. Obviously the community does not view the usability team as sufficiently trusted in this case, and that's fine, but I want to be clear about the general principles.