Hi / Bon dia,

I cannot agree more with the words of Gnangarra in his last email. And that's exactly what I meant in the specific proposal of fixing issues in Commons that moving all these key requests from their natural scope undermines the recognition of the Wishlist (as an equal, useful, and caring system towards Wikimedians and their real accumulated needs).

For me, its initial conception was really appropriate and I do not doubt at all of the good aim and organization (despite its limited capacity) of the Community Teach. However, even if still participating edition after edition, the results from last years and the new way of "moving some ideas (the most uncomfy, difficult, large... but needed) under the carpet" -where most voters won't find them contextualised in their right topics, as contrasted with other small gadget proposals of the same wiki environment- is kind of the end of this process. Overall, so difficult to go to our Village Pumps and pretend to convince other colleagues to vote to get some new peanuts when the background is like it is.

I only hope that all this load of messages brings some extra thoughts or worries to the ones that must take action high in the WMF, so that the Community Tech, that has explicity repeated here its problems and its capacity, isn't left behind (alone) with all our concerns and legit complaints. As other people have said previously, there's plenty (scandalous) of money to tackle the basics.

Best regards,

Xavier Dengra




‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
El dijous, 27 de gener 2022 a les 7:43 AM, Gnangarra <gnangarra@gmail.com> va escriure:
of course the Community tech team cant fix 900 existing issues, nor can it make a new team. The whole point about the wishlist is to focus on tools the community needs. The current reality is that instead of making new tools the Community really needs the tools made during previous wishlsts being fixed, upgraded, or if necessary the plug gets pulled on them.

One of the inherent problems with the wishlist is that the limited resources keep getting thrown at making new gadgets, but it never looks back at what its created. Many of the gadgets that get created are to work around an existing problem rather than fixing the underlying problem.

Moving an issue from being listed as Commons related, to Larger Suggestions is removing it from where the audience can see it, a close look many of the other "wishes" on the commons list could be granted by way of fixing small parts of the larger problems.

Wishlist as in its current form has an equity issue, a wish for Wikisource compared to a wish for Wikipedia is never going to garner the same amount of support. There is a significant size difference between the two, and with that there is a lack of understanding of how much impact a tool will have. Commons gains some in being multilingual<cough> yet loses out against a Wikipedia wish because of the same imbalance. An added bonus that upgrading the multimedia capacity on Commons means we need all the other projects being able to incorporate those gains, voila its too hard, its too big, its outside of scope. If your wish is for a tool to help a language other than the top 10 forget the wishlist altogether.

We end up with it haven taken 6 months to create the virtual Wikimania 2021, its now six months after Wikimania 2021 yet we still havent been able to upload all sessions to Commons because of underlying issues problems with the video uploading process. We didnt even have streaming capacity to actually present directly through Commons we had to use Youtube and continue to hold all the videos on Youtube even though everything is freely licensed. All because the wishlist process if flawed it looks only at the small ideas, the easy ideas, current needs there is no reason why the Community team cant take on a large idea and work collaboratively like the whole community does. There is nothing stopping the volunteers and Community tech team from applying for funding through a rapid grant to work on something larger or something that addresses the lack of equity being created by the Wishlist.



On Thu, 27 Jan 2022 at 04:39, MusikAnimal <musikanimal@gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps we can also have community discussion and !voting on the larger suggestions, to help Wikimedia at large to prioritize (or reflect on why tackling a popular set of challenges is hard to focus on). This seems like a useful enough list to want to come out with a rough ordering of the "larger" list as well as the traditional ordering of smaller wishes.

That's exactly what it is for. See the lead at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2022/Larger_suggestions . The wish about Commons maintenance was never "removed", it was moved to Larger suggestions, because as Szymon explained better than I did, we (Community Tech) cannot provide indefinite support for Commons and tackle 900+ bugs. Moving it to Larger suggestions recognizes the proposal is an important problem that deserves broader attention. Apologies this wasn't clear.

~ MA

On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 2:31 PM Samuel Klein <meta.sj@gmail.com> wrote:
Perhaps we can also have community discussion and !voting on the larger suggestions, to help Wikimedia at large to prioritize (or reflect on why tackling a popular set of challenges is hard to focus on). This seems like a useful enough list to want to come out with a rough ordering of the "larger" list as well as the traditional ordering of smaller wishes.

On Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 6:51 AM Gnangarra <gnangarra@gmail.com> wrote:
Kaya

As was said we should put forward wishes to the list even if they can't be fulfilled by the team, by removing the issue from the wishlist you have taken away the communities ability to express that they wish the issues to be addressed.

Calling it out of scope and removing it is exactly what we were told was not going happen this year. I'll go back to my original response the Wishlist is broken and doesnt serve the communities needs

On Tue, 25 Jan 2022 at 15:12, Szymon Grabarczuk <sgrabarczuk@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Dear Gnangarra and everyone who feels misinformed,


In a nutshell, the voting results are instructions for the Community Tech team. Since our team can't hire another team, such wishes, unfortunately, can't be voted upon. Instead, these become "larger suggestions" which will be shared with the leadership of the Product department at the Wikimedia Foundation.

I invite you to discuss the details on the Survey talk page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Wishlist_Survey

Best,

Szymon Grabarczuk (he/him)

Community Relations Specialist

Wikimedia Foundation



On Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 7:18 AM Gnangarra <gnangarra@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, 23 Jan 2022 at 12:26, Gnangarra <gnangarra@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, 15 Jan 2022 at 05:16, Bodhisattwa Mandal <bodhisattwa.rgkmc@gmail.com> wrote:
Maybe, the Community Tech team should start picking up long standing issues first which are being proposed repetitively almost every year but do not get adequate votes to receive their attention.



On Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 00:59 Mike Peel <email@mikepeel.net> wrote:
Not sure if the opening of the Wishlist has been announced here yet? But
it seems to be open for proposals until the 23rd.

Which means I get to propose fixing a simple technical question for the
fifth time in the wishlist: does this page exist?

Seriously.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2022/Miscellaneous/Check_if_a_page_exists_without_populating_WhatLinksHere

Thanks,
Mike

On 5/1/22 16:10:37, Natalia Rodriguez wrote:
> Hey all,
> Nice to meet many of you for the first time! Thanks for your feedback
> and for raising larger concerns around resource allocation at the
> Foundation. These concerns are extremely valid-- especially the ones
> around allocating resources for less supported platforms such as Commons
> and broken infrastructure. The wishlist process will begin next week
> with the proposal phase starting Jan 10.
>
> In the email thread, I identified some open questions about the Wishlist
> process so I am answering them here.
>
> *
> Can we vote/focus on the maintenance of tools rather than new tools?
> o
> Yes. The wishes that we work on do not have to be associated
> with a new tool. In the past we’ve taken on projects that were
> maintenance related. For example, in the last year, we took on
> improvement projects for Wikisource Export and Wikisource OCR
> tools, among other initiatives. We also maintain and fix all the
> tools we’ve built in the past.Check out the fresh documentation
> about what qualifies as a proposal here.
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey/FAQ#How_to_create_a_good_proposal?>
> o
> Gnangarra, your points about the issues with bulk uploads in
> Commons would make a sound proposal-- a proposal does not have
> to be a new tool in the least. The part about uploading large
> files is out of scope for our team though (see link above about
> our areas of focus, the issue is infrastructural
> <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T86436>and too large for what
> we can take on). I still believe there is value in suggesting
> it, though.
> o
> We have Talk to Us
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey/Updates/Talk_to_Us>hours
> on January 19-- where the entire team will be available for a
> video call to help folks who want to write proposals and polish
> them so that they may get selected.
>
>
> *
> What if what we want fixed is larger than what the Community Tech
> team can accomplish?
> o
> This year, we will be talking directly with leadership about
> larger wishes that we can't fulfill ourselves. To make this
> possible, we will no longer be formally 'Archiving' ideas. One
> improvement we are implementing from conversations with all of
> you at past Talk to Us Hours and other places, is that we will
> place projects that are too large for us into a new category
> called “Larger Suggestions'' because we still want people to be
> able to voice those needs. We plan to share this with the
> Foundation's leadership during the WMF's annual planning, which
> takes place in the spring.
> o
> This being said, if you have an idea that may be too large for
> us to take on, I would also encourage you to come to Talk to Us
> Hours (link above) and see if we can help you workshop the
> proposal into something we can help with. If we can’t then I
> would still highly encourage you to propose, by all means!
> Chances are if you think it’s an important problem, many other
> members do as well.
> o
> Finally, the wishlist isn't just for Community Tech. Volunteer
> developers and other Wikimedia Foundation teams have taken on
> wishes from the wishlist. For this reason, there is a chance
> that a wish may not be appropriate for our team, but it can be
> addressed by someone else.
>
>
> *
> Why isn’t the WMF fixing what we feel are be the most urgently
> needed fixes in functionality?
> o
> This is a larger question that gets answered at the board and
> C-leadership levels. There are also some relatively new teams at
> the Foundation, such as Architecture and Platform Engineering,
> that aim to improve the technical infrastructure overall in the
> years to come. However, every team can help with the answer and
> Community Tech can help with communication of technical needs.
> This “Larger Suggestions” collection of wishes I mentioned in
> the previous answer will not be a silver bullet that fixes all
> of the problems, but I believe in the power of incremental steps
> to steer us in that direction.
>
>
> *
> How can we communicate the urgency of the fixes that we need?
> o
> I don’t believe there is any lack of documentation of concerns
> about functionality that is broken. Folks are right to point out
> that it’s about synthesizing what is most urgently broken, the
> maintenance that is really necessary, and surfacing it to
> leadership. We, the Community Tech team, had a lot of hard
> conversations about how to handle this because we never want to
> mislead anyone into thinking we are going to work on ideas that
> are too large for our team. However, we all collectively came to
> the conclusion that we should still be the team that gives
> people the space to voice what they need from a technical
> perspective.
> o
> The wishlist itself can communicate urgency. If you submit a
> detailed wish (the more details, the better!), and if the wish
> receives a high number of votes, we definitively know as a team
> that it's urgent and high-priority. From there, we have the
> information we need to take next steps. This may involve taking
> on the wish ourselves or communicating the wish to leadership.
> *
> Does the Community Tech team work in isolation?
> o
> No, we constantly collaborate with other teams at the Foundation
> and most importantly, with all of you. This year our goal is to
> share the top wishes with other product managers who are
> responsible for products related to the categories in the
> wishlist. This way, they may incorporate relevant wishes into
> their team's roadmap, or they will at least consider community
> requests as they plan upcoming work. We always check to see if
> other teams are already working on solutions related to what is
> asked inside of the Wishlist. We plan to do more and are
> energized that the conversation is already beginning to happen
> in this thread.
> *
> Why is the Community Tech team so small? Why can't more people be
> hired, or why can't a second Community Tech team be formed?
> o
> As a team, we deeply believe in our work, and we hope to keep
> growing. We know how important it is to work directly with
> community members and fulfill community requests. If you want
> our team to grow, one of the best ways you can champion us is to
> participate in the wishlist. As participation rates grow (and
> they have!), the more effectively we can advocate for our team
> and its resources.
>
>
> P.S. We are still welcoming help to promote the survey and to translate
> the updated documentation. Thanks for reading.
>
> Best,
> Natalia Rodriguez
> Senior Product Manager, Community Tech
>
>
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