Message: 8 Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 21:40:37 +0200 From: Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Show community consensus for Wikilove To: fae@wikimedia.org.uk, Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: <CAO53wxW=UwegSJZgTbk24D69zgd4EOwoGpypKbdQnJqXSEqKMw@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Hoi, I am happy to make a distinction of what I do officially and what I say because I am personally of a particular opinion. This is very much my personal opinion.
There have been LOADS of opportunities where the community is asked, begged to be involved in what will be the way forward. The most obvious opportunity has been the Strategy project. At this time the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for all sorts of volunteers that are asked to help determine what future functionality will be like. Specifically I want to mention the need for "language support teams" and volunteers for our mobile development.
The position of the WMF as I know it is that it wants very much an involved community. To be effective, it is important for the community to be involved early in the process. Sadly many people want to be only involved at the end of the process. This does not help much and particularly not on issues that are not the bread and butter of working on content by the existing community.
I made points in my previous mail. They have not been addressed. We agree on the need for community involvement. The WMF has a strong tradition on involving its communities. My argument is that the programs that are discussed are very much monitored for their effect, based on the results the functionality will be tweaked. My argument is that these programs are the result of community consultation and therefore community involvement is the origin of the functionality we are discussing. Thanks, GerardM
Hi Gerard,
What changes do and do not require consensus is a fascinating issue, but not I think related to my query re Wikilove. Brandon has told us that the devs are only installing wikilove on wikis where there is a consensus for it. Hence my request for a link to the discussion that established consensus for the introduction of Wikilove on EN wikipedia, as I seem to have missed that debate and was having difficulty finding it. I'm not trying to reopen the debate, I'm not actually opposed to wikilove if that's what a bunch of editors want to volunteer their time for. If it was tweaked as per Geni's proposal it might actually become a net positive. I just wanted to read the discussion and see how that consensus was achieved. If it's true that every wiki except for the EN Wikipedia gets the chance to decide whether or not they want it then I wonder why that was the case, and what that says about the Foundation's attitude to our largest community of editors.
If wikilove was developed on Foundation money then I think it sad that this was prioritised above so many more important things. For example a big part of any welcome template is this bizarre looking instruction to sign posts on talkpages with ~~~~. Aside from the signing business the original design of talkpages is way superior and more newby friendly than liquid threads, but it could do with one small enhancement; Autosign on talkpages, with the preference defaulted to off for anyone who has signed a talkpage and on for anyone who hasn't, including of course all new accounts from now onwards. Implement that and we can easily improve the welcome templates, and greatly reduce the number of newbies who raise a query on a talkpage only to be responded with an admonition about their failure to sign their posting. Then there is that one little bug in Cat a lot that prevents if from being used to tackle the Commons categorisation backlog http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js#Hidden_... of those would be way more important than Wikilove, the Article Feedback tool or the image filter. On a different scale altogether is the question of whether Museums and other GLAMS should skip us and go directly to Flickr. Balboa Park has set out fairly clearly why they've taken the decision to use Flickr rather than Commons http://futureofmuseums.blogspot.com/2011/10/building-better-fishing-pole-how... like to know how many developers the Foundation has working to catch up there.
There is a broader point, a willingness to invest in things that might be of use to hypothetical groups of potential new editors really shouldn't come at the expense of neglecting the needs of the existing editor base. We have an editor retention problem and one way to confront that is to invest in fixing the problems that those editors raise and improve the tools they use. Another is to empower the community and put them in control of their projects. Only introducing new features where there is consensus for implementation is a step towards that. A bigger step, and a way to get much much better value from our IT budget is to get community input on the priority of new features. The Image filter referendum made a small step towards that by having a question about its importance. A more meaningful consultation would be to give editors the ability to rate the relative importance of a bunch of potential enhancements "How much do you want this?" Should be the second question after "Do you want this?". The least lovely feature of Wikilove as with the Article Feedback Tool is to think of all the amazing things that could have been done instead.
WereSpielChequers
Hoi, There are a few issues:
- the choice of what is going to be developed is very much a management issue; what gets priority and why - there are always people who object to any project because they are of the opinion that something else should be considered to be more relevant - when something is developed FOR a specific project, giving that project the option to opt out once it is developed defeats the objective of the functionality; such a decision is very much taken at the start of the project - I know that a thread like this is read. Good proposals are considered when they stand out as such. Personally I like the notion of leaving a message as the first option.. - I positively hate talk pages, prefer not to use them. I am a seasoned Wikimedian and when people like me are this negative about talk pages, then the notion that they are good / usable / can be left alone is suspect. - have you considered that many of the advanced functionalities used in the English Wikipedia are actually REALLY problematic in other languages - ease of use, even dumbing down is in my opinion acceptable when this grows our editor community in our projects other then the English Wikipedia - I am known for my hobby horses; working for the "Localisation team" allows me to be part of much good work. However, there are still many things that are not going to be developed any time soon that I rate highly
Thanks, GerardM
On 30 October 2011 12:17, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.comwrote:
Message: 8 Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 21:40:37 +0200 From: Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Show community consensus for Wikilove To: fae@wikimedia.org.uk, Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: <CAO53wxW=
UwegSJZgTbk24D69zgd4EOwoGpypKbdQnJqXSEqKMw@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Hoi, I am happy to make a distinction of what I do officially and what I say because I am personally of a particular opinion. This is very much my personal opinion.
There have been LOADS of opportunities where the community is asked,
begged
to be involved in what will be the way forward. The most obvious opportunity has been the Strategy project. At this time the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for all sorts of volunteers that are asked to help determine what future functionality will be like. Specifically I want to mention the need for "language support teams" and volunteers for our
mobile
development.
The position of the WMF as I know it is that it wants very much an
involved
community. To be effective, it is important for the community to be involved early in the process. Sadly many people want to be only involved at the end of the process. This does not help much and particularly not
on
issues that are not the bread and butter of working on content by the existing community.
I made points in my previous mail. They have not been addressed. We agree on the need for community involvement. The WMF has a strong tradition on involving its communities. My argument is that the programs that are discussed are very much monitored for their effect, based on the results the functionality will be tweaked. My argument is that these programs are the result of community consultation and therefore community involvement
is
the origin of the functionality we are discussing. Thanks, GerardM
Hi Gerard,
What changes do and do not require consensus is a fascinating issue, but not I think related to my query re Wikilove. Brandon has told us that the devs are only installing wikilove on wikis where there is a consensus for it. Hence my request for a link to the discussion that established consensus for the introduction of Wikilove on EN wikipedia, as I seem to have missed that debate and was having difficulty finding it. I'm not trying to reopen the debate, I'm not actually opposed to wikilove if that's what a bunch of editors want to volunteer their time for. If it was tweaked as per Geni's proposal it might actually become a net positive. I just wanted to read the discussion and see how that consensus was achieved. If it's true that every wiki except for the EN Wikipedia gets the chance to decide whether or not they want it then I wonder why that was the case, and what that says about the Foundation's attitude to our largest community of editors.
If wikilove was developed on Foundation money then I think it sad that this was prioritised above so many more important things. For example a big part of any welcome template is this bizarre looking instruction to sign posts on talkpages with ~~~~. Aside from the signing business the original design of talkpages is way superior and more newby friendly than liquid threads, but it could do with one small enhancement; Autosign on talkpages, with the preference defaulted to off for anyone who has signed a talkpage and on for anyone who hasn't, including of course all new accounts from now onwards. Implement that and we can easily improve the welcome templates, and greatly reduce the number of newbies who raise a query on a talkpage only to be responded with an admonition about their failure to sign their posting. Then there is that one little bug in Cat a lot that prevents if from being used to tackle the Commons categorisation backlog
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js#Hidden_... of those would be way more important than Wikilove, the Article Feedback tool or the image filter. On a different scale altogether is the question of whether Museums and other GLAMS should skip us and go directly to Flickr. Balboa Park has set out fairly clearly why they've taken the decision to use Flickr rather than Commons
http://futureofmuseums.blogspot.com/2011/10/building-better-fishing-pole-how... like to know how many developers the Foundation has working to catch up there.
There is a broader point, a willingness to invest in things that might be of use to hypothetical groups of potential new editors really shouldn't come at the expense of neglecting the needs of the existing editor base. We have an editor retention problem and one way to confront that is to invest in fixing the problems that those editors raise and improve the tools they use. Another is to empower the community and put them in control of their projects. Only introducing new features where there is consensus for implementation is a step towards that. A bigger step, and a way to get much much better value from our IT budget is to get community input on the priority of new features. The Image filter referendum made a small step towards that by having a question about its importance. A more meaningful consultation would be to give editors the ability to rate the relative importance of a bunch of potential enhancements "How much do you want this?" Should be the second question after "Do you want this?". The least lovely feature of Wikilove as with the Article Feedback Tool is to think of all the amazing things that could have been done instead.
WereSpielChequers _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Speaking personally, the tech department develops features that benefit the community. The difference is that they, quite rightly, see the "community" as consisting of both readers and editors. They are developing editor-specific new features, such as the Zoom interface for Special:NewPages, as I explained to you in Office Hours just last Thursday.
Switching authorisation and prioritisation over to the editors completely ignores readers, and assumes that editors will act outside their own interests to ensure that reader-specific features do get some traction; given that the last time enwiki reached consensus on a tech development it was to turn off new page creation for new editors. This is *clearly*self-interest, and short-sighted self-interest at that - the stated benefit was "it cuts down on our workload". You should recognise the dangers of editor consensus on tech matters given that you voted against it.
Letting editors also assumes that editorial consensus on tech represents what the vast majority of editors want, and not what a vocal minority of those few editors who turned up want. Now, a lot of editors are very vocal about the AFT being a waste of time. Is this representative? No - an actual survey, rather than a trawling of community pages to see what those editors who had vocalised their opinions in a specific venue thought, showed that a *vast* majority consider it A Good Thing.
On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 11:17 AM, WereSpielChequers < werespielchequers@gmail.com> wrote:
Message: 8 Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 21:40:37 +0200 From: Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Show community consensus for Wikilove To: fae@wikimedia.org.uk, Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: <CAO53wxW=
UwegSJZgTbk24D69zgd4EOwoGpypKbdQnJqXSEqKMw@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Hoi, I am happy to make a distinction of what I do officially and what I say because I am personally of a particular opinion. This is very much my personal opinion.
There have been LOADS of opportunities where the community is asked,
begged
to be involved in what will be the way forward. The most obvious opportunity has been the Strategy project. At this time the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for all sorts of volunteers that are asked to help determine what future functionality will be like. Specifically I want to mention the need for "language support teams" and volunteers for our
mobile
development.
The position of the WMF as I know it is that it wants very much an
involved
community. To be effective, it is important for the community to be involved early in the process. Sadly many people want to be only involved at the end of the process. This does not help much and particularly not
on
issues that are not the bread and butter of working on content by the existing community.
I made points in my previous mail. They have not been addressed. We agree on the need for community involvement. The WMF has a strong tradition on involving its communities. My argument is that the programs that are discussed are very much monitored for their effect, based on the results the functionality will be tweaked. My argument is that these programs are the result of community consultation and therefore community involvement
is
the origin of the functionality we are discussing. Thanks, GerardM
Hi Gerard,
What changes do and do not require consensus is a fascinating issue, but not I think related to my query re Wikilove. Brandon has told us that the devs are only installing wikilove on wikis where there is a consensus for it. Hence my request for a link to the discussion that established consensus for the introduction of Wikilove on EN wikipedia, as I seem to have missed that debate and was having difficulty finding it. I'm not trying to reopen the debate, I'm not actually opposed to wikilove if that's what a bunch of editors want to volunteer their time for. If it was tweaked as per Geni's proposal it might actually become a net positive. I just wanted to read the discussion and see how that consensus was achieved. If it's true that every wiki except for the EN Wikipedia gets the chance to decide whether or not they want it then I wonder why that was the case, and what that says about the Foundation's attitude to our largest community of editors.
If wikilove was developed on Foundation money then I think it sad that this was prioritised above so many more important things. For example a big part of any welcome template is this bizarre looking instruction to sign posts on talkpages with ~~~~. Aside from the signing business the original design of talkpages is way superior and more newby friendly than liquid threads, but it could do with one small enhancement; Autosign on talkpages, with the preference defaulted to off for anyone who has signed a talkpage and on for anyone who hasn't, including of course all new accounts from now onwards. Implement that and we can easily improve the welcome templates, and greatly reduce the number of newbies who raise a query on a talkpage only to be responded with an admonition about their failure to sign their posting. Then there is that one little bug in Cat a lot that prevents if from being used to tackle the Commons categorisation backlog
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js#Hidden_... of those would be way more important than Wikilove, the Article Feedback tool or the image filter. On a different scale altogether is the question of whether Museums and other GLAMS should skip us and go directly to Flickr. Balboa Park has set out fairly clearly why they've taken the decision to use Flickr rather than Commons
http://futureofmuseums.blogspot.com/2011/10/building-better-fishing-pole-how... like to know how many developers the Foundation has working to catch up there.
There is a broader point, a willingness to invest in things that might be of use to hypothetical groups of potential new editors really shouldn't come at the expense of neglecting the needs of the existing editor base. We have an editor retention problem and one way to confront that is to invest in fixing the problems that those editors raise and improve the tools they use. Another is to empower the community and put them in control of their projects. Only introducing new features where there is consensus for implementation is a step towards that. A bigger step, and a way to get much much better value from our IT budget is to get community input on the priority of new features. The Image filter referendum made a small step towards that by having a question about its importance. A more meaningful consultation would be to give editors the ability to rate the relative importance of a bunch of potential enhancements "How much do you want this?" Should be the second question after "Do you want this?". The least lovely feature of Wikilove as with the Article Feedback Tool is to think of all the amazing things that could have been done instead.
WereSpielChequers _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
As for empowering users and letting them play a role - speaking professionally now, that's exactly what tech is trying to do. I should know, they've hired me on a short-term basis to help out :P. If you want to get involved, my inbox is always open. Drop me an email and I'll send you links to what I'm currently working on.
On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 11:17 AM, WereSpielChequers < werespielchequers@gmail.com> wrote:
Message: 8 Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 21:40:37 +0200 From: Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Show community consensus for Wikilove To: fae@wikimedia.org.uk, Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: <CAO53wxW=
UwegSJZgTbk24D69zgd4EOwoGpypKbdQnJqXSEqKMw@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Hoi, I am happy to make a distinction of what I do officially and what I say because I am personally of a particular opinion. This is very much my personal opinion.
There have been LOADS of opportunities where the community is asked,
begged
to be involved in what will be the way forward. The most obvious opportunity has been the Strategy project. At this time the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for all sorts of volunteers that are asked to help determine what future functionality will be like. Specifically I want to mention the need for "language support teams" and volunteers for our
mobile
development.
The position of the WMF as I know it is that it wants very much an
involved
community. To be effective, it is important for the community to be involved early in the process. Sadly many people want to be only involved at the end of the process. This does not help much and particularly not
on
issues that are not the bread and butter of working on content by the existing community.
I made points in my previous mail. They have not been addressed. We agree on the need for community involvement. The WMF has a strong tradition on involving its communities. My argument is that the programs that are discussed are very much monitored for their effect, based on the results the functionality will be tweaked. My argument is that these programs are the result of community consultation and therefore community involvement
is
the origin of the functionality we are discussing. Thanks, GerardM
Hi Gerard,
What changes do and do not require consensus is a fascinating issue, but not I think related to my query re Wikilove. Brandon has told us that the devs are only installing wikilove on wikis where there is a consensus for it. Hence my request for a link to the discussion that established consensus for the introduction of Wikilove on EN wikipedia, as I seem to have missed that debate and was having difficulty finding it. I'm not trying to reopen the debate, I'm not actually opposed to wikilove if that's what a bunch of editors want to volunteer their time for. If it was tweaked as per Geni's proposal it might actually become a net positive. I just wanted to read the discussion and see how that consensus was achieved. If it's true that every wiki except for the EN Wikipedia gets the chance to decide whether or not they want it then I wonder why that was the case, and what that says about the Foundation's attitude to our largest community of editors.
If wikilove was developed on Foundation money then I think it sad that this was prioritised above so many more important things. For example a big part of any welcome template is this bizarre looking instruction to sign posts on talkpages with ~~~~. Aside from the signing business the original design of talkpages is way superior and more newby friendly than liquid threads, but it could do with one small enhancement; Autosign on talkpages, with the preference defaulted to off for anyone who has signed a talkpage and on for anyone who hasn't, including of course all new accounts from now onwards. Implement that and we can easily improve the welcome templates, and greatly reduce the number of newbies who raise a query on a talkpage only to be responded with an admonition about their failure to sign their posting. Then there is that one little bug in Cat a lot that prevents if from being used to tackle the Commons categorisation backlog
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js#Hidden_... of those would be way more important than Wikilove, the Article Feedback tool or the image filter. On a different scale altogether is the question of whether Museums and other GLAMS should skip us and go directly to Flickr. Balboa Park has set out fairly clearly why they've taken the decision to use Flickr rather than Commons
http://futureofmuseums.blogspot.com/2011/10/building-better-fishing-pole-how... like to know how many developers the Foundation has working to catch up there.
There is a broader point, a willingness to invest in things that might be of use to hypothetical groups of potential new editors really shouldn't come at the expense of neglecting the needs of the existing editor base. We have an editor retention problem and one way to confront that is to invest in fixing the problems that those editors raise and improve the tools they use. Another is to empower the community and put them in control of their projects. Only introducing new features where there is consensus for implementation is a step towards that. A bigger step, and a way to get much much better value from our IT budget is to get community input on the priority of new features. The Image filter referendum made a small step towards that by having a question about its importance. A more meaningful consultation would be to give editors the ability to rate the relative importance of a bunch of potential enhancements "How much do you want this?" Should be the second question after "Do you want this?". The least lovely feature of Wikilove as with the Article Feedback Tool is to think of all the amazing things that could have been done instead.
WereSpielChequers _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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