From: Marcus Buck <me(a)marcusbuck.org>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] FlaggedRevs on Hungarian Wikipedia still not working
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Saturday, August 29, 2009, 4:36 AM
Birgitte SB hett schreven:
I hope someone is able to shortly fix this issue
for
you.
However I think you have a mistaken idea about WMF.
The reason people are wanted
to join meta-projects is to
ensure that their local wikis issues are understood. The
meta-projects *are* hu.WP's projects, not competition for
hu.WP. If you, or someone like you, is not part of
foundation discussions to both speak up about hu.WP concerns
and also to better inform hu.WP discussions about larger
issues and trends, then how can hu.WP be properly cared for?
Certainly everyone here wishes success for hu.WP and that
her volunteers are active and happy. But for the most
part, people here are not some abstract "WMF-people" who
have neglected hu.WP. We are en.WS people or fr.WP
people or de.WP people.
I originally joined this list much like you did.
Rather upset at what felt was
attacks on en.WS's sincere
efforts to do the right thing and general lack of help for
us. These "WMF-people" had been talking about en.WS and
saying we would have to delete the UK Hunting Act. I came
here hoping to convince these people to actually help us:
tell us exactly what copyright allows (very naive I know)
rather than just dictating that our stuff be deleted without
clarification. But I discovered that these
"WMF-people" were no more than people just like me.
Passionate people who found their way here with their feet
still firmly planted in their own particular interests. They
meant no harm to en.WS, but en.WS didn't rate very high in
their concerns either. I quickly realized that someone
from en.WS better keep on top of things here, before our
interests got inadvertently squashed by someones pet
issue. Or we merely got forgotten.
So I understand how you might be hoping for for
solutions and answers to be found
here. I certainly did, but
I learned it was a mistake to think there was such authority
here. You will find opinions and ideas here. Sometimes you
may find needed attention. (I hope this is the case today!)
But the only real answer for solving hu.WP issues is to see
that hu.WP is in WMF. hu.WP people must be in WMF
people. hu.WP developers must be in WMF developers. hu.WP
projects must be in WMF projects. Then hu.WP will find
real answers and solutions. Or at least, they will
find answers and solutions as well as anyone does.
Birgitte SB
Well, on a general participation level it's all true, what
you are
saying. But looking at the actual issue "Flagged Revs at
hu.wp" it's
very clear: The Foundation pays staff to do administrative
tasks local
projects cannot do. It's their job to do it. And they
haven't done the
necessary steps in six weeks. Tisza/hu.wp have done what
they needed to
do: File a bug at Bugzilla. If the coordination would work
properly that
should suffice to get the job done. It didn't. He searched
to directly
contact people who can help about this.. And that didn't
help too. So
it's not Tisza's fault, he did it all right. The problem
lies at the
foundation level. Some processes are broken.
There are two possible solutions: If we don't have enough
manpower to
handle all requests and bugs than the foundation should
hire more staff
(with millions in donations flowing in that should be no
big problem).
The second solution (the cheaper one) would be to create an
interface,
that allows local bureaucrats to switch on or off a set of
approved
extensions on their project. The interface would then run
the needed
scripts automatically. This interface needs to be written,
but that's
only one time and it will save much time and effort in the
future.
Marcus Buck
User:Slomox
You cut off the part of Tisza's message with was not particularly about the call for
technical help. Those were the sentiments I was replying to. I don't disagree that
the bug should be fixed sooner. Every single wiki thinks their bugs could be fixed
sooner, and I have personally written about the need for bugs to be prioritized better in
the past. I have no disagreement there.
Birgitte SB