<sigh> This is all very nice "going forward", but it completely misses the salient points. 1. It is an egregious social blunder to act as Erik has done - he apologised (sort of) on the English Wiki, he should at the very least have the grace to do so on the German, 2. There are concerns about the MV software breaking attribution (among other things). These need to be taken seriously. I am not familiar with the detail, but if they are supported by fact the Media VIewer should be withdrawn until it is fixed. Breaking the law is not what the free content movement is about. 3. The Mediawiki community are knowledgeable, intelligent and experienced as a group. They are not objecting because they are reactionary old farts, but because there are significant issues. It is standard software development practice to have a roll-back plan in place in case of just such an event. It is not and should not be seen as a "defeat" or "climbdown" to disable a new component while improvements are made. It is a learning opportunity. 4. Superprotect. The suggestion that all software on the projects needs to go through code review is absurd posturing that points up the cultural difficulties. If there are features that should not be accesible to Admins, then the software should not expose them. Traditionally, though, such features have resulted in a divisive environment with chages to configuration requested and denied by devs on the grounds that "we know best". 5. Development. Note that the community does not have head-to-head clashes with legal, financial and other parts of the Foundation. The development team includes some of the best and the brightest of Wikipedians recruited over the years. I have had the pleasure of talking to several of them at Wikimanias, and despite the fact that they are lovely people, there is a sense that they have become increasingly out of touch with the community, and convinced that they are the guardians of the one-true-flame. I might cite the developer who changed his mind three times during the Hifa Wikimania over the solution to the "parser function" problem. His sole decision resulted in considerable effort being directed in a way that took years to deliver a result, when what we were asking for could have been delivered in ten minutes. 6.Mission statement. The mission is to "encourage and empower" the community. Not to bully and coerce it. I believe that during the time the WMF has turned its gaze outwards, to attempt (mostly unsuccessfully) to grow and diversify the editor base it lost focus on its mission. We need to refocus so that the WMF can encourage and empower the community efficiently. We need to ask the difficult questions on Gender Gap, on content, on translation, on advocacy, on wiki-culture - and yes on HCI too. We need to work with academic partners, talented volunteers, contractors and staff to build evidence on which to base our decisions. We need to build the software development structure Lila talks of. We need to engage in content building strategies. All this will be a thousand times as fruitful with an "encourage and empower" dynamic than the present confrontational one. All the best, Rich Farmbrough. On 14 August 2014 15:00, Manuel Schneider &lt;manuel.schneider(a)wikimedia.ch&gt; wrote: -- Landline (UK) 01780 757 250 Mobile (UK) 0798 1995 792

Juergen Fenn &lt;schneeschmelze(a)googlemail.com&gt; wrote: I doubt that WMF employees are paid in encyclopaedias :-). Tim