----- Original Message -----
Lars Aronsson wrote
In my mind, Wikipedia is about volunteering to make
the world better.
If you are concerned about the divide between wikipedia-l and
wikitech-l, then *you* can bridge the gap by joining both lists and
post summaries to wikipedia-l of the technical issues currently under
discussion.
I hope I don't sound like I'm giving orders; I know we're all volunteers here,
including Mr. Wales, who has volunteered his servers and talents to keep the whole show
running. I'm not asking for summaries of all technical discussions, nor do I think
they should be moved to Wikipedia-L (they were just moved *off* of this list not that long
ago). When I say I'm worried about the programmers becoming isolated (note that I
don't think the programmering subcommunity *is* isolated yet), I'm mainly talking
about two things.
The first is if a Bomis sysadmin has to take drastic steps to keep Wikipedia running (i.e.
temporarily removing major functionality), could some sort of announcement made soon
afterwards? That way, the community doesn't have to guess what's going on.
The second is my concern about what the Cunctator calls "featuritis". I think
that any *major* new software features should be discussed in the general Wikipedia
assembly. For example, what is the "Autowikification" button (no offence
intended to whoever implemented it!)? What does it do? Why is it useful? How do I use it?
Most importantly, do we need it? It sounds like it automatically links words to existing
articles. If so, I would argue against the utility of such a creature.
However, I also think that the programmers should not have to be nitpicked by a bunch of
people who don't code. ;-) It's only major stuff that I'm talking about here.
So, it's not that I want someone to sum up "This Week on Wikitech-L" all the
time. Anyone interested in that can join the list. I'm just looking for ways to keep
the rest of the community in the loop concerning major changes to everyday Wikipedia
work.
-- Stephen Gilbert
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Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.com
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