Why didn't anyone tell us this? (If this was discussed somewhere, my appologies; I missed it). Several people have pointed out the missing Talk links, but this is the first time I've seen any explanation.

It wasn't intentional; rest assured that we, too, see "talk" as a vital part of Wikipedia's functionality that we have no intention of removing (though some of us might consider it less vital than others :)

This was an emergency situation. Wikipedia was becoming totally unusable, and was losing its more valuable resource: users. Drastic action had to be taken, and Jim did that, to make the site usable. It had an unfortunate side-effect, and I think that's fixed now.

I'm a worried that that software dicisions are becoming isolated from the main Wikipedia community. Before major changes and new features are implemented on the live Wikipedia server, there should be some kind of general discussion where everyone can come to an agreement. Wikitech-l is only of interest to the programmers;

Yes, new _features_ or major changes in features should be discussed on the list at large. Again, this one situation was an emergency and I'm glad that Jim was able to take unilateral action to rescue the project when it was needed, and I wouldn't want his ability to do that overly burdened with discussion. I also think programmers ought to have some discretion on minor features and changes. But generally I agree that any changes in the interface should be discussed on the general list.

0