Hello Community Tech team,
Welcome to this list!
I think it is great that in WMF there is a team now that is collecting the
needs from the community and turns this in software improvements. This
sounds to me as a great improvement.
Concerning the section Outreach, I am not sure how many wikis have such,
but there still exist technical ambassadors who serve as an intermediate
between the tech and the community. From the tech side the ambassador
translates software changes into text with enough contest and clear wording
for local users on wikis, and informs the community about software changes
and more. From the community side the tech ambassador translates problems,
issues, feedback and more to the tech side. For the Dutch wikis I serve as
technical ambassador to have the interaction tech-community go more
smoothly.
Abouth the sections of Phase 1 & 2 I am concerned. The way it is suggested
to be set up now is that the proposals with the most votes win. First of
all, large wikis & communities have more people to submit proposals and
more people to vote. So it seems that this is becoming a popularity
contest, which is the wrong direction.
In the Dutch community it happens a lot that users are against certain
software, until they tried, and the other way round happens as well. Basing
a voting on what people like can easily become unbalanced because of
various factors. Also what matters to one person, does not have to matter
to another person (like because he doesn't do anything with it), while it
can be essential to another.
Also I think that the survey is missing an important factor: what level of
importance does a certain software have. This can't be determined by a
voting.
The determination can vary, but I see three different importancy levels:
1. software that is broken or cause troubles, while it is essential
2. software that is missing and needed to get a core process running
3. software that is helpful, extra, handy, but not part of a core process
That still level ones exist is a piece of past heritage, sadly.
Another subject that recently came up is the subject of continuity. One of
the largest announces I notice is that users see that software is no longer
maintained, but still like to use it, are getting very annoyed. This is not
an issue that is incidental, it is a structural problem.
In general speaking I am happy with the team and the survey, but I think it
will need some improvements before it can be used in a balanced way.
Greetings,
Romaine
Reading the Community Wishlist Survey page I think it is a great idea to
do.
2015-08-25 21:54 GMT+02:00 Ryan Kaldari <rkaldari(a)wikimedia.org>rg>:
Hi everyone!
Community Tech will be dealing a lot with technology relevant to Wikimedia
editors. We figured we'd introduce ourselves here, hoping some of you might
want to help out connecting us with the communities.
We're a new team within the Wikimedia Foundation, focused on meeting the
needs of active Wikimedia editors for improved, expert-focused curation and
moderation tools. Making the lives of the people who spend a lot of time
taking care of the Wikimedia projects a little bit easier. This is a small
team: myself, Frances Hocutt and Niharika Kohli, with some support from
Johan Jönsson as a Community Liaison. We'll focus on tasks that can be
dealt with quickly and that will have a direct benefit for the core
community and might be overlooked by the larger WMF development teams.
To find our feet, we’ve mainly been knocking out bugs during the first
weeks. At the moment, we're looking at tasks from previous surveys to see
how we can benefit the communities. We are also working on developing a
good process for soliciting new requests from the Wikimedians we're
responsible for helping. As part of this effort, we have written up a draft
proposal (
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Community_Tech_team/Community_Wishlist_Survey)
for a cross-project community wishlist survey that we would like to launch
within the next month or two. Please take a look at the draft, share it
with your communities, and let us know your thoughts on the talk page.
You can find more information, such as the scope of the team, a roadmap,
what we're doing and what we've done so far on our team page:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Community_Tech_team
Ryan Kaldari
Engineering Manager, Community Tech
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