Answer inline!

On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 10:51 AM, <wikitech-ambassadors-request@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:

5. Re: Community Consultation for Media Viewer now live (Kim Bruning)

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Message: 5
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 09:33:35 +0200
From: Kim Bruning <kim@bruning.xs4all.nl>
To: Coordination of technology deployments across languages/projects
<wikitech-ambassadors@lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc: translators-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-ambassadors] Community Consultation for Media
Viewer now live
Message-ID: <20140829093335.A12879@bruning.lan>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Hmm...
This consultation presents Media Viewer as a Fait Accompli.

when this is addressed on talk, there's an answer like:
"Hi Daniele, please notice this is not intended as a forum to
discuss WMF's general behaviour".

Might be wise to back off or modify the wmf's stated position a bit.

Hi Kim,

I hope to clarify this a bit: this is not Yet Another Page to express one's general opinions/feelings about MediaViewer. If people want to talk to Lila, Erik, and so on, there are lots of better venues to do so and which users have already discovered in these weeks: this instead is a place for direct communication aimed at the *Multimedia team*, for clear requests that that team can act upon.

Unlike regular feedback pages, this is a consultation which will "identify any critical issues with this new experience", or, the way Erik puts it, "[...] the listed planned improvements [...] are based both on user feedback, survey data and user testing. This consultation is more about "If we do these things, what's left that is really important to you?" For example, did we overlook something? Let us know!

That's why we ask that the users "be specific about what problem the suggestion would solve, whom it would help, and for what purpose (viewing, editing, re-using files, etc.)".

WMF staff will need to review /proposals/ and sort them (more info about how this will be done on the consultation page itself). As much as I can understand/sympathize with complaints, or compliments!, those are not items I can put in a list of things which MV should, could or must have :)

Also, at the top of the page I read that "If agreed upon critical issues cannot be resolved in the near term, the Wikimedia Foundation will temporarily move the feature back into opt-in beta globally". If MV was really a Fait Accompli, that wouldn't be there, IMHO.

Suggestions about improvements to the pages are definitely welcome.

HTH!

Erica

Elitre (WMF)

Politically speaking: it is wise to take pains not to treat something as a
fait accompli, even or especially when you would like for it to be so.
;-)

Otherwise, some people may feel like they are cornered, and that they
*have* to fight [*]. Always leave an "out" so they can feel safe and thus
stay reasonable.

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

[*] For folks who get the heebie jeebies talking about feelings,
pretend that by "some people" I may actually mean utility-optimizing
(bounded) rational agents. Obv, don't make the only optimal reply be "Have at
ye!"

( ps In general I think it would be rather wise if projects were actually
co-initiated by WMF&Community, in that case you don't get
situations like this. As of 2014 afaik there's still no clear on-wiki
pathway to rq features/changes? If I missed it, I'd promote that to pieces!)