Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
It's pretty clear that the objectives of this project are not successfully met at this point, and in fact have caused major problems on non-Latin script WMF sites, and significant but less critical problems on Latin script sites. Several factors for this have been identified in the thread - including limited attention to the effects on non-Latin script projects, the insertion of philosophical principles (FOSS) without a clear understanding of the effects this would have on the outcome, and the unwillingness to step back when a major change results in loss of functionality.
[citation needed]
Loss of functionality? The functionality we're talking about here is reading of Wikimedia content. It's the most core, most basic functionality we have. In the case of VisualEditor, which picks up read-mode typography styles, it's also editing.
Did reading suddenly become seriously impaired? No. If these things had happened, you'd see a hell of a lot more outcry than what we've seen now. If millions of readers and tens of thousands of editors were functionally unable to read our content easily and smoothly, you would hear a lot more complaints. If you didn't hear complaints, you'd probably still see a swift drop in pageviews.[1]
[...]
- Our realtime pageviews data is lacking, but HTTP requests and edit rates
for top wikis via gdash.wikimedia.org don't seem to show unusual drops. Am I wrong? [...]
What other free encyclopaedia would you expect readers and editors to turn to?
Tim