On 2010-09-02, Aryeh Gregor wrote:
Over the last couple of years, MediaWiki development has moved from being almost entirely volunteer-based to having a large contingent of paid developers. A lot of people have noted that this has led to a lot of work being done without much community involvement. Just for a basic statistic, in July, I estimate that about 90% of non-localization commits to extensions/UsabilityInitiative/ were by paid employees. (I use "employee" loosely in this post, to include all paid staff, such as contractors.) By contrast, about 25% (ballpark figure) of non-localization commits to phase3/ were by paid employees, and the number of volunteer commits to phase3/ was much higher than the total number of commits to UsabilityInitiative, so this isn't just a matter of community members not doing as much work overall.
...
I'd just like to repeat what others have said, and note that I agree with Aryeh's comments and replies 100%.
It's very dissapointing to see many of the suggestions discarded almost immediatley by most of the staff members replying as "unrealistic". These are well thought out points and I think a decent amount of consideration should be given to all of them, regardless of anyones predispositions.
Robert